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fpqc, this comment was based on a few (admittedly heuristic) observations. It is common for a good question to get more votes than all of its answers, and a typical question (not cw) gets nearly as many votes as its top answer. The number of (even first-year) grad students reaching 1k is well beyond my expectations, and there are a few remarkable grad students and undergrads with several thousand points (which you are well aware of).
Absolutely, but consider cases like Emerton, Brian Conrad, Keith Conrad, Mariano, and even yourself, all of whom have risen quite quickly through the ranks but all have few to no questions. For example, I had probably 1500 reputation when you had somewhere near 50, but you have now left me in the dust, having only asked three questions (although you've given quite a few very good answers).
fpqc, I did not say that it was impossible to earn points just by giving good answers (I've only asked 3 questions so far), I am only saying that it is possible to rise through the ranks quickly by asking good questions. I expect that the grad student population will be reasonably represented in the 10k users when MO reaches full maturity.
Yes, I edited my response while you were typing yours out, where I noted this. You will also notice however, that your reputation has increased much faster than most of the graduate students here. I think that it's clear that people who can give good answers will see their reputations increase much faster than people who ask questions, not to flatter you. =)
It is notable that amongst 10k+ users (just to take a small sample), number of questions roughly sorts by age:
Dear Noah,
I think your last post summarizes my feelings and position well. Francois' (fgdorais) adjective "childish" is not too far off, but perhaps emphasizes that aspect a little more strongly than I would want to. I'm glad that we're having this discussion. Although it's probably going to be inconclusive, I think that it's important. I'm glad that you're keeping an open mind, and I'll certainly try to do so as well.
I'm also glad we're having this important discussion. My gut sides with those who dislike keeping score, but my mind tells me that it's actually very important for MO.
I couldn't come up with anything better than the adjective 'childish' (with quotes). I apologize in advance if this becomes the new 'competitive' (which I sadly also introduced). I'm open to better terminology.
Shevek, that's an interesting point. I think to understand where all the bureaucracy comes from you have to have had some experience with other online math forums, which are often plagued by issues such as students asking people to do their homework for them. Happily, MO has had relatively few issues of this kind, and I think many people here are committed to making sure it stays that way. As a result occasionally people might get overzealous, but there's a reason it takes five votes to close. (For what it's worth, I had no problem with the Hartshorne question.)
My original proposition was to make reputation visible only in obscure places. I had in mind more precisely that it be visible on a user's page alone. If somebody really wants to make a judgement based on reputation, then s/he should be forced to go to the userpage. The reputation hunting will continue regardless, for reasons like trying to gain more privileges. Even after gaining 10k, some will keep on doing it just to stay on top of things, like Jon Skeet in SO. And then there are people who must always do one-upmanship stuff. So there is no need to worry that people will drop out of MO if reputation is made less prominent. With this in mind I once again bring up the idea of relegating the reputation display to the userpage alone.
When they first show up, the initial reputation 1 is displayed. This is also stigmatizing. Edit: sorry for the double post. Just the vagaries of my browser.. Please erase this post and preserve the one below.
The display of low reputation next to your username is also a stigma. I think I am specially in a position to say this since I have in the past given up used accounts and started all over from the ground. As I said earlier, life here is infinitely easier with higher reputation.
I personally have been a bit turned off by what (in my view) seems like excessive bureaucracy.
I think that the people that set up MO have been fantastic in being so open in their decision-making and in continually explaining and justifying what they do, and in listening to the opinions of anyone and everyone.
The discussions that have been taking place on meta would have taken place anyway, but it would have been via email or via bumping into people in corridors. It may seem like excessive bureaucracy, but I think that that is an impression created by the fact that (most of) it has been conducted out in the open where anyone can have a say and be heard. I commend Anton and Scott (and the others) on setting up meta in the first place to keep this discussion off MO whilst allowing it to take place in an easy-to-reach public place. That, to me, seems like the best of both worlds: those who hate these discussions can just get on with the maths, whilst those who like to discuss how to make it run better can sound off here to their heart's content.
Maybe we should be more strict in shifting putative discussions here from MO to further remove any sign of "bureaucracy" from MO itself. That's certainly a valid point.
I can just imagine that someone might come to MathOverflow and notice examples of such discussion (in the comments, or god-forbid if they went into meta!) and be given a bad vibe that this place is run by random young people on the Internet with lots of reputation who have very different opinions than their own and who have no idea that they are a "serious guy" in real life.
I'm not sure whether the person who is the "serious guy" is the person encountering MO for the first time or the "random young people" who run MO. Either way, who's now worrying about reputation?!
If it takes "random young people" to move mathematics into the internet age, I'll start funding probability theory to try to generate more of them. Things like MO and the nLab are experiments to see if we can use this shiny new toy that everyone keeps shouting about to our advantage. Some may work, some may not (blogs spring to mind there), some may work brilliantly from the start, some may need a little tweaking. But these things are genuine innovations, far more than just shifting from print journals to electronic journals! The nLab is maths being done in the open right from the first ideas to the final theorems - that's new. MO is mathematicians interacting from all over the world via questions-and-answers - that's new. Both are great, IMHO, but very different. Some find the pace of MO a little off-putting and prefer the nLab. Others find the nLab a little confusing (read Ben Websters SBS post from a few months back, but then note that Ben now has his own "web" at the nLab), but find MO very exciting.
So someone being put off from MO because they aren't shown the "proper respect" due to them from the IRL status ... not sure I can sympathise very much with that. I certainly don't see that as worth getting rid of the value of reputation. As I tried to say, reputation is extremely useful for me. Not as a game, but as a tool. I do not want to see it removed from the main list of questions, from a question post itself, or from answers. I do not want to have to trawl through pages to look up someone's reputation. As I said earlier, I use reputation as a guide to how much time I should assign to someone's posts. Losing that would mean that MO was no longer easy to use and would quickly become tiresome and tedious. I'm quite happy for the font to be so that it isn't so prominent (my eyesight is still okay), and the badges really are just a bit of fun (something that was driven home by the fact that I recently got "Nice Question" (a silver badge!) for the "Walking in the Rain" question!) so I'm happy to lose them, but reputation is what makes MO more than just a random list of questions and answers and so I really do not want to lose it.
I'll just note, I deleted the answer that Reid had linked to because it was not an answer. To summarize, someone who has enough reputation to comment left an answer which consisted entirely of asking for clarification of the question, fpqc suggested they could have left it as a comment, and Qiaochu noted that some people don't have the reputation to comment, which was irrelevant to the situation, but not obviously so, due to the reputation no longer being visible.
Anyway, Andrew L knows quite well how to post comments. He has been posting rants against Bourbaki in comments on my posts for the past month or so.
On a lighter note, this is the hottest meta thread in my memory.
Yes, but we've gone pretty far afield from the original topic. As has been noted the real issue isn't "competitiveness", but something that I'll tentatively call "something else".