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Is this question acceptable?: Counterexamples in Algebra

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    • CommentAuthorHarry Gindi
    • CommentTimeJun 24th 2010 edited
     

    I think that the more important point here is the one that Andy originally made about it being a "fishing expedition". It seemed like the question was posted on a whim, just so the user could do something and maybe spark a little discussion. I am against this sort of posting in general. I'm not against all big-list questions (some of them have been quite good), but the good ones were asked by people who put in time, effort, and some thought.

    • CommentAuthorAndrea
    • CommentTimeJun 24th 2010 edited
     
    Every now and then someone comes up with the idea that a new place to divert such questions should be created. Now, I (or many other people) could even create a site for idle chat in mathematics, say MathPub; even better we could propose it at Area51.

    The questions are:
    1) Would anyone be interested enough to moderate such a place?
    2) Would there be an effective way to divert people there from MO?

    I suspect both answers are 'no', so I think we will have to cope with these questions for long.

    On the other hand I sincerely don't like having too many such questions. I think the real problem is that people who want cannot completely ignore some tags. This is a deficiency of the software which I did not notice at the beginning, since I was interested in a lot of questions. After some time, I'd like to able to to completely ignore some tags, even at the risk of losing something interesting (don't we take this risk with SPAM filters?). This is even more noticeable for me on StackOverflow, where my ignore list is 23 tags long.
  3.  

    MathPub sounds interesting. But as you say, is it interesting enough to attract moderators etc.?

  4.  

    @Andrea,

    in the future, there may be an excellent mechanism for diverting people "there" from MO. If we migrate to StackExchange 2.0 (which we hope too), then we will likely be able to "migrate" questions instead of "closing" them. This mechanism already exists amongst the "trilogy" of Stack Overflow, Server Fault, and Super User, and I'm not sure that it will apply to all the new Stack Exchange 2.0 sites about to appear.

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      CommentAuthorJon Awbrey
    • CommentTimeJun 24th 2010 edited
     

    Re: “MathPub sounds interesting. But as you say, is it interesting enough to attract moderators etc.?”

    Perhaps a discrete, er, discreet inquiry in one or two well-chosen locations …

  6.  
    @whoever: Thanks for reopening the question! The nLab page didn't seem to be growing and my computer couldn't read a lot of the symbols for some reason...

    @Harry: I've been thinking about a "counterexamples in algebra" for a while, as I'm sure many others have. It's sort of the obvious missing thing in that whole book "series." I went to MO to search and see if anyone had asked for such a list. No one had, so I did. Given the fact that the question was not a research question, exactly how much more thought was I supposed to put into it? I could have put down a few counterexamples, but I don't think it's necessary: the question is unimaginative and everyone knows what a counterexample is, they don't need me to put one down...I honestly had no idea it would be such a big deal- it all seems like a rather silly fuss over a question that, if you don't like, you can pretend doesn't exist.
    • CommentAuthorYemon Choi
    • CommentTimeJun 24th 2010
     

    Andrew Stacey:

    In summary, I see MO as a place where research-level mathematicians come when they are in research mode. So that's completely different to when we visit blogs and the like.

    Harry Gindi:

    I think that the more important point here is the one that Andy originally made about it being a "fishing expedition". It seemed like the question was posted on a whim, just so the user could do something and maybe spark a little discussion. I am against this sort of posting in general. I'm not against all big-list questions (some of them have been quite good), but the good ones were asked by people who put in time, effort, and some thought.

    These are probably closest to how I feel. I want to try and help answer specific questions (what I think used to be called SMART targets in UK educational jargon), and personally would like to use MO as a research tool not a learning aid.

    As for the question "why not just ignore these questions?", because I have interests outside my nominal speciality, I don't want to set up a large number of filters. (I used to filter out big-list questions, but then found there were one or two "useful resources" or "recommended journals" type questions that I actually wanted to see the answers to.) Then I find the repeated bumping of these questions mildly irksome.

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