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    @Bill: Thanks for the advice. I think it's fair to say the new stackexchange site will have roughly the same moderation toolset as mathoverflow.net, since they are based on the same software. Are there any deficiencies you've noticed in the StackOverflow engine you think would be a problem?
    I am skeptical of your claim that usenet has better filtering capabilities. Could you clarify? I think that killfiles, at least, would have little effect in protecting against a large number of unique problem users.

    Of course, input from people other than BIll is welcome too.

    Edit: A revised version of Harry's link for those of you without access to the private beta: http://stackmobile.com/view_question.php?site=meta.math.stackexchange&id=231
    • CommentAuthorHarry Gindi
    • CommentTimeJul 24th 2010 edited
     

    @Kaestur: It's not a matter of how effective the moderation tools are. It has to do with how effective the moderators are in establishing a certain level of quality. You can't "trust the community" when the majority of people in that community are lazy highschoolers and crackpots (i.e. the "wider mathematical community").

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    @Bill Dubuque: +1. This is why we do need to walk the line between tolerance and quality.
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    Harry's mentioned and I believe that MO had a flood of "crackpots" etc. at the beginning and stayed afloat because of aggressive moderation of those users. Would anyone who was around at the very beginning give an idea of what this problem was like, how bad, and how it was dealt with? Any similar problem we have on math.SE is likely to be much, much worse, but it'd be useful to me to have more data, even anecdotal.
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    As far as I remember, MO has never had a "flood" of crackpots. We've sporadically had some trolls. To the extent that we had any problem users, most of the work was done by high-rep users using their high-rep privileges: downvote posts, flag posts, close questions. The software makes aggressive moderation pretty easy once a core of high-rep users develops.

    • CommentAuthorWill Jagy
    • CommentTimeJul 24th 2010
     
    Katie, this may be of no importance, but I contacted Robin Chapman (by email) about a problem user and it turned out Robin knew about the guy, had tangled with him before on sci.math, and so on. As I don't see Robin on this particular thread you might write to him individually. Indeed, I would say that the most politically explosive decisions must involve some email, otherwise you have public speculation about identity of users (I got called out for doing that), nasty discussion of just how destructive a certain user is, etc. If you see any need, you are welcome to write to me, Robin is not quick to answer email. I rarely get deeply involved in Meta discussions, but I do write to people and sometimes forward email between users who want to keep their email addresses secret...there is nothing special about me except that I make my identity and email address easy to find.
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    The software makes aggressive moderation pretty easy once a core of high-rep users develops.

    Yes, this is the most important point I've heard made.

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    In particular, it got a lot easier around here once there was a core of 3000+ rep users to close questions. Fortunately, the era in MO's history before that happened was also the era where we didn't have enough publicity to really attract a lot of problem users; most people got here, I imagine, through a combination of blogs and word of mouth. MU will likely have bigger problems in this regard, since my guess is its userbase will grow much faster than ours did.

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    I don't know about that. MO got so much publicity because of links from most of the major math blogs out there (e.g. SBS early on). Math.SE, by contrast, doesn't have an obviously comparable method of publicity (a question currently discussed on meta there).

    The other good news is that it's *much* easier to amass rep on Math.SE (even now that it's in beta) than on MO, since the questions are at a different level and generally don't require a great deal of specialized knowledge. Nevertheless, the threshold for closing questions will still be 3000 (it's now 1, but that'll change when the site goes public). So it should not take long at all until a critical mass of high rep users develops and closes irrelevant questions.
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    Yes, but Justin L is among the top-ranked users on MU, so the sword cuts both ways, Akhil.

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    The public beta has just begun!

    • CommentAuthorKevin Lin
    • CommentTimeJul 27th 2010
     

    Just took a look at the public beta. I think things are looking really good over there!

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    I think MU is looking pretty good; I would definitely encourage users here to answer questions there and maybe seed some more elementary questions while they're at it.

    Also, shameless plug: vote up my suggestion for the domain name! I think it's catchy, anyway.

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    Could everyone here please vote for the name "mathunderflow"? It is much better than the trite and boring "mathexchange" or the odious "dividebyzero.com", which has, in a stunning display of lack of imagination reached the top of the list.

    • CommentAuthorKevin Lin
    • CommentTimeJul 28th 2010 edited
     

    I can't vote because I don't have enough reputation. I don't like MathUnderflow for precisely the reason that Michael Lugo gives ('This name gives too much of an impression that this site is for people who "aren't good enough" for MathOverflow').

    I agree that DivideByZero is rather terrible.

    I also don't know what AxiomFive could possibly be referring to. The parallel postulate?

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    I think it's the axiom of comprehension of Frege. However, how can one seriously expect people today to remember the numbering of the axioms of a specific exposition of naive set theory from over a hundred years ago?

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