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Is this question acceptable?: Poll question about Wolfram

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    I unilaterally turned http://mathoverflow.net/questions/40709/is-the-notation-fx-deprecated-by-professional-mathematicians-as-claimed-by in to a poll question. Anyone who wishes to keelhaul me for doing so can do so here.

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    You know, it might be a good idea to close the question now. People can still vote on the answers, but that'll prevent people from adding new ones (and let this die after it disappears below the fold).
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    It did occur to me that actually closing the question will have no effect whatsoever as far as collecting votes is concerned. But I think that closing it would be interpreted as a message as to whether or not this sort of thing is acceptable or not which ought to be discussed before action is taken.

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    I dislike this use of MO, and I think that it should be on a blog instead. I don't have a very well thought out reason, but I can't see the point of the poll, and I don't think its results could be very informative. It can only prompt discussion, which is not generally the purpose of MO.

    Frivolous as it is, this is also sort of an abuse of the badge system.
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    Agree with Jonas.

    It would be kind of a neat addition, and not too frivolous, to have little non-intrusive polls running now and then on the side of the main page, but this debate doesn't strike me as a topic so particularly compelling as to merit a run-around of the site's design and intent. In short, I don't think it's a precedent we want to set.
    • CommentAuthorWill Jagy
    • CommentTimeOct 1st 2010
     
    Just for entertainment purposes, and making no public comment whatsoever about when I met the author of the book,

    http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/wolfram/

    No animals were harmed during the making of this post.
    • CommentAuthorRyan Budney
    • CommentTimeOct 1st 2010 edited
     
    The encyclopedia was written largely by Eric Weisstein. When it was "purchased" by Wolfram (or however it became associated with Wolfram) my understanding is it was edited some but as far as I know Stephen Wolfram had little or nothing to do with the contents of the encyclopedia.

    FYI, before it became associated with Wolfram I was one (of many) authors. Eric sent me a t-shirt for my efforts - and I think a copy of the 1st printing of the encyclopedia, too. He was very pleasant to deal with, and only let me put something into the encyclopedia provided I could explain it to him first. I noticed that some of my more colourful expressions like "algebraic topology is the study of holes" were purged from the encyclopedia on the purchased-by-Wolfram edit.
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    Huh, I chanced on Eric's Treasure Trove when I was in high school. And I remember the times when it was only partly accessible. But only now did I learn about the CRC dead-tree version and find out the reason for the access restrictions and subsequent outage. Hats off to Eric and anyone who originally contributed to the project!

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    @Cam: and who will be our CowboyNeal?

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    I notice that it's now been closed which, as I wrote above, makes absolutely no difference to this question whatsoever!

    I'd also like to say that I'm not convinced of the value of this question, but there were sufficient voices in favour (with sufficient reputation) of some sort of question that it seemed worth doing the experiment in actuality rather than discussing a virtual question (which no two people would quite have agreed upon).

    I certainly don't understand the "abuse of the badge system" remark. I thought that the general consensus was that the badges were so meaningless that they could safely be ignored. If you look at my questions and answers, then half of my +20 votes questions have been closed (and a fourth I tried to close but was out-voted), and you have to go down to about my 20th answer to get one that I would actually rate as having any worthwhile mathematical content (why doesn't homology have a coproduct, in case my count is off).

    I don't know if this says more about me, about MO, or something else entirely, but over on tex.SX, I completely ignore the reputation and badges number. And I do that unconsciously, it's a number that has absolutely no meaning for me. I can't remember from one day to the next what my reputation there is. Here, I notice when it goes up or down, and I know before I've looked if I've had any down-votes. Again, this is unconscious. However, even though I notice my reputation here, I certainly don't notice any badges (once I'd capitulated and gotten a silver badge, that is).

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    On badges, I don't want to say much, because I don't think much of them either (and I was trying to say that I consider them frivolous). However, this sort of thing came up during the moderator election, when Anton was earning badges for answering with moderator candidates. Badges were defended as being an "important form of silliness" in the comments on the top answer at http://math.berkeley.edu/~anton/posted/moderator-election-vote-here-closed.html .
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    I think that implicit in the word "silliness" is that there will be occasions where the badges are meaningless and that it would be more bother than it's worth to fix them for these cases.

    On a slightly different part of the issue, I disagree with the reason for closing. "Subjective and argumentative"? Given the amount of discussion some other questions have generated, I don't think that "argumentative" is fair. "Subjective" I guess is "by design", but I'd rather that it had been closed as "off topic" meaning, "We don't want such polls here.". Also, I wish that those who closed it had come here and expressed their opinions first.

    (I may well agree with such opinions, but as I said above: some people saw some merit in this question and their opinions have not been taken in to account.)

    • CommentAuthorHJRW
    • CommentTimeOct 2nd 2010
     

    As one who voted to close, apologies for not joining the discussion first. My reasoning is well summarised by Andy's comment above: closing doesn't prevent people from voting, but does contain any potential problem.

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    Well, there hasn't been the discussion that I'd hoped to prompt - either on whether or not correcting such bizarre statements was a reasonable thing to do (as was claimed in the initial round of comments to the question) or whether or not such polls are a reasonable thing to have on occasion on MO.

    Those issues apart, I do feel that such things should have a finite lifetime. Closing doesn't actually have any effect whatsoever (it doesn't even stop it getting bumped to the front page). So I would ask that this now be locked and that a note be put at the bottom saying:

    This poll has now run its course. The final tally can be seen below.

    The wording is intended to be as neutral as possible. I'm happy for any better suggestions to be used.

    (A moderator is needed to lock the post, I believe.)

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    (I just closed the poll as per Andrew's instructions.)

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