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I think it is a mistake to close these questions. People say "that's not what math overflow is for" but I'm trying to argue that it should be part of what math overflow is for. What do you think?
This is something that you should e-mail Anton about. It's ultimately his decision, and posting here on meta is not going to change anything.
This is something that you should e-mail Anton about. It's ultimately his decision, and posting here on meta is not going to change anything.
Disagree. Everybody who has some reputation is to lesser or greater degree moderating the site, and meta is meant to be the forum where those moderators decide what the community norms should be. If you vote on MO, and especially if you vote to close/reopen questions, then you are actively shaping what MathOverflow is for.
In general, I think questions about the profession should be acceptable on MO (see the [career] tag), so long as their density doesn't get too high. Of course, I think they should be good questions ... it's notoriously easy to ask really bad general interest questions. In my mind, one important factor is that the question should be asking for an answer to something, not inviting a discussion about some topic.
Actual gossip questions (e.g. questions which invite speculation about people or organizations) are pretty much always a bad idea.
I haven't looked at these two particular questions and I don't have time to look over them now, so I can't speak to the specifics.
Since there's some discussion, let me just describe why I voted to close the question despite Mark's good answer. (1) I believe in the principle that "a good answer does not a good question make". And (2) maybe it is the wording, but the question reads to me something too much like a blog entry/discussion, or something that I see on FaceBook walls.
(For the record, I probably would've voted to close the primes in nature question too; but I was not enfranchised back then.)
I voted to close both.
Questions like this just do not work on MathOverflow. There is no "right answer" and also no objective means to judge one answer over another. It's like asking for the length of the Emperor of Japan's nose. We can all give an answer, and all say whether or not we like other's answers, but who knows the correct answer?
There are serious failings in the refereeing system, and it would be nice to have a good proper discussion about them. Indeed, we tried a year or so back, but didn't get very far. If there's enough interest, we can reopen those discussions. But then they should be had in a proper place rather than on MO.
Just because MO is here, doesn't mean that it has to be used for everything.
@Todd: how do you know Andrew didn't vote on that? That question is 6 months old, and my impression is that votes to close expires after a few weeks if it didn't gain sufficient momentum?
(Observe also that http://mathoverflow.net/questions/43397/examples-of-prime-numbers-in-nature shows no pending votes to close, even though Andrew and Andy Putman both committed votes to that effect.)
@Shevek: regardless of what you think, note that there was a founding vision as expressed in the FAQ, where it is clearly stated
The site works best for well-defined questions: math questions that actually have a specific answer.
You are free to disagree, but many of us are used to, are comfortable with, and support that vision.
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