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  1.  

    http://mathoverflow.net/questions/48384/proving-that-induction-is-not-only-sufficient-but-also-necessary-closed
    http://mathoverflow.net/questions/48410/sensible-theory-between-pa-and-pa-that-has-a-certain-paradoxicality-closed
    http://mathoverflow.net/questions/48304/variable-range-of-a-low-order-real-multivariate-polynomial-equality-inequality-c

    The OP wants these questions reopened. I think I've failed to communicate that meta is the right place to come to have that discussion, so I'm starting this thread for him.

    @Jan Burse: You should explain why the questions should be reopened here. This is also the right place to ask for clarification about why people voted to close.

  2.  
    I voted to close because these questions are not research level. None of the edits they have suffered has changed my mind.
  3.  
    I put comments into the questions to counter argue many of the claims made by some posters. Since I do not see the process that leads to a collective close down, I cannot do more than argue with what is visible to me. I am happy to continue discussion here or wherever one proposes.
  4.  
    The FAQ says that research level questions are questions that you come across when you are reading "graduate level books". I have spend 8 years in research. If you want I can give you some people references about my past and also some book references about what bothers me. But I wanted to avoid this since I was a little bit in a hurry with getting an answer.
  5.  
    The MO FAQ is a little ambivalent about the following point: MO saves the day. When you're stuck, you can come to MathOverflow and say "I'm trying to do X. How can I do that? Does this work? Does anybody have a reference?", on the other hand it does not want to be a Encyclopedia.

    I was actually attacted to MO and the like, because I observed that my searches on some topics more and more yielded results on MO. So in many instances I got results from MO before Wikipedia. Probably MO can react more directly and on another level than a Wikipedia. So I decided to try to become a user of MO as well so.

    Currently I am not sure whether it is "cool", since I feel opressed here.
  6.  

    @andrescaicedo: can you elaborate a bit more, Andres? I do not know hardly anything about the topic in discussion, so cannot form my own opinions. But even I can tell, based on your votes, that you don't think the questions are research level. Evidently the OP thinks differently, or else the discussion wouldn't have been brought to Meta. I think it would help if you can explain to the OP why the question is not at a level to this website.

    • CommentAuthorWillieWong
    • CommentTimeDec 6th 2010 edited
     

    @janburse: don't take it too personally. The "process" that lead to the "collective close down" does not exist as such. Users with sufficiently high reputations are allowed to vote to close questions they personally think as inappropriate, and once a question has amassed 5 votes (or 1 from a moderator), it will be closed. Ideally we encourage people who vote to close questions to leave a comment on why the quetsion is inappropriate to this website. Sometimes that encouragement is not necessarily followed. What you see in the "visible" discussion is basically the same as what everyone else sees (except that people with the power to vote also see the number of votes, but not the identities of the voters, on a current question).

    So no, there is no secret kabal or oppression. In general you may find many similar names closing questions in one fixed topic because, well, we do have limited number of experts in each specialty.

    Also: since this thread is meant for you to make a case about why you think the question should be re-opened, you may want to focus less on complaining about the process and more on giving the intellectual merit of your questions. Granted, since none of the people who voted to close have so far appeared to explain their reasons, it may be a tad difficult for you to address the criticisms yes. But you may want to try to extrapolate from the comments to your questions and give a pre-emptive defence anyway.

  7.  
    Actually a question can be criticized for inconsistency, and maybe for trivial solutions. But all comments I have seen so far were only related to clarifications or fooling around, and we could not yet get to the meat. Which is a pitty, since the topic is not of no relevance. I also would prefer when people would post real answers and not hasty comments.
  8.  
    The copyright footer is critized. The genesis of the copyright footer goes along the following lines. 20 years ago I was posting some *free* software. The internet was not yet ripe, so I physically sent a floppy to somewhere. Several years later the software appread on a CD, and was not clear whether this CD was *free* or not.

    Since then similar things happened over and over and the internet does not make the situation simpler. So I read the licencse here and some faq, and deduced from what I read that the site applies a default way of noting the author BECAUSE the authors usually do not prescribe a way how their work should be noted.

    Since this default way is not clearly specified for now and for the future and since I am free as an author to prescribe the way how my work is noted as part of the license, I do note my work via a copyright footer. My copyright footer is harmless, its a one liner. It could be much worse.
  9.  
    I left a comment on one of the original questions, which did not include definitions but accidentally re-used the standard notation $PA^-$ for something else. I read the question as using the usual definition, which made the question somewhat trivial. With the definitions provided, the question is at least a real question now. I think that one key thing they questions lack is motivation: they don't seem to be the kind of questions that people usually run into when studying arithmetic, and it isn't clear how one would run into them. For example, first-order arithmetic comes already equipped with an addition operation, so proving this operation is unique is somewhat unusual. The way that the question doesn't acknowledge this also makes it hard to answer (for me), because it isn't clear what signature is being used. I didn't vote to close - I don't have enough rep to even worry about it - but I can understand how the questions could attract close votes. I think that differently worded questions, taking motivation and standard usage into account, would make close votes less likely. For example, I think that the newest version of http://mathoverflow.net/questions/48410/sensible-theory-between-pa-and-pa-that-has-a-certain-paradoxicality-closed is in a shape where it could be answered in some way.
  10.  
    a) I fully agree with Carl's assessment. It's a question now but it's still very vague and unmotivated.

    b) It seems worthwhile to point out that everything posted by users on MO is under creative commons share-alike license.

    c) The "history" of two closed questions probably had something to do with the trigger happy closing votes, so one should not take it too personal.

    This is imho a more general problem of MO -- there's no place where people can ask for help formulating a question (this question might not be a good example though). I have heard from grad students that is a key reason not to ask questions on MO.
    • CommentAuthorRoy Maclean
    • CommentTimeDec 6th 2010 edited
     
    "there's no place where people can ask for help formulating a question"

    If there is a market for a sort of preMO, problem factory or math-ante-room.net, then is a Q&A site the right format, or a more discussion-based threaded forum ?
  11.  
    The intellectual merit of a question is its answer or its lack of. And the joy begins then. When the seeker has received a further gift although still knowing that his quest will never end. Motivation and non-vaguness are not important for the true seeker.
  12.  

    If you are not sure whether a question is of a suitable form (in content and in style), you can always ask first here on Meta to seek suggestions on how to formulate them.

    Unfortunately (?) we do not advertise this fact to new users. So it has to be pointed out every now and then.

  13.  
    I would not formalize the posing of questions too much. I guess it varies very much how questions "can" be posed from area to area, and there should not really be a how questions "must" be posed. This is a real life forum and not a computerised proofs forum. If it were the later I would eventually agree on giving more strict guidelines on posing questions.
  14.  

    @janburse: in view of Carl's comments above, I have two suggestions

    • Make clear in the statement of the question that your definition of PA- does not agree with standard/common notation, and point the reader to definitions below. This will forestall any confusion.

    • Please give a short description of why the question is interesting and "not of no relevance".

    (It is always important to sell your question to the crowd, to make experts who may be able to provide you with an answer, but who do not have the answer readily available, care enough to figure out the solution.)

    Once you do that I think it may be possible to convince the requisite number of voters to re-open the question.

    Also, since the question, once fixed up, may be able to stand alone as a valid question, you may also want to remove the link to the previous closed version. And as a matter of personal taste, I would prefer it if you remove the copyright claim on the bottom, since by posting on MO you already implicitly agreed to allow MO and users to re-distribute the content using a CC license.

  15.  
    @Roy Maclean. A Q&A site is most likely not the right tool. My comment was not "against MO", it was just an idea on how to prevent similar discussions.

    A dedicated sister site along those lines could help a lot with problems like closing debates.
  16.  

    You know what, janburse? You are not going to get anywhere with this. With arrogant comments like

    Motivation and non-vaguness are not important for the true seeker.

    and open refusals to take suggestions, why should we even care about helping you? With every comment you post, the more I feel like my time trying to play peacemaker and advocate your cause has been completely wasted.

  17.  
    But I noticed differences between math.stackexchange.com (MS) and mathoverflow.net (MO), when I post an URL in MS it automatically fetches the title of it and displays it as a link. MO does not do it. On the other hand the formatting of MO is more powerful than on MS, for example the 4xsp did not work in MS.

    This relates to vagueness in questions. What I would like to do when posing a question, I would like to introduce common things via links. For example FOL= and PA, this can be easily linked to some wiki pages etc.. But the current system does not allow me to enter more than one link since I have not enough credits. To prevent spam.

    So there are conflicting goals.

    Bye
  18.  
    @WilliWong: You were asking for the intellectual merits of questions. I have given my romantic view. What is your view?
  19.  
    @WillWong:

    > Also, since the question, once fixed up, may be able to stand alone as a valid question,
    > you may also want to remove the link to the previous closed version. And as a matter of
    > personal taste, I would prefer it if you remove the copyright claim on the bottom, since
    > by posting on MO you already implicitly agreed to allow MO and users to re-distribute the
    > content using a CC license.

    This is exactly what I want to prevent, a depersonalization of query. If this is the goal
    of MO, I cannot cooperate. I have already cooperated in so far as I did not mention my
    commercial affiliation in my profile. But I cannot further cooperate since this is unpaid work.
    You can contact me for paid outside of this forum.

    Bye
  20.  

    You can't cooperate - with the people trying to help you formulate your question well, and get it answered on MO, which is already free - because you are not being paid for it. I'm speechless.

  21.  
    @ZevChonoles:

    Closing questions is not shaping the formulation of a question. If you look
    at the questions so far the only contribution in shaping the question was
    made by one guy named Arthuro Magidin, which I have also credited in
    the footer. The rest was oppression.

    So this does not shed a good light on the community.

    Bye
  22.  

    I remain to be convinced that jb's phrasing on this thread sheds a good light on whatever cause he feels he must champion...

  23.  
    @WilliWong:

    I do not have to account that my PA does comply with some standards or not,
    since there are competing formulations, used for different ends. I was using
    the formulation from the following paper:

    On The Independence of Goodsteins' Theorem,
    Justin T. Miller, April 30, 2001

    From this paper I borrowed the approach to introduce
    + as a function symbol, that is introduced later. I
    did then an adaptation to Edmund Landau, who does
    not use zero.

    Common practice in math is when there are competing formulations, to do
    exactly what I did. To use the name and then cite the definition explicitly
    to make sure what is really meant by the name.

    I think the premisse here, that I can learn something from MO, especially
    in this thread is wrong. Of course I could place a million of references
    into my posting, so as to blow it up. But this diverts the reader from the
    essential. The beauty of the peano axioms is, that they are a few, and
    nevertheless the create a certain complexity.

    Best Regards
  24.  
    I would learn something from MO, if my questions would be answered,
    but all that happend until now they got closed!
  25.  

    @janburse,

    if you're not happy with the licensing used at MathOverflow, please delete your content.

  26.  
    I not sure how I can protect my content. In computer science it is easier. For
    example in code snippets you can place multiple comment lines with all kind
    of information, also require that it is not removed.

    Here you get peer pressure to not but a single copyright line. The peer pressure
    has nothing to do with the license, since the license and I guess also the
    general posting rules allow putting the copyright line.

    Please note it is a personal copyright line, I don't refer to some company or
    some product. Also in scientific texts it is somethings accustom to have
    an acknowledges intro or extro, so I thinking about how doing this.

    My goal is not to have depersonalized content, as long as the whole work
    is done by me: fighting hasty comments, fighting closing, fighthing tag
    removal, etc.. This is a lot of work, and I already spend the last 3 days,
    and I didn't get an answer.

    If it would happen that a question is really shaped by the community,
    I would remove my copyright. But in the initial phase questions are probably
    not in this shape. Also only a few people have edit rights on the question,
    so the question is not the same as a wiki page, with multiple authors.

    Multiple authors can come in, in the answers. Which I cannot claim to
    have copyright. If this input causes me to change the question or make
    new questions I can cross reference here via links. And of course use
    methods of citation. This will also preserve each others copyright.

    Bye
  27.  
    Take for example a page from WolframMathWorld:

    http://mathworld.wolfram.com/MultivariatePolynomial.html

    What do you see at the footer?
    Does this impede the use of the site for you?

    Best Regards
  28.  
    I think MO and other stack sites should allow a user configuration
    that the user can edit, which is kind of a text footer, that is included
    in the content of the page, and not only the icon/name box somewhere
    remote of the content.

    Usenet you can also configure footers. But they have become less
    popular because of spamming. But nevertheless, I think MO
    and other stack sites are quite unique now, because of their
    depersonalization of content.
    • CommentAuthorHarry Gindi
    • CommentTimeDec 6th 2010 edited
     

    I refuse.

    Mathoverflow is not "other stack sites", which have claimed to be "Usenet for web 2.0", and has never claimed to want to replicate usenet functionality. I suggest that you bring your contributions to Math.SE, where the administrators might be more flexible regarding the "usenet-like" functionality you are requesting.

    I (and I'm sure most others here) do not want to be a part of a site where people do things like copyright answers. If anyone wants to make use of an MO answer in a paper, then the ethics of academia require that the work be cited. Expecting anything more than credit, I think, is both immoral and damaging to the community.

  29.  
    Hi

    Ok, interesting point (MO<>MS). Did research this a little bit.

    Well they use the same lincense, for example
    math.stackexchange.com (MS) uses Attribution-ShareAlike
    2.5 Generic and mathoverflow.net (MO) uses Attribution-ShareAlike
    3.0 Unported. Just different versions. Reading, they require back links!
    WoW, MS does not allow nofollow where MO allows nofollow.

    MS mentions the individual:

    "Attribution to the website, and more importantly, to the
    individuals who so generously contributed their time to
    create that content in the first place!" - from the Attribution Info Page

    MO does not do it anymore:

    - Nothing on the similar page...

    MS has a company:

    - Mentioned in the footer

    MO has a sponsor:

    http://math.stanford.edu/~vakil/files/mathoverflownotices.pdf

    But I guess "other stack sites", is valid in as far:

    "MathOverflow’s underlying software is Stack Exchange,
    the engine behind the wildly successful programming site
    Stack Overflow." from the PDF

    Best Regards
  30.  
    What do you mean by "Expecting anything more than credit"?
    Having a personal footer, or something else?

    BTW, I guess the answers are copyrighted already and at the
    same time you have given some rights to MO. Since you are
    require to backlink to the content and also to the authors,
    by the backlink policy, and you allow them remix etc... But
    then a part of you is locked into the MO system then.

    What is this remix thing, are they allowed to make virtual
    books? Give them away for *free*?
  31.  
    @Scott Morrison, Anton Geraschenko: Question: Is there an opt out possibility,
    i.e. to retract from the licensce later on, will then all articles, especially answers,
    that one has created be deleted, what happens with the backlinks...
    • CommentAuthorHarry Gindi
    • CommentTimeDec 6th 2010 edited
     

    You should probably ask your lawyer, but make sure not to post here in the meantime. It would be really unfortunate if someone posted here only to decide to retract the post and screw up all of the links.

  32.  
    So all articles are infinitely editable... Right?
    I don't know the state machine of the things. I
    am deducing that answers get closed from what
    I saw. But questions what do they get? I don't
    know. You see nobody answered my questions
    until now. How can I know. Would need to observe
    somebodies else question... Or read some FAQ.
  33.  

    Or read some FAQ.

    This is never a bad idea.

  34.  
    Well there is an undelete (sic!).
    http://tea.mathoverflow.net/discussion/792/deleted-questions-with-possibly-substantive-answers/#Item_0

    But again conflicting goals. Since the delete of the question
    is cascading, so undelete can save worthy answers.

    Bye
    • CommentAuthorHarry Gindi
    • CommentTimeDec 6th 2010 edited
     

    Gasp!
    ^ (Should be read as me literally shouting the word, "Gasp!")

  35.  

    Aktually MO seems not be always dead serious. Here is a nice example:

    http://mathoverflow.net/questions/22299/what-are-some-examples-of-colorful-language-in-serious-mathematics-papers/22455#22455

    How did this pass the research criteria? Since two examples where put into the question teaser?

    Interesstingly the following was closed: http://mathoverflow.net/questions/7155?sort=votes&page=1#sort-top

    Maybe the problem with MO right now is, that it does not have an alt section. Like the newsgroups have, everything is drop dead serious, and there is no room for (re-)creation, for experimenting etc.. Does a real life math department look like this?

    Is the homo ludens excluded from MO? What view has MO of current day research? I think games have a big tradition in math and it would be an error to promote anemic math on MO. The media that we have here could also be used for a more playful math. I think it is also partly, I have seen some posts with diagrams etc..

    Maybe can use the tag soft-question for one of my questions... But not happy with it... I have another idea...

    Bye

  36.  

    @Anton Geraschenko: Please close/delete this thread, there is nothing in it, which could be useful to keep for the past.

  37.  

    @janburse You didn't start this thread and I don't see why it should be deleted at your whim. You might not find anything useful in it, but I do and I would like to ask Anton not to delete it.

    I think you may have realised this already, but just in case, I will spell out some observations: there is a "culture shock" going on here. The attitude that you are displaying regarding copyright, "ownership" of words, intellectual merit of questions and answers, payment for services and many other things is pretty alien to working mathematicians who are not in the private sector and who happen to constitute the vast majority of users of this site. Your behaviour can be compared to that of a Westerner who goes to Japan, enters the hosts' house in his boots, uses the table napkin to clean his nose and talks loudly about a quarrel between a Republican and a Democratic governor, as reported in the latest New York times, while the Japanese hosts are trying hard to enjoy their tea and sometimes to politely point out to the guest that he is misbehaving.

    Let me point out to you that you have arrived here a couple of hours ago and are telling people what MO should and what it shouldn't do. You haven't even observed the local customs, according to your own admission. Please contemplate these last two sentences.

    You will be surprised to learn that the MO-community is much more homogeneous in their attitudes and their outlook on mathematics than you may be used to from the private sector, where the word "mathematics" itself can mean all sorts of things. So there is fairly little serious disagreement about what the active users want MO to be. The little disagreement that there is is usually settled in a different language and a different tone from the one you are employing.

    Please don't feel offended by this post, all this is meant as a piece of friendly advise of something that is obvious to everybody on this forum, but might not be obvious to you, just like the misbehaviour wouldn't be obvious to the Westerner in my little (slightly exaggerated) parabola. I will leave it at that and will let you draw your own conclusions about a good future course of action, or let you fail to do so, as the case may be.

  38.  

    +1 Alex.

    I cannot further cooperate since this is unpaid work. You can contact me for paid outside of this forum.

    What exactly is the service that we've been given a sample of? It's hard for me to imagine any culture (even in the private sector) where it customary to charge people for the privilege of listening to you asking them for help?

    @Scott Morrison, Anton Geraschenko: Question: Is there an opt out possibility, i.e. to retract from the licensce later on, will then all articles, especially answers, that one has created be deleted, what happens with the backlinks...

    What is it that you're trying to opt out of? When you post on MO (or SO, or math.SE, or ...), you retain the copyright to your words, but license them under the cc-sa license. You can only opt out of this by deciding not to use those sites. You can use another license later if you wish, but that doesn't change the fact that you released them under the cc-sa license, so people will still be able to use anything you wrote under the terms of that license.

    So all articles are infinitely editable... Right? I don't know the state machine of the things. I am deducing that answers get closed from what I saw. But questions what do they get? I don't know. You see nobody answered my questions until now. How can I know. Would need to observe somebodies else question... Or read some FAQ.

    I suspect I know whatever information you're looking for, but I can't parse this post. It sounds like you've come up with some other way to find that information.

  39.  

    Let me point out to you that you have arrived here a couple of hours ago and are telling people what MO should and what it shouldn't do. You haven't even observed the local customs, according to your own admission. Please contemplate these last two sentences.

    Actually you are interpreting my posts wrong. I just want to find out what are the boundaries concerning the copyright here. And I do this in asking or declaring my intentions in first person sentences. Reason for doing it like this, economy of the posts, I don't need 10 pages to express my questions, using millions of parabolas etc.. I am astonished that even in this thread some content style analysis is done, diverting from the issue.

    I can understand that content style is important for the articles given a certain goal how they should be perceived. But all this content style meta comments do not contain much information. What would be interesting here would for example some statistics from the MO owners about their usage and user profiles. Do they know how much people from private are here, how much people from academia?

    Any statistics about the demographics, besides the funding scheme? And of course it could be related the demographics and the refusal of articles. Further what interests me, are there some simulations around of the rep model? Are there possible abuses, like rep pumps? Etc.. millions interesting questions.

    Bye

  40.  

    From sleepless in beantown: The copyright message does not bother me; everyone posting here, and everyone in the USA creating any content at any time since 1978, has copyright on their own content, even if they do not affirmatively assert copyright in a notice along with that content (not true of content created prior to 1978, or so, I'm not your lawyer blah-blah). What is bothersome is entering a locus with known rules and guidelines for civility+behavior as pointed out in the FAQ (top and center of every MO page) and ignoring all of these rules and asking everyone to follow along.

    My new posts: No No I am not asking anybody to ignore any guidelines. But I guess hasty closing of queries is not the solution. There should be proper review process in place, with states "inprogress", "inreview" etc.. Otherwise the online editing is not needed, and you can simply upload elsewhere reviewed queries via ftp. This way how it is now done, is just embarassing newbees and even sometimes already existing contents. This is my current thinking now, that there is something wrong with the invitation to post queries and the magic of having high reps directly closing.

    Doubtful articles in state "inprogress" or "inreview" should appear on differnt lists, so that people who are only willingly to work on ripe posts can ignore them. And people who are willingly to help out can devote their time to the other. But currently the way it is done is a no go for researches and practicioner that are used to more direct communication.

    The review process can be refined as follows. It should not breed dependent question authors, but instead promote that question authors can formulate their queries without the help of others. So after the author has reached a certain rep, he can choose on his own whether he wants to directly release an article or first put in state inprogress. But initial authors with low rep should not have this option.

  41.  

    And there you go again: throughout this thread I see you starting a post denying doing X in the first paragraph, then continue to do exactly X. How is your advocacy not a quest to get us to abandon the status quo?

    Your most recent post is a suggestion / demand (depending on how I want to read the word "should") that we, the MO community, change our pretty well-working process to conform to one that you personally find more acceptable. This is especially farcical considering your (currently) rather limited contribution to the website, and your "threat" above to just take your business elsewhere due to our "oppression" of you that casts a "bad light" on this community. Perhaps you ought to re-read Alex Bartel's comment and re-think your audacity in joining a community just to agitate for change within 48 hours.

    Aside from the fact that the process is largely driven by software out of our control (so any discussion of change is ultimately moot in short-term considerations), even if we were to have control of the underlying software, why do you think the community should "fix" a process that just ain't broken to begin with?

    • CommentAuthorWill Jagy
    • CommentTimeDec 7th 2010 edited
     
  42.  

    @WilliWong:

    I am very happy that you mention this:

    contribution to the website, and your "threat" above to just take your business elsewhere due to our "oppression" of you that casts a "bad light" on this community. Perhaps you ought to re-read Alex Bartel's comment and re-think your audacity in joining a community just to agitate for change within 48

    The problem is that MO does take the business of posting queries to the outside very quickly. And I have no control whats ever. For example my very first query poped up on top on google when I was entering some of the salient key words. And this makes your process so embarassing. I don't know whether you have any sensibility for that.

    Therefore I am advocating a "inprogress" mode for queries and a "inreview" mode for queries. The "inprogress" queries should have the attribute "noindex" set in their page. So that not only MO-ers which are not interested do not find me, but also people from the outside.

    Whether a requirement that I am proposing is moot or not is not relevant. If you don't have the means at the moment to implement a requirement, then pitty, maybe you can propose a workaround somehow. At least you should take note, if you care. Do you have a known problems page BTW?

    Also in the first place I had already pasted my very first query elsewhere, interestingly I got a prompt answer. If you want that I don't discuss my experience with MO somewhere else, you would need a corresponding clause in your usage agreement. Maybe you have that somewhere, I don't know.

    Maybe discussing else shows a certain insensibility of me. Could be. But it mirrors the way MO seems to embarass people and how insensible MO is concerning this embarassement.

    Bye

  43.  

    @Will Jagy

    As I have describe initially how I landed here, MO poped up in my queries during some of my research. The other sites never poped up. So why should I go there? Do you think I will find something?

    Bye

  44.  

    MO poped up in my queries during some of my research. The other sites never poped up. So why should I go there? Do you think I will find something?

    It sounds like MO popping up in search queries is one of your main objections against it.

    The problem is that MO does take the business of posting queries to the outside very quickly. And I have no control whats ever. For example my very first query poped up on top on google when I was entering some of the salient key words. And this makes your process so embarassing. I don't know whether you have any sensibility for that.

    MO is meant to be a professional forum. You are expected to think carefully about your question before posting it. See http://mathoverflow.net/howtoask.