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I didn't recieve any notifying message and I THOUGHT I'd been obeying all the rules.I thought all my communications were VERY civil! What did I do now?!?
AND THAT WAS GROUNDS FOR A SUSPENSION BECAUSE I VERBALIZED I WANTED TO ASK THE OPINION OF AN EXPERT I'M FORTUNATE ENOUGH TO HAVE ACCESS TO?!?
I give up
Goodbye again until next week.I'm not even going to respond.
Being a MO underling, I had of course no role in this suspension... but, Andrew, your constant name-dropping is very close to being annoying!
Hay guys,i'm going to play tennis tomorrow with my great uncle and Roger Federer and do a final on Lie algebras tomorrow for Gopal Prasad's class.Then I'm going to go back in time and find out what Bernhard Riemann thinks of the Langlands program.Wanna come with me?
No senior mathematicians from top programs need apply,since all they care about is money,power,drugs,and theorems.They don't care about pedagogy or their students atall.One time when I met [a senior mathematician],I probably said something insulting or annoying and was blown off because clearly that person is just the worst teacher ever.
Jus'sayin...
Harry, this is very interesting, but is somewhat lost here in the depths of meta. I think you should post it on the main site.
I think that maybe parodying Andrew L's comments might reveal to him the problem with them. Plus it would be really funny to me.
Had no part in this suspension, instinctively feel it is disproportionate. (I often don't agree with, or see constructive content, in Andrew L's posts, but I think assuming this is down to the name dropping and decrying that is a bot OTT.)
I've had my problems with Andrew's comments in the past, but if he was suspended for what Ryan has guessed that seems a bit too much like playing the man rather than the ball.
Harry: that sounds more like Jonathan Vos Post than Andrew L...
Yeah I'm not very good at mimicking people. For instance, when I imitate people, I always use the the same voice (it sounds kinda like fat albert). That's why I want someone who's good at it to do it.
surreptitiously placed IRC quote:
( porton ) How many times in average a math research article is read?
( OxE6 ) over 9000
( porton ) OxE6: Wow! It is a gigant number! Is it true?
( OxE6 ) sure
@Yemon,gilkaliai: Thanks for standing up for me,guys. I think I've tried very hard the last few months to abide by the rules and be on my best behavior-but the moderators don't agree.
They basically suspended me for thinking out loud.I'm glad I'm not alone thinking it was unfair.
LOL at Yemon's last comment...
Some time ago the moderators considered permanently banning AndrewL. We decided against this. At around the same time, we told AndrewL that we were going to impose a certain list of rules governing his use of the site. We acknowledge that it is unpleasant to treat some users differently, and to restrict their behavior, but we decided that this was essential --- moderating problem users is about the least fun thing possible for the volunteer moderator crew, and our solution is to propose hard, fast, clear rules after some point, and subsequently follow those rules.
This is intended as a response to @gilkalai's, "If the quoted comment is the entire story then the suspension is unjustified." There is definitely more to the story here: that the moderators decided some time ago that AndrewL was going to be treated as a special case. We were apparently completely failing to communicate with him, and we needed a solution.
I would prefer to discuss the particulars of the rules governing AndrewL's use of the site via moderators@mathoverflow.net, rather than in public.
btw -- I met Jonathon vos Post recently, although I didn't realise until midway through the conversation who he was. It was, um, fun! :-)
@Sean: We let porton give a "seminar" on IRC. As you can tell, it was amusing.
@Scott: I'm grinning just thinking about it. Under what circumstances did you meet him?
I am not a moderator on this site, for instance because I don't want to be one: the amount of moderation ability given to a 10K user on this site accords pretty well with how involved I want to be with site moderation duties. A big part of what I am missing out on are the hard cases, of which this is one.
Nevertheless, if I am honest, I feel a little uncomfortable about the avowed double standard in play here, namely that Andrew L will get suspended for behavior that we seem to agree that, taken in isolation, would not cause another user to be suspended. I felt particularly bad when I remembered the comment I recently posted to an answer of Qiaochu Yuan:
"I'm no expert here, but it would seem to me that calculus and linear algebra are an excellent foundation for combinatorics, especially at the advanced undergraduate level. I took exactly one course on combinatorics, from the great Laszlo Babai, and the tools we used were indeed calculus (e.g. knowledge of asymptotics of functions and the ability to optimize certain constructions) and linear algebra (in very clever ways as in the book on the subject by Babai and Frankl). And I don't view the fact that you could probably get away with even less than this as detracting from my assertion."
This comment is (i) tangential to the discussion at hand -- the point of Qiaochu's answer was to recommend Stillwell's book, not really (I think) to endorse Stillwell's opinion that calculus plus linear algebra are not a good foundation for combinatorics -- and (ii) contains blatant name-dropping. I am unabashedly proud of the fact that while in my entire student career I took only one combinatorics course, it was a frickin' fantastic combinatorics course, from The Count himself. [At the time -- mind you, I was 21 years old -- Babai's Hungarian accent and proclivity for enumeration reminded me of a famous Sesame Street character.]
I think that Andrew L would have been suspended for this comment. I got +3 and a very polite, patient answer from Qiaochu, who by the way knows much more about combinatorics than I do.
Andrew L likes to tell tales of skullduggery of the mathematical elite. I find these stories to ring false almost to the point of paranoia, and I certainly wish he had a sunnier outlook on our profession. But in this one case I worry that maybe some powers-that-be are out to get him, just a little bit. Were I a moderator (but see above!), my policy of escalation would be one of (more rapidly) increasing punishment, not the same punishment for decreasingly severe infractions.
While I am also very glad not to have to make such decisions myself, I sympathise with the moderators. I understand the discomfort with double standards that some people have expressed, but one shouldn't forget that the moderators are volunteers and I don't see why they should have to put up with a situation in which one user causes them much more work than 99% of the remaining ones taken together. Even if they just said "we banned him straight away because somebody flagged the post and we felt that he has already taken up way too much of our time", I would understand it.
Several people, who have much more important, interesting, and pleasant things to do, must have spent several hours each trying to figure out how to make that one person play by the rules that seem so easy to follow for everyone else. They really don't have to do this and pulling the trigger fast in any danger of a situation that might start sucking up more of their time is - I feel - justified.
+1 to Pete Clark's comment above.
+1 Alex.
@Pete Thanks for standing up for me. I know you were one of the more annoyed people here by my candor,but you shelved it in order to speak out on obvious unfairness. For that,I thank you.
@sean You're entitled your opinion and I was wrong-as I put on my blog several months ago-in that I'm a guest at MO and I had no buisness defying the rules no matter how right I felt I was. But you're dead wrong that I didn't listen to anyone here. My freedom and candor are very important principles to me and I can be very stubborn when told to shut up even when I'm wrong,as was the case here. It doesn't mean a damn what my opinion is-this isn't my personal blog. That's the bottom line.
The problem is-as Lurker more directly implies-are the moderators enjoying "putting me in my place" a lot more then they're willing to admit? The measure of the mathematical content difference between my statement and Pete's repeated above in his reply is very nearly zero. And it's highly debatable-if not spurious-it's NOT zero.
Does this mean I'll be banned at every possible opportunity for no other reason but they can-and they'll have a reason prepared every time while they chuckle wildly?
If that's the case-please tell me now so we can save everyone a lot of wasted time later.................
@Ryan,Noah,Lurker Nah,there's no personal animosity here,what was I thinking?
For the record, I support the moderators action here. Alex Bartel's post five above (including the spam post which hopefully will get deleted making it four above) pretty much says what I would say.
+1 Alex. Certainly "special treatment" has to be considered more lenient than a permanent ban? If the moderators had opted for the latter would anyone (besides AndrewL, I assume) be complaining?
@Amused Lurker:
Hold thy tongue, foul knave.
@Qiaochu I'm certain YOU wouldn't be. You've made that VERY clear.
You know,I hope someday-when I'm old and and the end is near-that I'm laughing about how I became hated on a promienient message board in the profession simply by speaking my mind.
I got the message,bent over backwards apologizing,bit my tongue until blood came out of my nose-and it STILL wasn't good enough.
And it probably never will. And fairness be damned.
You know,I hope someday-when I'm old and and the end is near-that I'm laughing about how I became hated on a promienient message board in the profession simply by speaking my mind.
You are the ultimate number 1 if that's what you do. I think we all owe a little respect to people who can take it to the complete next level with regards to "doing the internet".
+1 Pete. I actually feel somewhat guilty for having engaged in similar behavior over on MSE. This was in the comment thread to a question I asked on why Hurewicz fibrations and cofibrations lead to a model structure on Top. At the end of the discussion, I mentioned -- quite irrelevantly -- that I had checked the answer with Michael Hopkins. (I have since deleted the comment.) This is entirely non-mathematical commentary and shameless name-dropping. Was I trying to impress someone? Of course not: the Berkeley graduate student whom I was addressing could list ten times as many experts that he had met than I could, though I'm very happy to have taken a good class with a successful homotopy theorist, which probably explains a decent portion of my current interest in the subject. I'm a bit embarrassed about that, and I suspect that, had I been Andrew L and had that been MO, I would have been suspended as well. But I wasn't.
I don't really know what a better solution would be, especially since I'm not aware of the full history (save for the comments on MO that I have read and a few meta threads).
I don't think the irritation with AndrewL's comment is reducible to "name-dropping". Part of the problem is the subjectivity of the original question, which leads to things like "let's see if Dennis Sullivan thinks it's beautiful and intricate" (not an actual quote), as if bringing in a big gun is going to settle the debate and silence the opponents. Whereas Akhil's checking with Michael Hopkins as to the truth of an objective mathematical statement seems to me quite appropriate, "proof by authority" on a very subjective judgment seems to me far less appropriate.
This is not to say, one way or the other, whether I think suspension was the right course of action here.
Dear Andrew L,
Regarding name-dropping (real or perceived): it goes rather against established mathematical culture to dicsuss direct consultations with celebrated mathematicians the way you do, especially when it seems gratuitous. There are counterexamples: e.g. in various answers BCnrd has mentioned personal conversations with Serre regarding various points of history and motivation related to certain technical concepts; the main difference between this example and yours is that, for better or worse, BCnrd is also a rather well-known and celebrated mathematician, who has conversations with Serre from time to time on something like an equal basis, whereas people find it unlikely that you have regular conversations with Dennis Sullivan of the same nature. This may seem unfair, and I don't know if I can fully justify the distinction, but there is no doubt that this distinction exists (or is perceived to exist, which comes to the same thing when we are talking about the way people interpret your posts).
In any case, the standard, and universally accepted way, to appeal to authority in mathematics is by citing the work of a celebrated mathematician. The basic point is that anyone can read any mathematician's work (modulo issues of access, which are tangential to this point); there is no sense of name-dropping, or exclusive access to the celebrated and famous, in making such a citation. Rather, if anything it shows erudition and diligence in scholarship, which are generally admired qualities.
Take these remarks for what you think they are worth; I am just trying to explain why comments of the kind that you made rub many people the wrong way.
Yours sincerely,
Matthew
@Qiaochu: yes, the current approach is more lenient than a permanent ban, or even a semi-permanent ban (say, one year). I would actually be more in favor of Andrew L (and other repeatedly banned users) receiving semi-permanent bans rather than being banned for n days for the nth time. The current approach seems to say "We'll work with you to calibrate your behavior so as to be maximally annoying but still within the borders of the appropriate", with all the attendant issues of exactly where the line is.
I would argue that a user who has been banned a half dozen times or more has a fundamentally wrong approach to their behavior on the site (as determined by the moderators with the help of the experienced users) and that past a certain point it is not even to their benefit to allow them to continue to post on the site and continue to alienate people. I do feel this way about Andrew L. His behavior almost never pushes my buttons and tends to generate my sympathy rather than my annoyance, but that does not stop me from thinking that he has almost never used MO for its intended purpose: to ask and answer research-level math questions. On this point he has been given essentially infinitely many chances (or, more precisely, 14,015 chances and counting), and invariably he gravitates to the subjective questions, the math education questions, and the questions about preferred textbooks.
So yes, I do think that it would be in the best interest of the site if Andrew L had received a semi-permanent ban for one of his past infractions -- not a borderline one but something that anyone would have received a ban for. This would save the rest of us from having a very similar debate over and over again, would save the moderators from the very difficult job of having to decide each time whether a certain behavior is worthy of a ban given all that has come before, and it would save Andrew L from feelings of being persecuted "simply for speaking his mind".
Perhaps this is somewhat paternalistic, but I think that being banned from MO for a year would actually be a positive experience for Andrew L. He really needs to focus on the math. Getting caught up in arguments with more senior mathematicians is not just -- or even primarily -- a bad idea because it carries the danger of burning future bridges. It is a bad idea because it is not at all what a master's student in mathematics needs to be doing in order to be successful. My worry is not just that if things continue as they are, then in say 2013 Andrew L will still be creating meta-threads about how he gets banned for his refusal to adopt the sycophantic tone of the masses. It is that he will be doing this still as a master's student who has not passed his exams and talking about the exciting number-theoretic research that lies in his near future.
I don't believe any double standard has been applied to AndrewL. The uniform policy has been that everybody gets some quota of patient moderator emails with explanations of what the problem is and with personalized suggestions for how to not bother people so much. Once the moderators are convinced this is futile, some system that doesn't require so much patience is put into place. We make every effort to make it fair, and the user is welcome to suggest alternatives. We lay down some explicit rules for when the user will be suspended. These rules are generally, (1) stick to math and (2) if somebody complains about you, you'll be suspended. The purpose is to minimize drama for the parties involved. The moderators (and the user) stop pouring so much energy into deciding exactly what warrants a suspension. I think it makes sense to apply this clear-cut suspension policy to any user who has so thouroughly demonstrated an inablity to intuit what constitutes acceptable behavior.
AndrewL's conviction that this process never happened is remarkable. If it were true, then he would be right to be confused about his suspension. But there have been dozens of emails between him and moderators, as well as the dozen or so threads he started on meta, in which people have tried hard to communicate with him, and in which clear rules that don't require any intuition for professionalism have been set out. I would not fault a moderator for applying those rules, even if deeper thought might reveal a better solution. We've asked AndrewL to stick to math since his intuition for what constitutes acceptable non-math is in such conflict with that of the MO community. He has agreed that he will. He hasn't.
It's been suggested that suspensions should more quickly turn into effective bans. If we had more problem users on MO, I would probably favor a less sensitive moderation style. But not so long ago, we had a thread about math.SE that gave me the impression that this would (or at least could easily) be worse for MO, not better.
As I said, I no longer send AndrewL long explanatory emails. I think it's time we also stop having new threads on meta about AndrewL. I don't think they're likely to be productive, and they're a drain. At the very least, I think they should explicitly be continuations of the existing threads, so that newcomers don't start with the impression that there's no history.
With apologies for lapsing into broken English, but at this hour I can't think of a better way to say it:
+1 Anton.