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Is this question acceptable?: Question on Galois Bicentennial

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    http://mathoverflow.net/questions/59155/galois-bicentennial

    Can't say I'm particularly impressed by the first answer given.

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    I know what you mean, Andrew. It would have worked better as a comment.

    • CommentAuthoran_mo_user
    • CommentTimeMar 22nd 2011
     
    Andrew, you are right. But the second one [not present when you posted] is good.

    Not to derail this discussion, but since I observed this already several times:

    I can't help asking myself whether this question *in non-CW mode* and that answer would be treated so relatively nicely, if they'd come from users with less reputation.

    To be clear: Personnaly, I have nothing much against either of it. But, what I find mildly upsetting is the double-standards regarding this that I feel exist on MO.
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    Actually, I'm not overly keen on this type of question as a whole. But given the last paragraph of the question, I thought I'd start with the answer and work my way up to the question! However, I see that Emerton has given what looks like the answer, so I wish merely to register my disapproval and hope that this sort of thing doesn't become a regular occurrence.

    (Though no doubt we'll be flooded by conference announcements and requests-for-conferences all saying, "But the question on the Galois bicentennial wasn't closed")

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    @an_mo_user: I do try to be consistent, and I certainly try not to show any favouritism. Sometimes I suspect I'm a little harder on MO regulars with "soft questions" as I think that they ought to know better by now. But also I know that I'm near one extreme of the "what is acceptable on MO" spectrum so I try also to tone down my actions a little (I'm far more vocal here than on MO itself).

    But here, I confess that the last paragraph of the question is what decided me not to vote-to-close straight away. Not because it's right - far from it - but because I'm a bit tired of saying the same things over and over again with seemingly little effect (though re-reading the history-of-mathematics thread, I did notice that even Gil acknowledged one of my points!) and I didn't really want to get in to yet another fight over what is and isn't acceptable on MO. So, yes, intimidation works. Case proved.

    Indeed, I've gotten so tired of writing the same thing over and over again that I've started collecting them in one place so that I can keep referring to them (anyone who's interested can read them here: http://www.math.ntnu.no/~stacey/CountingOnMyFingers/index.html). I've not yet written down what I consider the characteristics are of a "Good MO Question", but you can get a first idea from the post there on validation.

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    @Andrew: Thanks for that link. Incidentally, I have tried to write down what I consider the characteristics of a "Good MO Question" in imperative form (I especially wish people followed this imperative more). [Edit: interesting statistic. Based on the March 2011 public dump, questions that end in a question mark have an average score of 6.75, and questions that don't have an average score of 4.61.]

    @an_mo_user: If posted anonymously, I think the question would fly (better if CW), but the (first, now-deleted) answer definitely wouldn't. Though the question is not mathematics, it is to the point and has a clear goal. I do think the identity of the asker helps the clarity of the goal. In other words, if somebody posts this sort of "conference request" anonymously, the main thing that rubs me the wrong way is that it's not clear that they are really looking for an answer, rather than just being idly curious. (For the record, I think mathematical idle curiosity questions are absolutely fair game.)

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    Anton wrote:

    (For the record, I think mathematical idle curiosity questions are absolutely fair game.)

    And I (cheekily) reply:

    Such as this one?

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    Well, it does have a good answer, so maybe it's okay after all. </cheekiness>

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    Speaking of which, my feeling is that the question about "first collaboration" was another of these idle curiosity questions. (History questions are fine, in fact they are often of vital importance, insofar as they relate to research and who deserves attribution for relevant past work, but this was not in that category.)

    I definitely agree the present question ought to be CW. At it's best, it's a public service type question.

    • CommentAuthoran_mo_user
    • CommentTimeMar 22nd 2011
     
    Andrew and Anton, thank you for the responses. The main thing I find somewhat unfortunate is the non-CW issue.
    It is slightly difficult to argue this for me, as personally I think basically everything could be non-CW, but since this is *not common practice* I would find it good if high-rep users set a good example (rather than doing the contrary). And, if many of them disagree with the common practice, it would seem more efficient to me to state so here on meta (to possibly change it) rather than to simply ignore it.

    For this specific question it could well be an oversight, but here are two other examples that contributed to my present remark much more than the present one.

    a. http://mathoverflow.net/questions/58149/the-whole-plethora-of-topology It is documented by the comments that it was not an oversight, while in my opinion it is the archetype for a CW question and even for CW it is extremely broad (again, I wonder what happened if a random user would come along and ask something that basically is 'Hey, just wondering, what important things happened in topology in the last decades?'*).
    An explicit request for CW was answered negatively (getting slightly more support than the CW request), with the reaoning of not depriving people anwering of reputation that would however apply to many situations were CW is asked for (reference/litterature requests). And, in addition, there would be a way to give points to people *answering* even in CW-mode, via setting a bounty, which would be very easy for somebody with the reputation-count of the questioner of that question.

    b. http://mathoverflow.net/questions/54513/the-story-about-milnor-proving-the-fary-milnor-theorem Here CW is admittedly less clear
    though the reason behind the course of action described in that thread is a bit mysterious to me (it might be an experiment, I did not get?).

    Regarding the 'really looking for an answer': I am not at all sure in the present case it is not just idle curiosity (which I find fine, and, both the question, as I did not have this date in mind, and Emerton's answer are interesting to me, though I assume I would have learned about that event in more traditional ways at a later point, well, and even the now deleted one was funny). To me it would only not be idle curiosity if the questioner expressed the concrete desire to attend such a conference, which to me is neither explicitly nor implictly clear, or organize one if nothing is planned so far. And, in some sense, I think to a random user asking something along these lines---possibly in a 'worse' form, say, in broken english---an answer on this site could well be more important than it is to a well known/connected/informed professional mathematician that has plenty of possibilities to get this type of information elsewhere; as opposed to, say, a student in a developping country.

    So, all this is not important in any real sense, still I find it sometimes slightly unfortunate, and thus wanted to use this more or less fitting occassion to bring it up.
    Also, I do not wish to advocate to be stricter to regular users, rather to be less strict to random visitors. But, in any case, not to be stricter towards them than to reguar users.

    Unrelated note for non 10k+ (I guess) users reading this later: To avoid confustion, the 'first answer' mentioned in some posts is now deleted (roughly, it combined a couple of technical mathematical terms and Bourbaki to describe a non-existant conference). the 'second' is Emerton's.

    *Actually, I thought for a while at that time about testing this replacing 'topology' with something similarly broad.
    • CommentAuthorMariano
    • CommentTimeMar 22nd 2011
     

    Dear an_mo_user,

    An explicit request for CW was answered negatively (getting slightly more support than the CW request), with the reaoning of not depriving people anwering of reputation that would however apply to many situations were CW is asked for (reference/litterature requests).

    I don't see much reason,either, to not give symbolic retribution to people answering a question for references!

    And, in addition, there would be a way to give points to people answering even in CW-mode, via setting a bounty, which would be very easy for somebody with the reputation-count of the questioner of that question.

    But that would only give points to one answerer. This does not work in most cases which are usually "obviously CW-mode worthy", precisely because there is no correct answer. In my question, Sean's answer is currently amazing, but as this is a soft-question, someone else could surely come and write another great answer. Why would rules or guidelines preclude the second comer to not be retributed?

    In general, I do not see any reason for CW-ing a question, except in the situation where it would require no effort from the answerers to provide answers and where it did not make sense for passers-by to want to give symbolic retribution to them. I cannot imagine a question which satisfies those two conditions and which is worth having on the site...

    • CommentAuthoran_mo_user
    • CommentTimeMar 22nd 2011
     
    Dear Mariano, thank you for the information. So, I understand that you think that the current guidelines for CW-mode should be changed (only using it for jokes, quotes, puzzles and similar things). Actually, as said, I think so, too; and, also I do not have anything against general/idle interest questions; in particular, in principle, I have nothing 'against' your question. The *only* thing I really wanted to point out is a phenomenon that I consider as double-standards, which I quite dislike out of principle. Yes, with the bounty system one could not mimic exactly the non-CW situation; but it would have been an option, and also would have sent the signal that you recognize, in case this is so, that according to the existing rules this is sort-of a borderline question that you really want to ask nevertheless, and thus you 'sacrifice' some points for this 'violation', rather than to gain some from it. And, I think that in particular your (type of) question is anyway one that I assume is typically a pleasure to answer for somebody who can answer (after all, one writes on what is likely ones own field, or at least close enough, and can tell how interesting it is), so that in this case the completely symbolic upvotes in CW-mode might be sufficient recognition. Anyway, in view of the fact that in the very end--as said, my concern is consistency of the application of the rules, even if I would prefer different ones--I personnaly do not think that it should/has to be CW-mode, I will stop insisting on this point.

    To all, I should perhaps add that I do not think that some of the things I pointed out are really concious decisions, but rather along the lines of implictly giving people one knows more of a benfit of the doubt and alike. So, perhaps my actual wish is that the community extends this benefit of the doubt to newly arriving/recently arrived users, too; as I believe based on what I could observe on the site, that sometimes, though not always, this is not the case. And, some people that would make a positive contribution in the long run might actually permanently be scared away, only since for some reason they made a 'false start' that was pointed out to them overly clearly by the community; and, still others might not even try to start out of worry of starting the wrong way.

    Finally, while I am personally unaffected by the question-issue, I can say that initially I did (and still even do) not give some answers I could give, only in order not to answer questions that might be considered 'trivial' and thus, according to some, should not be answered on the site. (Where I mean questions that then were answered by somebody else without upsetting a part of the community, as opposed to questions that were then actually closed as off-topic or localized.)
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    Andrew: (Though no doubt we'll be flooded by conference announcements and requests-for-conferences all saying, "But the question on the Galois bicentennial wasn't closed") THEREFORE, the Galois question should now be closed!

    • CommentAuthorKConrad
    • CommentTimeMar 24th 2011
     
    OK, I'll chime in now on this meta discussion. I doubt that there is going to be a flood of conference announcements or conference requests based on my asking this question and it not being closed, as if people were waiting for one such question to get through and now they'll all pounce. :) I just did a search on the word "conference" and I see that someone asked back in Feb. 2010 about upcoming conferences in topology, it was answered, the question was not closed (!), and what happened as a result on MO? Nothing. Does anyone even remember that conference question? In any case, Emerton has given a good answer to the question I asked and I'll probably approve it in a few days if nothing new comes through.
    • CommentAuthoran_mo_user
    • CommentTimeMar 24th 2011
     
    At least that one was CW...
    • CommentAuthorKConrad
    • CommentTimeMar 25th 2011
     
    an_mo_user: I see that is CW, but how did an answer for it get marked "best answer"? I thought for CW that you can't select one answer as the best.
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    KConrad wrote:

    I thought for CW that you can't select one answer as the best.

    It's not that you can't select an answer, it's that one mark of when a question should be made CW is when it would not be appropriate to select an answer. There are other situations when a question is made CW where it would still be appropriate to select an answer. Sometimes (not much on MO, but on other SE sites) a CW-question-and-answer is used as a sort of wiki-page where lots of different answers are combined in to one document. Then it is appropriate to select that answer.

    an_mo_user wrote (emphasis mine):

    So, I understand that you think that the current guidelines for CW-mode should be changed (only using it for jokes, quotes, puzzles and similar things).

    These things should not be on MO. Indeed, on the main SE sites, they've made it much harder to ask a CW question (see http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/67039/what-can-we-do-to-make-community-wiki-better). There are plenty of places on the internet for these things, and if you can't find a suitable one then there's nothing to stop you building it (or asking Scott or myself to build it for you - we've both offered), but there isn't anything like MO. So rather than turning MO into a one-stop-shop, let's keep it as the refined speciality shop that it is. If it isn't a research-level mathematical question, it shouldn't be on MO.

    • CommentAuthoran_mo_user
    • CommentTimeMar 25th 2011 edited
     
    As Andrew Stacey answered it already I ignore KConrad's question.

    Andrew Stacey, first, let me clarify that *I never contributed* an answer to the three threads I specifically mentioned neither to, say, urban legends to give a more recent example. I read parts of them and I have nothing against this type of content, but I certainly won't argue in its favor and if it were not on the site, I would not consider it as a loss. And, yes, if questions like this would be the *main* part of MO I would not visit the site frequently. In particular, I find your arguments against them understandable, which is a main reason why *I refrain* from actively contributing to things like this (simply on the grounds, they are not important to anybody and some do not want them, so why have them).
    I see this differently for, let's call them, the occassional life-as-a-mathematician questions that comes up, and in view of the fact that some users that I feel are rather on the strict end (regarding what should and should not be on MO) contributed to them, it seems to me that the opinion that these questions are in a different category, as answers to them are/can be of very immediate use to the questioner and others, is not unique. (Although, yes, they should remain rare.)
    By contrast, I get occassionally annoyed by entirely mathematical "questions" that seem to be research level where somebody feels the need to share latest thoughts on some problems seemingly distant from their fields of expertise. (I explictly do not mean concrete questions.)

    Second, I understand your answer as follows: There is *no* policy or guideline of having somewhat soft questions in CW mode. I was under the impression that this was so, and questioners complying with this perceived(?) policy and commenters telling a questioner to comply with this policy can be seen on MO not too infrequently. So, either a question is considered as suitable or not; and the question of CW yes/no is completely independent of this. Thank you for this clarification, at least I was under the firm impression this was different.

    Is the following point (from the FAQs), thus, obsolete?
    'A question should be made community wiki if you don't think that people should gain reputation for their answers. A typical case is requests for references where it is the reference that is being judged by the voting system rather than the person who supplied it.'

    Added: Or, if it is not obsolete, perhaps it could be explictly clarified that this does not mean that somehow 'simple' questions should be CW. Just now there is again an example of this on main, where somebody ask for suggestions for topics for a seminar and the first thing that happens is that somebody asks to turn this into CW.
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    @an_mo_user

    The primary use case for CW mode is for questions which (explicitly or otherwise) ask for a sorted list of answers, rather than a single complete answer. Because community wiki mode means that people don't get reputation, it's easy for anyone who feels inclined to go through the entire list, voting up or down to help rearrange the sort order.

    I think the point in the FAQ you quoted could be rephrased to reflect this idea better. It's not really that you don't want people gaining reputation, more that you want to get the reputation system out of the way in order to produce the most useful page.

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    @Scott: This is a very useful description of the point of CW, which I did not understand. It would be great it if could be incorporated into the FAQ, and thereby perhaps become more widely appreciated.
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    I've tweaked the FAQ. Instead of

    • If you're trying to make a list of resources, your question should be community wiki and you should use the [big-list] tag. You should also request that people post one resource per answer so that it is easy for people to sort the list by voting up/down.
    • A question should be made community wiki if you don't think that people should gain reputation for their answers. A typical case is requests for references where it is the reference that is being judged by the voting system rather than the person who supplied it.

    it now reads

    • The most common use of community wiki mode is to ask a question where the goal is to produce a sorted list of answers, rather than a single complete answer. Community wiki mode gets the reputation system out of the way so that people more freely vote up and down to help rearrange the sort order, therby making the page more useful. If you want to ask such a question, please read at least the first two sections of the How To Ask page.
  22.  
    Great, Anton! Thanks!
    • CommentAuthoran_mo_user
    • CommentTimeMar 27th 2011
     
    Thank you for the explanations and the change!

    Also, appologies to everybody who should haven gotten offended, annoyed, or just bored by my perhaps overly pronounced contributions to this discussion.
    • CommentAuthorMariano
    • CommentTimeJun 2nd 2011
     

    So...

    Is anyone going to be there for the conference at the IHP?

    • CommentAuthorEmerton
    • CommentTimeJun 2nd 2011
     

    Dear Mariano,

    I will be there.

    Regards,

    Matthew

    • CommentAuthorMariano
    • CommentTimeOct 24th 2011
     

    @Matt,

    I've just noticed that you are talking at the IHP at approximately the same time on Thursday as I am supposed to be talking in a seminar at Paris n+1 :/

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