tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (non-technical big-list surveys)

VP comments on "non-technical big-list surveys" (7806)

VP — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 21:06:27 -0700

I think T did a good job separating the author's question and his/her good but unfortunately long and rambling example at the linear algebra question. Thank you, T! It's hard to affect the culture in one go, but one has to start somewhere.

Tony Huynh comments on "non-technical big-list surveys" (7802)

Tony Huynh — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 19:20:51 -0700

I agree with the bulk of what you are saying. My only issue is if someone tries to edit the question and move the contributions to the answers, the editor becomes the answerer which is confusing. Obviously, you tried to alleviate the confusion by clearly stating what you were doing in both the question and answer, but I wonder if there could be some kind of workaround here. I guess in general we don't want to give someone the ability to answer under someone elses name, but in this case it seems desirable to do so.

theojf comments on "non-technical big-list surveys" (7801)

theojf — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:35:51 -0700

I realized why I don't like questions like Parabolas everywhere and Why linear algebra is fun!(or ?). Part of the problem is the level of the question, but much more of it is that OP gives lots of their own answers, which usually are not the best, in the body of the answer.

I think the issue is that the mechanisms of MO support two very different types of question/answers. I strongly support that technical, research-level questions include lots of background --- what OP is thinking about, what they've tried. This helps the answers better match the question, and helps the rest of us listen in.

But in a big-list CW question, I think it's better for OP to write not very much, and leave their own contributions as separate answers, one-answer-per-answer style. Otherwise there's this funny thing where the let's-sort-answers-by-votes thing can't get OP's contributions off the top of the list.

I don't know if there's much those of us over here on meta can do, except try to influence the culture --- I don't think that all these non-technical questions should be closed. One possibility is that, as the question is CW, I'm perfectly allowed to edit the question and move the contributions to answers. I think I will do that for one of the questions I linked to. But I don't know how else to effect a larger change.