Timeline for Users using Math Stack Exchange as a de facto blog
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
27 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 13, 2017 at 12:22 | history | edited | CommunityBot | replaced http://math.stackexchange.com/ with https://math.stackexchange.com/ | |
| Oct 25, 2015 at 12:08 | comment | added | littleO | @CarlMummert I often google for topics and find that my question has been asked and answered clearly a long time ago on a stackexchange site. In this case, I'm not seeking to interact with any human, I just want to read the (often excellent) explanation someone provided previously. I think this is one of the main ways this site is used. It seems to me that good questions with good answers contribute to this usefulness regardless of who the authors are (or if it's a single author). (Of course, bad questions or answers would be a different story.) | |
| Oct 18, 2015 at 11:55 | comment | added | quid | @Asaf at least for a site like this those norms though are ideally deduced in a rational way from a handful of simple principles and necessities. Thus, they should be explainable. In any case, the discussion feels a bit pointless, since mostly users agree anyway that good contribution are welcome no matter what, yet there is no reason to make exceptions to the standards to host sub-standard content generated by a single user only. | |
| Oct 18, 2015 at 8:57 | comment | added | user642796 Mod | Don't bother wasting your delete votes on this answer, because I will undelete it (and, if need be, lock it). | |
| Oct 18, 2015 at 8:32 | comment | added | Najib Idrissi | (Regardless of the previous debate) @J.F.Sebastian The problem here is that all the questions asked by the user we are speaking about are missing context, are not very readable, use custom notations (and since s/he often makes "series" of questions you need to check previous questions), etc. So the questions, evaluated on their own, need to be closed. When a user exhibits a behavior that leads to most of their questions being closed (and in this case it's so bad it contributes to the clogging of the RQ), there's a problem. | |
| Oct 18, 2015 at 4:55 | comment | added | Asaf Karagila Mod | Sigh. @John: Fine. Replace "my house" by "the commune which I am part of who are currently squatting in an abandoned mall". And my point is that it doesn't even matter what he has to say in this case. To have a voice of say about community norms, you have to be an actual part of the community, and be recognized as such (here participation is the main way to get that recognition). You can't come from the outside and say "this should be like this", because who are you and why should we care what you think. This is why not every SE user can vote in any SE elections. | |
| Oct 18, 2015 at 0:21 | comment | added | user99914 | @AsafKaragila : Your analogy is quite misleading.... First of all no one is the owner of this house, and the suggestion of Sebastian is far from suggesting that people walk naked in others house. | |
| Oct 17, 2015 at 23:19 | comment | added | Asaf Karagila Mod | @quid: Don't get me wrong. I do think and agree that input from visitors and transient users is important. That's how regulars are born. The question is on what subjects, and what is the opinion. It's fine that a toddler expresses the opinion that he will only eat chocolate cake from now on, it doesn't mean that it should be taken seriously. But since none of the users here are toddlers, there's little point in exercises in futility, like letting newcomers talk about norms they are not familiar with on this site, as if they were the same everywhere else. | |
| Oct 17, 2015 at 16:11 | comment | added | quid | @Asaf this is a bit disappointing. To avoid a misunderstanding the disappointment is that you cannot give an argument; on whether or not you allow visitors to walk around naked I am indifferent. :-) | |
| Oct 17, 2015 at 15:50 | comment | added | Asaf Karagila Mod | @J.F.Sebastian: If you come to my house and decide to walk around naked "because that's how you do it at home", I can't give you any counterargument other than "that's not how we do it here". That's all I have to say about that. | |
| Oct 17, 2015 at 15:46 | comment | added | jfs | @AsafKaragila: agree. Then why does it matter who said it? Attack the content, not the author. | |
| Oct 17, 2015 at 15:31 | comment | added | Asaf Karagila Mod | @J.F.Sebastian: On the other hand, the truthiness of "Brides wear white dresses" changes depending on the culture one says it in. | |
| Oct 17, 2015 at 15:21 | comment | added | jfs | @CarlMummert: The truthiness of 2+2=4 does not depend on whether inexperienced user said it or not. It should be especially obvious on a math site. | |
| Oct 17, 2015 at 15:13 | comment | added | Asaf Karagila Mod | While I may only agree with some of what @Carl have said, I do strongly believe that people who are not part of this community, should avoid pretending like we care what they have to say. Especially when they compare us to other communities. | |
| Oct 17, 2015 at 15:10 | comment | added | Carl Mummert | @J.F. Sebastian: I don't see that as irony, because I disagree with the notion that the author of a post should not be considered when judging the post - both when looking at self-answered questions, and when looking at posts on meta by inexperienced users. | |
| Oct 17, 2015 at 15:05 | comment | added | jfs | @CarlMummert: do you see the irony? You are attacking the author of the answer which says that you should not attack the author: you should judge the content on its own merits — no matter who said it. I agree that each community on SE network may choose for itself what rules to enforce. See quid's comment on the meaning of "help forum" in this context. | |
| Oct 17, 2015 at 14:57 | comment | added | Carl Mummert | @quid: most closed duplicates are closed because they are poorly written, and don't refer to the original. If someone was to write "I was reading this post, and I was stuck on the following particular point: ...", then that would not be a duplicate any longer, and I expect it would be answered and not closed. | |
| Oct 17, 2015 at 14:53 | comment | added | quid | @Carl taking this to the end we should stop duplicate-closing. Perhaps from your perspective this is a good idea, but it is certainly not the site's policy. | |
| Oct 17, 2015 at 14:47 | comment | added | Carl Mummert | @quid: from my perspective, the purpose of this site is exactly to aid individuals with their problems in mathematics by answering their questions. I don't see these as somehow different or mutually contradictory. This is one reason homework questions are so often discouraged, because we don't help the individuals by merely providing an answer to those question as stated. Instead, we look for individuals to indicate where they in particular are stuck, so we can address that point. For that reason, and others, questions here are less useful for reference than the TeX stackexchange. | |
| Oct 17, 2015 at 14:42 | comment | added | quid | @Carl the issue is what "their questions" means exactly. Sometimes I have a question, a tex-related one, so I search for an answer. Sometimes the good folks at TeX - LaTeX help me with my question but I never posted a question there (but the the content is there already). As should be clear from my answer I do see a difference, however I strongly agree with OP that this site is a not intended as a "help forum," by which I understand a site where individuals are aided in dealing with their problems in mathematics. It is a site to provide answer to questions. And, again it is Stack Overflow. | |
| Oct 17, 2015 at 14:34 | comment | added | Carl Mummert | This answer is an example of how users who are not part of this community should avoid imposing the norms of other communities (e.g. Stackoverflow) on this one. As far as I can tell, the answerer here has almost no activity in this community - math.stackexchange.com/users/1665/j-f-sebastian?tab=activity ! | |
| Oct 17, 2015 at 14:29 | comment | added | Carl Mummert | @J.F. Sebastian: a Q&A site is, by definition, a help forum. The purpose of the site is to help people who have questions by answering their questions. And it is a forum where anyone can post. We need to keep the humanistic aspect of this in mind. Stackexchange.com (and Stackoverflow in particular) tries to emphasize other things, but that has never been the purpose of this site. | |
| Oct 17, 2015 at 14:27 | comment | added | jfs | @CarlMummert: the site is not a social network. It is not a help forum. It is Q&A site. Most (90+% for Stack Overflow) visitors are from google. | |
| Oct 17, 2015 at 14:26 | comment | added | Zach466920 | @CarlMummert In your opinion that's the purpose. From my own experience the statement "MSE serves as a repository of knowledge useful to people who aren't involved with the original question/answers in addition to people who are" is what I hear the purpose is. | |
| Oct 17, 2015 at 14:24 | history | edited | Zach466920 | CC BY-SA 3.0 | Grammar fixes |
| Oct 17, 2015 at 14:24 | comment | added | Carl Mummert | The underlying purpose of the site is facilitate asking questions to others and answering questions others have asked. In other words, the purpose of the site is not to be merely a dry repository of answers, but more importantly to facilitate interaction between people with questions and people with answers. Users who want to interact just with themselves would be better served by using their own blog. | |
| Oct 17, 2015 at 13:19 | history | answered | jfs | CC BY-SA 3.0 |