Skip to main content
added 6 characters in body
Source Link
Pete L. Clark
  • 99.4k
  • 3
  • 43
  • 60

Dear Kyle,

The designated purpose of MO is to field questions in mathematics which are of direct interest to research mathematicians (starting, approximately, at the level of an intermediate PhD student). The designated purpose of math.SE is to field questions in mathematics at all levels.

Thus the focus of MO is a subset of that of math.SE. On the other hand, if you look at the subcommunities of PhD-level mathematicians active on the two sites, the community here is close to being a subset of the corresponding community on MO.

Thus, if you have a math question that you think a PhD mathematician (often, a particular kind of PhD mathematician) will be interested in answering and someone of a lower level will probably not understand, you should probably ask it on MO rather than math.SE. Sometimes someone asks a question here on math.SE and doesn't get much of a response, and then the question gets asked again on MO. This happens with something like 1-3% of the questions asked here. Of these, I would say at least half of them are not being answered for some reason other than insufficient expertise of the math.SE readership (e.g. the question is in fact not very clear or well-defined), and then it may get rapidly closed on MO. The process of "site transfer" works best when someone who is active both here and at MO recommends that the question be transferred. This seems like an important advantage of having many dual users.

This leaves about 97-99% of the questions here which would not be asked on MO. In other words, there is actually not very much overlap between the two sites when it comes to actual questions.

What do you find specifically problematic about most or all of the moderators on math.SE being active on MO?What do you find specifically problematic about most or all of the moderators on math.SE being active on MO? (If it matters, none of the people who have so far stood up for the moderator position are also moderators on MO.)

Dear Kyle,

The designated purpose of MO is to field questions in mathematics which are of direct interest to research mathematicians (starting, approximately, at the level of an intermediate PhD student). The designated purpose of math.SE is to field questions in mathematics at all levels.

Thus the focus of MO is a subset of that of math.SE. On the other hand, if you look at the subcommunities of PhD-level mathematicians active on the two sites, the community here is close to being a subset of the corresponding community on MO.

Thus, if you have a math question that you think a PhD mathematician (often, a particular kind of PhD mathematician) will be interested in answering and someone of a lower level will probably not understand, you should probably ask it on MO rather than math.SE. Sometimes someone asks a question here on math.SE and doesn't get much of a response, and then the question gets asked again on MO. This happens with something like 1-3% of the questions asked here. Of these, I would say at least half of them are not being answered for some reason other than insufficient expertise of the math.SE readership (e.g. the question is in fact not very clear or well-defined), and then it may get rapidly closed on MO. The process of "site transfer" works best when someone who is active both here and at MO recommends that the question be transferred. This seems like an important advantage of having many dual users.

This leaves about 97-99% of the questions here which would not be asked on MO. In other words, there is actually not very much overlap between the two sites when it comes to actual questions.

What do you find specifically problematic about most or all of the moderators on math.SE being active on MO? (If it matters, none of the people who have so far stood up for the moderator position are also moderators on MO.)

Dear Kyle,

The designated purpose of MO is to field questions in mathematics which are of direct interest to research mathematicians (starting, approximately, at the level of an intermediate PhD student). The designated purpose of math.SE is to field questions in mathematics at all levels.

Thus the focus of MO is a subset of that of math.SE. On the other hand, if you look at the subcommunities of PhD-level mathematicians active on the two sites, the community here is close to being a subset of the corresponding community on MO.

Thus, if you have a math question that you think a PhD mathematician (often, a particular kind of PhD mathematician) will be interested in answering and someone of a lower level will probably not understand, you should probably ask it on MO rather than math.SE. Sometimes someone asks a question here on math.SE and doesn't get much of a response, and then the question gets asked again on MO. This happens with something like 1-3% of the questions asked here. Of these, I would say at least half of them are not being answered for some reason other than insufficient expertise of the math.SE readership (e.g. the question is in fact not very clear or well-defined), and then it may get rapidly closed on MO. The process of "site transfer" works best when someone who is active both here and at MO recommends that the question be transferred. This seems like an important advantage of having many dual users.

This leaves about 97-99% of the questions here which would not be asked on MO. In other words, there is actually not very much overlap between the two sites when it comes to actual questions.

What do you find specifically problematic about most or all of the moderators on math.SE being active on MO? (If it matters, none of the people who have so far stood up for the moderator position are also moderators on MO.)

Source Link
Pete L. Clark
  • 99.4k
  • 3
  • 43
  • 60

Dear Kyle,

The designated purpose of MO is to field questions in mathematics which are of direct interest to research mathematicians (starting, approximately, at the level of an intermediate PhD student). The designated purpose of math.SE is to field questions in mathematics at all levels.

Thus the focus of MO is a subset of that of math.SE. On the other hand, if you look at the subcommunities of PhD-level mathematicians active on the two sites, the community here is close to being a subset of the corresponding community on MO.

Thus, if you have a math question that you think a PhD mathematician (often, a particular kind of PhD mathematician) will be interested in answering and someone of a lower level will probably not understand, you should probably ask it on MO rather than math.SE. Sometimes someone asks a question here on math.SE and doesn't get much of a response, and then the question gets asked again on MO. This happens with something like 1-3% of the questions asked here. Of these, I would say at least half of them are not being answered for some reason other than insufficient expertise of the math.SE readership (e.g. the question is in fact not very clear or well-defined), and then it may get rapidly closed on MO. The process of "site transfer" works best when someone who is active both here and at MO recommends that the question be transferred. This seems like an important advantage of having many dual users.

This leaves about 97-99% of the questions here which would not be asked on MO. In other words, there is actually not very much overlap between the two sites when it comes to actual questions.

What do you find specifically problematic about most or all of the moderators on math.SE being active on MO? (If it matters, none of the people who have so far stood up for the moderator position are also moderators on MO.)