# What is the goal of MSE?

What is the goal of MSE? Is it to get a repository of interesting questions and well-written answers. Or are we instead an online math tutoring site where we help anyone as long as they seem to be trying. These two goals are often in contradiction with each other!

I am afraid that we are headed in the direction of being an online tutoring site, at least for a couple months in the spring and fall when school is in session. What I have noticed this past spring was that MSE was inundated with "newbie" users coming on here and asking on average a high volume of problem-set questions each--oftentimes 10 questions/week per person. Now, in all fairness, the users were demonstrating some effort in their questions. But it was clear that they were struggling with the basics, so their questions were hardly what you would consider to be "good" questions. And yet, these users still received a lot of help on their questions from the more established posters on MSE nonetheless. And so it continued on through March and April. It is like MSE was filling the role of Teaching Assistant or whatever for these students.

[It seems to have quieted down now that the most recent semester is about to end, but it will pick up again. Just wait until the fall! Or maybe even later this summer. If not even sooner than that.]

If the desire is to move back away from being a homework-tutoring site, it is probably going to be hard for the site to stop this without making changes on the admin level. [A possibility would be lowering the number of votes to close from 5 to 3. Another possibility would be to make a tag or section of MSE dedicated for someone learning the basics.] Meanwhile, I'm not seeing how the EoQS currently implemented, is changing this. This site is nonetheless being clogged with many boring or poorly-written questions, which are still getting rewarded with a long string of comments doing their best to tutor the student, and at least one of those comments [are comments under the purview of EoQS$$^1$$] has the answer to the student's questions. These questions may get a couple votes to close and maybe a downvote too, but then they also get a pity upvote. And so we get many more such questions, because users are being rewarded for asking them--whether there is an "Answer" or not. There does seem to be a critical mass of users on MSE who do feel that this should be a site where struggling students can come for help with their basic homework even if their questions don't meet the MSE Guidelines, as long as they are demonstrating some effort.

If you cannot already tell, my vote would be MSE moving towards a repository of high-quality questions and answers, and away from being a homework-tutoring site.

ETA: In any event though, I do think EoQS would work better if the way it were administered were shifted. What if the following changes were implemented:

(a) Reduce the number of votes needed to close [NOT delete!] a question from 5 down to 4 or 3. I think a reason why EoQS came to be in the first place was the proliferation of too many really bad questions that get too much oxygen.

I'm not necessarily for more enforcement, I am for smarter enforcement. The net result of what we are doing now w EoQS are question after question of debatable quality, with a long string of comments--in place of a well-written answer written where it is supposed to be--the answer box. The worst of both worlds--still no quality control but now messy flow. Should those questions be allowed to stay? Maybe. I get from the comments and whatnot that it is a debate. But if so, then at the very least, the formatting should be right.

ETA 5/20/2022 18:30 EDT: Reading the other posts and comments here, I think the biggest problem with EoQS as I see it, is in unclear and contradictory objectives of here, and so what gets enforced as bad content is often absurd. I understand that really confused students are going to end up asking questions that are really duplicates [even with context]. For example, every semester we see a bunch of question such as:

Is $$\{(x_1,x_2) \in \mathbb{R}^2; 2x_1+x_2=5\}$$ a vector space?

We will also get a bunch of questions about the probability of drawing $$2$$ red cards or a certain hand from a deck of $$52$$ cards, and so on. Just as we did last semester and the semester before that. The consensus on here, going by what I'm reading in the comments anyway, is that those questions should get respect on here if the student is showing effort. Alright, fine and great. If this is what the board decides then let's give those questions respect. But then if these questions are fine and allowed, then what is the point of EoQS again? What is the point of shutting down more interesting questions again then? Sometimes an answer to a duplicate gives a different take that may be useful to the next person. And just as much, why are the ones who answer a lot of hard questions getting put into the corner then. They are the ones contributing to the knowledge base here! And they were never really contributing to the problem EoQS was supposedly about fixing.

It often just all seems to arbitrary and capricious....

$$^1$$ EoQS = Enforcement of Quality Standards

• @amWhy I do my best to vote to close questions. I suppose moving forward I will flag more. But I do wager that it would also be necessary to (a) require only 3 votes to close questions (b) extend EoQS to comments that answer bad questions.
– Mike
May 11 at 23:07
• @Mike IMHO that's a false dichotomy between "repository of high-quality questions and answers" vs. "a homework-tutoring site". I see it closer to "repository of (random) knowledge" vs. "museum of (curated) pieces of math arts" as I wrote here. There are questions asked on MSE with appealing, non-trivial math contents, but which get summarily dismissed because they don't raise to the level of "high-quality questions" in EoQS' eyes.
– dxiv
May 12 at 7:41
• (...) Which btw is why I think lowering the close vote-count may not be such a good idea. Many (most?) "low quality" questions get closed and deleted before the OP has a chance to even see the votes and ammend their question.
– dxiv
May 12 at 7:42
• But is it indeed "primarily a site for experts to bounce ideas off other experts", or do we want it to be that? The banner you see when you first enter the site without an account says "Mathematics Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for people studying math at any level and professionals in related fields." I thought the "for experts by experts" site was MathOverflow, not MSE. May 12 at 8:15
• (I myself am a student, and I'm sure most of my questions asked here can be seen by an expert as "struggling with the basics", but nevertheless they were of great value to me and I'd say also to other students who stumble upon the same questions.) May 12 at 8:21
• dxiv but, do you think the the barrage of homework questions we saw this spring were "good" questions though? There are indeed some good homework questions no doubt, if the professor is good, that is why the question was assigned in the first place, because it was a good question. I personally don't think this site is for tutoring students in need of more remedial help though. BUT, it's not just my call. If I am wrong and MSE is a sort of Online TA, then let's scale back EoQS. Otherwise, let's get rid of bad questions faster.
– Mike
May 12 at 16:47
• "I'm pretty sure there have been some pretty conspicuous suspensions and retirements of poor content producers...." @rschwieb, I'm pretty sure there have been retirements of excellent content producers. EoQS has its downside, and I'm not convinced that it has been a net positive. May 13 at 2:08
• @GerryMyerson that is neither here nor there. We will never be able to stop good content producers who want to leave because the site isn’t run just so. And if you’re trying to say they were forced out because of EoQS directly then it is questionable that their content was good so…? My point was to show that there are definitely effects in the intended direction (because it was doubted is that there have been effects at all.). I never claimed that there weren’t side effects or that there is a net gain (although it seems to me there is.) May 13 at 3:38
• @Mike See my answer linked in the previous comment. Then (quoted parts are yours)... 1) Don't think the "barrage of homework questions we saw this spring" was different, or worse, this time around vs. previous years - both before and after EoQS. 2) "don't think this site is for tutoring students" A good math question does not become a bad one just because a lazy or clueless student asked it while doing their homework. Answering such a question does not only benefit the OP, but also contributes to the "repository of interesting questions and well-written answers" for future readers.
– dxiv
May 13 at 4:43
• I don't see how lowering the number of votes required to close a question, or extending quality standards to comments, will work toward keeping the good content (and keeping the users who provide the good content), Mike. May 13 at 23:47
– dxiv
May 14 at 6:04
• Meanwhile, the answer of mine that you had quoted, I had already deleted, before you quoted it. When I saw the question was being flagged as a dup I deleted my answer--which by the way, was thoroughly and carefully written [convergence needs to be established first]. There is something about playing gotcha like that in general, no context, that makes my brow furrow. I have 700 [thoroughly-written] answers on here over 4 years. Plenty of those answers are long answers to challenging exercises that took a while to write.
– Mike
May 19 at 18:05
• (Concerning a point raised in the most recent edit of the question) If you think you have a good answer to Question X, but you know that question is a duplicate of Question Y, then the thing to do is to vote to close X as a duplicate while posting your good answer at Question Y (assuming your good answer doesn't duplicate answers already posted to Y). 2 days ago
• @rschwieb I'm sorry, but I'm not sure I follow most of your comment. I seem to be missing some context. From my own experience, there is no room for discussion, and no second chance. I was banned for quite a while without any warning or any explanation. I believe I'm far from the only one, but it is very difficult to get any information on how the mass banning happened exactly. If other bans were similar to mine, I understand that most of the prolific users refuse to return. yesterday
• @rschwieb There was no communication by email either, by the way. I do get generic MSE mails there on occasion. I did get banned once before when I just joined MSE some 10 years ago. Back then I did get an explanation and a quick chat with a moderator to explain why, that was all good and fine. Not sure why I got the treatment I got; perhaps the mods were/are overworked. Anyway, my point is that the moderation is/was very far from ideal, as some users believe it to be. yesterday

There are three main categories of questions which I feel are worth talking about:

1. Conceptually deep questions which can't be answered from standard books

2. Conceptually deep questions which can be answered from standard books

3. Standard problems which come as exercises

In my personal experience, I find it that 90% of mse users can only handle 2. and 3. . There are only handful I met on this site who I really felt" gets it" beyond the book and can answer the type in 1. .

And depending on the subtopic of math, the number of people that maybe capable to answer in this category here is non existent.

Now, for the direction of mse , everything I said in the above paragraph is mostly irrelevant because firstly these questions are in minority, and, I think the people who are capable of writing deep answers won't be attracted more to the site more than they are right now by policy shifts. Infact, I have actually found that the people who answer in 1. often do not engage much in meta.

For 2. and 3., I'll just say let them be to be honest. Students need help and it is certainly valuable to provide a free reliable resource like mse to them. I think we should aim for inclusivty rather than exclusivity at this point.

To begin with mse is already very exclusive because it is not at all simple to use it. Firstly you need an Internet connection, then some command of English, and finally a willingness to learn some mathjax.

Most people don't speak English, and also may not have an Internet connection.

To achieve inclusivity, the website should be made more accessible in some way. I see no future for it if the philosophy is to keep it like some elitist mathematics circle for the English speaking privileged.

Now where is it actually going towards? That I believe is unanswerable. Only the future can say.

• Your point about the lack of receptivity of the StackExchange network (I don't know about in general, but at least MO and MSE where I spend most of my time) to non-English questions and answers is well taken, but surely there's not much one can do to remove the requirement of Internet access to be able to use a web site? (I would think that the requirement to learn Mathjax is not much more onerous than the requirement to learn some math, itself also a prerequisite for useful participation, but maybe I'm biased.) May 12 at 5:56
• Here are some ideas of how things could improve: there would be preformatted question drafts one could use, and, the subject body would auto translate the text written. Some sort of DeepL or Google transfer integration. I'd say mathjax maybe harder than math because mathjax is unlike what most people encounter in school or smthn. The Internet access point, I agree one can't do anything, but my idea was that this site is already tending on the very exclusive side. May 12 at 9:37
• Your last suggestion belongs at meta.se or a separate math.meta question. But your last comment is not directly related to the question you purport to answer. May 14 at 0:25

MSE exists to sustain itself in a condition of stasis.

It does not exist for the benefit of its users.

It does not exist for the benefit of those who need to get help with their studies.

It does not exist for the benefit of aspiring teachers who wish to get practice at crafting explanations for people who are trying hard to understand.

It is full, it needs no more input, and further contribution is superfluous.

All that is needed now is a way to index the repository so that questioners may be able to come here and find the answers to what they are looking for.

Unless it can do that, it is of limited use to the mathematical community.

• Most users cannot be bothered to search for duplicates, even when their questions are obviously duplicates. And it makes sense, because it is quicker to copy-paste your question from your homework sheet to this website, and wait a few minutes for an answer. There is no point in indexing a repository that barely anyone will bother to search. yesterday
• @Thissitehasbecomeadump. Meanwhile genuine self-learners like me, for whom this site could potentially be a valuable resource, are finding it more and more unhelpful. Every single call for improvement is squashed. yesterday
• Hey, for all you downvoters, how about you reply with some sort of refutationary argument? yesterday
• Reports of the death of mathstackexchange are greatly exaggerated. yesterday
• Whatever can be asserted without evidence or reasonability or connection to reality, can be dismissed without needing them, too.
– Nij
yesterday
• Are you seriously curious as to why you are just getting downvotes and no replies? There are straight forward answers to this, but I'm guessing that you would dismiss them without consideration, plus they would be hard to write without characterizing your recent actions on meta, something that mod's are likely to remove (which is probably a good policy). So "why no replies?" - because they're hard to write, and probably useless. yesterday
• >It is full, it needs no more input, and further contribution is superfluous. Disagree here. At the top most level of question and answers, there is a lot more to be explained and a lot more to be asked. At the most basic level, I agree tho. yesterday
• @JonathanZsupportsMonicaC Maybe it's because I'm angry at what I perceive to be an attitude of self-righteous gatekeeperism. 21 hours ago
• @PrimeMover do you have another account ? I agree with most of what you are saying, but I feel like even 4 years the gatekeeperism was sort of strong. Back in like 2013 this place was awesome, I was able to ask questions and get good answers that today would have no chance. 21 hours ago