Timeline for We should stop claiming that this website is “research-level”
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
23 events
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| Apr 13, 2017 at 12:32 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/ with https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/
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| Apr 19, 2011 at 9:03 | answer | added | Charles Stewart | timeline score: 4 | |
| Mar 26, 2011 at 14:23 | comment | added | Tsuyoshi Ito | @Lev: I disagree to your claim that it is better to say “research-level” when we really mean “of interest to researchers.” I cannot see how calling it “research-level” can possibly make it any easier for non-researchers to judge whether a question satisfies the criteria. | |
| Mar 26, 2011 at 4:27 | comment | added | Lev Reyzin Mod | Also - in retrospect I agree some questions outside complexity are judged less harshly. For example this question in learning: cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/5137/… which I probably should have voted to close instead of answering (this makes me part of the problem). We're not always perfect, but I don't think we should lower our standards. | |
| Mar 26, 2011 at 4:21 | comment | added | Lev Reyzin Mod | In reality our criterion is "of interest to researchers" instead of "research-level". However, a non-researcher would have a hard time telling what interests researchers, so probably "research-level" is a better, though less accurate, descriptor. | |
| Mar 25, 2011 at 21:34 | comment | added | Kaveh | non-research level question from another researcher from time to time (but not many), and that is OK and fits in the scope of our site (but I don't think we need to state it explicitly because stating this explicitly will cause more trouble than it will solve). Anyway, I think we have had enough discussions about scope recently and my personal opinion is that we should stick to the last decision at least for sometime (say a year) before revisiting it. | |
| Mar 25, 2011 at 21:32 | comment | added | Kaveh | I don't think traffic is the main point for us, if traffic was the main objective we could have stayed on MO. We tolerate non-research questions to some extent but that is not the definition of our scope. Having a few interesting non-research question is OK, having too many is bad. If we remove the requirement of being research level from our scope then it seems to me that it would be difficult stopping lots of them being posted, we already get many off-topic question even thought the FAQ says that this is a research level site. On the other hand, a researcher might ask an interesting | |
| Mar 22, 2011 at 21:41 | comment | added | Tegiri Nenashi | Due to traffic volume mathoverflow can afford to discriminate "non-research level" question to math.stackexchange. There doesn't seem to be much noise here. Besides, where are database theory people? | |
| Mar 17, 2011 at 19:04 | comment | added | Radu GRIGore | (1) IMO, one of the benefits of the site is that a researcher in field X can ask a question that is easy for a researcher in field Y. The difficulty of a question varies a lot by background too, not only by experience. (2) For this particular question, I think the OP would get quick and good answers on forums.topcoder.com where this kind of questions are encouraged; so, I would slightly prefer redirecting the OP, although I don't feel adverse to keeping the question. (3) @Philip: IMHO "Is X NP-hard?" is or is not a research question depending on X. | |
| Mar 17, 2011 at 18:05 | answer | added | Dave ClarkeMod | timeline score: 6 | |
| Mar 17, 2011 at 15:31 | comment | added | user1338 | ...(contd.) This criterion ("what a professor/researcher would find interesting") is relatively subjective. As such, it may be a little tricky to enforce, but might be more in line with what you're really going for...you don't to bore or drive away professional researchers. | |
| Mar 17, 2011 at 15:30 | comment | added | user1338 | Doesn't CStheory allow certain other questions that are clearly "non-research-level," such as whether or not a problem is NP-hard? Maybe there is a different phrase that needs to be used for describing what kinds of problems are not allowed...for example, maybe saying that a question has to be "non-trivial or otherwise interesting to a researcher" would be a better criterion. I think Tsuyoshi is right that we've already diverged from "the sort of problems that two professors might discuss"...why not define it as "the sort of question that a professor would find interesting?" ...(contd.) | |
| Mar 17, 2011 at 13:06 | comment | added | Jukka Suomela | I think the question is fine and there is no need to change the scope. | |
| Mar 17, 2011 at 10:38 | answer | added | Kaveh | timeline score: 15 | |
| Mar 16, 2011 at 22:30 | comment | added | Suresh Venkat Mod | @DaveClarke: My personal view is that this question shouldn't have been encouraged, because even if it was non-obvious, it's not research level. | |
| Mar 16, 2011 at 21:52 | answer | added | Suresh VenkatMod | timeline score: 10 | |
| Mar 16, 2011 at 21:06 | comment | added | Raphael | I think Tsuyoshi Ito is right. Since we have a lot of people in complexity, questions from that area are judged very harshly; things I have not seen in my Master course are declared too basic. In other areas, stuff I have seen in my Bachelor course is accepted. This is nothing new. | |
| Mar 16, 2011 at 19:50 | comment | added | Peter Shor | I have been arguing that we should exclude (a) typical homework questions for undergrad courses and (b) questions the answer to which is easily findable on wikipedia, or using Google. On the one hand, if we start answering questions of type (a) and (b), I think we'll rapidly degenerate into a site that will lose many of our current participants who want research-level questions. On the other hand, I'd like to still answer relatively elementary questions for practitioners who could use an answer. | |
| Mar 16, 2011 at 16:41 | comment | added | Dave Clarke Mod | As the moderator who commented on the question: Firstly, I found the question interesting, so I commented. It's called encouragement. Secondly, I do not work in algorithms, so it is difficult for me to always determine the level of the question. Thirdly, it seems impossible to please you: close a question and you complain, comment on a question and you complain. | |
| Mar 16, 2011 at 16:22 | comment | added | Klark | As a OP of problematic question I just want to say that I didn't know what kind of questions are usually asked on cstheory. I stated the problem on SO first, but I didn't find satisfactory answer so I tried my chances here. After looking at other question I agree that question isn't on the level of this site. I hope that next time I will have a question better suited for this site :) | |
| Mar 16, 2011 at 16:17 | comment | added | Tsuyoshi Ito | @Hsien-Chih: I do not have any other examples right now. | |
| Mar 16, 2011 at 16:01 | comment | added | Hsien-Chih Chang 張顯之 | @Tsuyoshi: Thanks for bringing up the discussion. Do you have other examples like this one? I'm wondering if this is a special case, and it may only happen once for a while. | |
| Mar 16, 2011 at 15:30 | history | asked | Tsuyoshi Ito | CC BY-SA 2.5 |