Wolfram Mathematica

R.M

12:01 AM

Sorry, Infix is the only currency that's accepted here...

Gustavo Bandeira

@R.M Haha

Verbeia

12:23 AM

@SjoerdC.deVries Yes, I am quite concerned that at the moment we have one nominee with very little site experience (only 7 votes cast and no meta activity) and two with quite obvious time constraints (me, going to be out for a few months, and F'x who is already moderator on two other sites). Because of my time constraints, I would be more than happy to withdraw if someone else amongst the regulars is available.

To the more senior users (e.g. those on the first page or two by all-time rep - please consider whether you would be willing to be step up.

2

R.M

@Verbeia He probably thinks it is a game because he got an inbox notification...

@Verbeia No, don't withdraw. This isn't just about who has time... it'd be a shame if the community and the remaining mods can't hold the place together just because one person had to take a break for a couple of months and I'm confident that we're waay better than that.

Verbeia

1:02 AM

@R.M Thank you so much for stepping up! Your knowledge of the SE system and good sense about community building have been one of the reasons why this site has been so successful. (And you and I are the top two voter casters overall - an interesting metric.)

R.M

1:30 AM

@Verbeia Thanks, that's very kind of you! I did notice that metric, and it looks like F'x and I are the top two flaggers overall (since no one else has the Deputy badge) :)

Verbeia

2:03 AM

@R.M Yes, maybe it's the timezone I'm in that everything gets cleaned up before I see it, but I haven't found that much worth flagging here on Mma.SE. StackOverflow, on the other hand...

R.M

Btw, looks like the site's frozen (there's a notice on SO, but not here). I see new questions and answers, but they won't show up on the front page or /questions

Probably related to the server move

@Verbeia Yeah, not much here. A lot of them are not-an-answer (and comment) flags and usually such posts are more common in the US time zone

Verbeia

@R.M I used to find a lot on SO in Australian evenings (Indian mornings) that were spam and not-an-answer but there is very little of that on Mma.SE.

R.M

Yeah, when India wakes up, Stack Overflow's quality drops significantly... Heh, US outsources jobs to India and India ships back crappy questions and flags. I pity the SO moderators who work in that time zone :)

rcollyer

5:16 AM

@Verbeia I'll admit, I have gone back and forth on it for a while, and I cannot spare the time at least until after the first of the year. Otherwise, I'd throw my hat in the ring, too. (Mostly just to squish the hypnotoad, but I digress.)

F'x

6:11 AM

@rcollyer if you squish the toad, hypno or not, you'll have PETA chasing you :)

R.M

6:33 AM

Think again... Oh, wait. You can't.

Gustavo Bandeira

10:41 AM

mathematica.stackexchange.com/election/1#post-10470

WTF?!

J. M.

@R.M I'm still thinking of how to fake the flickering eyes with a judiciously-colored ContourPlot[]...

Luke Allen

12:10 PM

can someone please save my brain and help me figure out how to translate any of the algorithms on this wiki (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_coverage_problem#External_links) to mathematica

i've never done anything like it before

Sjoerd C. de Vries

12:43 PM

@LukeAllen You could make a question out of it of course, but remember that a "give me teh codez" questions generally are not highly appreciated. You have to make the question interesting and explain what you tried and what difficulties you've encountered that you couldn't solve. Also, take care that the question doesn't include everything and the kitchen sink.

@Verbeia It's great that you stepped in. I hope that you can combine in with your work. If you hesitated I'll volunteer for another round, but I'd rather not at the moment. I'm doing a course (FRM; you'll probably know that one) in my spare time and I notice I'm getting behind my tight study schedule, so far so that I'm worried I won't be ready for the first exam in November.

Sjoerd C. de Vries

1:12 PM

@R.M Of course, I support your nomination too. You're smart guy with a great sense of duty. We've had some discussion with respect to friendliness to newcomers, and leeway for fun. In the days where we were just a tag on SO, we were very proud to be a fun and friendly community that managed to stay around without the level of downvotes found further on on SO. Leonid still has zero downvotes.

I know your philosophy is a bit different (your down:up ratio is 1/30, and @F'x is even higher at 1/10, which worries me somewhat) and I respect that, but I hope and trust that you will live up to the meaning of the job, that is being moderate.

R.M

2:23 PM

@SjoerdC.deVries Since you've acted on a lot of my flags, you probably know that I've also voted to delete on every single spam answer/question-as-an-answer that I come across (more often than not, as the first vote). All of those require me to down vote, as other wise, I can't vote.

I've been doing that since about February, which is when I got that privilege. On my detailed /votes tab, I see about 30ish existing down votes, of which about 10 or so are on posts that are closed and about to be deleted. So effectively, my actual downvote ratio is about 25/3450.

(votes on deleted post are counted too)

Sjoerd C. de Vries

2:36 PM

@r.m Good to hear that. Actually I wasn't aware of the details of the delete mechanics as I haven't done that very much before I became mod (I think on SO I just flagged for mod attention). And after becoming a mod, due to mod privileges, I didn't need to downvote before a deletion, so I never noticed that's a requirement.

R.M

Yeah, that's a 20k privilege now (was 4k in beta)... the answer needs to be -1 or lower, so someone has to downvote it (only belisarius had it on SO then)

There have also been times when Szabolcs, Heike, acl, myself and a couple of other occasional ones have teamed up and deleted spam without involving the mods

rcollyer

2:50 PM

@SjoerdC.deVries I figured out a way to make your solution on Mark's question moderately doable.

Sjoerd C. de Vries

3:05 PM

@rcollyer The ToRules mystifies me a bit. It appears in the output as well.

rcollyer

3:15 PM

@SjoerdC.deVries you're right. But, I think it is because they aren't simply formulas, but conditions plus formulas. And, ToRule just can't quite handle it. But, it gets us partway there.

@SjoerdC.deVries Changing the Solve code to this:

Solve[e_,
   v_] := {Cases[Reduce[e, v],
    var_?(MemberQ[Flatten[{v}], #] &) == rhs_ :> Rule[var, rhs],
    Infinity]};

Does the trick. But, it strips out all of the other conditions that go with each solution. So, the knowledge of where all of the solutions are valid is lost.

Sjoerd C. de Vries

@rcollyer Yep, that does the trick.Throw in a Quiet for good measures and your done. Losing the conditions will be a problem though.

rcollyer

3:39 PM

Block[{Solve, conds},
Unprotect[Solve];
Solve[e_, v_] :=
With[{res = Reduce[e, v]},
conds =
res /. Equal[var_?(MemberQ[Flatten[{v}], #] &), __] :>
Sequence[];
{
Cases[res,
var_?(MemberQ[Flatten[{v}], #] &) == rhs_ :> Rule[var, rhs],
Infinity]
}
];
Transpose[{DSolve[u'[t] == u[t]/(4 + u[t]^2), u[t], t][[1]],
List @@ LogicalExpand[conds]}]
]

@SjoerdC.deVries Fixed. Moved it over to Block as we are rewriting Solve not adapting it.

Hi, @F'x long time no see/talk to.

F'x

hi @rcollyer

rcollyer

I should be working on my thesis. But, I needed an mma break.

F'x

@SjoerdC.deVries wrt downvotes, their role is central to SO's working, for both questions and answers

I perfectly agree, thouh, that they should not be abused to bash newcomers… in fact, I don't find I ever downvote newcomers

I definitely don't like (and thus avoid) casting a downvote on a zero-score question

(and even worse for an already negative score question, of course)

but yeah, I do downvote more than people on average here

I know that in some SO tags, the situation in that respect is horrific

Sjoerd C. de Vries

@F'x The importance of downvotes is often stated without supporting evidence. As I said above SO/Mathematica worked reasonably well without significant downvotes from the regulars. In fact, it was the drive-by downvoting from irregulars that was one of the reasons to start a separate SE site.

I don't deny that downvoting can be used as a corrective measure, but there are other means too.

Gentle commenting, editing etc. all will more positively contribute to the community feeling.

I'd say, comment first, downvote (much) later.

Give users time to correct themselves. Many newcomers don't expect the realtime feedback experience you get here, and don't return within half a day.

Mark McClure

4:18 PM

@Sjoerd Thanks for your response to my DSolve question!
Also, I recently stumbled upon message-5811170, where you indicate that I "stated at least twice that my [ie. your] moderation policies were too harsh". While true, I do recognize that my views are a bit out of line with the generally prevailing view on stackexchange. More importantly, I want to make it clear that I certainly do appreciate the work that you and the other moderators have put into the site - thanks!

Oleksandr R.

@F'x to me, it seems reasonable to downvote senseless or ill-considered questions, even from newcomers--it's hardly too much to expect that users engage the brain before posting. That said, I don't downvote very often (my ratio is 90:1 up) and would prefer to close/delete bad questions after they've been answered (hence my meta post) rather than downvote them into oblivion. It's instructive in view of Shog9's answer to me that his ratio on SO is something like 2:1 up.

Mark McClure

@OleksandrR. As you might guess, I'm in favor very light use of the down vote. R.M. seems to have an interesting point that down voting is an important mechanism for the site.

Oleksandr R.

@MarkMcClure given that nothing is ever really deleted on SE sites, I tend to view close/delete as more of a way of tidying away things that nobody is ever likely to want to see in the future. I do find the endless repetition on MathGroup rather tiresome at times, although I agree that outright censorship is not helpful. The reason I want another reason to close is precisely so that there can be a voting process. Moderators unfortunately have no choice but to act unilaterally.

Mark McClure

@OleksandrR. Wow you type fast.

Oleksandr R.

I was typing that one already. :)

Mark McClure

4:28 PM

@OleksandrR. I see what you mean about MathGroup but, actually, the censorship there is one of the reasons I'm so happy about this site.

@SjoerdC.deVries This is my first time on chat. Perhaps I needed to type all of @SjoerdC.deVries instead of just the @Sjoerd that I typed earlier.

Oleksandr R.

Well, yes, I agree that it is rather arbitrary that one can't mention MATLAB or Maple. And it makes it rather less useful as a support forum.

Mark McClure

Exactly!!

Oleksandr R.

@MarkMcClure if you get the first three or so characters then a match will be made.

Mark McClure

Yes, that's what made me realize it. My first message was pre-typed, so I didn't notice it with that one.

Also since it's my first time here, I wonder what the number next to my name represents. It seems larger than my reputation score.

Oleksandr R.

@MarkMcClure it's a total across all sites, as chat is itself a separate SE site and not tied to Mma.SE.

Mark McClure

4:34 PM

Ahh, although in that case, I think I'm being shortchanged. :)

Sjoerd C. de Vries

5:11 PM

@MarkMcClure I was AFK, preparing dinner. I got both of your messages. Thanks for your support! It's always good to let your opinion be heard. I tried to balance all the views I got during my mod tour, so I closed and deleted much more than I might have done on my own. After your reaction I certainly was more aware of the alternative visions and have more consistently tried to shift the balance both in action and in words.

@mark I believe the number represents the total of all SE sites.

Mark McClure

@SjoerdC.deVries Hi Sjoerd - glad you got the message.

And I'm sure it's a tough job - at least you've got a T-shirt on the way!

Sjoerd C. de Vries

@mark Ha!

Mark McClure

I wonder when we'll get those? I'll be going to the Wolfram Tech conference and would certainly take it.

Sjoerd C. de Vries

@MarkMcClure They said six weeks.

Did you go last year?

Mark McClure

As far as my take on moderation/down votes goes, my first concern is that we scare away new/novice users.

In addition, I'd hate to discourage folks without clear benefit.

Downvotes, particularly, don't seem very informative.

Sjoerd C. de Vries

5:19 PM

True. Closing as duplicate, for instance, is done with the best of intentions, but without explanation it's like a slap in the face

Mark McClure

Exactly. I think something like "Merged with ..." another question, would be essentially the same but with less harsh language.

At any rate, I did not got to the conference last year. I've been every even year for some time, now.

Sjoerd C. de Vries

Last year was my first time, and though I liked it very much, I can't effort it to repeat it. It's costly in financial terms but especially in time. I have to take vacation to attend.

Mark McClure

Ouch. Plus, international travel.

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