The Blog Room - 2014-06-04

1:46 AM

I think I'd like to post my articles on my own blog as well as on the math.se blog. I thought I'd let the article appear first on the math.se blog, then wait a month or so, then post it on my own blog. Does anyone have a substantive objection to that plan?

anorton

2:24 AM

@MJD I, for one, think that is perfectly fine. In fact, I may do the same with some of my posts. (I know you asked for any objections, but I figured that agreement would be welcome as well.)

mixedmath

2:54 AM

@MJD that doesn't bother me at all, and I appreciate the wait between letting it appear here

@anorton: your post has now been published, and the post of @MJD has been approved and is next

anorton

Yay! :) Thanks for letting me know.

mixedmath

@anorton Further, you've expressed interest in being an editor, right?

anorton

Yes.

(I want to see this blog get off the ground, and I figure I should help out any way I can)

mixedmath

@anorton Then I'm going to make you an editor. What this means is that we'll expect you to read/copyedit some of the posts and then (assuming the post is reasonable) pass it over to the mods for a final review

does that sound reasonable?

anorton

Sounds fine.

mixedmath

3:03 AM

@anorton you now have superpowers (relatively speaking)!

anorton

With great power...

anorton

3:24 AM

@vzn I just went through and edited your post to account for capitalization and some punctuation. In the middle of the post, there's a comment: . Is this something that is supposed to be there, or is it just an "artifact" of a draft? (I wanted to check before deleting it.)

@mixedmath How do I pass off a post to the mods for final review? It seems like I have the ability to directly publish, and I don't want to goof up anything... (Note: I'm not saying I'm done with revisions, I'm just curious how I will signal that I'm done)

mixedmath

@anorton you do have the ability to directly publish... just don't use it (we're very trusting)

to signal, just ping us here

anorton

Ok.

mixedmath

5:44 AM

Alright: I wrote a script that will transform .tex files or MSE-style markdown+math into html which should (very nearly) copy-paste directly into the blog

And it's here, with some directions and doc

I tested it on a few of my own things, and on one of the blog drafts, and it works pretty well. But I'm sure we'll manage to break it

Jyrki Lahtonen

6:23 AM

@mixedmath: Does using your tool require me to have a python interpreter (or whatnot) installed in my laptop (running on Windows 7)?

Jyrki Lahtonen

7:12 AM

I guess what I'm asking is about the existence of an executable? I'm totally unfamiliar with running scripts.

Jyrki Lahtonen

8:28 AM

Ok. I managed with manually inserting the word `latex' at appropriate places. Ctrl+V is your friend. My bit is now in there, but probably still needs a fair amount of editing.

Should we organize the media somehow? The iimages that I used are there together with the ones that anorton uploaded. This is not a problem right now, but may become so later as the blog grows.

anorton

11:27 AM

@JyrkiLahtonen Oooh.... I thought they were tied to each blog entry. We probably could create libraries for regular contributors (e.g. "All of anorton's stuff goes here, and all of Jykir's stuff goes there") , but the one-time contributors could have their stuff in the main directory.

MJD

3:03 PM

I request an answer to my question at meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/13903/… about the intended meaning of our blog post categories.

vzn

hi an "" is a wordpress extension/comment that signals an article header/break when article headers only (instead of full blog) are listed in the blog serial history. presume that it works also on the se blogs...?

splitting content/more tag wordpress support

see also "lead"

Lead paragraph

A lead, or lede, paragraph in literature is the opening paragraph of an article, essay, news story or book chapter. Often called the lead, it usually occurs together with the headline or title. It precedes the main body of the article, and it gives the reader the main idea of the story. In both spellings, the word rhymes with the word need. In the journalism industry, particularly in the United States (see News style), the term is spelled "lede". The alternative spelling was invented to differentiate it from the metal lead (pronounced led), which was used in hot metal typesetting. This...

12 hours ago, by mixedmath

@anorton: your post has now been published, and the post of @MJD has been approved and is next

congratulations!

however as of this second main page blog link still goes to se blog instead of new math blog.

not on se main blog pg yet either

stackexchange.com/blogs

can admins see hit stats on the blog? do not have permission myself

blog link here (dont think this link has shown up yet in chat; its in mm's meta post)

math.blogoverflow.com

anyway nice teamwork everyone! way2go!

re gracenote concern:

in Blog Launch, May 12 at 18:29, by Grace Note

@vzn What defines comfortable, I guess? I'm not trying to set guidelines here explicitly because I don't want to create some sort of "goalpost" that people will just achieve. It's not important to me how often that you post (though from a personal my own perspective, I'd love to see at least 1-2 posts a month, so that's about 18 posts a year), it's just that I want to see that posting activity continues year after year on a regular enough basis.

so pacing is important wrt her concern here.

therefore suggest that maybe a stockpile of a few blogs be saved up & not "released"/published immed as they are ready.

2

grace has a good pt that many other se blogs get initial enthusiasm that cools (this is a cyberspace-wide blog phenomenon)...

also blog admins may need to issue new/periodic "calls for content" here or in meta if the stockpile seems low.

MJD

3:44 PM

I personally will be surprised if the blog is still going in a year.

But I would like to be surprised.

vzn

4:15 PM

lol :(

so then how do we sustain it?
(alas indeed hard q, even grace doesnt have answer to this q & looking to us somewhat for answers & its much bigger than just se blogs...)

leo

@JyrkiLahtonen The post seems nice to me. I've never blogged either, but I think it would be nice if you add some titles and subtitles. For example as one read your post there are clear divisions. You introduce the algebra. Then you explain the application, inside that you use an example and then generalizes. As for the finite fields thing, I think it's fine as it is. Maybe just mention that we can only construct finite fields of size a power of prime number and that fortunately $256$ is one of those

Jyrki Lahtonen

4:48 PM

@leo: Duly noted. Working on it.

mixedmath

6:56 PM

@vzn yep, there are more tags

@vzn interestingly enough, no, we can't see the stats. They are being collected, but they are beyond our view. In the beginning, though, there should be very few views. It takes a bit to build a viewership

@vzn Why isn't the blog visible from main yet?

But I agree that pacing is important. There are a few active personal bloggers in the community, and some might use this as a soundboard (which is totally fine)

having 3-4 people that contribute every other month, while other people contribute however often (even just one time!) they like would keep the blog interesting, varied, and alive

MJD

We could see some stats. Modify anorton's article to include a tracking pixel.

If the tracking pixel is hosted on my site, I can gather the information from my server logs and make it available in real time to whoever we decide should be able to see it.

Should I elaborate?

mixedmath

Usually mods have access to a variety of site stats, and it just happens to be that these are down since the move of the SE servers to Colorado

if we don't have access to the stats ever, we'll go down that road

for now, I'm content to just see the blog get on its feet without knowing the exact details

@JyrkiLahtonen It does currently require python to use. I see that you've already done that step, but if you write again in the future, I'm sure that we can work something out without you needing to install python

@JyrkiLahtonen Hmm, that's a good point. A minimal thing to do would be to have folders for the current month. That should be fine enough and easy enough.

Américo Tavares

8:53 PM

@mixedmath Are the comments moderated? By the Administrators of the blog?

mixedmath

@AméricoTavares I hadn't looked before now. But no, they're not right now

it seems likely that will change,

on my blog, I use the your-first-comment-must-be-approved model, and that works well for me

2

Américo Tavares

9:41 PM

@mixedmath Thanks. On my blog I moderate all comments, not only the first, but I think that your model should work fine in this case too.

vzn

10:19 PM

re hits statistics, would like to see them eventually. there should at least be some trickle from se menus & std locations (hence my interest in seeing those hooked up asap).

understand that new blogs get low hits.

also, suggest esp if se lead-ins dont lead to much hits, there be some discussion of promotion of the blog.

from experience, in general reddit is very good for generating hits. unf se chat rooms tend to have very little views & are not-so-good for blog links. (cross-se mods tend to be hypervigilant in killing these types of links also)...

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$Mathematics$ The Blog Room