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Martin Sleziak
Martin Sleziak
00:08
11
Q: Newsletter says to cast a vote "by" the date of the end of the nomination phase instead of after

MartinRecently I got an email with the MathOverflow newsletter (digest) which contained the following text: 2022 Community Moderator Election The community moderator election is currently in the nomination phase. Please cast your vote by September 26! However, since September 26 is the end of the nom...

bug status-completed election wording community-digests
...Yep, right you are – for some reason, the relevant code says exactly this. It makes sense that this "Please cast your vote by [end of current phase]" wording is used for the subsequent primary phase (if there is one) and voting phase, but it doesn't make much sense to use this phrasing during the nomination phase. — V2Blast ♦ Sep 30, 2022 at 23:36
3
A: Newsletter says to cast a vote "by" the date of the end of the nomination phase instead of after

ConnellAs of January 30th, 2023, the default newsletter text for the nomination phase has changed to If you would like to run in this election, please nominate yourself by {StartDate} The text remains as it was for other phases.

 
14 hours later…
Martin Sleziak
Martin Sleziak
14:19
1
Q: The number of MO users

Ali TaghaviIs there any statistics/diagram who shows and compare the number of MO users in the course of time?

discussion user-interface user-accounts statistics
2
A: The number of MO users

Martin SleziakSEDE contains the data about users - so one should be able to find out at least some information. I have tried to create at least some queries - I hope that somebody with better knowledge of SQL might come up with some better suggestions. Number of active users I think that it is probably more i...

This is number of the accounts created on MO per year and per month.
user image
I will admit that I am a bit curious about the spike in 2021 - any other year has less than 25k created accounts, this year has almost 280k. Most likely we'll never know. — Martin Sleziak 37 secs ago
The Amplitwist
The Amplitwist
14:46
@MartinSleziak I would guess that the spike is due to lots of spammer profiles.
Oh, looks like Stefan Kohl already commented the same.
@MartinSleziak The spike in new user accounts in 2021 is due to a huge influx of spam profiles created in this time. — Stefan Kohl ♦ 9 mins ago
@StefanKohl I will admit that spammers could be a possibility. OTOH if I check number of spam posts, that one doesn't seem to be higher in 2021. — Martin Sleziak 1 min ago
Martin Sleziak
Martin Sleziak
Of course, considering that I have seen many incorrect claims posted by the MO moderators, I take anything they say with a grain of salt.
But this seems indeed quite a plausible explanation.
The Amplitwist
The Amplitwist
Hehe, understandable 😄 I just vaguely recall some Meta SE post related to this, actually. I'll try and search for it later, hopefully I'm not dreaming it up.
Martin Sleziak
Martin Sleziak
15:03
Checking some other sites, there doesn't seem to be such spike on Stack Overflow or on Mathematics.
Superuser and Ask Ubuntu both have spikes in 2021.
ServerFault has a spike in 2021, TeX not.
 
1 hour later…
Martin Sleziak
Martin Sleziak
16:18
@MartinSleziak The peak was due to profile spammers, i.e., accounts which didn't post. At some point, the interest of profile spammers in MO dropped again, and the massive influx was over. — Stefan Kohl ♦ 1 min ago
@StefanKohl Looking here on meta, these questions - related to spam in users' profiles - are indeed from 2021: Influx of ridiculous number of spam users – what to do? and Filtering out the Autobiographer badge from "Recent Badges". — Martin Sleziak 29 secs ago
@MartinSleziak Yes (and mod data shows it clearly). — Stefan Kohl ♦ 15 secs ago

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