@BillDubuque why do you think this site is among the worst affected by the HNQ?

That aside, and I do not like the HNQ much either, I really do not think that in the specific case the outside votes played that much of a role.

Yes, it would not have given answers at +20 without the HNQ, but the HNQ is also shown on this site.

It's just not a question that should attract all that many driveby votes from completely unqualified users. Because why should they care for that somewhat technical question.

Maybe somebody active on say say physics might be attracted to it, but really are they less qualified? I don't think so. I actually think the issue with that situation is that it is not at all that bad as meta OP made it look.

" But it was not I who raised the tangential point about whether or not MSE suffers more from the Hot list than other sites." The reason I raised it was to explain why I doubt math.se would get a special treatment re HNQ. There is just no grounds for that. Alright one could scrap HNQ altogether but that was discussed many times on the general meta.

This was an answer to the Q if mods could ask somewhere for not being included. Yes, they could ask on Meta SE, but it feels pointless for the reasons mentioned earlier.

If a small specialized site or one with many controversial topics would ask for it maybe. But really for math I do not see what is special about math compared to physics, chemistry, CS, etc.

Or on academia I feel it is more of a problem. Where questions are vaguer and any number of people than offer their 2 cents, since of course they are experts as they attended some school at some point.

Or also on MO, sometimes, as the difference in knowledge between target audience and average SE is higher than around here.

Really I am astonished my claim was even controversial.

A way in which math.se is affected a lot is in absolute numbers of Q in HNQ, I guess.

Maybe one could ask for a tweak of the algo re this. I think SO has a special casing in place, so that it does not swamp the list.

@PedroTamaroff that ping went nowhere as I am not in the conversation. Why didn't you move my comments too but just deleted them apparently?

@quid Do you want them back?

@quid: I actually agree with BillDubuque that mathematics is worst affected by HNQ. Why? Not because of the voting behaviour that ensues, but because of the impact. Logically, it matters little whether Philosophy/ELU/... SE have a HNQ that attracts plenty of spurious answers and upvotes by people who want to express their opinions. Life still goes on and incorrect philosophical beliefs and language usually does not affect anything.

However, when people do the same with mathematics (and to a lesser extent the other physical sciences) it has in my opinion far-reaching consequences that we may not see now but will come back to hurt the later generations. The sheer irrationality of many people in making important decisions is one present-day example of the inadequacy in mathematical education. So if @BillDubuque was actually referring to mathematics rather than just this website on the internet, that's what I'm agreeing with.

After all, I hope the frequent contributors to Math SE don't consider it merely a game, but a platform for contributing to the mathematical society at large.

@quid: As for your suggestion that Math SE gets disproportionately more coverage in the HNQ list, if true I would certainly agree in dialing it down.

@PedroTamaroff if it causes not much trouble, yes, please.

@user21820 I would not say disproportionately more coverage, but rather proportionate coverage (or rather sub proportioante). But since it is large in absolute terms this more than for other site. The site gets about 1000 times more questions than MESE. It does not have 1000 times more Q in the HNQ, but obviously a lot more.

@quid: If it was larger for larger sites it makes sense according to SE principles. But I still would rather have less.

I cannot quantify the impact of HNQ, but here's a different perspective. I was on Money.SE, and there were many problems that seemed potentially impactful. Like tax and law-related investment advice given independent of the relative nation of the asker and answerer. Not to mention advice that was clearly just wrong. (I left Money.SE over this.) That was not all HNQ b/c some of the highest ranked members were the big offenders, but the consequences were potentially very real for people.

@user21820 that's funny given that an important objection against the answer was its incorrect use of language. OP knew the were talking about a vector or at least a signed quantity, yet called it speed. That was a language error not a math or physics error. In addition you may want to ask some interpreters and translators about some anecdotes what consequence their slips can have.

@quid: My mistake in using "disproportionately" was because I had assumed the HNQ algorithm just selects equally based on actual popularity and not based on activity or size of the site.

@user21820 but I believe for the most part it does just this, select on actual popularity of the thread.

It's just that this site has few popular threads in a relative sense, but still many in an absolute sense. (This is a neutral statement, it's pretty much a direct function of the size of the site.) I did not double check but I am pretty sure that the median number of views on, say, MESE is significantly higher than it is here.

@Brick I agree on this. Health, Law, are other examples. To some extent even Travel, Home improvement and Cooking.