This was asked before (in fact it is among starred messages), but I'll ask again anyway:

Does this new project has something which already existing similar websites do not have (like the ones mentioned here or here)? Wouldn't effort of users be better spent trying to improve existing projects than starting a new one?

@MathematicsAminPhysics That is plainly untrue. I've certainly seen dishonesty, rudeness and disruption in chat, and people using multiple accounts to troll a room. True, you can't "cheat" because there is no reputation to earn, but that doesn't mean moderation becomes any easier.

@MathematicsAminPhysics My main problem is that you seem to vastly underestimate the amount of work and learning that actual researchers do, in that you expect people qualified to train and tutor researchers to be able to devote that time for that in addition to their actual day-job as researchers, and in that you expect that the students are able to devote the necessary time and energy beside whatever job they hold.

And if I devote enough time and energy to this to actually do that, then I might as well teach or learn at an actual university! This model seems to have no advantage over a traditional university, and in the end will not grant me a degree anyone would recognize

@MathematicsAminPhysics You keep repeating that people downvote your posts because they dislike you. I do not think it's true.

However, the question of downvotes on your posts is not really relevant to the topic of this room. (But it was difficult to me to ignore claims which are, in my opinion, incorrect.) So if you wish, we can discuss this elsewhere.

One more comment about: "I think giving stars to messages, ..., is not very reasonable." On the contrary, I think that stars are very useful in marking content which new users of the room should notice first. So it would be a good idea to pin messages which you think every newcomer into this room should notice. (Room owners and moderators can pin messages. So you could ask ACuriousMind, for example. Or you could do this yourself if you become a room owner again.)

@MathematicsAminPhysics Of course. But answering a single focused question on SE is much different from teaching a course. That's why SE works so well, even busy people can pop in and answer a question.

@MathematicsAminPhysics In fact, I don't know that there are many unemployed graduated people, especially not in mathematics or physics.

@MathematicsAminPhysics Is the goal "self-study with discussion" or "to train researchers"? Because these two are very different, and I still haven't seen how "self-study with discussion" would be different from what SE already offers with its Q&A and chatrooms.

And you keep evading my point that it is very difficult to "do research" unless you devote time equivalent to a full job to it.

Are you a researcher? Have you asked any actual researchers whether they think one can do mathematics research "on the side"?

Is this supposed to be a university for unemployed people, giving them no degrees that would help remedy their unemployment? Talking about how people don't care about money and reputation is all good and well, but at the end of the day, we all got to eat.

And you should also consider that "mathematics research" does not happen in isolation, but embedded in the academic community. This university would have no connection at all to the research community, leaving its "researchers" stumbling about without access to conferences or colleagues.

@MathematicsAminPhysics I thinking that it practically has a lot of hurdles to overcome before you are going to draw much interest. I think it is a noble idea and I'd love to see a way for it to happen, but I don't think it is flushed out nearly enough to be successful yet. Contrary to your statement that all that is needed to start the project is human resources, willing people, by themselves are nothing more than a mob. You have to give the people direction so that they don't all go their own ways

otherwise you just have a disorganized mess

even if well meaning

@MathematicsAminPhysics ok, but you mentioned a bunch of things that do need oversight, like making sure that tutors are good. And I don't think gaming the system for reputation is as prevalent as you think. It occurs, but it's removed with a reasonably high degree of accuracy.

and if you try to put in systems to allow things to scale through community moderation of things to avoid it being too central administrator heavy, cheating can potentially become an issue again

@MartinSleziak I think the big difference is he wants something with hands on education and discussion groups rather than something that is just one way course videos

Well, for example Coursera is far from "just one way course videos".

@MathematicsAminPhysics perhaps, perhaps not, but if you have anyone that doesn't have a problem with you, they'll star them and they'll still get attention. I know I've stared more than a few of your posts, though I'd personally consider myself neutral on the whole thing since ultimately, I won't have the time to be directly involved

@MartinSleziak ok, I haven't had much direct experience with that one

@ACuriousMind very much this. If anything it becomes harder as there is less magic in chat

(ie, mysterious things we can't actually go in to any detail about)

but said mysterious things make life easier on community moderating on main sites, but chat is kind of a red headed step child

it sadly doesn't get much love and affection from the dev team since such a small percentage of SE users make use of chat

@MathematicsAminPhysics right, but the reason that people spend so much time on SE is that their input will benefit people for the rest of the time the site exists. Tutoring in chat helps the people who are there at the time if they happen to have the question, so mostly, it's helping one person and that's it. My contributions on various SE sites have been seen by millions of people. If I'd spent the same time in chat as a tutor, it would have been maybe a few thousand.

and it would never grow

where as I could drop out of SE today and 5 years from now, I'd still likely have impacted more than 12 million people, just from my old posts being useful to more people

@MathematicsAminPhysics you keep making the claim that the main site isn't really organized well (educationally) but haven't really made it clear what you mean. How would courses differ from topics? Topics are already covered by tags