MathOverflow

7:24 AM

2

His wiki article has been updated to say that he died recently. Are there any other sources confirming that? Thanks. If it is more appropriate for another stackexchange site, please feel free to move the question there.

Peter Swinnerton-Dyer

Sir Henry Peter Francis Swinnerton-Dyer, 16th Baronet (born 2 August 1927, died 26 December 2018), commonly known as Peter Swinnerton-Dyer, was an English mathematician specialising in number theory at University of Cambridge. As a mathematician he was best known for his part in the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture relating algebraic properties of elliptic curves to special values of L-functions, which was developed with Bryan Birch during the first half of the 1960s with the help of machine computation, and for his work on the Titan operating system. == Biography == Swinnerton-Dyer was the...

At the moment he is not listed in the Wikipedia article Deaths in 2018 (current revision).

Martin Sleziak

9:23 AM

2

Q: Replace Stack Exchange logo by site's logo in the top bar

One of the complaints I have seen about the new design is that it is more uniform that it used be and often it is difficult to distinguish sites from another.1 (Especially if you are viewing a question and scroll down.) Proposal: Instead of Stack Exchange logo in the top-bar on the left, use a l...

feature-request top-bar

I am not sure how much help will this help, but at least I've tried to post feature request on Meta Stack Exchange - we will see what others think about it.

This was basically one of the main problems mentioned on Meta: How can we visually differentiate MathOverflow from MathStackExchange within the constraints of the new design themes?

@DavidRoberts And I recall that David Roberts mentioned this problem also here in chat.

Dec 15 at 3:13, by David Roberts

For what it's worth, when I'm on my (7") tablet and scrolled down from the top of the page, M.SE and MO are indistinguishable (perhaps there's some font different that I never noticed before....), and the logo in the sticky bar at the top is the SE logo, not the MO logo, so it's not clear I'm on mathoverflow.net or on generic.site.stackexchange.com

To repeat what I said in chat: when the window width is narrow enough to switch to a mobile layout, the 'Search on MathOverflow/Mathematics/Generic.SE.site' vanishes, leaving no sign when scrolled down, just the StackExchange logo. — David Roberts Dec 15 at 6:21

Although this will probably not help too much for mobile devices - when I switch to mobile web, the name of the site is already shown in the top bar.

The trouble is that - unlike in desktop version - the top bar (and the logo there) disappear when you scroll down.

Martin Sleziak

10:58 AM

I see that David Roberts got supporter badge on Meta Stack Exchange. Possibly it was in connection with the post I've mentioned above - if that's the case, thanks for your vote.

@Catija and @Glorfindel I'd like to use the opportunity that two rather experienced Meta Stack Exchange users are now pingable in this room to ask about this.

Do you think that this question would be reasonable to ask on Meta Stack Exchange: Forbid (or rewrite) proxy links in answers. (Or at least that it would be positively received, perhaps even if it's not that likely that it gets implement.)

7

Q: Forbid (or rewrite) proxy links in answers

One can see from the recent discussion Correcting links with university proxy (especially MathSciNet links) that some users add in their posts links that only work for people behind a specific proxy, and that some other users spend time correcting those links. This looks like a problem that can ...

feature-request hyperlinks

That's a good feature request, hopefully the fact there are several academic sites on the network will encourage the SE Overlords to implement it too. — Asaf Karagila Jul 21 '17 at 8:43

If it turns out that we like this suggestion here, then it should be posted for discussion on the "big" stackexahnge meta. — Gerald Edgar Jul 21 '17 at 12:26

Probably diamond users know more about this, but I think that it is already possible to add warnings triggered by certain strings or to blacklist them entirely. For example, see the list of blacklists and warnings on math.SE. However, if also rewrite of the link should be implemented, that would probably be a new feature. — Martin Sleziak Jul 22 '17 at 4:22

I am aware of the fact that simple blacklisting is already available. However, adding some rewrite rules, such as automatically changing for example, http://jlms.oxfordjournals.org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/content/s2-15/1/134 to http://www.jstor.org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/stable/2372821, would be a new feature.

Glorfindel

11:13 AM

@MartinSleziak reasonable, yes. Especially if you have support from other sites. Whether it would be positively received, I don't know. It's really a problem specific to academic site; most people on Meta.SE have a programming background and wouldn't care about this.

@MartinSleziak this part I don't get. I can imagine certain domains like jlms.oxfordjournals.org.proxy.lib.umich.edu getting mapped to www.jstor.org.proxy.lib.umich.edu, but how is the system going to find out rewriting the 'dynamic' part of the URL? You don't really want to rely on the user's browser to perform that magic, if that would work at all.

If I were you, I'd go for the blacklisting route. That's an existing feature whose settings can be easily adjusted by CMs.

Alternatively, one can write a bot to automatically detect these URLs and leave a comment under the post (or even change them). There is (or was?) one that did this on every [burninate-request] posted on Meta Stack Overflow. IIRC there's a bot on Math.SE as well which identifies certain (low quality?) questions and comments on them.

Martin Sleziak

11:42 AM

I see I copied the example wrong, my bad.

The example should have been http://www.jstor.org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/stable/2372821 changed to http://www.jstor.org/stable/2372821.

Another example would be http://jlms.oxfordjournals.org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/content/s2-15/1/134 changed to http://jlms.oxfordjournals.org/content/s2-15/1/134.

@Glorfindel See the corrected examples above. My it's more complicated than I think, but I would guess something like this could be done with a regex.

If it helps, I can try to find some other examples from other university proxies.

I'd guess several of the edits obtained from this query would provide examples of this: data.stackexchange.com/mathoverflow/query/746801/…

Glorfindel

@MartinSleziak ah, right. Sounds doable. I can 'train' one of my bots to comment and/or suggested an edit on those posts. That would work near real-time.

Martin Sleziak

Here is a bit more comfortable version of the query - including link to the revision history: data.stackexchange.com/mathoverflow/query/954166/…

I am asking partly because the user who posted the suggestion I linked to (on Meta MathOverflow) is currently question-banned on Meta Stack Exchange.

IIRC posting a new questions after 6 months - if it is positively received - is one possible way to get out of the question ban.

This is mentioned in the help center: meta.stackexchange.com/help/question-bans

> If you're unable to improve your existing questions, you'll get the chance to ask a new one 6 months after your last question. If that question is positively received, you may be able to continue asking questions; if not, then the ban will be reinstated.

@Glorfindel I guess collecting a few more examples could help both you (if you plan to use a bot for this) and also it would be useful to include in the question posted on Meta Stack Exchange, right?

@FedericoPoloni You have mentioned that you are currently question banned on Meta Stack Exchange. Would you perhaps be interested in trying with posts about the rewriting proxy links (see above)?

Glorfindel

11:57 AM

@MartinSleziak ah, right. This might help, then; another way could be posting upvoted answers (waffles was an SE employee back then).

Martin Sleziak

Based on what I saw in the help center, you should be allowed to post a new question if it is already six months since your last question. (Including deleted ones - those ones I do not see. Perhaps you'd be able to say whether it is already six months.)

I am curious whether at some point I'll be facing the same problem (some kind of post-ban) here on MO.

Glorfindel

@MartinSleziak sure; if the list gets too long and distracting from the post itself, you might consider compiling it elsewhere (e.g. on the meta.MO post) and linking to it.

@MartinSleziak do you have so many deleted posts then?

Martin Sleziak

I am sorry, but I'll have to go afk for some time. But I'll certainly come back and look here whether there are some more comments related to this.

@Glorfindel On MO: I have some deleted answers. I do not have deleted questions.

But since I have only posted two questions on the site so far, I assume that several badly received questions would be enough to get me over the edge.

Glorfindel

probably not if you have so many (30+) upvoted answers

but I guess you're not willing to try :P

Martin Sleziak

In general, it would be interesting to see what it takes to get out of a question ban. (From what I've heard, it's quite difficult.) If it's likely to get into a ban, probability is bigger on sites when I do not post too much - where I only have a few questions.

But I certainly do not plan to try this on purpose.

Anyway, as I mentioned I'll have to leave now. See you later and thanks for your response!

Glorfindel

12:09 PM

Thanks, bye!

Federico Poloni

1:21 PM

@MartinSleziak @MartinSleziak I cannot post questions on Meta right now. My last question was 5 months ago, it is at +9, and I am still question-banned.

At this point, I don't think I'm really interested jumping through hoops to contribute to Meta.SE.

*interested in jumping through hoops...

Martin Sleziak

@FedericoPoloni Well, if you don't mind I'll wait a bit and ask you again after January 8 (it's 6 months since that question.

We'll see whether I am at similar situation here at MO at some point, if I were I'd probably try to get out of the question ban.

Reading your message in our previous discussion concerning the question ban, I should with you the same thing: I hope your experience on MathOverflow is going to be better than mine.

At least we still have some time to collect some examples of proxies. (This would make easier to asses whether this is doable by regular expressions.

Federico Poloni

2:36 PM

OK, I'll let you know if I can post a question on meta.SE after Jan 8. That said, I am not sure I want to repeat this feature request on meta.SE. It was already ignored on meta.MO, and I'm afraid that the answer will be "there are too many proxies to filter them all". If you want to post it on meta.SE, though, please go ahead.

Martin Sleziak

Well the fact the many posts on meta.MO receive almost no feedback might be partly due to the fact that many MathOverflow users (including moderators) simply ignore meta.

After all, moderators already have some tools at their disposals that could prevent problems with such links - either by blacklisting them completely or at least by adding some warnings. (Automatic rewrite would be a new feature, at last to my knowledge.)

Even if this feature is not implemented, at least on Meta Stack Exchange it would be likely that it gets some reasonable feedback.

But even if the only result if you post this (or some other reasonable) question on Meta Stack Exchange would be that you get out of question ban, I would consider that a useful result.

We probably have different opinions on this, but I consider Meta Stack Exchange a useful site. (It's quite likely that we might have different opinions about MathOverflow, but that would probably be for a longer discussion.)

Martin Sleziak

3:16 PM

I have posted some examples as an answer to Forbid (or rewrite) proxy links in answers. Do you think that adding number of occurrences would help to see to which extent the solution with automation would be suitable?

I suppose that query like this would be relatively reliable in finding past occurrences of a given proxies" data.stackexchange.com/mathoverflow/query/954228/…

Catija

11:00 PM

@MartinSleziak At this point, that's not going to happen. I'd like to investigate replacing "Home" in the left navigation with the site logo/name the way we do Teams on SO... but I don't get to make those choices.

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