MathOverflow

5:23 AM

9 hours ago, by Martin Sleziak

Catija is pingable in this room. As a mod, you also have a super-ping.

Since I have mentioned this, I will add that if a users posted at least one message in the room, you can ping the user in that room simply by replying to one of their messages. Meta Stack Exchange: Does a direct reply to a message in chat create a notification, no matter what age the message is?

Another thing which could show a notification to a user about some specific chatroom is inviting the user to that chatroom. Mathematics Meta: How do I invite a user to chat?

As I said, a moderator can use super-ping. But I wanted to mention also things available to regular users.

Martin Sleziak

6:37 AM

0

A: Is it possible to list all mathoverflow users from a given country?

Below is the result of this SEDE query. It's significantly more complicated than the one martin mentioned in his comment, largely because it was only composed within the last year and Martin's comment was from 2017 (though the link in his comment does have this new SEDE query listed in one of the...

As far as I can tell, you have used a query from one of the answers here: How can I write a query DATA.SE to list top users from all countries in the world? In the same question, rene's answer shows how that query can be modified. For example, you can tell the query that Lviv should be counted as Ukraine or Oxford as UK. (Of course, this will no longer be correct if the top user is from Oxford, Maryland.) — Martin Sleziak 48 mins ago

Here is a query with such minor modifications: data.stackexchange.com/mathoverflow/query/1400175 — Martin Sleziak 43 mins ago

@NikeDattani Feel free to ping me somewhere if you want to discuss further improvements to those SEDE queries. (Although all I can do is basically adding and removing locations to be included in some country - as I did with Lviv, New York and Oxford.

Some examples of this are shown in rene's post:

6

A: How can I write a query DATA.SE to list top users from all countries in the world?

Here is the first attempt at a SEDE query, partly inspired by the query from Martin What I've done here is creating three support tables first: Countries, Alternative spellings for the country and spellings you want to exclude for a country. The Alternative spelling table will then be joined with...

If this discussion grows longer, we can go to my chatroom or SEDE chatroom. (I suppose this is not something significant on MO - the same thing can be done on other sites.)

Martin Sleziak

12:55 PM

1. Define "from a given country". How should we consider a user native from Taiwan, who works in a university in Crimea and is posting an answer from a French IP address because he happens to be there? 2. What is your goal? Why would you like to have this list (so that we can be sure this is not an XY question)? — Federico Poloni 20 mins ago

Martin Sleziak

1:49 PM

@TarasBanakh I assume that this is your question - although it was posted from the account Lviv Scottish Book: Is it possible to list all mathoverflow users from a given country? Since you probably do not use the other account that often, you might not be notify that quickly about the recent comments and the new answers - so I wanted to let you know in this way. Please, ping me either here or in chat after you've seen this - so that I know that I can delete this comment. — Martin Sleziak 17 secs ago

Martin Sleziak

2:57 PM

I have added also Indiana into the list of exceptions.

9

A: Geographic distribution of people on MathOverflow

There are a number of scripts on data.stackexchange.com that give information about users by country. For example, the World Cup of Reputation tells you the number of users and total reputation of users by their self-reported country, and then sorts the list by the average of the top 100 per cou...

> It appears that the script could be improved, however, since it finds Noah Synder to be the top user from India, whereas I believe he is from Bloomington, Indiana.

Tim Campion

6:26 PM

I have posted a meta question advancing Martin's proposal for the modal window, and tagged it to be featured on meta. After about 24 hours of no discussion, I also posted a couple of answers for folks to vote on -- one confirming Martin's proposal as-is, and another adding some language about cross-posting.

Martin Sleziak

We'll see whether some MO users will react in some way.

Tim Campion

There have been upvotes, so folks seem to be not totally uninterested.

Martin Sleziak

Is it on purpose that this one is not posed as a bullet point: "If you have already posted your question on another site, please see our guidance on cross-posting."?

Tim Campion

I wrote it that way because unlike the bullet pointed items, it's a "conditional" point, only applicable if you are in fact crossposting

So I thought it flowed better?

I don't feel strongly about it.

Also I know as a reader that 3 is kind of a magic number -- lists longer than that are things I'm less likely to actually read in detail.

Martin Sleziak

You reminded me of this proposal on Mathematics Meta: Change the link to search in modal window for the first-time askers And one of the Math mods already added (statusr-review). But probably we'll just find out that this part is not customizable.

Tim Campion

6:32 PM

Yes, I remember clicking on that and finding to be a strange choice for the link.

The customizability questions seem not to be well-documented, so I suppose we should ping Catija.

Martin Sleziak

Well, as far as this specific issues goes, I believe that status-review tag automatically means that it is put to CMs or some SE employees.

So I guess we'll find out eventually.

Tim Campion

I see.

Martin Sleziak

But asking somebody might be reasonable - especially if you considering something like that on MO.

Although MO does not have a search engine "specific to MO", so to say - in that regard, the situation on Mathematics is a bit different.

Tim Campion

Oh, and even though that question is from January, status-review was only added today.

Martin Sleziak

Yes, it was partly reaction to your activity.

Tim Campion

6:35 PM

@MartinSleziak I didn't realize that Math.SE has additional search functionality.

Martin Sleziak

Well, what I mean is Approach Zero.

More details can be found here: How to search on this site?

Tim Campion

I see. I had not actually followed your link and assumed it went to a help page similar to whatever we presumably have on MO

Martin Sleziak

It was discussed a bit whether it should include MathOverflow, but this idea seems to be abandoned (at least for now): Is there any third party search engine for MathOverflow?

Tim Campion

What did it entail to get this set up for Math.SE?

Martin Sleziak

Approach0 indexes Mathematics and AoPS (originally it was on Mathematics). I use it quite often, here is an example of a search.

Tim Campion

6:39 PM

I see, that's very cool.

I see that the post on MO was from 2017.

Martin Sleziak

Here are the search results for the same query in SearchOnMath - this one indexes MathOverflow.

Tim Campion

Very neat! I was totally unaware, I might try to start using this.

How do Approach0 and SearchOnMath compare to one another?

Martin Sleziak

@TimCampion Basically, it was initiative of the creator of that search engine. This users is sometimes available in the chatroom In the search of a question.

Possible also some past discussion about the possibility of including MO might be found there.

@TimCampion My personal impression is that the results from A0 are a bit better. But things like that are difficult to quantify.

Tim Campion

Sure.

Martin Sleziak

One thing is that in Approch0 I can include multiple things, not just a single formula.

Tim Campion

6:42 PM

To me, that sort of functionality sounds particularly relevant to MO.

Martin Sleziak

To me it seems that the response from MO was not that enthusiastic when this was discussed.

You can check for yourself what exactly was said in that chatroom when MathOverflow or MO was mentioned.

Wei Zhong is the creator of Approach0 - so that would be the person to ask about this.

Tim Campion

To me, the response seems about as enthusiastic as one might expect, given the typical level of engagement from MO users. Short of somebody saying "This is absolutely great, please do this!".

I suppose that in order for it to be worth the effort to index the site, it needs to be publicly known that it's usable.

So it would be good if we could commit to somehow making it known on here.

Martin Sleziak

Well, many Mathematics users are very satisfied with this search engine.

Of course, it is natural that the two sites are rather different.

On Mathematics you're more likely to search for something that is "formula heavy".

Anyway, I will have to go AFK for a bit.

Tim Campion

Were either / both search engines "advertised" in any way on the site beyond the visibility of the meta posts you linked?

Ok, see you later

Martin Sleziak

Thanks for your posts concerning the modal window. (Even in the case that nothing comes out of it, I certainly appreciate the effort!)

@TimCampion I do not think that they were mentioned too much.

Other that the posts on meta, you can see an occasional comment and it was mentioned a few times in chat.

See you later!

Tim Campion

6:54 PM

@MartinSleziak I am willing to say right now, I promise it will get tagged "status-review" in a timely manner. I view the current question as a "public comment period"

Well, okay, if something unexpected comes up on the current question, it's conceivable it wouldn't get tagged.

Barring some strange thing coming up that's being overlooked, it should get tagged status-review, whether it's in the current form, or changed somehow.

Since we don't currently have any guidance on outside search engines for MO, it still seems to me that linking to the help page might make more sense than current link which is less user-friendly.

@Catija Do you know whether, in the non-customizable text for the modal window, the hyperlink underlying the text "search the site" can be changed?

Right now it goes to mathoverflow.net/search

which is not a very user-friendly page.

It would likely be preferable for it to go to the relevant help page

Martin Sleziak

7:18 PM

I should have probably mentioned that SearchOnMath has possibility to restrict the search result to one of the indexed sites, for example restrict them to MO.

This is not available in Approach0 at the moment. (But since it only indexes two sites, it is probably not a big deal.)

Catija

9:25 PM

@TimCampion It can't be changed per site, as far as I'm aware. That said, that's not a bad idea - to link people to guidance on how to search instead of a search field is a good thought.

Tim Campion

10:56 PM

Thanks, Catija!

Yes, especially since every page has a search field.

mathoverflow.net/search actually just lists all the keywords you can use to search

and in addition continues to have the standard search box at the top of the screen

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