@quid Either it should be moved to Academia or it should stay and be open. Frankly it's mathematical enough for here IMO. "MathOverflow is a question and answer site for professional mathematicians." Not "for professional mathematics".
@MilesRout AFAIK the question can be migrated only if it is at most 60 days old. So to get What's a mathematician to do? to Academia it would need to involve SE stuff. (It cannot be done by regular users or moderators.)
On meta you have slightly bigger chance that you get actually some response than here in chat. But at least from voting on your post you could see what the community thinks about the reopening.
As I mentioned, even if the question was suitable there, getting it to Academia site would present some difficulties. Still, I've asked in their chat room - so that we at least know whether it is on-topic on that site: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/2496/2017/10/31
> Stack Exchange acknowledges that moderators may wish to make reasonable adjustments to the operation of MathOvertlow 2.0 by means of extra clientside JavaScript.
> Thus, moderators shall be permitted to submit additional JavaScript to Stack Exchange which, if it does not compromise the technical integrity of the network, will be inserted into the footer, allowing some reasonable modification of the site that is specific to MathOverflow 2.0.
> MathOverflow and you acknowledge and agree that the Stack Exchange 2.0 HTML is changing all the time, and accordingly, such JavaScript will need to be actively maintained by the moderators or it may stop working. It is understood that this script maintenance will he the sole responsibility of MathOverflow (including moderators) and not of Stack Exchange.
> If you are a new user or are submitting to a new archive, you may be required to find endorsement before your submission will be processed. Users with recognized academic affiliations may be exempt from the endorsement process, while other users should contact eligible arXiv endorsers to verify that they are active members of the scientific community.
And also there is some moderation on arXiv:
> All arXiv submissions are subject to moderation and may be removed (while pending) or reclassified (at any time). Please see our moderation help page for a full description of the moderation process and the reasons a submission might be removed or reclassified.
Of course, I'll have to admit that my experience with arXiv is very limited, but I do not know much about how the submissions are actually moderated.
I'll add that both MathOverflow and Academia have a tag called arxiv - so probably also there one could learn a bit more about arxiv.
@MartinSleziak OK. I got it. Thank you. Comparing arXiv to publishing process in any other mathematical journal - I guess, it should be easier to submit piece of mathematical work on arXiv.
@MilesRout "MathOverflow is a question and answer site for professional mathematicians. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about research level mathematics." (my emphasis)
Further:
"MathOverflow's primary goal is for users to ask and answer research level math questions, the sorts of questions you come across when you're writing or reading articles or graduate level books." (emphasis as in the original)
To be sure it then continues to say that:
"You'll notice that there is the occasional question making a list of something, asking about the workings of the mathematical community, or something else which isn't really a math question. Such questions can be helpful to the community, but it is extremely tricky to ask them in a way that produces a useful response. "
What all this is to mean exactly in practical and actionable terms was discussed to considerable length on the sites meta. (Also its old version now hosted at tea.mathoverflow.net )
I mean the question itself even acknowledges that it is not really on-topic.
But might be considered nevertheless.
To be sure, there is no complete consensus on how to handle such questions (at least there was none when I paid detailed attention to it). But some kind of compromise is that such questions might be kept open for a while, but eventually are closed.
It seems you are somewhat active on SO @MilesRout. Could I ask there: "What can one (such as myself) contribute to software development?" I would not think so, but maybe I am wrong as I do not know the site much.
@FrançoisG.Dorais I do not see a problem with features being requested in principle. I see a problem with the way this is handled, such as here. I just do not get the merit of this approach at all.
@MarekMitros my understanding is the same as that of @Martin. The arXiv is not peer-reviewed (there is no evaluation of the papers) but there is some mostly behind-the-scenes moderation that prevent papers from being on arXiv that are just not legitimate preprints.
@MarekMitros yes, certainly. In my understanding, if some paper is not obviously non-sense it can make it's way to the arXiv relatively easily, especially if the author is affiliate with some academic institution.
To be clear, I think it should be like this. The arXiv is a preprint server, it serves to disseminate scholarly work in an essentially unfiltered way; the responsibility is with the author(s) of the work. The only thing to do is weed out what is clearly not actually scholarly work but pseudo-science or otherwise non-sense.
Or maybe also in terrible shape on formal grounds. The papers usually are in good to at least reasonable form.
@quid I expect it would be closed. But StackOverflow has Programmers, which at least in the past had these sorts of questions and considered them on-topic. It's not like all of StackExchange is only super serious questions about completely objective stuff: code review, interpersonal, workplace, etc. are all quite subjective and opinion-based.
arxiv's totally unmoderated 'sister' is vixra if that hasn't been mentioned already
@MilesRout interesting that this is the case while SO is a question and answer site for professional and enthusiast programmers. Not "for programming". ;-)
@MilesRout I guess it depends on one's taste. "Programmers" even changed its name to get rid of some type of content. Personally I am in favor over having more separate sites, not munching everything together.
@quid I’m a little confused, but this is perhaps because I’ve been too busy to catch up on the discussion. In any case, the clause is intended to be used in cases where we have invested in a solution (like the citation helper).
@FrançoisG.Dorais the discussion at least from my side is about the style of communication about and related to SE present in parts of the MO community, several examples of which I mentioned. Problems are create or imagined over pretty much nothing. This is unfortunate.
