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7:35 AM

@FedericoPoloni I am not claiming that your post about rewording that part of help center is urgent. But since S. Carnahan edited this part of help center very recently, I decided to ask about your post as well. (If nothing else, since the FAQ on meta has been edited, at least the post will not be bumped only once with these two changes.)

Of course, probably the moderators want to first look into it and decide whether or not to change it.

Regarding the question you've mentioned: Should users be shown some basic information before posting the first question?

The moderators are most likely aware of it. You have mentioned it in a few of your posts, for example: Blocking some words in question title to prevent silly questions.

For what it's worth, I flagged the meta question you linked to for moderator attention a few weeks ago with the comment "Could a moderator perhaps write a response to this question? What steps are needed by the community before such features could be implemented?" and my flag was marked as "helpful". — j.c. Jul 14 '18 at 0:23

In case somebody stumbles upon this post, it is probably worth mentioning that Todd Trimble promised in chat that moderators will look into this. (This comment is kind of "status udpdate".) — Martin Sleziak Jul 13 '18 at 11:37

My plans with this question were to ask on Mathematics Meta whether we are able to get some data to asses whether this change helped on mathematics. Somewhat similar question to this one - which was about registration: Registration to ask a question – has it made a difference?

Having some actual data would help to evaluate whether this change is actually efficient. (Although personally even if it does not help much, at least the fact that the user checked the "thanks I will keep this in mind" in checkbox" makes it more natural to treat first time askers as if they read the information.)

Personally, I consider a bit unfortunate that we haven't heard from moderators about the new design. (The only things I've seen were the comments by Scott Morrison on your post. And one of the moderators said - in an email - that he is find with the new design.)

I don't think that the redesign came as a surprise to the mods - from this message is seems that they talked about that with SE people already in august. And also they were shown the new design a bit sooner than regular users.

Of course, considering that there is stuff that should have been done in 2014 and it's still not dealt with, it seems that moderators have created a bit of backlog. :-) (This is partially tongue-in-cheek, but at least to some extent also true.)

A positive sign is that now moderators visit meta a bit more than they used to. data.stackexchange.com/meta.mathoverflow/revision/890149/…

Sorry for the wall of text. I tried to respond to several things that you've mentioned.

1 hour later…

Martin Sleziak

9:27 AM

@PraphullaKoushik At least to some extent it can be said that the problem you're complaining about in "Migrated to MSE, did not get enough attention. What to do?" is that you don't find enough users on Mathematics site with good knowledge of your areas of interest.

I just wanted to mention two chatrooms on MSE. (Maybe you are aware of them.) Many other area-specific rooms can be found in List of chatrooms on meta.

One room close to the things you've asked is Geometry & Topology. it used to be rather active, at the moment it is practically dead.

The room garbological cohomology for derived nerds seems relatively active, and probably you can find there some users whose interests have at least some overlap with yours. (I'd guess you might know Mike Miller also from MO.)

This room is a gallery room, meaning that you have to request access to that room first.

I am not sure, but maybe mentioning your posts in those rooms could improve chances that somebody who knows about this stuff would have a look at your questions.

1 hour later…

Martin Sleziak

10:40 AM

Federico Poloni's message on site design reminded me of: "The time for talk should be over, it's time for action."

@Martin Sleziak Thanks for the links. The time for talk should be over, it's time for action. It seems pretty easy to implement suggestions along these lines - just do it. — Mark L. Stone Jun 16 '18 at 13:19

It is a comment under this post:

A: Should users be shown some basic information before posting the first question?

Regardless of any advice pages, perhaps mandatory before 1st question by new user, how about getting the attention of everyone who views any math overflow page? Include a prominent banner on the top of every page, perhaps (with portions) in bold red. ========================= For research-leve...

5 hours later…

Praphulla Koushik

3:34 PM

@MartinSleziak thanks. I have requested access for room you mentioned, thanks..

5 hours later…

Martin Sleziak

8:40 PM

@PraphullaKoushik Perhaps you have noticed this even without me, but here is some response I've got in that room: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/78363/2019/1/7

Since we are talking about various chatrooms, I should have mentioned the main Mathematics chatroom. Maybe good strategy when somebody has a question from algebraic topology is to ask it when Mike Miller or Balarka Sen are in the room. For differential geometry Ted Shifrin might be the right person to talk to.

Martin Sleziak

9:00 PM

Basically one is faced with this when choosing a chatroom where to ask: It is better to choose a room with high traffic (which means that more user will see my post but it will move away rather quickly because of new messages posted quickly in that room) or a room with low traffic (which means less visitors - but also less messages, so my question will be visible for longer time).

1 hour later…

Martin Sleziak

10:12 PM

Q: Non-scientific questions about technical aspects of research work

Recently several "soft" questions have appeared in MO and somewhat to my surprise have not been closed. These are questions about softwares which are non-mathematical, and for which the specificity to mathematics is somewhat unclear (if not inexistant), and at least is not mentioned in any way ...