user7530

"...preparation for any judicial or administrative proceeding pertaining to the enforcement of a specifically designated Federal criminal statute (not involving tax administration) to which the United States or such agency is or may be a party, or pertaining to the case of a missing or exploited child" (2/2)

In practice, the IRS might not proactively share information with the FBI. But the IRC does permit such sharing, if required by court order: "... any return or return information with respect to any specified taxable period or periods shall, pursuant to and upon the grant of an ex parte order by a Federal district court judge or magistrate judge under subparagraph (B), be open (but only to the extent necessary as provided in such order) to inspection by, or disclosure to, officers and employees of any Federal agency who are personally and directly engaged in..." (1/2)

Does the image of $\gamma$ lie in a two-dimensional subspace of $\mathbb{R}^4$?

$$\gamma(\theta) = \left[\begin{array}{c} a \cos \theta - b \sin\theta \\ a \sin \theta + b \cos \theta \\ c \cos \theta - d \sin \theta \\ c \sin \theta + d \cos \theta \end{array}\right].$$

@rschwieb here’s my attempt. Let $a,b,c,d$ be four given real numbers, and consider the curve $\gamma: S^1\to \mathbb{R}^4$ with

again, I don't have any problem with singular "they" and use it extensively myself. But editing a post for the sole purpose of switching pronouns around strikes me as so obviously likely to inflame tempers that it feels inherently troll-y

if you believe that using maximally-inclusive language on Math.SE is very important, the proper approach is to start a Meta topic about it, establish consensus that it's ok to edit all posts to use singular "they," and only then start editing people's posts

@XanderHenderson I would say the same thing if someone were to edit people's posts to change British to American spelling. They're not actually improving clarity or readability, or correcting an error: they have strong personal believes about writing style (which is fine), and imposing those beliefs on others in an aggressive way by editing posts without permission (which is not)

In fact I'd be inclined to interpret such edits as deliberate attempts to antagonize, or make a social statement, rather than honest attempts at improving mathematical communication.

I use singular "they" and its usage is so common these days that I'd recommend others do so as well. That said, editing people's posts to add or remove singular "they" seems totally unnecessary to me.

@amWhy hrm, thanks. Though it's not clear to me why "a minor irregularity in the distant past" requires purging all votes.

FYI, it is my understanding that the moderators can use a special deletion method for very high-reputation users that does not unroll all of that user's votes (see math.stackexchange.com/help/user-was-removed). Might have avoided math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/28810/…

On the other hand, I struggle to see the harm, and certainly there wasn’t much strong opposition to the idea in my meta thread.

As I mentioned in the other chat room, I don’t think translating the election timeline by two weeks is useful on its own unless there is also community notification

Fair enough, but “I’m not sure extending the deadline would help” != “I am opposed to changing the deadline”

@amWhy to be fair, neither you nor anyone else posted an answer or comment in response to my complaint saying, “actually, please dont change the election timeline! Here’s why: ...”

Yes, fair enough, that makes sense

@Fundamental @Fundamental Well one answer was "so that the question will be auto-deleted" which immediately leads to your questions. Also, there is quite a difference between deleting flagged off-topic comments, and locking all comments, which on meta more or less silences all discussion on a topic.

@ArthurFischer Well, I suppose I will object. Do you really think the status quo, with two camps taking turns deleting/undeleting questions, with no attempts at communication or building a site-wide consensus policy, is optimal and tenable in the long-term? If conversations about our deletion policy are not permitted on meta, where, precisely, are they supposed to take place? How will anything ever change?

No last-second nominations, it seems

Did y’all ever figure out what happened with Zach? He was getting some pointed questions from the “will do your homework for you for 10 e-points” crowd, but I didn’t see anything too rude or aggressive...

@amWhy I assume "We have someone playing needless literal word games" refers to Arnaud D.'s comment.

@amWhy Sorry, I was replying to The Count

I dunno, Arnaud D.'s comment seems quite polite to me. It may or may not be "needless" but I don't see it doing any harm.

@AsafKaragila great, thanks

@quid moreover being a moderator is a huge time commitment and I suspect the pool of users with the time and interest to take the job is quite shallow

I know there is reluctance to speak in plain terms about the actions of past users, but if there’s concern about an under-informed electorate, full tranparency seems much preferable to “insider allusions”

From looking at the election history it seems the mod in question is Number/Bill Dubuque. Are there meta threads somewhere with more information such as: why he was removed shortly after the election? Why was he suspended?

Asaf, you said there was an instance where a moderator nominated themselves at the last minute, refused to answer question, and then did a poor job? Which election/candidate?

why is there a separate primary and final voting phase? Even if we end up with more than 10 candidates somehow, that seems unnecessarily convoluted. Why not just have a straight vote between all candidate?

oh I see. So it's not looking at flag or voting history, etc

Is there a post somewhere explaining the "candidate score" and how it is computed?

I agree there's little point drawing out the question-gathering phase. My original suggestion was to dilate all the election phases.

@quid ok. These are interesting points, though I don't think I agree these are very significant risks. Is there any evidence of collusion or gaming of the system in past elections? I suppose it's possible someone would try to farm 1000 rep with a handful of accounts in order to stuff the ballot box, and I agree that this is easier to do in three weeks than one. Is there any evidence this has happened/is happening?

Certainly there is reason to delay if there is no benefit, but I still struggle to see the harm.

@quid could you please articulate these “significant risks”? I’m making a good-faith effort to understand, but the only harm that comes to mind is if someone (1) was aware of the original deadlines; (2) plan ed to run or vote; (3) cannot run or vote due to a real-world time conflict that did not exist for the original deadline.

My point is that, while one can craft theoretical reasons why the delay might be harmful, I’m not sure the actual harm is nearly at all as serious as you’re worried it might be

Do you know anybody who changed their mind about running because of the delay? I thought only Zachary had declared themselves interested in running?

@RobertFrost I thought CRUDE was just a place to request action from 10k users? What's the connection to supporting new users?

@mods I'm glad the election schedule was extended, but for the extension to be useful, the community needs to be aware of the new timeline. Is there any chance of posting a main-site notification about the upcoming election?

@PeteL.Clark That is a very thoughtful and reasoned response. I'm not completely sure I agree about "not an easy target," though; I'd think the hardest targets are those that keep maximal professional distance, with empathy exploitable as a vulnerability (NB that's not necessarily a good enough reason to eschew empathy.)

@PeteL.Clark "Regarding plagiarism: all I will say is that is a very inapt analogy." Strange you would say so. To be honest, I'm not seeing any aspect of the analogy that is not apt: we have unethical and unprofessional conduct (sexual harassing somebody/plagiarizing them). We have a low-probability but professionally devastating possibility of being falsely accused of that conduct. And a reasonable desire to learn best practices for avoiding such false accusations.

Imagine someone asking, "what steps should I take to protect myself against allegations of plagiarism from authors of concurrent work?" And someone answered, "most of all, being fearful of being falsely accused of plagiarism suggests a certain lack of empathy with victims of plagiarism..." Ridiculous.

"Most of all, being fearful of being falsely accused of sexual harassment suggests a certain lack of empathy with your female students." No, no, no. -1. It is never a bad idea to think carefully about your legal liabilities and how to best protect yourself from them. And suggesting that anything more than a cavalier attitude towards allegations of sexual harassment is unenlightened/sexist is extremely unhelpful.

@casey it’s an assertion that’s extremely easy to research for yourself: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_administrator

@MartinBonner et al: I find it bizarre that people jump to the conclusion that this is a gender issue when there was nothing suggesting anything of the sort in the OP. Yes, it is inappropriate for the woman employee to be fetching the boss's coffee, but (1) where in the world do people see coffee in the OP(??) and (2) the OP never suggested anywhere in the question that she was being singled out for the admin work because of her gender.

thanks

is there an explanation somewhere of how the "candidate score" is tabulated?

noob question: how do I log in/comment on a blog post?

@Behaviour eh. I'll think about it in the unfortunate case that there still isn't a good selection of more qualified nominees in a few days.