Proposal for new subforum

[ppo]

Ernst Mayer sent an email out today. He got into a severe car accident on Fr. 9th

I wish all the best to Ernst, and I hope he will recover soon.
I think that I can speak for all of the GIMPS people. We need him.
Pierpaolo

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by philmoore

My apologies, I missed the postings in this thread that were made over a week ago. I didn't realize that it was my co-moderator stirring things up! I notice now that the renamed "Miscellaneous Math Threads" subforum contains 33 threads, a bit under 9% of the total number of threads that were in the regular math forum.

I had done an initial pass over about the most-recent one-third of the math forum threads. So that extrapolates to a weeding-out rate of between 20-30%. My intention was not to dramatically reduce the dataset size of the Math Forum, but to assure at least a minimal level of quality/usefulness/interest of the threads there, and move the dubious/non-starter/blatantly-crankish/just-plain-wrong-headed ones to a subforum. That having been said, I admit that my choice of name for said forum could have been more tactfully chosen, and apologize to anyone who was offended (for the choice of name, not necessarily for my decision to move a given thread there). I've suggested to Xyzzy that we give it milder title, perhaps something like "Left Field." ("The Half Bakery" was already taken by some website dedicated to not-quite-ready-for-prime-time ideas. :( )

Originally Posted by akruppa

Ernst Mayer sent an email out today. He got into a severe car accident on Fr. 9th, i.e. the day after he moved the threads. He is now recovering and apparantly will make it out of the whole affair in one piece. He'll still need quite a bit of time to recover, though. I think maybe we should delay further action on this subforum issue until Ernst is back and can share his view on it.

To use pirate-speak: Argh - it's the curse of the moved "amateur's prime sieve thread" - Argh!

Yeah, getting blasted while crossing the street by an SUV driven by a young fellow who has apparently never heard of newfangled gadgets called "Red Lights" and "Crosswalks" is not a fun way to start one's Friday evening. Feeling much better, but it's going to take months for my mangled legs to heal. Let's just say I had envisioned more pleasant ways to spend the Fall.

I'm a bit shaken, his email really sounded rather serious. I can only hope he'll be alright and will make a speedy and complete recovery.

Gute Besserung, Ernst!

Thanks, Alex - alas it's already clear that it's not going to be speedy, but hopefully the "complete" part will at least be approximately true.

Cheers,
-Ernst

[ewmayer]

Oh, and specifically regarding the thread that has caused all the controversy, I am happy to defer to my fellow moderators - take a vote amongst yourselves to decide if it deserves to be in the "Left Field" (or whatever) subforum.

-E

[R.D. Silverman]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

<snip>

Allow me to wish you a complete and speedy recovery.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by R.D. Silverman

Allow me to wish you a complete and speedy recovery.

<aol>Me too!</aol>

Paul

[OmbooHankvald]

Originally Posted by forum description

These threads are currently under review by our crack team of math moderators

Shouldn't that be "crank"?

[David John Hill Jr]

The wording, ' expositional mathematics' , might possibly be used for entries that are pertinent to Mersennes and number work in a long drawn out form.
The original entry could not be classified elsewise.
As to being a crank, I really object .Even if a false result were found ,
the method in itself might be of value.
Thank god (with a small g) the days of galileo are over.

If ,by the way I could figure out a way to get a small sketch taking 400 mgbites, I could show (you know visualization-a technique of learning),
my own perception technique, in tandem ,as you will with a first course in computer science mathematics.

Sincerely,
Hill

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by R.D. Silverman

Allow me to wish you a complete and speedy recovery.

Thanks, Bob and Paul (and Alex and Jason and everyone else who sent their best wishes). Got released from the hospital yesterday, and though I still have a long recovery in front of me, being home is definitely a good start.

On a related note, I also received a very mature e-mail sent via an anonymizer (real gutsy there) urging me to "drop dead," followed by a few childish German epithets. A quote from one of my messages to the forum was included, which indicated that the anonymous sender was upset about a certain "Amateur's prime sieve" thread being moved off the regular math forum. To the mystery sender: I assure you that someday I, like everyone else who has ever drawn breath, will indeed drop dead. And guess what? You'll still be a pathetic loser.

[mfgoode]

Dear Ernst Mayer 'Ich wunshen zie sehr guten gesundheit'
Mally

[grandpascorpion]

I 2nd that.

[Citrix]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Inspired by the latest crank-maths thread, I would like to suggest a new subforum specifically for these kinds of threads. I propose to title it "Cranks, Kooks and Miscellaneous Malfeasants". This would serve as a home for threads which in the opinion of the moderators are either certain or highly likely to be wastes of time if taken seriously (or even if not, if they lead to flame wars, as crank and troll threads so often do.)

This is not meant to stifle discussion, but rather to encourage *useful* discussion, by explicitly contrasting it with useless (or extremely likely to be so) discussion, and thus providing a mechanism for forewarning readers and newbies as to the distinction.

Properties which make a thread a prime candidate for the CKMM subforum could include (but need not be limited to) the following:

1) Obvious trolls, e.g. "I hav ritten a pogrom for my cellfone that is 10x faster than Prime95 and used it to find the first 10-million-digit prime, but I ain't tellin what it is until i collect the prise $$$. so keep searching, u losers."

2) Threads in which the author makes wild unsupported claims which are either provably false or extremely likely to be so. The aforementioned thread is a classic example of this, as is e.g. this one:

http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=3965

Another example of this would be someone who admits they have little number-theoretic experience but claims to have discovered an elementary proof of, say, the Riemann hypothesis or Fermat's last theorem.

3) Threads in which the author makes wild claims which are not provably false but still extremely likely to be so (e.g. "I have proved there are infinitely many Fermat primes"), which the author supports via obscure (but possibly quite-mathematical-sounding) argumentation. In my opinion this is the most insidious form of crankery, because while it is generally just as useless as its more-blatant brethren, because it is couched in specious (and usually byzantine) mathematical "reasoning' it generally require time-consuming analysis by knowledgeable people to find the worm in the core of the apple, as it were. An example of this:

http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=676


Your thoughts?

I think your idea is a bad one. One of these "Cranks, Kooks and Miscellaneous Malfeasants" could be smarter than all of us. If you really wanted to divide the forum, you would divide it as, if you are willing to publish the proof/ not willing to publish the proof. that way if someone is not willing to publish the proof, they can post in the cranks section. If a proof is found to be false it can be moved to the crank section.
we should not discourage ameteurs from trying.

Just what I think, implement it if you agree.

Citrix