12

As would be clear from other discussions, the first Mathematica proposal was closed (on possibly erroneous grounds, but people can agree to disagree on this). The solution proposed by SE staff was to re-launch the proposal with a clean slate. This has been done (see here), but that leaves 90-odd people with a closed commitment who will probably want to re-commit to the new proposal.

Is there an easier way to contact these people than laboriously going through profiles, recent questions, chat rooms etc and contacting them one-by-one?

(Is this something SE staff would consider doing as a gesture of magnanimity?)

3
  • 2
    The fact that they trust SE to contact them at the end of commitment phase instead of checking their commitment every day proves that they are not interested, doesn't it?
    – user11235
    Commented Dec 17, 2011 at 11:31
  • 2
    @Phira please tell me you are being facetious. For what it is worth, I found 13 email addresses in the profiles of the 92, or the blogs linked in those profiles. Three of those people have already recommitted. I think people should be notified if their commitment it closed.
    – Verbeia
    Commented Dec 17, 2011 at 11:35
  • 1
    Of course I am. This was actually one of my questions in the other thread that I started which was never answered.
    – user11235
    Commented Dec 17, 2011 at 11:37

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
13

On occasion, it is okay to contact the followers and committers to a proposal to notify them of administrative events as long as it doesn't get too spammy.

Since the Mathematica proposal is relaunching from the support of a prior proposal, I will contact the remaining users to let them know about the new proposal.

6
  • 1
    Thanks, Robert! :)
    – Lorem Ipsum
    Commented Dec 19, 2011 at 19:22
  • 1
    Thank you so much Robert. We already found some of them and they have already followed the new proposal.
    – Verbeia
    Commented Dec 19, 2011 at 19:24
  • Thank you for this Robert! Will it happen after the new proposal goes into commitment or before?
    – Szabolcs
    Commented Dec 20, 2011 at 18:15
  • 1
    The proposal is already racing pretty close to commitment, but I am not waiting explicitly for that threshold. The notices will go out within the next day or so regardless.
    – Robert Cartaino
    Commented Dec 20, 2011 at 18:42
  • 1
    Thank you! And it looks like we have crossed into commitment already. :)
    – nixeagle
    Commented Dec 20, 2011 at 23:50
  • Thank you Robert. Judging by the rush of 15 commitments in the last 5 hours, most of them by committers to the previous proposal, I am guessing you have sent those emails out now.
    – Verbeia
    Commented Dec 23, 2011 at 22:53
5

I will not and cannot contact former committers.

Most of the Mathematica questions on the math.SE site are tolerated and would be immediately closed as off-topic if a Mathematica site existed. Many of the CAS questions on Stack Overflow do not get good answers and are certainly not welcomed. Almost no one wants the Mathematica questions on these sites except the Stack Exchange moderators who are not concerned.

In the past months, I have repeatedly told users on math.SE who posed a Mathematica question that they might want to commit to the Mathematica proposal. This is painful slow work to gather support from people who are actually interested. Now, this work has been destroyed by the Stack Exchange moderators because they have judged that the proposal should be held to much, much higher standards than others based on their original faulty assumption that there is already a big expert community on Stack Overflow who wants to segregate for personal vanity reasons.

The Mathematica commitment was very close to reaching 100 commitments and thus being advertised, rendering manual advice to individual users unnecessary.

It is this disrespect of my time and effort that annoys me the most, and I will certainly not invest more time when there is no guarantee that this proposal is treated with as much respect as others.

The existence of a Mathematica site on Stack Exchange is not very important to me personally, but the respect of my time and effort very much is, because this concerns my investment on all Stack Exchange sites.

1
  • 2
    "It is this disrespect of my time and effort that annoys me the most, and I will certainly not invest more time when there is no guarantee that this proposal is treated with as much respect as others." - The closure left me feeling shafted myself...
    – user17323
    Commented Dec 18, 2011 at 7:35

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .