12

I am new to Mathematica and find this site very helpful. Much more than the MathGroup that is listed on the the community page of Mathematica, see Wolfram Support page.

So in the interest of getting even more attention from users of Mathematica, I am wondering what this community is doing to get listed on Wolfram's support page?

If it is a policy of Stackexchange to stay away from technology owners in the ecosystem, it would also be interesting to understand.

22

I don't think that this should be currently one of our primary concerns. I actually think that we will develop better when people have to do a little research to find us. Besides, with the number of answered questions growing fast, and those answers being indexed by search engines, very soon it will be quite straightforward to find us for anyone interested.

On the other hand, WRI takes some responsibility for anything the company puts on their official recommendation list. Since WRI has no control over this community (which I think is a good thing, in many respects), mentioning us there may be a responsibility they don't want to take.

Finally, we are still quite young as a community, and it takes time for other interested parties (WRI etc) to become convinced that we are here to stay.

All in all, I would not worry about this much and just keep going. Things like that should IMO always be side effects of our true usefulness and popularity, not the other way around.

19
  • Primary concern argument: At meta.mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/301/… it seems the number of visits are lower than it should be for a healthy site. So getting a boost WRI shouldn't hurt. – FredrikD Jul 18 '12 at 15:35
  • WRI responsibility argument: The MathGroup moderated e-mail list also seems to be out of the control of WRI. – FredrikD Jul 18 '12 at 15:37
  • @fredob314 I think those numbers are there only as approximate goals. If SE team would not think we are ready for graduation, they wouldn't have graduated us now. – Leonid Shifrin Jul 18 '12 at 15:37
  • @fredob314 Oh no, it is under WRI control, at least partially. – Leonid Shifrin Jul 18 '12 at 15:38
  • Here to stay argument: Sort of ties in with the first argument, i.e. more visits will increase the "here to stay" probability. – FredrikD Jul 18 '12 at 15:39
  • didn't know that about the Mathgroup. Good point. – FredrikD Jul 18 '12 at 15:40
  • 1
    @fredob314 Here-to-stay argument: not necessarily: the long-term survival of our community may not have a definite positive correlation with the increase of the number of users / visits right now, and may even have a negative one. This is not an easy thing to assess. – Leonid Shifrin Jul 18 '12 at 15:40
  • 1
    @fredob314 I don't know what you're talking about but this site is definitely here to stay. Although I sometimes don't agree with Leonid's views on the impending apocalypse, I do agree here that we needn't worry about publicity from WRI's site. If it happens, well, good for us. If it doesn't, that's perfectly fine too. We'll eventually become well known regardless of links from WRI's site. The situation has improved so much from just about a year ago... now most searches for help with mathematica bring results from this site within the top 5 results – rm -rf♦ Jul 18 '12 at 17:48
  • @R.M First, I just thought it would be a good idea to make sure that buyers of Mathematica easier would find this site since it is so much better than the Mathgroup listed on WRI:s support page. Second, when I looked at the stats and you can see that the number of daily visitors is clearly below 1500 which was a critera at the beta stage. Just for the arguments sake, why do you argue so strongly too keep this site separate from WRI? As a newcomer and looking largely from the stand, there is a clear inter-dependency between this community and WRI that should be beneficial to both parties. – FredrikD Jul 18 '12 at 18:21
  • 3
    @fredob314 The number of daily visitors is only a guideline... I've seen sites launched with 800 views too. Also, since we've graduated, let's not discuss that at all, since it is pointless. Coming to the relationship with WRI, the interdependency is only to the extent that the topic of this site is about a product that they make. Nothing more, nothing less. WRI employees participate here out of their own will and interest in the community and are not paid to do so by SE or WRI. (continued) – rm -rf♦ Jul 18 '12 at 18:25
  • 3
    True, we're indirectly beneficial to WRI, but they probably don't see it that way or care for it. The existence of a vibrant community does not in any way help their sales. I don't think anyone says "Oh, that's a nice Q&A community out there, so I'll buy product X". WRI has their own support channel via Premier service and they'd like to keep it that way. Even if we did influence sales in any way, it's probably like a drop in the ocean. I'm fine with WRI themselves recognizing us as a helpful community and adding it, but I'm not eager to get our name up there. I'm not against it either. – rm -rf♦ Jul 18 '12 at 18:28
  • ok, good points. So an attempt to a summary should be that 1) there is an imbalance between MMS.SE and WRI at the current stage and 2) this imbalance points at letting the MMA.SE - WRI relationship grow without trying på influence WRI. – FredrikD Jul 18 '12 at 18:48
  • "... Since WRI has no control over this community ..." ahem, LOGO!? :-p – Mr.Wizard Jul 18 '12 at 20:15
  • @Mr.Wizard You are mixing business relations and control. There is a difference (yes, I know you were kdding). – Leonid Shifrin Jul 18 '12 at 20:18
  • As an experiment, about the same time as when I posted this question here, I posted a similar question in the Mathgroup. It was rejected by one of the moderators, his argument was that "This is not the kind of discussion we want in this group". According to LinkedIn, he works part-time as a contractor for WRI. So Leonid et al are right regarding the control. I can understand his argument since there is no "meta" place in the Mathgroup but it wasn't very welcoming for a new member of that community. – FredrikD Jul 19 '12 at 8:50
10

Last year, when we were still a tag in StackOverflow, I sent an email about precisely this question to suggestions@wolfram.com but never even got a response. I suppose we could repeat this, but I'm not overly optimistic here.

I could understand WRI's restraints if they'd voice any, though. This is not a site they can control, and quality of the answers cannot be assured. On the other hand, there are sufficient WRI employees participating here, so this shouldn't actually be an issue.

I also discussed this with the Dutch MMA distributor and he is aware of the site's existence and refers his customers to the site. I suggest that those with local contacts do the same.

1
  • Sending a mail to the suggestions mailbox sounds a bit passive. Top of mind, the marketing or support management would be interested. I checked out the listings of people at LinkedIn and it seems like most of the key persons are listed there (from Stephen Wolfram et al) – FredrikD Jul 18 '12 at 15:49

You must log in to answer this question.

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