How do you feel about the Maths forum?

How would you see this working with attachments? (It's precisely because of issues like this that I don't like attachments).

Well I've been back for a couple of days and can report on what I have seen.

The traffic is certainly much lower than it has ever been. There are lots of maths threads but they are appearing in the GCSE and A level Forums and elsewhere rather than in F38. I've been reporting them to request that they are moved.

Lots of users are oblivious to the F38 Forum Rule about not giving full solutions. They don't seem to mind when they are told about this and appear willing to conform so, if everyone could challenge people posting full solutions, I'm sure that would help.

I've seen a bit of trolling silliness. This may have moved in to fill the vacuum and I expect it will decline if the academic side of the Forum is re-established.

Finally, I will have been here for 10 years on 16th January. I'm just making you aware of this so that you can put my long service medal in the post.

Having a maths WYSIWG edtior would help with the latex problem. The user would select "maths mode" and then proceed to click the functions that they'd like to use.
You might use an interface such as the one available at http://www.hostmath.com/.

I've seen on multiple occasions, on this subforum, people asking for help with maths that other users deem "easy" and treat the user asking for help with disdain. I think people are scared to ask for help in fear of being treated badly, as there are clearly users on here that are mathematical geniuses (@notnek + @RDKGames ) but some people seem to feel intimidated by them (through no fault of their own!) because they are extremely superior to them in terms of maths.

This definitely resonated with me. If I get stuck I'll have a look here to see if it's been asked before, but won't raise a thread if it hasn't; I'm still on basic (GCSE/Early A-level stuff) and I worry I'm going to be shot down. So much of the maths here is way over my head so it's quite an intimidating environment!

If you ask in the GCSE or A-level forums though, then you know only people who are expecting to see basic things will see/respond to it, and you won't disturb a bunch of angry mathmos...

... Aside from having more GCSE threads and fewer A Level threads, can you think of anything specific that could be changed so that you would feel less intimidated?

Having a stickied thread for GCSE questions (like the Y13 sticky) could be good. It might help nudge the culture along too, as it's sort of a flag saying "this sort of thing belongs here!" - especially if TSR is trying to stop people using the upper-tier "GCSE" forum etc for subject-specific q's. Nothing else immediately springs to mind though...

Having a stickied thread for GCSE questions (like the Y13 sticky) could be good. It might help nudge the culture along too, as it's sort of a flag saying "this sort of thing belongs here!" - especially if TSR is trying to stop people using the upper-tier "GCSE" forum etc for subject-specific q's. Nothing else immediately springs to mind though...

That is an excellent idea that I hadn't thought of.

Any mods agree and want to start such a thread?

If you feel this would help to encourage GCSE students then I'm up for it, my only concern is that because everyone posts their questions in there, if it's a busy day then some questions will get lost pages back in a thread with no answers, whereas if they have a thread of their own then they are more likely to get an answer. I'd be more inclined to have a 'GCSE Maths questions and chat thread' to encourage people to come out of their shells a bit, as long as it was posted in the OP that if people don't get answers to their questions in the thread then they should make their own thread in the maths forum. A lot of our stats on how the forum is doing is based off amount of threads created too

This all sounds good to me.

I will add that the GCSE has changed a lot this year so students may have general questions about the GCSE that they could post in this thread and that could be mentioned in the OP. I think I'd prefer a mod to start the thread so it looks more official

If you feel this would help to encourage GCSE students then I'm up for it, my only concern is that because everyone posts their questions in there, if it's a busy day then some questions will get lost pages back in a thread with no answers, whereas if they have a thread of their own then they are more likely to get an answer. I'd be more inclined to have a 'GCSE Maths questions and chat thread' to encourage people to come out of their shells a bit, as long as it was posted in the OP that if people don't get answers to their questions in the thread then they should make their own thread in the maths forum. A lot of our stats on how the forum is doing is based off amount of threads created too
...

This all sounds good to me.

I will add that the GCSE has changed a lot this year so students may have general questions about the GCSE that they could post in this thread and that could be mentioned in the OP. I think I'd prefer a mod to start the thread so it looks more official

I also share gingerbreads concerns about this being a sticky - I have to say I tend to subconsciously zone out of sticky threads and ignore them by default!

I note F373 already has a sticky regarding the new GCSE so it seems there'd be some redundancy here.

(Having paid attention to the stickies there, I'd also say that the "Summer of Maths" sticky is 100% in the wrong place and should be in F38).

I also share gingerbreads concerns about this being a sticky - I have to say I tend to subconsciously zone out of sticky threads and ignore them by default!