/meta/ - Meta Questions

>>555
Hello!

When it comes to any rule, Mathchan staff shall always take in consideration the perceived intent of the poster. Only posters that are perceived to be intentionally malicious will be met with a ban. Therefore, if a poster has good intentions but uploads something by mistake, or unintentionally posts something that Mathchan finds undesirable, or accidentally skirts Mathchan's rules without knowing so, their thread will be moved to an appropriate board and/or they will be warned why, but the poster will not be punished by a ban. If you are not repeatedly and delibarately trying to infringe Mathchan's rules, you should have no fear at all of getting banned. Any goodwill effort to contribute to the body of knowledge of Mathchan is welcomed and appreciated and any potential missteps will be met with leniency and not punishment.

When it comes to the specific rule you're quoting (i.e. Rule 5), Mathchan only looks to host useful and valuable content. To be specific, Mathchan only looks to host content that is of practical value (i.e. guides, walkthroughs, explanations, tutorials, how-to's), or organic discussion that is in the interest of multiple people, and not just the OP. Without this rule, we would quickly become overwhelmed by those who are asking for something (e.g. "How do I do my homework?") and very few people would be contributing something. It's an order of magnitude easier to ask for something - especially with hard subjects like math and science - than it is to contribute something in these subjects. For this reason, on-topic boards can only be contributed to, and can never be solicited from. Creating a thread on Mathchan is supposed to be analogous to your lecture podium; you are supposed to showcase everything you know about what you are talking about, potentially answering any questions that posters in your thread might have. It doesn't make sense to assume a lecture podium and then ask your attendees to teach you something, nor does it make sense to assume a podium and then say nothing of value to the audience.

Classic examples that would violate Rule 5 because they are not considered sufficiently valuable to Mathchan are:
>a) I'm stuck on my homework. Any ideas?Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>556
>you are supposed to showcase everything you know about what you are talking about, potentially answering any questions that posters in your thread might have. It doesn't make sense to assume a lecture podium and then ask your attendees to teach you something
But questions will facilitate discussions. I don't see someone talking about their i.e. engineering experience unless asked by another poster. In that case I don't see an issue as the topic is more obvious and people will still be able to have discussions about it. People would probably post more if there are specific questions being asked. Your rules are very poorly worded, for example 4g:
>Avoid discussing views and opinions of popular individuals (celebrities, youtubers, social media influencers, ...)
you could easily be talking about the works of any popular mathematician.

>>566
>But questions will facilitate discussions
Well, first of all, I want to clear up the vision for the kind of content that Mathchan looks to host. The potentially surprising truth is that I don't actually want there to be much of a discussion on the on-topic boards such as /math/. Let me put it like this: 4chan is known to have image dumping boards such as /gif/, /wsg/, /c/, /cm/, /w/ etc. Similarly, Mathchan's boards are intended to be dumping grounds for mathematical knowledge, and that is supposed to be their primary purpose. If there's a thread about calculus, I want people to dump everything there is to know about calculus, just like if there's a thread about K-On on /c/, anons dump any images that pertain to K-On, even though they don't even necessarily discuss K-On at all.

You may pick a book, make a thread, and post every single theorem in the book, with zero discussion. That thread is, in fact, what I would consider to be an ideal Mathchan thread. Discussions in the thread are not forbidden of course, but they are only secondary. The primary objective of Mathchan is to have as much mathematical content as possible, and only the secondary objective is to enable discussion of this content. You should try have those order of priorities in mind.

What this means in practice is that if you make a thread on, for example, combinatorics, you should focus on posting everything you personally find interesting or important combinatorics. You should not tailor your thread in such a way invite other users in (e.g. "Does anybody here know combinatorics?" "Does anybody wanna try this problem?") and you should focus solely on posting about combinatorics itself. If other users contribute problems to your thread or eventually take over your thread, that's fine. If nobody does, that's also fine. The point is, you should just create a thread on any topic you want, and elaborate on it for how many posts you want, with little to no regard to whether there's anybody who actually cares about that topic and will post in your thread.


The bottom line: please treat Mathchan as more of a content dump (i.e. more like 4chan /c/), and less of a discussion forum (i.e. less like 4chan /a/).


Ideally, reading Mathchan threads should feePost too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>560
I got you fam.

Hello, kuz!


>Do you think imageboard users are interested in discussing advanced science and mathematics?
Some are and this site is for them.

>also what is your speciality? math? chemicals?
My speciality is making this website and when there is nothing left to do I will hang around /meta/ and /dev/.

>can i post drug making tutorials here?
That's impossible to moderate without lawyers and it would quickly scare off my advertisers so Mathchan won't be allowing that.

>>549
Did you program all these new features to vichan yourself?

>>550
Well, I'm the only dev.

Mathchan is going to be the most sophisticated imageboard in the world and once we gather enough knowledge and expertise we shall rule the world

﮳>>546
hi kuz

KUZ I WILL KILL YOU

Not sure how userful it is but every board has

index.rss

(

https://mathchan.org/meta/index.rss

for this one).

>>542
I fucking knew I missed something. Thanks anon

don't forget about 4chan compatible json api, if based lukyon reflected his changes in it i don't know but it's there

>>534
Links are cloaked and put through

exit?u=ENCODED_URL

in order to display Mathchan's exit point disclaimer. This is done for the following two reasons:

1. To protect users from accidentally clicking on harmful links that are posted on Mathchan (such phishing sites or sites with criminal content) before Mathchan's staff is alerted and has a chance to take it down.
2. To disassociate Mathchan from any websites users link to as well as hint the search engines that Mathchan does not want to associate with these sites (All user-generated links have

   rel="ugc nofollow"

   )

Trusted sites (like links to Mathchan itself) are not put through disclaimer and resolve immediately. Links to some well-known sites (like Google, Youtube, Reddit, Twitter etc.) are distrusted by default because privacy conscientious users may not agree with privacy policy of these sites and do not want to let them know Mathchan was the site that referred them. Therefore, these sites have to go through the exit point too. When user settings becomes available there will be an option to whitelist certain sites in order to circumvent the disclaimer for sites you trust. URLs to websites that Mathchan trusts are going to have direct links but for now

\url

and

\href

commands put all URLs through the exit point.


>If mathchan dies, links in threads people may have backed up or archive die too
If Mathchan is recursively mirrored then exit points ought to be mirrored with it too. Exit points contain a real URL so there would be no issue following the links on Mathchan's future archive.

Also, URLs are not shortened, nor encrypted. They are just encoded and can be easily reconstructed by replacing

._-

with

+/=

and running them through a base64 decoder (which is the current way Mathchan encodes URLs). Creating a URL shortener or encrypting URLs was in consideration but that would require us to maintain database of shortened URLs or an encryption key with no real benefits of doing so. If any of these are lost, all links on Mathchan would be dead. Unfortunately, encoding URLs has a signiPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>535
You know, I was interested to ask this because this is the only image board I can name that messes with URLs. Somewhat reminded me of lame forums that you needed to register to follow links.
>Search engines can easily consider

https://terrorism.org/

a URL slug and tank Mathchan's rankings
Now that I think about it, I don't remember making a search on google and have an imageboard be one of the results, even when there's a thread that fits that search query better than any of the results that actually come up. Imageboards do come up if I search the name, so they're not all blacklisted. It seems (mainstream) search engines don't regard imageboards highly.
Is this actually because chans have an unusual frequency of naughty links? If that's true then cloaking is a good move for Mathchan. Or is that chans simply don't practice aggressive SEO to earn a place in the first page of results?

I appreciate that resolving

exit?u=

doesn't rely on a database, and the encoded URL is just that, it can be decoded. But is a nebulous (AFAIK) search engine optimization principle worth the inconvenience? I think you downplay how inconvenient it is:
>If Mathchan is recursively mirrored then exit points ought to be mirrored with it too. Exit points contain a real URL so there would be no issue following the links on Mathchan's future archive.
I highly doubt there will be an anywhere near competent Mathchan archive. Only 4chan has dedicated archives, other chans at most have individual pages saved on the wayback machine. Links in Mathchan are broken in the Wayback Machine, and they're also broken when casually downloading one thread with

Ctrl+S

.

You underestimate your users' incompetence, and underestimate their competence at the same time. You expect users to be able to do recursive mirroring or base64 decode URLs. But you don't expect them to think before choosing to click link so you greet them with an obnoxious "Are sure you want to exit?" page. Nor do you expect privacy-conscious users to configure their own browser to not send referer headers, if that's their concern.
>1. To protect users from accidentally clicking on harmful links that are posted on MathchanPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>536
>this is the only image board I can name that messes with URLs.
This is also one of the few imageboards with significant innovation, which comes with some responsibility. If we are going to provide users with a rich markup that can embed URLs, LaTeX figures etc. then we have to think about how we are going to do that securely. We could've allowed embedding URLs like javascript:while(1); that would've crashed your browser but we don't want browsing Mathchan to feel like a minefield.

\url{...}

and

\href{...}{...}

are there to allow posters link to other websites but users should not be afraid of clicking them, voluntarily or involuntarily.

>Is this actually because chans have an unusual frequency of naughty links?
Yes, and anonymous image boards in particular have a troubled history with this stuff. There is a CSAM linking spambot that plagues all imageboards including Mathchan and we already have two of its IP addresses permabanned, though this one will be thwarted by Mathchan's captcha.

>But is a nebulous (AFAIK) search engine optimization principle worth the inconvenience?
This is not just for search engines but for your security as well. If you're browsing Mathchan at work or school, you may have to install their root certificate in which case your organization will act as the man in the middle between you and Mathchan. If they scan the page you're looking at and find

<a>

tags linking to a blacklisted/criminal websites, you will be in trouble. Even if your connection is secure, it's better if you can review the link before following especially if it's given using

\href{...}{...}

(e.g. Click me). Malicious users may also try to conceal a link using

\color{...}

or

\colorbox{...}{...}

in order to trick you into clicking it. They may also use

\href{...}{...}

to make it look like

\url{...}

and triPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>538
You've made good points about security. And while I still believe link cloaking is an inconvenience to some aspects of user interaction, you've convinced me its possible benefits outweigh those bumps.

>>539
We should have a pop up like pic related but that'll take a while because lukyon is the only developer.

>

>surely anyone with half a brain realizes this?
I don't know. Would a stupid person start a chan like this?

It's fine, it only lacks an overboard.

>>526
same shit different browser
excuse the blurryness this is through xwayland because i couldn't be bothered to setup something i don't use

>>526
>>527
It looks like your browser is inverting lightness, so the text color ends up clashing with the background.

You'll have to either ad block the background:

https://mathchan.org/assets/bg.png

Or you'll have to use the Stylus extension and add the following rule

body { background: #2f2f2f; }

Or you'll have to wait until Mathchan gets a dark theme.

>pic rel
How it should look like in stock Chromium.

>>529
yeah that's fine, again i wrote a stylish CSS anyway and considering this is quite new i don't expect everything to work ootb

by the way, it seems like when you delete threads/posts they are just deleted in the database, or something idk how vichan works but point is that they're still accessible, just hidden
files however seem to be gone

as a result i have recovered some old threads and many test threads on this board alone
what will i do with them? i don't know, but i have them

anyways, cool site lukyon (and from what i hear, friends)
let's make this chan great

>>530
>by the way, it seems like when you delete threads/posts they are just deleted in the database, or something idk how vichan works but point is that they're still accessible, just hidden
There are also hidden boards like >>>/polsci/ and a few others.

Some threads are actually still in the database but hidden, while those that you recovered were residual due to a bug because this site is kludgy as fuck. It will take some time to make it stable, which is why we don't advertise this site anywhere despite it being online. Though there is nothing in those threads except embarassing shitposts and test posts to amuse yourself (like this one https://mathchan.org/meta/thread/236)

>10 Aug 2021
wew.

>>530
Added dark theme to Mathchan.
Hopefully it will make the website more usable for a lot of people.

Quora is horrible.

Bvffalo.land is a great way to invite unwanted attention to any board. The indexers never seem to put much thought behind their lists. It's not like they'll respect you emailing them to be taken off once they eventually find your site.

>>510
I suggested bvffalo.land because it accepts slow chans with small communities. allchans.org is better but they don't accept most additions. Shilling the site on 4chan is an alternative but it's difficult because mods will ban you for advertising.

>>511
>allchans
>doesn't accept all chans
heh, ironic.

>>511
That's reasonable. What's most important is the longevity/continuity of a community.

>>508
I stumbled across this board by accident from DuckDuckGo. So far I love it. I was looking for math discussion.