@Alejandro Jakubi 

Alejandro, but you have created your famous website with Maple links much earlier than that, I think (1998 maybe, or earlier). At that time, when Google didn't exist, it was extremely helpful.

As well as being the "Maple ambassador" in Argentina (and South America, perhaps).

Since what time would you consider yourself being a member of Maple community?

Robert Israel and edgar (Gerald A Edgar), probably, beat all of us for several years.

Just found my MUG answer dated February 2002, to Sharon Gray in a thread with comments from Robert J. Lopez, Robert Israel, Francis J. Wright, Otto C. Wilke, Jurgen Barsuhn, and Metha Kamminga.

There were many more people active at the time, whom I didn't mention personally because they are less active on this site (especially its 2nd version) - Thomas Richard, Helmut Kahovec, William C. Bauldry, Steven F. Bellenot, Fr. Mike May, Matthias Kawski, just name a few. Later Stephen Forrest and Roman Pearce.

Many Maplesoft people were also active, I don't want to mention their names because of a possible conflict of interests - but they are free to comment (saying "What a good time that was! Give this guy his Maple Questioner Badge." :)

Alec

@Alejandro Jakubi 

Alejandro, but you have created your famous website with Maple links much earlier than that, I think (1998 maybe, or earlier). At that time, when Google didn't exist, it was extremely helpful.

As well as being the "Maple ambassador" in Argentina (and South America, perhaps).

Since what time would you consider yourself being a member of Maple community?

Robert Israel and edgar (Gerald A Edgar), probably, beat all of us for several years.

Just found my MUG answer dated February 2002, to Sharon Gray in a thread with comments from Robert J. Lopez, Robert Israel, Francis J. Wright, Otto C. Wilke, Jurgen Barsuhn, and Metha Kamminga.

There were many more people active at the time, whom I didn't mention personally because they are less active on this site (especially its 2nd version) - Thomas Richard, Helmut Kahovec, William C. Bauldry, Steven F. Bellenot, Fr. Mike May, Matthias Kawski, just name a few. Later Stephen Forrest and Roman Pearce.

Many Maplesoft people were also active, I don't want to mention their names because of a possible conflict of interests - but they are free to comment (saying "What a good time that was! Give this guy his Maple Questioner Badge." :)

Alec

@longrob 

adiban is a test account I think which Will is using for testing various aspects of the site which he can't test using his own account (because it has elevated privileges). Also, he might use it for voting up or down posts in addition to his own vote - the same as some other people here using 2 or more different accounts.

Why do I post here (from time to time)? Mostly for nostalgic reasons I think.

There were times when the Maple community was much larger (and also more qualified) - the times of MUG, Usenet Maple group, Yahoo Maple experts group, and Carl DeVore. I wasn't there from the very beginning like Robert Israel, Joe Riel, Alejandro Jakubi, edgar, Edwin Clark, JacquesC, Doug Meade, Preben Alsholm and some other people known here, but more or less actively participated for several years (and am still one of the moderators of the Yahoo Maple experts group I believe.) Some experts, like Axel Vogt, joined the community later than me, I think.

I got several friends there and there were some good things related to that.

It's much different now. The community is much smaller, Maple went into a completely different direction than we hoped (with new Magma package in Maple 15 being the first and only package in that direction that we hoped Maple would develop.)

But still some of the people are still here and it is interesting to read their posts, as well as posts of some new active members of the community.

Alec

@longrob 

adiban is a test account I think which Will is using for testing various aspects of the site which he can't test using his own account (because it has elevated privileges). Also, he might use it for voting up or down posts in addition to his own vote - the same as some other people here using 2 or more different accounts.

Why do I post here (from time to time)? Mostly for nostalgic reasons I think.

There were times when the Maple community was much larger (and also more qualified) - the times of MUG, Usenet Maple group, Yahoo Maple experts group, and Carl DeVore. I wasn't there from the very beginning like Robert Israel, Joe Riel, Alejandro Jakubi, edgar, Edwin Clark, JacquesC, Doug Meade, Preben Alsholm and some other people known here, but more or less actively participated for several years (and am still one of the moderators of the Yahoo Maple experts group I believe.) Some experts, like Axel Vogt, joined the community later than me, I think.

I got several friends there and there were some good things related to that.

It's much different now. The community is much smaller, Maple went into a completely different direction than we hoped (with new Magma package in Maple 15 being the first and only package in that direction that we hoped Maple would develop.)

But still some of the people are still here and it is interesting to read their posts, as well as posts of some new active members of the community.

Alec

@pagan 

I forgot that there is a minimal score needed for up-voting on this site. Certainly, everybody should be able to vote up (or down) answers to his/her own questions. How can new users get the points necessary for voting? I usually vote a question up only after my (or somebody else's) answer is voted up.

I don't think that checkmarking only one answer is such a good idea. In many cases, there are 2 or 3 answers complementing each other in some aspects, and a complete answer can be obtained reading all of them and not just one. That's why I from the very beginning was against reordering the answers according to the number of votes - that changes the natural order of reading of them.

However, I agree with Axel Vogt saying in another post that it is useless to make any comments about the site functioning - they are just ignored by whoever maintains the site.

For example, one can't tell if you, me, or other people have left some comments in this thread looking at the Recent page - they are not counted as replies and the post doesn't move up there after posting a comment to an answer. That was one of the most disturbing problems on this site from the very beginning and it is still the same now - a year after.

The timing of the posts goes from "moments ago" to 59 minutes, then again from 1 minute to 59 minutes, then to 2 hours - again not fixed for longer than a year.

The 2nd and further badges pages are empty for every badge.

"View the the" over the editor, etc. etc. - nothing has changed.

I'm not even talking about such "luxuries" as 2D-math display etc. - just about the very basic things which don't function properly.

I wonder what were the "improvements" on this site Christopher2222 was talking about in another thread. That changing a question to a post removes all the answers to the question? - but I am not sure that was not like that from the very beginning.

Have you seen any - ANY - other forum on the web with so many problems persisting there for longer than a year? I don't. Nothing even close to that.

And that's supposed to be the company face?

Alec

@pagan 

I forgot that there is a minimal score needed for up-voting on this site. Certainly, everybody should be able to vote up (or down) answers to his/her own questions. How can new users get the points necessary for voting? I usually vote a question up only after my (or somebody else's) answer is voted up.

I don't think that checkmarking only one answer is such a good idea. In many cases, there are 2 or 3 answers complementing each other in some aspects, and a complete answer can be obtained reading all of them and not just one. That's why I from the very beginning was against reordering the answers according to the number of votes - that changes the natural order of reading of them.

However, I agree with Axel Vogt saying in another post that it is useless to make any comments about the site functioning - they are just ignored by whoever maintains the site.

For example, one can't tell if you, me, or other people have left some comments in this thread looking at the Recent page - they are not counted as replies and the post doesn't move up there after posting a comment to an answer. That was one of the most disturbing problems on this site from the very beginning and it is still the same now - a year after.

The timing of the posts goes from "moments ago" to 59 minutes, then again from 1 minute to 59 minutes, then to 2 hours - again not fixed for longer than a year.

The 2nd and further badges pages are empty for every badge.

"View the the" over the editor, etc. etc. - nothing has changed.

I'm not even talking about such "luxuries" as 2D-math display etc. - just about the very basic things which don't function properly.

I wonder what were the "improvements" on this site Christopher2222 was talking about in another thread. That changing a question to a post removes all the answers to the question? - but I am not sure that was not like that from the very beginning.

Have you seen any - ANY - other forum on the web with so many problems persisting there for longer than a year? I don't. Nothing even close to that.

And that's supposed to be the company face?

Alec

@hirnyk 

Shouldn't be a problem for triangles. One way of correcting it in general case is using a list of distances instead of a single distance r, and making some of its entries negative for non-convex polygons.

The fixed distance (in the triangle case) to a triangle side instead of the distance to a vertex could make a better visual effect, I think - but I didn't try that.

Also, if there are many (triangle) tiles, the numbers at the vertices may be 2-digit and even 3-digit, which should be also positioned differently perhaps. It would be nice to have an example of what the original poster wanted to achieve.

Alec

@hirnyk 

Shouldn't be a problem for triangles. One way of correcting it in general case is using a list of distances instead of a single distance r, and making some of its entries negative for non-convex polygons.

The fixed distance (in the triangle case) to a triangle side instead of the distance to a vertex could make a better visual effect, I think - but I didn't try that.

Also, if there are many (triangle) tiles, the numbers at the vertices may be 2-digit and even 3-digit, which should be also positioned differently perhaps. It would be nice to have an example of what the original poster wanted to achieve.

Alec

Deleting an account would help only temporarily. Nothing prevents him/her/it from creating a new account and spamming from it.

Blocking an IP address might help against some users, also only temporarily in most cases, but not against a slightly more sophisticated ones - there are tons of proxies available in the world, and even if all known ones are blocked, creating a new one wouldn't take long.

One of the reasons that I shut down Maple Wiki was that I couldn't prevent continuous spamming without monitoring it continuosly which I wasn't able to do at the moment.

Alec

PS Actually, thinking about that - requiring the (valid) Maple purchase code during account registration, and blacklisting that purchase code in case of spamming, together with the account deleting (or disabling), would make more complicated creating a new account for spamming - unless he/she/it buys a new copy of Maple each time creating a new account, which would be good for business :) -Alec

@Christopher2222 

Before, on the first version of this site, we got a point for every question, answer, or comment, 5 points for a blog post etc., which was fine. I was happy with that.

Also, people reaching a certain level, say 400 points, were getting some special "badge" displayed next to their names in the answers, blog posts etc.

Plus, answering many questions, one could get a Maple Mentor of the Month award (I got a Maplesoft mug once, for instance).

Now, I do some work answering questions, at least spend some time on that, so I expect to have some kind of a reward for that - at least adding some points to my score, and get disappointed not getting any reward.

Alec

@Christopher2222 

Before, on the first version of this site, we got a point for every question, answer, or comment, 5 points for a blog post etc., which was fine. I was happy with that.

Also, people reaching a certain level, say 400 points, were getting some special "badge" displayed next to their names in the answers, blog posts etc.

Plus, answering many questions, one could get a Maple Mentor of the Month award (I got a Maplesoft mug once, for instance).

Now, I do some work answering questions, at least spend some time on that, so I expect to have some kind of a reward for that - at least adding some points to my score, and get disappointed not getting any reward.

Alec

@tiepdinhvan 

Since such a procedure doesn't exist in Maple, one has to write it himself/herself, or ask somebody to do that for him/her, in which case more information is needed for what you want to do exactly, accompanied with an example (or a couple of examples). Adding a work that you did yourself and a description of a problem that you are having not being able to finish it yourself also might be helpful.

Alec

@tiepdinhvan 

Since such a procedure doesn't exist in Maple, one has to write it himself/herself, or ask somebody to do that for him/her, in which case more information is needed for what you want to do exactly, accompanied with an example (or a couple of examples). Adding a work that you did yourself and a description of a problem that you are having not being able to finish it yourself also might be helpful.

Alec

Nope, I still didn't get it - as one can see by clicking my username here (the badges are at the bottom of the page).

If one is really concerned about me answering to his or her questions or post commented on, the best way to ensure that is voting my answers up.

Frankly, if I answer somebody's question, or a couple of them, and my answers haven't been voted up, I am getting inclined to stop answering to that person's questions.

Alec

Nope, I still didn't get it - as one can see by clicking my username here (the badges are at the bottom of the page).

If one is really concerned about me answering to his or her questions or post commented on, the best way to ensure that is voting my answers up.

Frankly, if I answer somebody's question, or a couple of them, and my answers haven't been voted up, I am getting inclined to stop answering to that person's questions.

Alec