In the past, researchers would have gone to department tea to seek out solutions to intermediary problems, but these discussions were often limited to the faculty and resources of a given institution. Online mathematics forums are a more recent development, existing on sites like sci.math, group wikis like the Polymath Project, or in the comments on well-read math blogs.

But organizationally, Math Overflow stands apart from its predecessors. Math Overflow is a community-moderated forum; users vote on the most accurate answers to the questions posed and gain reputation points based on participation, the most active of whom are granted various moderation privileges. The best answers are voted to the top of the page, while the worst ones are voted to the bottom.









At first glance, MathOverflow looks like a scaled-down version of popular social news sites like Reddit or Digg. But users aren't voting on the most entertaining content or debating each other in sprawling threads. Math Oveflow is almost an anti-social network, focused solely on productively addressing the problems posed by its users. Heavily moderated, the guidelines for asking questions are designed to discourage unnecessary chatter and keep the community's focus on a question at hand. "Math Overflow is not for homework help," blares the FAQ page. "Math Overflow is not for discussion. Math Overflow is not your encyclopedia." Open-ended conversations are relegated to a separate meta thread.

"We've tried to make the forum as 'professional' as possible," said Scott Morrison, a Miller Fellow at UC Berkeley's math department and moderator at MathOverflow, when asked about the interactive nature of Math Overflow "We've been pretty strict about good behavior, too, absurdly beyond what is common on the Internet. If it wouldn't be appropriate at department tea or particularly during a seminar, it's not at Math Overflow, either."

The Math Overflow team has made a conscious effort to differentiate the site from social media in the minds of research mathematicians. "Mathematicians as a whole are surprisingly skeptical of many aspects of the modern Internet, despite having been early adopters of email, etc," said Morrison. "In particular, things like Facebook, Twitter, etc. are viewed as enormous wastes of time." Math Overflow does give rise to some social collaboration outside of the forum; Geraschenko notes that participants have on occasion authored papers with the "answerer" to their questions.

Geraschenko and Morrison both assert that the success of the community-moderated forum is inherently tied to its software, StackExchange. The software powers Stack Overflow, a programming Q&A site founded in 2008 and original Stack Exchange site now utilized by nearly 18 million people worldwide each month.

"One of the things awesome about the Internet is the ability to chat, making communities, and forming friendships. On the other hand, we see that as not the same as getting answers to difficult questions," said Joel Spolsky, CEO of Stack Overflow Internet Services, during a phone conversation. "This is a different kind of activity."