math site links

[Ted]

Hi guys,

Just wanted to clear up one point in regards to spam. I know a lot of you have math sites of your own, and I appreciate your spending time on here as well. If you want to include a link to your own site in your signature that's fine with me. However, please do not reply to a student's question just to provide a link to your site.

If you setup your signature to include a link, then it will show up in all your posts, some of which will obviously be just conversational and not intended to provide solutions (when we're talking about other topics). That, of course, is fine.
Additionally, you are always welcome to provide links to specific, relevant information that will help a user. This post is more directed at a general link to your homepage. I think that is totally ok with me, as long as it's done appropriately. The only issue I have would be when a user is clearly just reply to other students and saying "If you want the answer, come to mywebsite.com"

Any questions? I'm not sure I made that as clear as it could be!

Thanks!
Ted

 

[A_G]

If you want to include a link to your own site in your signature that's fine with me. However, please do not reply to a student's question just to provide a link to your site.

Ted,
Your message seems to be pretty clear and unbiased in this post. However, I would like to let you know that I have joined in new and for all of the 2-3 relevant and helpful posts I have made over the last 24 hours or so my signature (having a link to my own site) has been deleted from all of them! I am sorry to have bothered you by shooting an email and a message to you even before I came across this thread. Could you please have a look?

 

[mmm4444bot]

Hi Ted:

I looked over part of Anirban's site. It appears that his services are free, but I did not read the entire site.

I saw one ambiguous statement that seems to infer a possibility of offering something personalized for a fee, but there is nothing to indicate that he's trying to market anything. (I read the statement to mean that he might need to charge a fee if somebody contacted him for extra-personalized service.)

He's offering free 20-minute middle-school level tutoring sessions to millions of students and parents on a first-come, first-signed-up basis by time zone over several hours each day. Real-time voice communication is via Skype; he also has whiteboard software at his site for those with digital pens.

(I'm tempted to see if I could win a piece of this scheduling lotto, but I don't currently have time to look into Skype.)

I think his signature URL is okay.

 

[Ted]

I have no problem with a small, unobtrusive link in the signature. I think it's pretty clear when someone is posting useless messages just to get their link out there, so I think we can all use our best judgment in removing links. If the message is genuinely helpful and the link is short and simple that should be just fine... I would recommend not deleting those.

Anirban -- I can't promise this won't happen again. There are a number of moderators on this site, and there's no way to force them to all follow the same rules. However, I hope that the guidelines are generally effective. Welcome to the site!

 

[mmm4444bot]

… I think it's pretty clear when someone is posting useless messages just to get their link out there …

I agree with this, but I've also seen some posts that I feel are cleverly designed to appear relevant to the thread, and only after checking out the linked web site do I realize that their motivation for posting is marketing.

I flag these cases by posting a warning in the thread, if I see that none of the other regulars here do not comment first. (Paul caught a good one, recently.)

 

[mumu416]

HI! from mumu416

Hi, i haven't been on this website for such a long time! Well, i had practised maths, and i had a test of UKMT intermidiate maths challange today, i've got some of them, but some questions at the end of the test paper were hard. I think i should practise some of the past papers, and having some math lessons over here - which one shall i start? Thankyou!