Yes, our discussion staff have tried valiantly to moderate it since 2007 and have taken many slings and arrows from all sides since then and feel great disappointment in the result. We all feel your pain.

Here’s a little of the history – math-teach began as nctm-l. As the Math Wars picked up steam, and the Internet world was a much smaller, more focused place, this discussion group has been the home of unpleasant argument ever since. The Math Forum agreed to take over hosting in 1995 I think (which was the year that I attended my first Math Forum Summer Institute! I was still a middle school computer and math teacher at that point. I joined the staff in June, 2000).

Eventually NCTM was no longer willing to be associated with it and thus, the renaming. It might be significant that such forums are meant to be open, public spaces, and centralized rather than dispersed. For our part we focused on other venues for productive conversation and online math interaction, and other more focused discussion groups were established as well, including
Ask Dr. Math: http://mathforum.org/dr.math/
Math Tools: http://mathforum.org/mathtools/
Teacher2Teacher (T2T): http://mathforum.org/t2t/
pow-teach: http://mathforum.org/kb/forum.jspa?forumID=375
ap-stat and ap-calc until they moved over to the College Board site
professional organizations: http://mathforum.org/kb/forumcategory.jspa?categoryID=17

In a sense, we have left math-teach as a space for those who want that sort of interaction, hoping to minimize their interest in fouling the other places we do our work.

As I re-read, I’m thinking that it’s really “math-teach” that is the angry place that makes you sad when you visit it. Or, at least, that’s what I’m hoping.

Yes, just “math-teach.”

One way that we serve the community is to provide places/opportunities for conversations. Math-teach is one of those places. I wonder what might be done so that it isn’t an angry place. Do you or others have ideas?

I’m curious if there is any moderation at all. Is there a code of conduct? Are people just allowed to say anything at all to each other? Here’s a thread at random where people are just hacking away at each other.

My blog is hardly a perfect forum, but what civility we have here has come as a result of a) promoting helpful commenters, b) nagging unhelpful commenters, c) deleting really unhelpful commenters, d) blocking really, really unhelpful commenters. Math-teach just seems like a free-for-all and I’m wondering if similar efforts have been made to moderate it.

As I re-read, I’m thinking that it’s really “math-teach” that is the angry place that makes you sad when you visit it. Or, at least, that’s what I’m hoping.

The 1992 version (when it was the Geometry Forum) was founded on the idea of offering “an online math education community center.” We have continued that mission for 24 years nows (although, we’ve had a bit of a hiccup since the staff left Drexel on June 30th but all of the legal paperwork we hope will be signed soon. We are so excited to be part of NCTM!).

One way that we serve the community is to provide places/opportunities for conversations. Math-teach is one of those places. I wonder what might be done so that it isn’t an angry place. Do you or others have ideas?

For those who only know us as folks who tweet and run Ignite events, you might check out this informal history I wrote after participating in a panel convened by Lani Horn: http://mathforum.org/blogs/annie/2014/05/07/the-math-forum-the-original-social-network-for-math-teachers/

I wonder if one reason we have such a wide variety in responses to your question is that we are attempting to find a causal relationship where none might exist?

I’m actually very surprised by the narrow range of reasons for participation. Both here and on Twitter, people have cited community, encouragement, and support far above any other reason. The second place finisher — resources — doesn’t seem close to me. Your read is different?

Is it possible that this is not true with other online platforms? For example, could ELA communities exist with greater depth than the equivalent math ed communities on Facebook?

Certainly they could. I’d be grateful for examples.

It’s interesting to me that the #MTBOS isn’t limited to T’s and B’s, though. What began on blogs expanded to Twitter and then to webinar platforms and then to an email newsletter and then to a physical conference.

I’ll bet we could find a thriving Pinterest community of ELA educators. But could we find them in all of those media?

Henri:

Yet another hypothesis: could it be that one contributing factor is the participation of a math ed rock star? Do other disciplines have their Dan Meyer equivalents?

Perish the thought …