Helpful services based on mathoverflow API [closed]

Question

My area of research is math information retrieval. In particular, I come up with several basic ideas how to make use of a promising discussion platform offered by mathoverflow.net (MO). That's why I'd like to ask for opinion of professional mathematicians and users. Do they look helpful? What ideas do you have on your own?

1. Integration of MO with an academic paper search engine, e.g. automatic retrieving citation links to relevant papers on arXiv. This might be a recommendation service for a given question, as well.
2. Integration of MO with Wikipedia/Wolfram Functions Site (or similar resources). This can be done for enriching an user interface with widgets displaying useful definitions or basic facts about mentioned mathematical knowledge objects (terms, theorems etc.)

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

I'm a long-term Wikipedian, and I find MO interesting for several reasons. And there is already a good measure of mutual linking going on (MO questions in some cases are suitable external links for WP articles, though rarely do they meet the standards for references). The two sites are complementary, and they both enjoy support from active communities of mathematicians.

Coming at the issue raised from the WP direction, I'd first latch onto issues of searching here (and therefore also of choice of titles, tagging, and necessarily of proofreading, considering that typos can defeat search). Something also ought to be done here about prominence: closed questions are just left as such, not filtered away. The first wiki I worked on was actually founded as the "best of" a newsgroup, and that conception also seems to be appropriate here. So there would be quite a number of points of presentation that I would see as deserving attention, as well as the "wikignome" mentality of editing away minor blemishes.