This has been one of my earlier academic dreams. I have pitched the idea to Prof Ravi Vakil, among others. Recently, because of participation in the mathematical competition hosted by Alibaba, I have decided to revive my decade-old enthusiasm. The basic idea is as follows. Many mathematical texts are difficult to penetrate on one's own, be it due to typos, vagueness, or prerequisite assumptions. Thus it is helpful to study with friends or mentors. People out of the academic circle, or even graduate students, may find it difficult to meet people of similar interest, let alone reading the same chapter of the same GTM book.

Given the success of numerous online Q&A fora, including this one, and the ridiculous level of specialization, it seems plausible and the right timing that we can now dedicate one group/site to each textbook. Even though it is often advised that one should not read a technical treatise sequentially, there is something satisfying about being able to finish a single math text from back to back that cursory scan or occasional reference lookup does not conjure. To be honest I did not manage to finish a single book this way during grad school. Note taking on a single text is also a great mnemonic tool in the long term, as I am sure many people still practice.

So my question is simple, are there existing platforms that offer such service already? I am aware of something tangentially related, such as Fermat's Library. But I don't see a way to expand it into a full-blown book-based service. My recent encounter with Slack suggests that the latter may be a more suitable style than stack exchange, since it encourages multi-threaded conversations around a single topic. The level of specialization there is naturally more fine-grained than MO, down to a specific piece of software for instance. Not all books need to get the same amount of attention, but just having a few books being annotated and Q&A'ed frequently can really facilitate self-paced learning.

Any thoughts or suggestions? Would this be helpful to many students/researchers in math?

This has been one of my earlier academic dreams. I have pitched the idea to Prof Ravi Vakil, among others. Recently, because of participation in the mathematical competition hosted by Alibaba, I have decided to revive my decade-old enthusiasm. The basic idea is as follows. Many mathematical texts are difficult to penetrate on one's own, be it due to typos, vagueness, or prerequisite assumptions. Thus it is helpful to study with friends or mentors. People outside of the academic circle, or even graduate students, may find it difficult to meet people with similar interests, let alone reading the same chapter of the same graduate text in mathematics (GTM) book.

Given the success of numerous online Q & A fora, including this one, and the ridiculous level of specialization, it seems plausible that with the right timing, we can now dedicate one group/site to each textbook. Even though it is often advised that one should not read a technical treatise sequentially, there is something satisfying about being able to finish a single math text from cover to cover, that a cursory scan or occasional reference lookup does not conjure. To be honest I have not managed to finish a single book this way during grad school. Note taking on a single text is also a great mnemonic tool in the long term, as I am sure many people still practice.

So my question is simple, are there existing platforms that offer such a service already? I am aware of something tangentially related, such as Fermat's Library. But I don't see a way to expand it into a full-blown book-based service. My recent encounter with Slack suggests that the latter may be a more suitable style than stack exchange, since it encourages multi-threaded conversations around a single topic. The level of specialization there is naturally more fine-grained than MO, down to a specific piece of software for instance. Not all books need to get the same amount of attention, but just having a few books being annotated and Q&A'ed frequently can really facilitate self-paced learning.

Any thoughts or suggestions? Would this be helpful to many students/researchers in math?