User blog comment:Forthright/MORE videos you MUST watch as a googolist/@comment-35470197-20191022011748/@comment-39541634-20191023142720

"Why don't you help them to show what to do?"

I used to do that, you know. When I just arrived here a couple of years ago, this is exactly how I treated people like this.

I quickly learned that it is - at best - a complete waste of time. People who do this are simply not interested in learning anything. At best, they come here to fool around. At worst, they come here to purposefully waste our time and/or spam the wiki with garbage.

I've also learned something else: Eventually, many of these guys snap out of it. On their own. But there's nothing we can do to help them make the transition, because THEY. ARE. NOT. LISTENING.

"Are you blaming me as if I just had appreciated the OP?"

I'm not "blaming" anyone.

I'm simply saying that giving these guys positive attention is counterproductive. This wiki is supposed to be a community for recreational mathematics, not a circus. And I gotta say that I'm quite surprised to see a math pro like yourself having such patience for people who are clearly not interested in learning anything.

I want to be perfectly clear: I have nothing against beginners in general, nor do I have any problem with younger contributors. I do have a problem with people who come here for the sole purpose of fooling around.

"Well, what caused you to judge that they are random...?"

For example, a video that "counts to a googolgong" but the numbers aren't even in the correct order. Why would any person who is genuinely interested in large numbers, post something like this?

"People can get interested in large numbers, even when they see a large number which you do not regard as a non-sense target, e.g. 100000000000000000000000000 or 99×…×99 (99 ^99 times)."

I know that. Please, p-bot, give me some credit. My point is that there's a difference between things that a beginner might find exciting (like the stuff you just posted) and complete-and-utter-nonsense.

There's also a difference between the type of nonsense that looks like an honest mistake (due to the many pitfalls and common misconceptions that the general public has about large numbers) and a person just fooling around.

"Remember that we have an example, Ubersketch. He had written so many blog posts and comments on non-sense "random facts" including so many obviuous mistakes as if they were trivial truth. After then, he tried to create a notation corresponding to Cantor's normal forms, which is greatly related to googology. Although he has never completely defined a googological stuff, I hope that he continues to study mathematics in a step-by-step way."

Yes, we have an example: Ubersketch, who consistently ignored your explanations, never even bothered to check the most basic things about the stuff he posted, and always whined about the fact that people like you and me are expecting him to make sense.

We've spent a huge amount of time on him. Did he learn anything?

Seems to me that this example only serves to prove my point...