As I’ve said before, it seems that I just can’t resist the pedagogic imperative. So over the years I have sporadically contributed to that admirable and heavily used question-and-answer site, math.stackexchange. I’ve learnt a lot from it myself, as there are some first-rate logicians who contribute there. And I occasionally try to do my bit, when the spirit moves, to answer some (usually pretty elementary) logic questions, trying to Get Things Right.
I’ve now just hit my tenth anniversary there, and simultaneously just ratcheted up 50k “reputation” points (gosh, wot fun! — like getting a gold star at primary school). But is contributing to a question-and-answer site like this really worth doing?
I’d say yes. For a start, there are far worse ways of procrastinating on the internet! But anyway, I’ve just checked the estimate for the number of readers for my answers. And while we all know that idle browsing doesn’t in general mean that we are paying much attention, someone is unlikely to be visiting math.se and clicking on the link to an answer without some level of interest. I hope. Anyway, the stats are that approximately 1.8 million people have now viewed my answers there. Heavens above! Actually, I don’t really believe that figure: but even if the site’s algorithm heavily overcounts that’s still a goodly number of readers. And more than enough to encourage me to continue dropping by from time to time, trying to shed a bit of logical light.