MSE is for noobs, think HS and uni students. MO is for pros, think PhDs, researchers etc.

Adults, who might or not have graduated or attended high school or University, also use MSE.

There are probably some very clever people who are not PhDs nor professional researchers using MO too, GP was just giving examples ('think [...]').

This is not a helpful comment.

MO is for research-level discussions, questions are often bumped from one to the other (more often from MO to MSE).

Math Overflow domain and name are owned by a nonprofit organization, see https://meta.mathoverflow.net/questions/969/who-owns-mathove...

> The MathOverflow corporation is completely independent from Stack Exchange and its mission is to ensure the continued operation of the site in a manner that meets the needs and expectations of the community.

Does it make it more or less hostile than Stack Exchange?

They claim "The MathOverflow corporation is completely independent from Stack Exchange"

and then when you click Legal notice, you see that all conditions and legal of Stack Exchange applies.

In addition:

> This letter is to confirm that, per our communications, that MathOverflow ("MathOverflow") agrees that the website, MathOverflow (located at www.mathoverflow.net, www.mathoverflow.com and www.mathoverflow. org (the "MathOverflow Domains"), the assets of which are owned and controlled by MathOverflow, will be upgraded to Stack Exchange, Inc.'s ("Stack Exchange") version 2.0 software model and, in conjunction with this upgrade, MathOverflow accepts Stack Exchange 2.0's Terms of Service (http://stackexchange.com/legal/tems-of-service, the "Terms"

===

"completely independent" is perhaps exaggerated claim.

The corporation is independent, and has the right to unilaterally leave the website at any time. The current website is not independent.

MSE is sometimes perceived as hostile to beginners because it often closes off newbie questions that lack context or are thought to be of low quality. MO is not suffering from this because almost all such questions are migrated to MSE. In this sense, yes, MO is less hostile than MSE because its hostility is outsourced to MSE.

> Thievery corporation

My experience with MathOverflow was funny, the first time I posted a question it was almost immediatly downvoted and criticized by the moderators. Later the same day, I was surprised when my question was answered by Terence Tao, then the moderators quickly changed their opinion and people started to upvote the question.

Mathematics even worse than Software Engineering because lay practitioner can miss significance of question. If you have link to question, would appreciate. Just out of curiosity to see if I would realize why question is interesting. That in itself is a skill.

To be fair the question was kind of naive, about language, but T. Tao bother to answer and made my day. https://mathoverflow.net/questions/206544/why-do-people-use-...

Thank you for responding. Assuaged my curiosity :)

I believe one was for professionals and the other one for students. Don't remember which one, I guess Overflow is for professionals since we use it for coding.

Honestly it’s Stack Overflow that’s really the "noob" level programming discussion, with 95% of questions incredibly elementary, whether "professional" or not. cstheory.stackexchange.com is more analogous to mathoverflow.com in that it’s about research-level questions.

I think Math Overflow was the first overflow instance after SO, so it has a sort of a special status and its own domain. *.stackexchange.com came later to meet the growing demand for more instances.