2 ms·
> Apart from the care Knuth takes, what's remarkable is that he has basically put out a permanent invitation to a DDoS on his time and attention—everyone in the
by lou1306 4y ago
> Apart from the care Knuth takes, what's remarkable is that he has basically put out a permanent invitation to a DDoS on his time and attention—everyone in the world is invited to contact him about every word he has ever written—and somehow still continues to produce new material.
I mean, this is just a best practice among academics -- every paper has at least one corresponding author to whom you should write for all inquiries about it. Of course, Knuth's immense popularity and the chance you may get a reward [0] contribute to the intensity of the DDoS.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth_reward_check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth_reward_check (of course, the "reward" is not really the money, but rather getting recognition from Don Knuth himself)
- smitty1e 4y ago> everyone in the world is invited to contact him about every word he has ever written But not by email.
- lou1306 4y agoWell, as others have pointed out, at his scale this is likely a necessary rate-limiting countermeasure. Even relatively obscure academics easily end raking up hundreds of emails in their inboxes once they are senior enough. With someone as popular as Knuth, it would be madness.
- svat 4y agoYes by email (search the posted page for "@" or look under "Rewards" at https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/taocp.html#:~:text=Rewards https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/taocp.html#:~:text=Rewards ) And when I said "invited" I meant "strongly incentivized": by offering cash rewards (initially) and those highly prized "Knuth checks", he surely gets orders of magnitude more scrutiny and error reports than a typical academic.