Theoretical Computer Science 
Theoretical Computer Science Meta
The question-and-answer site cstheory, also known as “Theoretical Computer Science,” was founded in 2010 by community volunteers, and now has over 4500 registered users. Some of the founding members of cstheory participated in discussion of a proposed solution to the P/NP problem that spanned multiple blogs, led to the creation of wiki pages, and brought together researchers in disparate areas from around the world. This effort made it clear that the worldwide theoretical computer science community was ready for – and needed – a structured way to ask research-level questions and to consider answers to such questions. (For more background on cstheory, please see this SIGACT News article.)
This blog is intended for community discussion of topics in theoretical computer science, broadly construed. While the blog’s parent site (cstheory) requires that questions asked there be “research-level” (e.g., not elementary), posts and comments here can have a wider scope. We hope to publish both introductory and advanced posts in complexity theory, learning theory, quantum computing, programming language theory, logic, algorithms, and other areas of theory, and theory applied to practice.
We are actively soliciting one-time contributions, and the participation of regular contributors. If you would like to participate in the blog, please email one of the editors — Joe Fitzsimons or Aaron Sterling — or post your interest on the blog contributor signup sheet.
Editors’ bios:
Aaron Sterling is a PhD candidate in computer science at Iowa State University. He is currently a Visiting Predoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University, working with Ming-Yang Kao on the theory of self-assembly. He authors the blog Nanoexplanations.
Joe Fitzsimons recieved his DPhil from the from the University of Oxford in 2007, and is currently research assistant professor at the Centre for Quantum Technologies, at the National University of Singapore, and a visiting lecturer at University College Dublin. Prior to joining CQT, Joe spent 3 years as a Junior Research Fellow at Merton College, Oxford, and as a visiting researcher at the Institute for Quantum Computing and the department of Combinatorics and Optimization at the University of Waterloo. His research interests lie mainly in the field of quantum computation.
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Is there a reason for not having a “link rel=alternate” pointer to the feed? Yes, there’s a “Subscribe via RSS” link on the page, visible to humans, but the link rel syntax allows software to figure out where the feed is given only the url to the blog itself.
Hi David, I don’t know the answer. I copypasted your question into this question on meta.
Looking forward to great posts!
“Some of the founding members of cstheory participated in discussion of a proposed solution to the P/NP problem […]. This effort made it clear that the worldwide theoretical computer science community was ready for – and needed – a structured way to ask research-level questions and to consider answers to such questions.”
I was not aware of this piece of history. It seems ironic to me that exactly the type of question that apparently lead to the founding of cstheory.SE is deemed inappropriate on the site today.
Part of the purpose of the blog is to be able to have more open-ended discussion. The cstheory policy decision not to permit discussion of non-peer-reviewed papers (especially relating to P/NP)( is here. In that link, you will see that people were explicitly saying that a Q&A site is not a good medium for such discussion, but that a blog would be. Not that Joe and I plan to feature every paper that claims to resolve P/NP, or to efficiently solve graph isomorphism. My point is that the scope of the blog is much broader than the scope of the Q&A site.