Timeline for What should be the policy on "open problems" on MO?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
16 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 15, 2013 at 19:52 | comment | added | Yemon Choi | I concur with Todd. Even for something which isn't a crank magnet, like "does ${\rm H}^\infty({\bf D})$ have Grothendieck's approximation property?", I think asking the question without showing any sign of being able to contribute meaningfully is unhealthy. | |
| Jul 15, 2013 at 17:05 | comment | added | Todd Trimble | I am quite leary of allowing open problems for two reasons: (1) Goldbach's Conjecture, Twin Prime Conjecture, Riemann Hypothesis would be like opening the floodgates to crank posts, and (2) attributions and credits could get very messy, especially with the damned point system muddying matters. Oh and (3) asking a famous open question is the easiest and laziest thing in the world; do we really want to upvote questions that take no thought up to the skies? Much better would be a kind of polymath divide-and-conquer approach, where big problems are broken down to smaller ones in an organized way. | |
| Jul 14, 2013 at 22:30 | comment | added | user9072 | I am not quite sure who is notified of what, so I comment here that I put up a draft (as an asnwer here) for the open problem section of the revised faqs. I would be happy if you would provide some feedback. | |
| Jul 4, 2013 at 20:05 | comment | added | Kaveh | I think we can welcome them but at the same time have a higher expected standard for questions asking open problems. I don't think the real issue is being an open problem or a "closed" problem. What is important is that it should be clear what the OP is looking for (what would be an acceptable answer?) and it should be possible to answer it in principle. For example, if someone directly asks for a solution to a "closed" problem like FLT would that be fine? I don't think so. It would probably get closed as too broad or unclear. I think same applies to open problems. | |
| Jul 4, 2013 at 15:39 | comment | added | Joel David Hamkins | I think I would prefer to just stand by answer, which is clear enough: I think we should explicitly welcome open questions. | |
| Jul 4, 2013 at 15:17 | comment | added | user9072 | On the other matter: yes it is not the same, though in the end there is no effective difference between editing a question a lot and closing the original and reasking a new one. But, my point is, since you seem to agree that the question I mentioned should not be left as is, I do not see why you would be against discouraging, which is what I suggested (the closing was only parenthetical with an added perhaps), it being asked in the first place in this form. | |
| Jul 4, 2013 at 15:11 | comment | added | user9072 | Perhaps could you give the specific edit of my question you have in mind. Say, do you propose to leave the question as-is and just add this is also known as Goldbach's conjecture? Or, to edit it into: Do you know a proof for Goldbach's conjecture? Sorry for the many comments, but it is truly unclear to me how this should work well. | |
| Jul 4, 2013 at 14:59 | comment | added | Joel David Hamkins | I think it would work well. Note that asking Goldbach's conjecture is not the same as asking whether it is already proved. And editing a question is not the same as closing or deleting it; sigh. Meanwhile, I would enjoy seeing more open questions on the main site. I really doubt that I know of them all already... | |
| Jul 4, 2013 at 14:36 | comment | added | user9072 | Thank you for the clarification. But does this actually work? If somebody were to ask my question, so then it would be edited to "Is Golbach's conjectured already proved?" This then is first in a formal sense already type (b), so one could infer you agree (a) is not good, after all you suggest to edit it into type (b) and thus to effectively delete this type (a) question. But this particular one does not strike me as a very reasonable question to ask either. If it would be more specific I would have no problem though. This is what I mean roughly speaking with (b) in a reasonable way. | |
| Jul 4, 2013 at 14:28 | comment | added | Joel David Hamkins | I had meant in my "foolish" remark merely that such questions would be edited so that they would be properly described in the question and title, for example, as "Goldbach's conjecture". I don't think we should close such questions down. | |
| Jul 4, 2013 at 13:49 | comment | added | user9072 | We might want to distinguish two things, which in my opinion are quite different: (a) asking an open problem on MO and (b) asking (something) about an open problem. What I write above is what I understand under (a) (in this case done for Goldbach conjecture). Since you consider doing this as making one look very foolish, we might want to consider to disourage doing it (and perhaps also to close it when it happens). In brief I think we should discourage (a) but I have in principle no problem with (b), at least not when done in a reasonable way (I will elaborate on what I mean by this later). | |
| Jul 4, 2013 at 13:09 | history | edited | Joel David Hamkins | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 165 characters in body
|
| Jul 4, 2013 at 13:07 | comment | added | Joel David Hamkins | I don't see a problem with someone asking Goldbach's conjecture on MO. But they would look very foolish, in my opinion, to ask the question without mentioning that it is Goldbach's conjecture. So probably such questions would be correctly labeled in the question itself (and title). I don't see the need to reproduce a wikipedia page, and for this reason probably wouldn't vote up someone who did, but if someone wanted to do it, what is the harm? If we had GBC on MO, then if there were ever some partial progress on it or related matters, we might get an answer update. Wouldn't this work well? | |
| Jul 4, 2013 at 12:58 | comment | added | user9072 | Thank you for the contribution to the discussion. I agree about the first part. To some extent also with the second part, though I do not like the polynomial question that much myself. However, what I do not quite follow or perhaps understand is your proposal regarding very prominent open problems. So, someone should ask: is every even integer greater 2 the sum of two primes? And, then somebody replies this is known as Golbach's conjecture and then we reproduce first some sort of Wikipedia page of it and then various ancounts on it. Is this the idea or somethig else? | |
| Jul 4, 2013 at 12:48 | history | edited | Joel David Hamkins | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 43 characters in body
|
| Jul 4, 2013 at 12:20 | history | answered | Joel David Hamkins | CC BY-SA 3.0 |