# Should my question be closed?

See the question "On the number of $n$-perfect numbers". Some people claimed that it should be closed because I know the answer while I don't simply because they are hard open problems in number theory that I wasn't aware of until some friends told me about it after asking this question on MO.

Now what to do? Should we close it or leave it open for receiving possible partial results related to these open problems in future?

## migrated from mathoverflow.netNov 8 '15 at 7:17

This question came from our site for professional mathematicians.

• Why down-votes?! – user82509 Nov 8 '15 at 6:46
• This question should at least be on meta.MO. I've voted to move it there. – David Roberts Nov 8 '15 at 6:55
• You know that the answer is that they are hard, open problems. What more do you want? – Gerry Myerson Nov 8 '15 at 9:06
• @GerryMyerson I'm not sure whether the question (2) is as hard as the others. Maybe one has some ideas about it. – user82509 Nov 8 '15 at 9:08

## 1 Answer

The official documentation says:

If it turns out that a problem is equivalent to a known open problem, then the [open-problem] tag is added, and the question is converted to community wiki. After that, the question essentially becomes, "What is known about this problem? What are some possible ways to approach this problem? What are some ways that people have tried to attack it before, and with what results?" That way, the MO thread for the problem becomes a repository of resources related to the problem. Perhaps the answers could be organized by approach, with an outline of the basic approach, followed by a horizontal rule and a summary of what is promising about the approach and why it doesn't give a complete solution.

This is what it seems you did more or less. Thus, theoretically you should be good.

This is, however, in my opinion completely out-dated. Perhaps finally the time has come to change it.