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Maybe some context in the beginning. It is my second year in university so I am far away to be good enough to answer questions here, but from time to time I enjoy reading questions and answers. I guess over the time MathOverflow existed the possibilites of formatting the answers and the questions changed a lot (for example it is possible now to typeset commutative diagrams in mathjax via AMScd).

I am searching for some nice questions (presumably with nice answers) which "need" a make over with ${\rm\LaTeX}$. Is such a behaviour welcome and if so on which questions ?

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    $\begingroup$ As I have said elsewhere, I am not a fan of reformatting old answers just to add LaTeX if the original was legible and easily parsed. (For instance, I personally believe the edit on mathoverflow.net/a/4564/763 was unnecessary and just serves to bump a dead question.) $\endgroup$
    – Yemon Choi
    Commented Jul 15, 2013 at 8:38
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    $\begingroup$ Also, you should make that LaTeX symbol upright, surely $\endgroup$
    – Yemon Choi
    Commented Jul 15, 2013 at 8:39
  • $\begingroup$ However, it appears I am in a minority, so if the consensus is that the editing you propose is beneficial, then fair enough I suppose $\endgroup$
    – Yemon Choi
    Commented Jul 15, 2013 at 8:45
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    $\begingroup$ @YemonChoi: not to insist on this but for readers not reading everything, also in this case one might or might not have a different opinion regarding mathoverflow.net/posts/4575/revisions another answer to the same question, which was done at the same time. $\endgroup$
    – user9072
    Commented Jul 15, 2013 at 14:26
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    $\begingroup$ @quid that was the reason I fixed the others too. As I was setting one new I thought about refreshing them all $\endgroup$
    – Dominic Michaelis
    Commented Jul 15, 2013 at 15:38
  • $\begingroup$ Here is a related question (but this may be the wrong place to ask). Does anyone know about the status of Scott Morrison's feature request for non-bumping minor edits subject to review? [This question is partly due to my unfamiliarity with the procedures of the stack exchange network regarding feature requests.] $\endgroup$
    – Ricardo Andrade
    Commented Jul 15, 2013 at 19:09
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    $\begingroup$ @RicardoAndrade There are quite old similar feature requests at meta.SO, some of them tagged status-declined, so I doubt this gets implemented. See for example meta.stackexchange.com/questions/122567/… and meta.stackexchange.com/questions/26483/… (And you can surely find many more discussions on this there and on per-site metas.) $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Commented Aug 17, 2013 at 9:29

2 Answers 2

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There were some old "fancy ways around the html/LaTeX/markup conflicts" like doubling the backslash, etc., which now may screw the formulae to the extent that they are no longer legible. I think you should fix those for sure when you see them. However in the cases when the reading is easy and nothing strikes the eye, I would just leave things as they are.

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Just so we can see how out of sync I am: please vote this answer up if you think this revision, or also to compare to the original one, made an improvement significant enough to warrant doing years after the event; and please vote this answer down if you think the improvement was not significant enough to warrant doing this (or even if you think the revision wasn't an improvement.

I should note that this is being posted merely as a weathervane, not to rebuke Dominic in any way.

Update: please see the comments below by quid and Ricardo Andrade.

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  • $\begingroup$ I assume that we need to add a downvote for your opinion, right? $\endgroup$
    – Asaf Karagila Mod
    Commented Jul 15, 2013 at 11:40
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    $\begingroup$ Downvoted as I agree with you (in isolation). Also, I added another link so that one can see the changes more easily. Finally, while you say anyway it is not to rebuke, let me still also add that some other answer were edited at the same time, and in one there was a (minor) actual problem fiwed. (One could still debate if this is necessary but it slightly changes the situation.) $\endgroup$
    – user9072
    Commented Jul 15, 2013 at 14:19
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    $\begingroup$ I just want to confirm quid's statement that one of the edits (specifically to mathoverflow.net/a/14241/21095) did in fact fix a minor issue with a math display. $\endgroup$
    – Ricardo Andrade
    Commented Jul 15, 2013 at 18:59
  • $\begingroup$ You should have done what I did and go for some sort of inverse voting; might have gotten you a nice answer badge in the end. ;-) But then as Traven wrote... $\endgroup$
    – user9072
    Commented Jul 15, 2013 at 22:26
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    $\begingroup$ @quid: my choice of "orientation" was deliberate :-) $\endgroup$
    – Yemon Choi
    Commented Jul 16, 2013 at 0:10
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    $\begingroup$ A minor comment here: One of the formatting edits in this revision is actually incorrect--"span" is used as a verb but formatted as an operator. $\endgroup$
    – Charles Staats
    Commented Aug 17, 2013 at 14:51

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