Linked Questions

2 votes
0 answers
231 views

Undelete request, question 455497 [duplicate]

I'm asking if question 455497 could be undeleted. It was about multiplicative persistence. Even if the question itself was not that well-prepared, it was a valid question about research (at some level ...
Jukka Kohonen's user avatar
56 votes
5 answers
11k views

What happened to the dear user "quid" (9072), they appear deleted?

What happened to the dear user "quid" (9072), they appear deleted? Noticed this by edits I remember were from them. Google still remembers them and the user page of user number 9072 returns 404 (...
joro's user avatar
  • 24.2k
40 votes
3 answers
3k views

What shall we do with stone soup?

Sometimes, a question is asked that isn't up to the standards of MathOverflow. Maybe it's worded vaguely, maybe it's too open ended, or maybe the asker fundamentally misunderstood something important. ...
Scott Morrison's user avatar
20 votes
7 answers
2k views

What is needed to succeed in keeping up the level of the site and retaining the good contributors?

MathOverflow is a nice high-level communitiy with a good collegial academic atmosphere. I'd like to know about how this can be achieved; for example how does MathOverflow keep up the good qualitiy of ...
Dilaton's user avatar
  • 408
18 votes
5 answers
1k views

On the recent question "Is Euclid dead?", or: Is it considered good practice to use MathOverflow for a campaign?

Yesterday, a question entitled Is Euclid dead? has been asked in which the OP states: "Currently I am leading a campaign for the return of EG to the syllabus of the high schools of my country (...
Stefan Kohl's user avatar
  • 19.5k
56 votes
1 answer
2k views

Deleted answered question / arXiv posts based on unacknowledged MO posts

I'd like to mention here two possibly related facts: (a) Soon after this question was answered, there was an arXiv paper posted providing the same answer (b) Soon after this closely related ...
YCor's user avatar
  • 60.1k
14 votes
7 answers
1k views

2013 Moderator Election Q&A - Questionnaire

In connection with the moderator elections, we are holding a Q&A thread for the candidates. Questions collected from an earlier thread have been compiled into this one, which shall now serve as ...
Grace Note's user avatar
  • 101
-2 votes
5 answers
1k views

close/reopen wars on Mathoverflow

Sometimes one sees a situation like with this question: Cargo Cult Science in mathematics? which goes on hold and back again a number of times. Should there be a limit to the number of such rounds? ...
Dima Pasechnik's user avatar
14 votes
3 answers
1k views

Should we try to re-start manual deletions or is the situation fine anyway?

On MO 1.0 we had, after some discussions and conflicts but still, what I think was a quite smoothly and efficiently working process of deleting "bad" content. It seems with the move to MO 2.0 this ...
user avatar
6 votes
2 answers
2k views

User retention rates on MathOverflow

A two-input table : First input : number of users with more than $500, 1000, 2500, 5000$ or $10000$ reputation points. Second input : number of users not seen for more than $1/12, 1/4, 1/2, 1, 2$ or $...
Sebastien Palcoux's user avatar
19 votes
2 answers
1k views

Why do non-research and soft questions get closed if and only if the poster lacks high reputation?

The title says it all. Don't get me wrong. I have actually enjoyed my first few weeks on MO. I am not writing out of personal vendetta. That is, I have not had any of my own questions closed and I ...
Peter Dukes's user avatar
  • 1,071
10 votes
1 answer
493 views

Should there be a "statute of limitations" for closable questions?

Ever more frequently I find in the "close votes" review queue questions which are a few years old. Many of them already have accepted answers, and one can see that they were well received at the time ...
Ramiro de la Vega's user avatar
-6 votes
1 answer
335 views

How the moderators/admin decide the significance/research orientation of any question before closing it? is it intuitive to them?

I am not sure whether there exists some kind of objectivity in taking a decision in closing a question. For example my question https://mathoverflow.net/questions/226226/a-symmetric-function was ...
user avatar
7 votes
1 answer
424 views

I fixed my question. Can it please be taken off hold now?

Yesterday I asked a question on parameterizations of knotted surfaces in $\mathbb R^4$. After I stated in the comments that I wanted the question to be kept to the case of a general surface, the ...
silvascientist's user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
851 views

Why was "Is it meaningful to work on convergencies, integration, etc. on the Zariski topology?" closed?

This post is about the question Is it meaningful to work on convergencies, integration, etc. on the Zariski topology? It is an interesting, relevant question which attracted two excellent answers. The ...
Frank Thorne's user avatar
  • 7,199
-2 votes
1 answer
385 views

Legitimate questions put on hold with no comments, no notification, and no chance to improve

My question was put on hold as unclear. I see a number of issues in this: No intent was made to clarify the question via comments: it was just shut up. I consider it rude and unhelpful. No reason was ...
Alexander Gelbukh's user avatar
12 votes
1 answer
579 views

Undelete request, Question 290941

Could I request that Question 290941 be undeleted? It is a sensible question, and I spent some time finding a reference for the answer. It was then deleted by the poster - I have no idea why.
Derek Holt's user avatar
  • 36.4k
5 votes
1 answer
293 views

Once a thread is deleted, is it really too late to bring it back?

I was under the impression that "deleted" threads were still visible by moderators or other high-level members of the community. Is this correct? If a post was deleted that shouldn't have ...
silvascientist's user avatar
23 votes
0 answers
770 views

Should "The probability for a streak when tossing a coin" be reopened?

The question "The probability for a streak when tossing a coin" is on hold. [Edit: It has been reopened.] I disagree with closing the question and voted to reopen. This problem may sound like it is ...
Douglas Zare's user avatar
  • 27.8k
4 votes
2 answers
236 views

Why was "Awfully sophisticated proof for simple facts" closed (two years ago)?

Most likely veterans became bored with Awfully sophisticated proof for simple facts but for newcomers it is such a delight! My actual question is: what happens with closed questions? Do they become ...
მამუკა ჯიბლაძე's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
612 views

Some proposals for modifications of the process of closing/reopening questions

I wish to make a modest proposal on closing/reopening questions. Let me begin by noting that by far the most frequent reviews are Close votes -- almost 37,000, and looking quickly most of the close ...
Lucia's user avatar
  • 43.3k
9 votes
0 answers
701 views

Why this is off-topic?

I posted a question on MSE for two months and received no helpful answer. So I tried the same question on MO. I got 4 off-topic votes and so the question got migrated back to MSE. I'd like to mention ...
Troy Woo's user avatar
  • 163
4 votes
1 answer
388 views

Migrated question returned to MO - how to handle?

The question I am referring to is Is all complicated modern math intuitively understandable? (See the user's math.SE account to see that the question was at one point migrated to math.SE.) I think the ...
Yemon Choi's user avatar
  • 25.5k
10 votes
1 answer
358 views

Reopening questions after clarifications

I noticed that closing unclear questions often happens in next to no time while reopening them after the OP honestly follows the request to explain what he meant and does a reasonably decent job on ...
fedja's user avatar
  • 59.5k
10 votes
0 answers
566 views

Probability question migrated to stats.stackexchange

What has happened to the following question?: https://mathoverflow.net/posts/202242/revisions Firstly, it looks like a reasonable question to me (although the notation could be improved). Why was it ...
James Martin's user avatar
  • 3,787
6 votes
1 answer
330 views

How could I have better clarified my question?

I seem to keep getting my posts put on hold in various stack exchanges because it's "unclear what I am asking." How can I do better to prevent this? Specifically right now I'm asking about this ...
Phylliida's user avatar
  • 695
12 votes
0 answers
343 views

OpenScience Q&A just went live

Perhaps you are aware of the fact that there was an Open Science private beta at StackExchange that did not quite manage to develop enough traction so it was closed down recently. Some people want to ...
user avatar
6 votes
0 answers
353 views

Should this question remain closed?

The OP of How to project a vector onto a very large, non-orthogonal subspace has written to complain that the question was closed unfairly. The question is too far from my area of expertise to be ...
Todd Trimble's user avatar
  • 52.3k
6 votes
0 answers
298 views

Nominate bountied question for closure

Bountied questions cannot be closed: this prompted this meta-MO question. In the answer to that question, the reasons for this feature are explained (closure would shorten the bounty period, possibly ...
4 votes
0 answers
226 views

Thread for asking about suitability of math.SE question on MO?

Often there are questions of the type: "I have posted this question on math.SE. No satisfactory answer so far. Would this question be suitable for MathOverflow?" People ask this in various places: ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
187 views

I want to answer a closed question

Please reopen this question: A problem of an infinite number of balls and an urn I have a nice answer. (Added (DR): now re-opened. Please note there are ten deleted nonsense answers, which I imagine ...
Anixx's user avatar
  • 9,306
6 votes
0 answers
95 views

Tracing and Seeing deleted questions

Is there a way to search through deleted questions? Can a user reach his or her own old deleted questions? In the early days of MO I asked about similar sites in related disciplines and there were a ...
Gil Kalai's user avatar
  • 24.2k