Questions tagged [close-reasons]

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12 votes
1 answer
282 views

How to recommend that a question is better suited for another SE site that isn't listed in the close reasons?

Today I found MO questions where commenters recommended that Proof Assistants or History of Science and Mathematics would be preferable to MO. Other better placements I remember include Mathematica, ...
7 votes
1 answer
510 views

Repeated re-open/close votes (Tate conjecture)

The question Tate conjecture (Proved?) was asked yesterday, and quite quickly closed; it was then re-opened, and then closed (by, I think, a different set of 5). Questions about proofs of correctness ...
3 votes
2 answers
88 views

Can’t vote to close question as duplicate of question without an answer

I tried to vote to close Einstein problem; on mirror symmemtry as a duplicate of Aperiodic monotile without reflections?. But the software gave me an error I wasn’t expecting: it said because the ...
14 votes
2 answers
898 views

Revamping the closure reasons in 2022

Prompted by Gro-Tsen's recent meta question, it appears that now may be a good time to rethink our site-specific close reasons here on MathOverflow. Background: If you have sufficient rep, you can ...
12 votes
1 answer
563 views

Was the custom close reason mentioning Math.SE removed?

For a long time, these two custom close reasons used to be available: This question does not appear to be about research level mathematics within the scope defined in the help center. MathOverflow ...
11 votes
0 answers
267 views

New community close vote reason

While doing some cleanup on the home page just now, I noticed that we have a new community specific reason to close. The second option in the list is new, and leaves me slightly confused. While I ...
11 votes
1 answer
528 views

Could we add another reason for closing that's more appropriate for "check this (dis)proof of RH"-type questions?

I wanted to vote to close this question which claims to disprove the Riemann Hypothesis, but I realized that, even though we get questions of this kind occasionally, none of the reasons to close is ...
0 votes
0 answers
242 views

"overestimates topoi" and research level

I wonder now and then, why this question is still open Did Grothendieck overestimate topoi? Usually, MO's members tend to be very strict about what is and what isn't a good question. But why is this ...
5 votes
0 answers
204 views

How to find out why a post was deleted

It would help to know why a post was deleted, I believe in this case automatically by a MO monitoring robot. I am not judging the decision, but would like to know why, to avoid asking such questions ...
0 votes
0 answers
136 views

Unable to delete this post

I have been wanting to delete this post for quite sometime. Unfortunately a user already answered and my reputation is so low that I can’t accept or delete it. Note my original question is nothing ...
3 votes
0 answers
196 views

A case when the closure reason might be unclear to the OP (and possibly others)

There is this question I have read about the 3x+1 conjecture so I am thinking of 3x-1 instead closed as not research level. It is about replacing $3n+1$ with $3n-1$ in the Collatz conjecture. OP shows ...
8 votes
3 answers
1k views

Acceptability of "Changes forced by the pandemic"

I refer to this question by André Henriques. It is nonstandard, and prima facie there is a clear case for closing it, and at the time of writing there is one vote to do that. However, I personally ...
27 votes
2 answers
898 views

Concern about sending to academia.stackexchange

There have been two questions today with suggestions (one acted on, at time of writing) to close, with the question being better asked at academia.stackexchange: Referee reports and Covid lessons. In ...
1 vote
1 answer
252 views

Questions seemingly/apparently/ostensibly too elementary for overlfow

Well I don't really get notifications of flag responses sooo... Nov 6 at 14:01 helpful - I suggest you take this up in meta; there is not enough space to answer here. But there are a number of ...
10 votes
0 answers
310 views

What should you do if you find old duplicates?

Sometimes I discover that "old" MO questions are duplicates of even older MO questions. Two examples: Embarrassingly, I found out that my own question: Formula for number of permutations ...
2 votes
0 answers
104 views

Closing votes: what difference between "not research related" and "not research related" [duplicate]

I am reviewing many posts with close votes recently, and I often end up with the same uneasiness about the reason to chose. In the "Community specific reason" option, there are This question does ...
14 votes
1 answer
395 views

change in voting to close

I noticed today that the pop-up screens for voting to close a question have acquired a new layer. Clicking "close" used to produce a pop-up with checkboxes indicating various reasons for closing. Now ...
2 votes
0 answers
142 views

Merge the closing reasons "needs details" and "needs more focus"

I usually find unclear how to choose between the closing reasons "Needs details or clarity" and Needs more focus. Moreover the reasons "Off-topic because..." seem much more ...
8 votes
1 answer
510 views

List of close reasons has changed?

I just wanted to vote to close a question, and it looks like the list of options has changed The options are now: Duplicate of... Off-topic because... Needs details or clarify Needs more focus ...
4 votes
0 answers
126 views

Possible additional option for "See Math.Stackexchange" close vote [duplicate]

Some of the most common close votes are for people who have posted homework questions, to which the usual appropriate response (to my understanding) is to flag as off-topic with the message "...
19 votes
0 answers
883 views

Are we making it too tempting/easy to send inappropriate posts to MSE?

This "question" (asking for generalized help with a long list of elementary topics) is clearly going to be unwelcome almost anywhere, yet two users voted to close with a suggestion to "see math....
5 votes
0 answers
119 views

When we close questions and suggest MSE, should we link to their How to Ask? [duplicate]

When we close questions by saying MathOverflow is for mathematicians to ask each other questions about their research. See Math.StackExchange to ask general questions in mathematics. ...should the ...
-5 votes
1 answer
241 views

Close votes of different types

Sometimes when a question is closed, different people have a different reason for closing it. You can see this while voting: there is a count in the margin saying how many votes of a given type have ...
3 votes
0 answers
156 views

What's the difference between two off-topic flags? [duplicate]

I'm sure that this is somewhere on MMO, but my searching hasn't turned it up. When I flag a question as off-topic, two of the options that I am given are "This question does not appear to be about ...
-13 votes
1 answer
298 views

offtopic question

my question was off toped https://mathoverflow.net/questions/298576/eiπ-1-1iπ?noredirect=1#comment742859_298576 Now I clearly see no reason for this. Just like for having two distinct websites for ...
0 votes
0 answers
107 views

Another close reason: "subsumed"?

This happened few hours ago: the question Series involving gamma function about the sum of a specific series, probably not research level, was followed by another one, Series involving factorials ...
2 votes
2 answers
347 views

Is there a clear rule against "check this proof" type questions?

I discovered that the meta question "Questions" of the type "I have written something, please give me feedback" from more than three years ago still does not have any answer, while ...
3 votes
0 answers
95 views

Not a duplicate, but

Just encountered two questions, ADE type Dynkin diagrams and Is there a common genesis for ADE classifications? IMO, they are very-very similar, but this is not really a duplicate case, rather, ...
-2 votes
1 answer
448 views

May I know why is my question on hold when it is clearly research-level?

This is my question https://mathoverflow.net/questions/262039/central-properties-of-the-integers-mathbbz-over-other-structures-with-sum I think the question is clear enough and it is easy to ...
15 votes
1 answer
502 views

Allow questions to be closed as duplicates of questions on math.stackexchange.com

We frequently have questions that are crossposted, e.g. https://mathoverflow.net/questions/137414/systems-of-parameters-for-algebra-a#question. The only options for now are to close as off-topic, ...
2 votes
1 answer
155 views

Need help on my closed question

It is about this question on periodic structures: my question Currently I don't have any idea what is wrong with the question? It was totally rewritten by me and edited by other users, so now it ...
1 vote
1 answer
210 views

Why is my question on martingales off-topic and not migrated?

Here is my question: https://mathoverflow.net/questions/225181/show-that-ex-t-t-infty-le-ex-0-and-cp-sup-x-n-ge-c-le-ex-0 I said in the beginning to please migrate if needed. Could it be on-topic ...
8 votes
0 answers
504 views

Downvoting and Closing of a Good Question

This seems to be a perfectly good (i.e. interesting and nontrivial) question that was downvoted and closed for mysterious reasons. As far as I can tell, the main objection is that the author ...
4 votes
2 answers
235 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 ...
28 votes
2 answers
659 views

Migrating to Math.SE: too many close reasons [duplicate]

As everyone knows, we get a fair number of questions on this site that are not research level, but would be appropriate for http://math.stackexchange.com. As a frequent Math.SE user, I have an ...
14 votes
4 answers
2k views

What about the question "does Grothendieck have any pseudonymous paper"

There is a beginning of close war about that question. It has 25 votes, just got closed, but has already 3 "reopen" votes only three hours after it was closed. Only quiz has given in comments a reason ...
1 vote
0 answers
274 views

Why is this still 'unclear'? [closed]

I recently asked a question that was subsequently put 'on hold' for being 'unclear'. I then edited it pretty drastically, and as far as I can tell there is nothing really unclear about the new version,...
16 votes
0 answers
313 views

Redundant ways to close as off-topic/better on MSE [duplicate]

Right now, there are 4 ways to vote to close a question as off-topic. "This question does not appear to be about research level mathematics within the scope defined in the help center." "...
3 votes
2 answers
1k views

Why is this question considered undergraduate?

The question https://mathoverflow.net/questions/173132/number-of-combinations-of-ordered-sequences-of-n-integers is closed because it is considered "undergraduate"... could someone explain me how in ...
9 votes
3 answers
2k views

Why has the question "Optical methods for number theory?" been closed?

Edit: The MO question has now been reopened, and the two answers here that addressed it have been copied across. The question Optical methods for number theory? was put on hold. While answers are ...
16 votes
1 answer
802 views

Really minor complaint about the off-topic close menu

In the off-topic part of the close menu, the radio button for "this question does not appear to be about math" is annoyingly close to the link to the help center, at least for me: Twice now I've ...
9 votes
6 answers
393 views

Custom 'off-topic' reasons to close

Splitting off the first item from the main 6. Currently, the 'off-topic' reasons are: This question does not appear to be about research level mathematics, within the scope defined in the help center....
8 votes
1 answer
849 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 ...
-4 votes
2 answers
572 views

How do people determine if other people's questions are research level or not?

I post a question here: https://mathoverflow.net/questions/159016/on-convexity-of-function-in-c10-infty (now deleted). Obviously, those who closed it think it is too elementary. But how do they know ...
7 votes
1 answer
169 views

Custom closing link looks too much like it should be a migrate to MSE link [duplicate]

Currently, one of the custom off-topic closing reasons is: MathOverflow is for mathematicians to ask each other questions about their research. See Math.StackExchange to ask general questions ...
39 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. ...
33 votes
3 answers
1k views

Easy research-related questions, and closure reasons again

I am a bit confused by the close reason for https://mathoverflow.net/questions/154235/minimum-l1-norm-may-not-obtain-the-sparsest-solution?noredirect=1#comment395410_154235. It is an easy question ...
3 votes
3 answers
787 views

Why this question is not welcomed but others are welcomed in MO?

May I wonder why this question is not welcomed: accidental-unplanned-breakthroughs-in-mathematics see the votes-down. And unfriendly responses. but many others are even more broad or more opinion-...
34 votes
0 answers
618 views

Revamping the closure reasons

Motivation 1 Currently the custom off-topic reasons for MathOverflow read: This question does not appear to be about research level mathematics within the scope defined in the help center. ...