Questions tagged [discussion]
The question you're asking is designed to solicit opinions or best-practices on a particular topic, with the goal of reaching community consensus.
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Incentivizing ‘bad’ questions
As a 5+ year member of MO, I remember the old days when upvotes on questions only netted you 5 points as opposed to the current 10.
While I was generally glad to see good questions being rewarded in a ...
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MathOverflow answers and peer review
Sometimes, the asker does not have sufficient background to verify an answer. How should one handle such cases?
Some of the signals on whether to accept such an answer are whether it 'looks' good, ...
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Ordered rings tag
I've noticed that while there are tags ordered-groups and ordered-fields, there is no tag ordered-rings. The issue is that there was a little amount of questions with this tag. So it got deleted.
I ...
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Is it fine to repost questions from a paper
Is it fine to re-ask open questions from ones paper on mathoverflow?
On the one hand, I am interested in finding an answer to the question, and it might help if it is more publicly available. But if I ...
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How do we fit in with Stack Exchange’s new AI agreement with Google?
Stack Exchange has some kind of new AI agreement with Google, as announced in their blog.
I’m just trying to get caught up myself here on what exactly is going on, but one real possibility is that ...
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Request to consider undeleting an answer
Apologies if this should go in the "requests to undelete questions" thread but this seems to be technically different.
I noticed that this answer https://mathoverflow.net/a/465960/ has ...
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I am seeking a solution to an Abel equation of the first kind with f0=0. y’=f3(x)y^3+f2(x)y^2+f1(x)y. f3,f2, and f1 are are given in the body [migrated]
The Abel equation of the first kind with $f_0=0$.
$$
y'=f_3(x)y^3+f_2(x)y^2+f_1(x)y \tag{1}
$$
where
\begin{align}
f_3(x)&=(12x^2-2)/x,\\
f_2(x)&=(14x^2-1)/x^2,\\
f_1(x)&=3/x.
\end{align}
...
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Closing via - "review queue"
For those who missed (like me) - there exists "review queue" - and some questions can be closed via that pipeline.
So even old questions can be closed without any activity, which is unusual.
...
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Why was my spam flag declined on an answer that does nothing but promote the answerer's book?
I recently encountered an answer that does nothing but refer to the poster's book:
Please look pages 141-147 of the book:
S. Saitoh and Y. Sawano, Theory of Reproducing Kernels and Applications, ...
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A MathJax/LaTeX question
In This question, the following appears:
$$[0,2] \times \left[0,4-\sqrt{3}\right] \times \left[0,4-\sqrt{3}\right] \times \mathop{\Large\times}_{i=1}^{k-3}[0,2]$$
Thinking that that last $\times$ ...
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Using mathoverflow as a blog
In the past, I’ve seen instances where a user has been accused of ‘using mathoverflow as a blog’; the specific criteria for when this accusation is leveled vary, but generally the following are ...
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Suggestions for the design of a font for math articles/books
Recently I've resumed work on a font I'm currently developing, meant to be released as a completely free, open-source, OFL-licensed font designed specifically for use in papers, theses, books, lecture ...
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1
answer
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Is there a way to see the up/down vote spread on all questions asked by a given user?
When you as a user get some sufficiently high reputation, you can see the up/down vote spread of any question/answer. Now suppose there's some user, X, you're interested in. On their page you can sort ...
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2023: a year in moderation
It’s that time of the year again! As we wave goodbye to last year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.
As most of you here might be ...
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Should there be a banner with some basic info about MO in the right sidebar?
A recent discussion about customizing the "Draft your question" panel reminded me of an older one here: Feature request: add short "about MathOverflow" section to the front page.
...
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Should community wiki answers be eligible for bounties?
I posted an answer to this question Kepler conjecture: Are there only two most efficient packings or could there be more than two? summarizing various points made in the comments into a coherent ...
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Are "has this been studied before" questions on topic?
I have a fairly elementary question but rather than feeding it straight to the wolves I thought I would ask it here. Well, via a more general question:
Are questions of the form "has $X$ been ...
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How often are questions "successfully" migrated to MSE?
I rarely use MSE and so I don't have a good feel for what it's like overall. I was slightly surprised by a recent comment by Christian Remling which characterizes MSE as a "homework factory with ...
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Why isn't "Nobody has answered" on the multiple-choice list of reasons for a bounty?
When one is asked "Why are you starting this bounty?" the multiple-choice list of answers does not include "Nobody has answered the question." Choosing the answer that says it has ...
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Procedure for requesting a complete removal from MathOverflow
With any online community, as the users and the company owning the domain change, it is inevitable that some users will want to exit the community. For example, many Facebook users deleted their ...
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Most important results of the year - appropriate or not?
The question Most important results in 2023 has been posted to MO, and as in previous years, has had a mixed reception. (EDIT: As of this writing, the post has been deleted by the author, presumably ...
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Is asking for the status of Vandiver's conjecture suitable for MO?
I wonder what the current status of Vandiver's conjecture in number theory is? An internet search revealed the paper "Vandiver's conjecture via K-theory" by Alexander Stolin from 2020 on the ...
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Should this question be reopened
Given the comments, should this question be reopened Is |A| < |B| possible if A->B is surjective?
With a negative score, no answers and closed it will be automatically deleted, losing the ...
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Should we be more polite when closing non-research-level questions?
We get many questions from students (usually in high school, or less-advanced undergrads) that are clearly off-topic since they’re well below research-level. Mods and high-rep users are generally ...
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Why is it taking so much longer than it used to for MathJax to get rendered?
These last few days when I click on a posting it sometimes takes more than a minute or even two, for MathJax to get rendered. It used to be a couple of seconds.
Is anything being done to correct this?
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On documents found over the internet and sites that make them available
Yesterday on MO I saw this question and gave this answer by posting a link I found by googling (more precisely, I used DuckDuckGo). The sought for paper is from a series of preprints issued by the ...
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affiliation or association (in the wording of the promotion help page)
There is a little discussion in the comments of a recent MO question on the meaning of the word "affiliation" in our promotion help page. If you promote one of your own publications in a ...
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Feature: Making the MO-guidelines visible while editing questions?
I noticed that some of the MO questions that get closed are clear-cut going against the MO-guidelines eg. "here is the link to my new result" or "here is the jpg file of my homework ...
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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 ...
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Is this an AI bot? Can't tell if answer is from a real person
This question of Baez is getting a string of strange answers. I can't tell if the author is a mathematician, but their answers don't make much sense to me.
Which finite abelian groups aren't ...
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Does anyone remember seeing this answer/comment? (A famous result known earlier than believed)
I remember seeing the following interesting exchange recently on MathOverflow:
someone asked a question about something,
another person ($X$) answered (or commented) that the answer is such-or-such ...
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What happened to my MathOverflow account?
I posted this question from my account two days ago. Now suddenly, I saw I don't have an account any longer. I tried to log in and Overflow created a new account. Can someone please shed some light on ...
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Should the dots used in lambda-calculus notation be typographically treated the way binary relation and binary operation symbols are?
Within this question we find the notation $\lambda f . \lambda g . \lambda x.f(g\ x)$, and that causes me to wonder about a point of LaTeX and MathJax usage.
The code ...
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May I Offer Money to People Who Answer My Question on MathOverflow?
Erdos and others have offered prize money to people who answered their questions.
May I offer money to people who answer my questions on MathOverFlow?
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Drive-By Deletion of Answer to Own Question by Moderator
I'm a bit confused by some moderator action. I posted a question asking for a direct proof of a certain fact. A superb answer was provided by Jochen Glueck. (Thanks again!)
I came across another proof ...
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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, ...
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There is no any answer box for this post
I would like to add an answer to this question but there is no any answer box for this question.
What is the reason?
Nonequivalent definitions in Mathematics
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Is deleting posts a good practice?
In principle, MO posts can be cited in papers; on the other hand, MO posts get deleted sometimes. There is a risk, then, of referring a MO post which no longer exists. Is deleting posts a good ...
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Moderation strike update 6 and last : back to work
As you probably were aware, since early June moderators around the whole SE network have been striking, including at MathOverflow. We appreciate your patience through this time, and there has been a ...
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Moderation strike update 5 : the results of negotiations
The negotiations over the strike have ended with agreement addressing all the issues raised by the striking moderators. The post on meta.StackExchange was vetted and agreed to by both sets of ...
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Posting a technical/narrow open question on mathoverflow?
I am a bit confused on our policy for open-problems. Are we allowed to post a technical/narrow conjecture/open problem on MO?
For example, here is a type of a beautiful question that I have in mind ...
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Are questions about mathematical writing acceptable on the main site?
I have a question concerning mathematical writing, a draft of which is posted below if you are interested. The question I wish to ask on Meta however is about whether questions concerning mathematical ...
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Transferring a misplaced question after it has a positively received answer
I recently goof'd and forgot that hsm.stackexchange exists, and posted a history of mathematics question here.
This was kindly pointed out to me by a user here, but the question already had a ...
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The tag (elementary-number-theory) - yes or no?
The tag elementary-number-theory was created and removed a few times in the past. And recently it was created again - it is still listed among the new tags.
Should there be a separate tag for ...
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Moderation strike update 4
This update is to point to two posts by the company on the platform-wide meta site, Meta Stack Exchange.
The post (Historical) Policy on the use of GPT Generators is a copy of the private policy on ...
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"In the past one and half years, Stack Overflow has lost 50% of its traffic."
In a tweet by Mahesh Sathiamoorthy, I saw a chart showing a substantial recent drop:
Two questions: (1) Is this accurate? (2) What does the analogous chart for MathOverflow show?
(I can't remember ...
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Moderation strike update 3
There was a lull in the negotiations, for various innocuous reasons that are not relevant. But on 20th July 2023, the following update was posted to Discord by negotiator Mithical, and reposted at the ...
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Will the closure of Gfycat affect MO?
Gfycat is a hosting service for (animated) GIF files, which will close on September 1st, 2023. Since some MO users might have included GIF files hosted on Gfycat in their posts, does the service's ...
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Moderation strike update 2
There has been movement at the station. Reposting an update on how the negotiations are going from this answer on meta.StackExchange, which also gives details on other updates over the past fortnight.
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How can I improve my posts to attract responses?
This is a follow up to this post:
I haven’t received a response from either this or this post, since, according to @Asaf Karigila:
"The longer, more detailed, more effort that is required to ...