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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What should we call a tag on point-free topology?
The tag currently used for point-free topology (aka “pointless” topology) is “locales”. I think the name is a bit restrictive: while writing this question (which, indeed, does not contain the word “...
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On the tag [bitcoins]
Since several questions under the tag bitcoins have nothing to do with Bitcoin per se, but, rather, are related to proof of work, why not rename the tag cryptocurrencies or proof-of-work?
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imgur will remove some content soon. Does MathOverflow need to save images?
It has been reported that "Hosting site Imgur will remove explicit and anonymous content next month". Are there possibly some images linked in MathOverflow questions or answers, attached to ...
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Best of MathOverflow, or papers inspired by MathOverflow
This is a place to collect MathOverflow success stories!
Was some of your research inspired by something on MathOverflow? Do you know questions & answers that led to interesting research? ...
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Revisiting our policies on thank-you comments
Despite the little notice in the comments section telling us that comments along the lines of 'thank you' aren't welcome because they don't move the discussion forward mathematically, I have always ...
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Jean-Christophe Yoccoz
I've heard today that Jean-Christophe Yoccoz passed two days ago:
Le mathématicien français Jean-Christophe Yoccoz, médaille Fields, est mort [archived], Libération, 05.09.2016.
I think people would ...
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I have a question which is a near fit for MathOverflow. What are some other resources I might consult?
What are some other resources which might be useful for somebody considering asking a MathOverflow question, especially if their question is not quite a perfect fit here?
In asking this, I have ...
Tim CampionMod
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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 ...
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Difference between Mathematics SE and MathOverflow
If I post a question that I invented myself on Mathematics SE, I receive comments like "did you do homework?" and, eventually, "why do you ask if you know?". Fair enough. It seems ...
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Rule against asking the same question that was once asked in the past (on another forum, yet)
In its relatively early days, MO was an organic and dynamic website — it encouraged active discussion among its members, that in almost all cases was extremely fruitful.
But now, even if a similar ...
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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 ...
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Celebrity usernames
The question "naive de Rham cohomology fails for singular varieties" (naive de Rham cohomology fails for singular varieties) recently received an apparently useful answer from a user with the name "...
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MathOverflow in the classroom
My belief is that it is legitimate to cite some posts of the main site MathOverflow in the classroom of some course. Under this assumption I've wondered about the following question.
I don't know ...
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Update on "Who owns my MathOverflow posts?"
I saw the question previously asked in:
Who owns my MathOverflow posts?
Unfortunately, I was not able to get a clear answer by reading the responses to that question, as other people had commented ...
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The number of MO users
Is there any statistics/diagram that shows and compares the number of MO users in the course of time?
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2022: a year in moderation
As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.
As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange ...
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Winter Bash on MO?
I noticed that the Stack Exchange sites are having a Winter Bash, and one of my friends received a hat on MSE. Why isn't this on MO? It'll be fun to have something like that here, wouldn't it? (I ...
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How is TeX rendered in edit summaries?
I recently edited a question Dynkin type classification for 2-dimensional hypersurfaces in non-commutative space, and entered as my edit summary "$<x,y>$ -> $\langle x,y\rangle$" <...
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Posting multiple "answers" to an already answered question
This question was asked and correctly answered three weeks ago. Since then another user has posted, as of today, five other "answers" describing his thoughts about related questions, ...
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Gaining points for posting
How do I earn 50 points to comment if I am not allowed to comment or post? So my problem is as described as far you can see.
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Should this question have been CW?
Yesterday I asked a big-list question (Examples of errors in computational combinatorics results). The question is naturally big-list because it asks for various examples. Now I am not quite familiar ...
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We have our first user with more than 200K reputation!
Congratulations to Joel David Hamkins who on (I think!) the 27th November 2022, was the first MathOverflow user to pass 200k reputation! Since Joel joined on the 19th November 2009, he has supplied ...
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MathOverflow conferences
What would the appropriate initial steps be to host a MathOverflow conference?
Back in 2019 I hosted a party for the 10th anniversary of MathOverflow, and it was a blast.$^*$ Since then I've ...
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Let us wear hats
Many of the other stackexchange sites enable a festive wintertime custom every year in late December, the Winter Bash, in which user profiles are accommodated with fanciful hats, earned for various ...
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Should we flag suspected ChatGPT posts?
Another meta question raised the issue of AI-generated (by ChatGPT or similar) posts.
I have a more specific question. If we see a post that we suspect to be of this genre, would the moderators like ...
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History of MathOverflow
What is history of this site? When and by whom was it created?
What were the important milestones of this site?
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My question was closed on MO because it is not research level. Where should I ask instead?
If a question is closed (put on hold) on MathOverflow as off-topic for not being research level-question, but it is still a question about mathematics. What might be a suitable place for such question?...
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How should we respond to user profiles (as opposed to questions or answers) that appear to be spam? [duplicate]
I've come across 10 different MO user profiles that all have very similar usernames that contain the name of a company. None of these users have any activity on the site except for filling out their ...
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Is this question about partition numbers too broad/vague?
Here's my proposed question (edit: now posted) (edit 2: posted version now edited):
I have found an algorithm for counting partitions, and I've been able to express it into a mathematical formula, $P(...
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Can a question be muted from showing up to the front of the page so answers can edit their response as much as they please?
I liked the answer to this question: An algebra of "integrals" by @anixx
Which had a very detailed table attached. My understanding is the answerer had updated the question some 35 times to ...
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Should tags be removed from spam?
When flagging spam, I usually delete tags and replace them by tag-removed as well. I just received a comment suggesting that this is not useful. It probably doesn'...
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Cleaning up comments
Traditionally, MathOverflow moderators only delete comments that are highly problematic. Even in that case, we copied the entire deleted comment thread to tea.mathoverflow.net. Since migrating to the ...
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ChatGPT strikes MathOverflow
The user (or a bot) https://mathoverflow.net/users/496085/canvas123 appears to be posting ChatGPT-generated text on MathOverflow.
Two “answers” by this user already got accepted (!):
When is a ...
Tim CampionMod
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Mathoverflow for finding the name of mathematical concepts
I am used to posting on MathOverflow problems with questions. However, now I am looking for the name of a mathematical object that I think already exists (and I would be happy to find reference ...
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Creation of "procrastination" tag
One user has created the tag procrastination: see this question. In principle I would have immediately deleted it as totally irrelevant (in the same way I would delete "Stupid question" or &...
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Frequently asked questions about tagging on MathOverflow
Due to several discussions on the main site, I am asking this question concerning the best practices for tagging questions on MathOverflow. Unfortunately, the relevant documentation page https://...
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The tags (publishing) and (journals) - maybe change direction or cancel the synonym
At the moment there is a synonym publishing $\to$ journals. (With the tag journals as the master tag.)
I think that at least for some questions tagged journals:
Using a tag called publishing might be ...
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Should there be any concern about the number of questions imported into PhysicsOverflow?
I just happened to note that http://www.physicsoverflow.org/ now exists; this isn't a stackexchange website, but seems to run on similar software, and with similar goals to mathoverflow, which seems ...
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New tag for "stochastic partial differential equations" (SPDEs)
Since there are separate tags for a) ODEs, ca.classical-analysis-and-odes and differential-equations and for b) ap.analysis-of-pdes but only one tag for stochastic-differential-equations, I was ...
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Why is this question locked?
This question has only two downvotes, which is not enough to keep it off the front page. I'd therefore like to downvote it, but can't, because it is locked for mysterious reasons.
Because this does ...
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Where did the reputation go?
Some time ago, it was decided that reputation should no longer be displayed by default, but users had the possibility to opt in to see it, as explained by Ben Webster. I had opted to see reputation, ...
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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 ...
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If it doesn't interest you, don't read it!
As an algebraist, if I see an analysis question on Mathoverflow that falls outside my expertise, I probably won't read it in details, and if I do read it, I certainly won't judge its "level",...
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Specialized chat rooms
Would there be an interest in having more specialized chat rooms, like the one for homotopy theory that currently exists?
So far, the homotopy theory one seems to be fairly successful, and it seems ...
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What to do with the erdos tag?
This was discussed before but that discussion is outdated.
Tags related to a specific person are generally bad. (This is not the same as specific topics named after a person, e.g. Galois theory is not ...
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Why was my question deleted?
Why was my question Is the Frog game solvable in the root of a full binary tree? deleted?
It was a cross-post, but I followed all recommended advices when doing so.
It was also decently upvoted (12+).
...
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2022 Election results: Congratulations to our new moderator!
The election is over, the votes have been counted, and on behalf of the current team and board, I'd like to welcome David Roberts to the moderators team!
I'd like to thank Carl-Fredrik Nyberg-Brodda ...
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2022 Community Moderator Election
The 2022 Community Moderator Election is now underway!
Community moderator elections have three phases:
Nomination phase
Primary phase
Election phase
Most elections take between two and three weeks, ...
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Nominating other community members
Is there no mechanism to suggest other community members for nomination?
If I remember correctly, last election there was some mechanism in place to suggest community members other than ourselves who ...
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Which questions should be tagged “reference-request”?
The reference-request tag is currently described as: “this tag is used if a reference is needed in a paper or textbook on a specific result.”
I have found current usage of this tag too broad to be ...
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