Questions tagged [discussion]

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23 votes
1 answer
3k views

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?...
1 vote
0 answers
37 views

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 ...
0 votes
0 answers
133 views

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(...
-3 votes
1 answer
199 views

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 ...
9 votes
2 answers
211 views

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'...
13 votes
3 answers
580 views

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 ...
56 votes
2 answers
3k views

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 ...
14 votes
1 answer
318 views

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 ...
19 votes
1 answer
616 views

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 &...
17 votes
3 answers
1k views

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://...
4 votes
1 answer
226 views

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 ...
16 votes
4 answers
2k views

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 ...
9 votes
0 answers
287 views

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 ...
2 votes
1 answer
224 views

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 ...
-6 votes
1 answer
296 views

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, ...
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 ...
-5 votes
2 answers
553 views

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",...
12 votes
4 answers
559 views

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 ...
14 votes
1 answer
363 views

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+). ...
46 votes
0 answers
1k views

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 ...
7 votes
1 answer
541 views

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, ...
19 votes
2 answers
972 views

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 ...
14 votes
0 answers
215 views

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 ...
-14 votes
2 answers
615 views

Why my nomination for 2022 Community Moderator Election withdrawn without convincing reason?

I was honored to participate in the elections for moderation in MO 2022 , but I am sorry to say that my candidacy was withdrawn today without any convincing reason, frankly, I did not find it ...
4 votes
0 answers
283 views

Can I ask this question on Math Overflow? (Advice on how to get started)

I am thinking of applying for a maths PhD programme. I have more or less an idea of the subfield I'd like to research, but not much more than that. I'm looking for suggestions on how to properly ...
18 votes
11 answers
900 views

2022 Moderator Election Q&A – Question Collection

The purpose of this thread was to collect questions for the questionnaire. The questionnaire is now live, and you may find it here. MathOverflow is scheduled for an election next week, 2022-09-19. In ...
25 votes
4 answers
1k views

Examples of mathematical exposition arising from MO answers

I could imagine that several very long Mathoverflow answers have eventually turned into expository papers. For example, I have posted this (unpublished) expository paper on the arxiv about various ...
3 votes
2 answers
198 views

Should we allow link-only answers that point to stable, well known and respectable sites?

I have just been presented with an answer in the VLQ queue that consisted essentially in a link to a preprint on arXiv. The user having posted it is a high reputation user, so he definitely knows the ...
5 votes
0 answers
216 views

Partial answer accepted, thinking it could have been easily extended and provided enough insights

Some days ago I posted a question and I accepted an answer, "although it’s only a very partial answer," as the answer author wrote in a comment. I accepted it because I thought that it ...
1 vote
2 answers
824 views

Triangle commutative diagram does not work here at MO

I frequently tried to draw a triangle commutative diagram similar to the definition of projective modules for this question. A module associated to an endomorphism of a vector bundle so I ...
0 votes
0 answers
163 views

Asking if a post about a mathematical characterization of gravitational geons can be potentially interesting for the main site MathOverflow

I would like to ask about if a question about the following subject can be potentially interesting and on topic on MathOverflow. I would like to ask on the main site of MathOverflow about the ...
3 votes
1 answer
396 views

I lost my three questions

About 3_4 days ago 3 questions of mine got down vote but they were not "closed" or "onhold". After these downvotes, each of them became -1 vote, totally. Now I can not find these question. Where are ...
23 votes
0 answers
917 views

Upcoming election announcement (2022)

It has been quite some time since the last moderator election, and we decided that it would be a good idea to hold one soon. This is just a preliminary announcement to let you know that this is going ...
5 votes
0 answers
239 views

Would such a "big list" on known bounds for distances between $2^S-3^N$ be appropriate for MO?

After new questions and/or activities on older questions on "bounds for distances $2^S-3^N$" appeared in MO I thought whether a [BigList] or [CommunityWiki] on known such bounds (their ...
16 votes
1 answer
840 views

Should moderators in some cases remove a question from the network-wide hot questions list?

Not too long ago - in March 2019 - some changes have been made to the Hot Network Questions (HNQ). Some of the new features are the limit on the number of hot questions from a single site, or limit on ...
2 votes
2 answers
169 views

When, precisely, should history of math questions be CW?

I don't have much experience with "history of math" questions or the ho.history-overview tag. I tried to distill an answer to my question from looking at existing questions, but failed to ...
3 votes
0 answers
155 views

Planar geometry on MO

"Planar geometry" here is 2-dimensional Euclidean geometry, usually used as Olympiad geometry problem, its objects just be a bunch of lines and circles, it has no Combinatoric aspect and not ...
11 votes
0 answers
375 views

To which extent should spam posts on meta be considered a problem?

MathOverflow is one of the few sites in the Stack Exchange network where users with reputation 1 can post on meta.1 Clearly, this has some advantages2 and some disadvantages. Probably one of the ...
8 votes
1 answer
321 views

Comment / Down-vote / Vote to close -- in what order, with what delay?

If I see a post that I think belongs on MathStackExchange, what should be my first response? a) Comment to the user b) Down-vote c) Vote to close with suggestion of migration And how long should I ...
4 votes
3 answers
359 views

Is asking for good review papers a good question?

I think that generally speaking asking for papers might be a non-research issue. If it's merely a google issue, then it shouldn't be in MO. What about Survey/Review papers? Obviously those are hard ...
10 votes
4 answers
305 views

Is it possible to see the source for a comment?

Although this question seems to be new to M.MO, @MartinSleziak points out several related posts on Meta.MSE. I was curious about the diagrammatic magic of @YaakovBaruch's recent comment, and so ...
14 votes
2 answers
916 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 ...
7 votes
2 answers
566 views

Are there policies to respect in order for MathOverflow Q&As to be tracked back in relevant zbMATH Open reviews?

Are there policies to respect in order for MathOverflow Q&As to be tracked back in relevant zbMATH Open reviews? I am asking this since I noticed that all questions and answers to which I ...
13 votes
2 answers
648 views

Questions about correctness of published papers

A recent thread brought up the issue of the appropriateness of discussing correctness of a published paper on MO. Correctness of Thierry Aubin's argument about positive Ricci curvature I did a ...
3 votes
3 answers
647 views

Local vs. Global MO in relation to "Polymath" efforts

Certain polymath-flavor questions appear on MO, and are not really appropriate for the forum. Such questions are probably posted (I can only be sure for my own such posts) because MO captures a huge "...
12 votes
1 answer
569 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 ...
25 votes
5 answers
2k views

Updated: Is it time to replace links to the UCDavis arXiv frontend?

This question from March 2020 points out that many questions/answers link to papers at the http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/ frontend instead of at the arXiv itself, but that the frontend had been down a ...
20 votes
2 answers
974 views

Can (and should) Project Euclid links be replaced in bulk?

In February 2021, Project Euclid made some changes on their website: Project Euclid Platform Migration FAQs. It is probably a consequence of this that the links starting with ...
9 votes
1 answer
557 views

When answers are primarily opinion based, should the question be CW?

A question was just asked about whether or not we still need model categories of spectra (vs working with the $\infty$-category). To me (and Fernando Muro at least), it is reminiscent of a previous ...
11 votes
0 answers
360 views

Keeping a question on track or allowing people to chime in with stuff they'd like to mention?

I am slightly unhappy with the direction of drift to answers to this question. On my reading, the OP mentioned a phenomenon and asked how editors should react to it. This seems to have been taken by ...

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