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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Why my nomination for 2022 Community Moderator Election withdrawn without convincing reason?
I was honored to participate in the elections for moderation in MO 2022 , but I am sorry to say that my candidacy was withdrawn today without any convincing reason, frankly, I did not find it ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 For example, I have posted this (unpublished) expository paper on the arxiv about various ...
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2
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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3
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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 ...
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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 ...
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2
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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 ...
8
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2
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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 ...
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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 ...
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3
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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 "...
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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 ...
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5
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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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Why are some non-research questions so highly upvoted?
It is not difficult to find soft questions on the website which do not clearly strike as research level. To give examples of some: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Yet some of them are upvoted so highly that even many ...
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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 ...
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Flagging Low Quality Questions
For questions of extremely low quality that are sure to get closed anyway, do the moderators still want flags? Or is that just cluttering up their mailboxes to no purpose?
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Citing papers in questions/answers
Is there an established policy for how to cite a paper you link to in a question/answer? If not, what does etiquette dictate appropriate for citations?
I used to be careful to include full citations ...
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How should we react to the existence of Math Educators SE?
As was previously announced at meta, there is now an SE site for mathematics education (MESE).
My broad questions is this: Should we react to this somehow?
(More specific questions are below.)
Does ...
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10
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What MO is for and what is *your* aim in participation?
Q1: What is your view on the purpose, aims and benefits of MO?
Q2: What are your specific aim, targets and benefits in participation at MO?
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Recurrent posting about «Matrix polynomials» and so on
MO is currently being the focus of what I guess to be a single particular individual R.T.Man sporting multiple unregistered users identity (like Eskand or H.night). S/he's asking multiple very similar ...
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How to make it easier to moderate blatantly off-topic questions?
As many of you have noticed, there's a lot of new users asking basic mathematics questions. This is not the only site in the network with this kind of problem; on Meta Stack Exchange we get all kinds ...
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Has MO traffic decreased a bit since the invasion of Ukraine?
I check the review queues several times a day, each day. I have noticed a significant drop of posts in the queues that I am watching (First questions, First answers, LQP, Late answers). Even the ...
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Downvote and vote to close of a recent question
I recently asked the following question on God's number for higher dimensional sequential move puzzles. It was downvoted once and has a vote to close, even though it is in my eyes a perfectly good ...
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Editing old question, can't submit as title is too long
I'm editing Is there a canonical map from the cohomology of orbifold Chiral de Rham on an orbifold to the cohomology of Chiral de Rham on a crepant resolution? as there was a broken arXiv Front link (...
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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 ...
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Revising the help page on "What topics can I ask around here?"
This is a freestanding post taking its content from a previous discussion on the modal window for first-time askers. Thanks to Martin Sleziak and Tim Campion for the encouragement to post it ...
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Would this question be appropriate on the main site?
I would like to ask a "big list" style question on the main site.
The question would be "How do we pronounce the names of famous mathematicians?".
Each answer would be an audio ...
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Feature request: add short "about MathOverflow" section to the front page
Until a few years ago MathOverflow front page had a short section at the top describing what the site is for. I am not sure when it disappeared or why but I would like to see it restored. Currently ...
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Might featuring some FAQ posts on meta be useful?
Among the things on the site which can be directly influenced by the site moderators (without any involvement of Stack Exchange staff), probably the community bulletin has the most visibility. The ...
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1000 Questions by Dominic van der Zypen!
Amazing milestone! Our first $1000$-question user.
Question # $1000$:
"Edge sets on 𝜔 maximal with respect to chromatic number".
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Do we have a privacy problem when people try and leave the mathoverflow community?
Do we have a privacy problem when people try and leave the Mathoverflow community?
Due to my objections regarding MO I deleted my profile. While I understand not deleting my questions and answers, I ...
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Citing a mathoverflow comment
One can easily cite a mathoverflow answer as there is an option "cite" below every answer. But there is no cite option to any mathoverflow comment to a question.
One is then forced to cite ...
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MathOverflow related ICM satellite event (2022)?
I read in Terence Tao's blog about the 2022 ICM satellite coordination group.
As the ICM is now online,
the IMU encourages grassroots efforts to supplement the core program with additional satellite ...
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Automatic comments by Community
There seem to be automatically generated comments by "Community".
As an example, this question by a new user has
Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to ...
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What should I do if I believe to found the answer to my question but I'm not sure?
Four months ago I asked one question in MO and had no expected answer. After following the clues from comments of other users I realized that, in that time, I didn't even know how to properly ask what ...
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1
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How to respond to well-known sockpuppeters
Frequent sockpuppeter/spammer Wolfgang Muckenheim is back, and across multiple SE sites (philosophy, mse). This leads me to ask:
Is there anything specific we should do in a situation like this, ...