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"A year in moderation" post on MathOverflow?

You might have noticed than many Stack Exchange sites have some statistics about both community moderation and moderators' activity posted on meta under the title "2018: a year in moderation". Here is ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
24 votes
5 answers
2k views

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 ...
Joonas Ilmavirta's user avatar
23 votes
1 answer
5k views

Why was my dissenting viewpoint in a post about diversity censored?

In a question about special lectures for the ICM, the following answer proposed that a lecture on how to make the mathematical field more diverse be given. The answer contains some rather bold ...
Patriot's user avatar
  • 1,038
23 votes
2 answers
826 views

Can the clutter of obviously off-topic questions be removed faster?

I have noticed a number of blatantly off-topic questions that hang around for a long time despite heavy down-voting and calls for removal by senior users. I found somewhere on the site (although I can'...
John Bentin's user avatar
  • 2,427
22 votes
3 answers
1k views

Answering not research level questions

I just commented the solution to a question that was obviously not research level. Then I deleted the solution again since providing it might encourage people to again asking such questions. ...
Christian Stump's user avatar
21 votes
2 answers
628 views

Data on voting by 'association bonus only' users

There's recently been some discussion of the potential impact on voting of users whose only MathOverflow reputation comes from the network association bonus. I asked the SE team about this, and ...
Scott Morrison's user avatar
20 votes
0 answers
758 views

Which "non-arxiv" tags are de facto top-level tags?

The tag system on MathOverflow is designed in such way that each question should contain top-level tag; these are the tags which correspond to subject areas on arXiv and generally have format such as ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
20 votes
1 answer
1k views

What to do with links to arXiv front end?

There are quite a few posts which link to some paper at http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/ rather than directly at https://arxiv.org/ The front for arXiv at UC Davis seems to be down for some time. (I ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
20 votes
7 answers
2k views

What is needed to succeed in keeping up the level of the site and retaining the good contributors?

MathOverflow is a nice high-level communitiy with a good collegial academic atmosphere. I'd like to know about how this can be achieved; for example how does MathOverflow keep up the good qualitiy of ...
Dilaton's user avatar
  • 408
19 votes
3 answers
1k views

Are Links to Articles Behind a Paywall Acceptable Answers?

This question boils down to whether an answer to a question should contain sufficiently free and easily accessible detail about the solution to a question. So IMHO it would be perfectly acceptable, ...
Manfred Weis's user avatar
  • 12.6k
19 votes
0 answers
885 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....
Steven Landsburg's user avatar
19 votes
4 answers
1k views

Why was "The origin(s) of the word “elliptic” migrated to hsm?

This question on the history of the ellipse terminology was migrated to hsm after a week of being active on MO and receiving several useful answers. Did the OP ask for migration? Why are some ...
Michael Bächtold's user avatar
18 votes
2 answers
682 views

Proposal to more aggressively delete off-topic questions

We are going to get many more off-topic questions now. Can we agree to vote to delete on them so as not to pollute the site? It takes a few votes from users who can vote on such things and/or one ...
Mariano Suárez-Álvarez's user avatar
18 votes
4 answers
1k views

What areas/aspects of mathematics are underrepresented on MO?

The question: What areas/aspects of mathematics are underrepresented on MO?
Gil Kalai's user avatar
  • 24.2k
17 votes
2 answers
1k views

Decluttering MathOverflow

There are quite a few very poor questions (all being put on hold quite soon after they've been asked), such as this. These questions stick around unless they get deleted by the OP (which they almost ...
Dominic van der Zypen's user avatar
17 votes
8 answers
3k views

2021 Moderator Election Q&A - Questionnaire

In connection with the moderator elections, we are holding a Q&A thread for the candidates. Questions collected from an earlier thread have been compiled into this one, which shall now serve as ...
Catija's user avatar
  • 101
17 votes
5 answers
4k views

Should these sexually suggestive jokes be kept or deleted?

There are a few jokes in "Do good math jokes exist?" that I think are inappropriate. Specifically: Nov 21 '09 at 9:01 item (1) Oct 19 '09 at 16:03 Dec 10 '09 at 23:14 Dec 15 '09 at 1:31 All of ...
Tanner Swett's user avatar
  • 1,133
17 votes
4 answers
1k views

Opting out of reputation

[Disclaimer. I'm making this feature request not because I want it nor because I think it's a good idea, but because I heard it so often that there is need to discuss it. Please don't shoot the ...
François G. Dorais's user avatar
16 votes
0 answers
585 views

area 51 proposal - Math review

Recently I created a new proposal at area 51; it's called Math Review (http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/90443/math-review), and it is intended to be a Q&A site concerning troubles one ...
Conrado Costa's user avatar
16 votes
2 answers
447 views

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 ...
Vitali Kapovitch's user avatar
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 ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
16 votes
5 answers
3k views

Why was there pushback on a user's profile image?

The comments on the OP for the following question are disconcerting: Why is Voevodsky's motivic homotopy theory 'the right' approach? From what I can gather, the OP must have had ...
Samantha Y's user avatar
16 votes
1 answer
600 views

Correcting links with university proxy (especially MathSciNet links)

Let me first say, that I consider links to papers referenced in MO posts a useful things. And so do other users, judging by an older discussion on this topic: Is it worth editing old posts to add ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
16 votes
0 answers
477 views

Studying the MathOverflow data dump with Mathematica

This is just a mention of some work Wolfram has done recently, allowing you to import a database dump of MathOverflow and analyse it within Mathematica. The Data Science of MathOverflow Their ...
Scott Morrison's user avatar
15 votes
2 answers
671 views

How to wake up an old question?

Suppose there is an old question on mathOverflow, asked by someone else, which has been voted up a quite decent number of times, and received several answers which have also been voted up, but no ...
Joël's user avatar
  • 25.7k
14 votes
1 answer
407 views

Copyright of MathOverflow logo?

What is the copyright of the MathOverflow logo? Is it in the public domain? In this site they say that "most simple logos simply do not have the required level of creativity to be considered ...
unity's user avatar
  • 1
13 votes
0 answers
351 views

What should the tag (open-problems) be used for?

Since this issue came up in comments to another questions on meta, I'll ask about the intended issue of the open-problems tag. Question. What is the intended usage of the open-problems tag? Should it ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
12 votes
1 answer
13k views

Using MathJax for formating (**bold**, *italics*)?

Some users use MathJax to get italicized or bold text. This is sometimes done in titles (where MarkDown is not available), but some users do this also in body of a question, where MarkDown is used. ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
12 votes
3 answers
488 views

In the new site design, what should the background look like on MO?

SE is giving us pretty limited options for how the site is going to look going forward. Our most popular customization request, judging either from Carlo Beenakker's original suggestion or the ...
Tim Campion's user avatar
  • 60.6k
12 votes
1 answer
650 views

Problem with posts and comments relying on macros defined elsewhere

MathJax supports possibility do define macros. (Using \newcommand, \DeclareMathOperator, \def...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
12 votes
2 answers
728 views

Should questions to which I already know the answer in advance be appropriate for MO?

I was just asking Is it appropriate to ask for references and point to a blog with the same question and started to read http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/07/its-ok-to-ask-and-answer-your-own-...
Christian Stump's user avatar
12 votes
0 answers
1k views

Why is my question apparently not research-level?

I just posted this question a few hours ago, and it's already had two votes to close for being off-topic (i.e., not of "research-level mathematics"). Considering it's ultimately a question about ...
Kieren MacMillan's user avatar
11 votes
4 answers
937 views

Development of the MathOverflow community

From the Stack Exchange Data Explorer one can obtain the following data: Number of people who joined MO in the last 4 years and have collected at least 10000 points: 96 Number of people who joined ...
Stefan Kohl's user avatar
  • 19.5k
11 votes
0 answers
260 views

Quick or easy methods to post math or diagrams on chat

One of the seeming obstacles to having scheduled informal seminars on chat is the extra work, probably mostly for the leader of the discussion (should there be one), in presenting ideas on the chat ...
Will Jagy's user avatar
  • 25.3k
11 votes
2 answers
520 views

Papers, articles, books and other resources discussing MathOverflow

There already is a post asking about published works which started on or were inspired by posts on MathOverflow: Best of MathOverflow, or papers inspired by MathOverflow. It might be interesting to ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
11 votes
3 answers
686 views

"This question has been answered in the comments."

Athanagor Wurlitzer has recently been adding answers saying "This question has been answered in the comments" (see, e.g. https://mathoverflow.net/a/156051/3). I'm inclined to delete these answers (...
Scott Morrison's user avatar
11 votes
3 answers
732 views

Does the number of answers really drop over years?

This was caused by an answer of mine to the question Slight downward trend in Q & A. I was adding another update to that answer when I noticed that the query I was using there now can be run for ...
მამუკა ჯიბლაძე's user avatar
10 votes
1 answer
555 views

Quickly Accessible MathJax Help

I recently had the problem of encoding big brackets in a formula in my question "Functions that Calculate their $L_p$ Norm" and, I could find nothing under "How to Format > MathJax equations", as the ...
Manfred Weis's user avatar
  • 12.6k
10 votes
2 answers
632 views

Is bounties period sufficient?

I edit the quesion according to the comment of professor Edgar Is it reasonable to suggest to MO to extend the bountiess period from 7 days to 3 or 4 weeks? Can mo be an exception, according to ...
Ali Taghavi's user avatar
10 votes
0 answers
352 views

What to do with the synonyms for the deprecated tags?

Recently, the following tag synonyms were created by a MathOveflow moderator: abstract-algebra $\to$ ra.rings-and-algebras, geometry $\to$ mg.metric-geometry and discrete-mathematics $\to$ co....
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
9 votes
9 answers
3k views

What do we mean by welcoming when we're a site aimed at researchers?

I was just browsing the main page this morning, and I decided to look at some of the posts by new people. One of the questions had garnered three votes to close and a comment from a regular user to ...
Harry Gindi's user avatar
  • 19.4k
9 votes
0 answers
701 views

Why this is off-topic?

I posted a question on MSE for two months and received no helpful answer. So I tried the same question on MO. I got 4 off-topic votes and so the question got migrated back to MSE. I'd like to mention ...
Troy Woo's user avatar
  • 163
8 votes
1 answer
442 views

What to do with useful answers to questions closed as duplicates (or by some other reasons)?

Before the question Intuitive explanation of concentration of the measure for spheres has been marked as duplicate (correctly I believe), it has got an answer which might provide additional useful ...
მამუკა ჯიბლაძე's user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
463 views

Can anybody provide a clear list of design changes that are obligatory, with explanations?

With several heavily loaded questions here on meta and the StackExchange meta, - MathOverflow updated site theme is ready for testing! Responsive Design Themes - What can sites customize and how can ...
მამუკა ჯიბლაძე's user avatar
8 votes
6 answers
1k views

How to discourage excessive self-edits?

My question is prompted by the reappearance of this post on the front page. A glance at the edit history shows that the OP has edited his own question thirteen times. This user has a history of ...
Nik Weaver's user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
423 views

Chatroom links disappeared

I like to hang out in the homotopy theory chatroom. I used to navigate to this and other chatrooms using a link on the main site. This seems to have disappeared. Is there a reason for this change? I ...
Thomas Rot's user avatar
  • 7,363
8 votes
3 answers
894 views

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 ...
Thomas Kojar's user avatar
  • 4,414
8 votes
3 answers
628 views

Community standard for contacting users off of MO?

If a user is using their full name as their user name, what, if any, is the community standard with regards to emailing that user using their independently found work email address about their ...
Trevor J Richards's user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
291 views

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. ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
476 views

Answering my own question

As a typical scenario, assume I ask for examples of some mathematical phenomenon and somebody answers my question and provides 2 families of examples. After several months, I figure a third family of ...
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