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.
447
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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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8
votes
1
answer
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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 ...
8
votes
1
answer
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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 ...
8
votes
3
answers
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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 ...
7
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1
answer
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How to ask multiple very specific questions about a paper?
I'm slowly going through some topos theory papers by Lawvere. In almost every paper, there are many small sayings and sometimes entire sentences which I do not understand and have never explicitly ...
7
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1
answer
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Is it possible to use tikzcd code in MO posts?
Question : Is it possible to use tikzcd code in MO posts?
There are information for drawing diagrams using AMScd
...
7
votes
2
answers
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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 ...
6
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2
answers
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What does research-level mathematics mean?
My understanding of this is that mathematics is research-level if:
you could conceivably write a paper on some aspect of it;
it could be taught in a grad-level course;
it is not widely known ...
6
votes
0
answers
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Merging old duplicates?
New to meta, so apologies for any breaches of etiquette.
I've just noticed that these two old questions are duplicates:
Smallest permutation representation of a finite group?
Smallest n for which G ...
6
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4
answers
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What should the "hover text" for the MathOverflow link on all SE sites be?
If you go to the bottom of any page in the SE network (e.g. this one!), you'll see a list of SE sites. In particular there's a link to MathOverflow, that is potentially seen by a large number of ...
6
votes
2
answers
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Appropriate Reaction to a Failed Reference Request on MO
This follows Amir Asghari's advice concerning my comment on the answer to
Answering my own question:
Background of my question is, that I can envisage different reasons for reference requests on ...
5
votes
1
answer
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On the top-level tag ra.rings-and-algebras
I'm confused about the scope of the ra.rings-and-algebras
The problem is related to the ambiguity of the word "algebra", which essentially has two (rough) meanings
the meaning "ring&...
5
votes
3
answers
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Creating theories-of-arithmetic logic tag
It seems to me that a tag for "arithmetic logic" is missing while it concerns a significant number ($\sim 500?$) of questions, which currently have no common tag other than the very broad lo....
4
votes
1
answer
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Should we have standing bounties?
There have been proposals to stop the bounties from expiring. On meta.SE these have been received rather badly, but would be most likely welcome here, as offering rewards for unsolved problems has a ...
4
votes
2
answers
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Mailing lists / Usenet groups for research math
For Category theory there is a well known and quite active research mailing list https://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ Do similar mailing lists or usenet groups exist for other branches of mathematics? For ...
4
votes
1
answer
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Undelete request, question 23943
NEVER MIND --- the same moderator who suggested I post here has solved the problem by deleting my copy-paste job and undeleting the answer we wanted undeleted. [or maybe it got undeleted by some other ...
3
votes
1
answer
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Bounty policies
When you propose a bounty, these points are immediately subtracted from your score,
and can never return, even if there is no satisfactory answer.
I think this is unfair; can someone explain the ...
2
votes
1
answer
139
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Garbled MathJax in some old questions [duplicate]
In several old questions/answers I have seen in MathJax the combination \\, where it obviously should be \, and also ...
2
votes
2
answers
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Some proposals for modifications of the process of closing/reopening questions
I wish to make a modest proposal on closing/reopening questions. Let me begin by noting that by far the most frequent reviews are Close votes -- almost 37,000, and looking quickly most of the close ...
2
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3
answers
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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 ...
1
vote
0
answers
477
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Reference Requests: Good Ways and Bad Ways
I would like to know of types of bad examples of MathOverflow questions that are tantamount to reference requests. I can think of two:
a) A reference request for something that is properly outside ...
1
vote
0
answers
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Migration site list lacks entries
The question What is the integral of temperature over space called? obviously belongs elsewhere. Most probably the proper place is physics.SE, but in any case not here on meta, not on math.SE, and not ...
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0
answers
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Should there be Anonymous Comments?
I currently got a downvote for my question Making a Graph Eulerian for Applying TSP Heuristics, but unfortunately the downvoter didn't leave a comment explaining what the motivation was, thus ...
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1
answer
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Restriction on editing closed questions
Guidelines to prove that $2^{\sqrt{2}}$ is a transcendental number? question bumped into https://mathoverflow.net/ after making an edit.
I am not sure if that adds anything to the question.
Should ...
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votes
1
answer
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Should we create an Erdős tag?
I was thinking about creating tags for some famous or important people, like Erdős (that already exists, as pointed out by Joonas: erdos), that could be used for questions related to their work.
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2
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Area 51 Mathematics Open Community Reviews
Following the discussions in
Area 51 community peer review
and links therein, I have created the following proposal
Mathematics Open Community Reviews
hoping to get things started. The proposal ...
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votes
1
answer
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Restriction on Number of edits
Book about fluid dynamics asked Apr 13 '10 edited 1 hour ago
Are there examples of conjectures supported by heuristic arguments that have been finally disproved? asked 21 hours ago edited 2 hours ...
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votes
3
answers
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MathOverflow user jailed
I know this is off-topic, not even being a question.
MathOverflow user Kıvanç Ersoy has been jailed, apparently for signing a petition.
Edit: As mentioned in comments, there is a petition about ...
73
votes
4
answers
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Why all the negativity?
I've been on this site for several years and I appreciate the site a lot but I don't like to post here anymore because no matter what I write I get some kind of sarcastic comment, or put-down, or ...
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6
answers
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Happy 5th anniversary, MathOverflow!
MathOverflow first came online on September 28, 2009!
Let's celebrate five years of MO!
I bought a delicious cake from the best bakery in the area to have with dinner tonight. I'm sure you will also ...
55
votes
8
answers
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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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59
answers
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News of potential interest to the MO community
Occasionally, there has been a suggestion to start a meta question to collect information that might be of interest to the MO community. This is an attempt to start such a thread.
Is there any news ...
50
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0
answers
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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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4
answers
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On discussion of published papers at MO
There is an interesting discussion taking place at MO over the suitability of this question: Complex structure on $S^6$ gets published in Journ. Math. Phys. The question is about the correctness of a ...
48
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0
answers
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Moderation strike update 1
As announced a little while back, MathOverflow moderators are participating in a network-wide moderation strike (currently at 121 moderators striking; see the background post for more details). The ...
46
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0
answers
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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 ...
46
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6
answers
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Should graduate students be encouraged to participate in MO? If so, at what stage?
When I started graduate school ten (!) years ago, a more senior Ph.D student at the time told me about MathOverflow and encouraged me to participate. Ever since then I have found it immensely useful. ...
44
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2
answers
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Restoring Bill Thurston's figures in an answer
The question Floating polyhedra with fair equilibria was answered by
Bill Thurston, but his (typically amazing) answer contains links to 7 figures,
all now broken. I don't know how to retrieve those ...
44
votes
2
answers
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How to cite comment by unknown user disproving Erdős conjecture?
I believe that fedja has disproved a conjecture of Erdős et al. when commenting on my question Almost monochromatic point sets, but I'm unable to contact fedja regarding this. What shall I do? Shall I ...
44
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0
answers
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An interactive graph of MathOverflow tags
I created a graph of tags from Stack Exchange sites (including MathOverflow), TagOverflow.
It is a continuation on my previous project - plots with static graphs and (sadly) without MO (due to API ...
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4
answers
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Catering to professional appearance a bit much?
[In case of hurry, please scroll down to the suggestions at the very end.]
The deletion of the Math Jokes thread (mirrors: html or pdf), most likely provoked by the meta.MO debate about some specific ...
38
votes
2
answers
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Deleting others' work
Recently a question was posted on MathOverflow, which received (I think) more than an average number of upvotes. There was an answer to the question, by someone other than the OP. Next day, the ...
38
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4
answers
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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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3
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Discreet editing
After I edited someone's Question or Answer, it feels real awkward to see my name mentioned in front of the author of the respective Q. or A. I feel that instead of displaying editor's name there ...
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1
answer
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How is it off-topic to ask whether the normalization of a local complete intersection is Gorenstein?
This question (which I did not ask) is whether the normalization of a local complete intersection domain is Gorenstein. Why was this closed as "off-topic"? Especially when this one, which asks ...
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1
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Grothendieck's passing
I think it would be a healing ritual
for the MO community for someone of appropriate stature (which excludes me)
posting an inviting cwiki question that elicits responses from the users
to this ...
34
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3
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Easy research-related questions, and closure reasons again
I am a bit confused by the close reason for https://mathoverflow.net/questions/154235/minimum-l1-norm-may-not-obtain-the-sparsest-solution?noredirect=1#comment395410_154235.
It is an easy question ...
33
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0
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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 ...
33
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0
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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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4
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How does one cite a MO post with an anonymous author?
I asked the question "Averaging $2^{\omega(n)}$ over a region" because this is a necessary step in a research paper I am writing. The answer is detailed and does exactly what I need, and it would be ...