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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"Is this a known/interesting result?"-type questions
Are questions of the form "Is this a known result?" and "Is this an interesting result?" legitimate for MO?
I have sometimes found myself staring at results that were new to me and unsure whether ...
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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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Why is the update so awesome?
I mean, we really don't deserve it. It's awesome. Good work everyone, high-fives all around. Cheers (for those of you from across the pond, so-to-speak).
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My question has already been asked, but not really answered? What should I do?
I have a question I am curious about: call it $Q$.
There exists a posted question $P$ on MO which asks my question $Q$. More precisely, $P$ states a series of (slightly vague) questions, one of ...
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Statistics showing that more reputation for questions leads to better questions
One of the more controversial aspects of the transition to MO2.0, for myself at least, was the reduction in the reputation added for upvotes on questions asked from +10 to +5, while retaining the ...
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How to handle crankery on MathOverflow 2.0?
On the previous MO we had a thread on Tea called "crank post to flag as spam" in which crank posts were pointed out so people could flag them as spam and have them deleted.
Seeing how we are now ...
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Crazy idea about soft questions
I was thinking the other day about big list and other soft questions and had the following crazy idea.
It seems to me that what we want is to occasionally have good soft questions. The main thing ...
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Should "The probability for a streak when tossing a coin" be reopened?
The question "The probability for a streak when tossing a coin" is on hold. [Edit: It has been reopened.] I disagree with closing the question and voted to reopen.
This problem may sound like it is ...
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What makes you vote to close a question?
Some recent exchanges and observations suggest to me that users not only have different thresholds for voting to close a question yet still applying the same criteria, but that they even apply so ...
user9072
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Request to keep an eye out for PROMYS admissions problems
Many of you may be familiar with PROMYS, a camp based out of Boston University which teaches number theory to high school students each summer. Students applying to the program are asked to submit ...
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Question about $i$ versus $-i$
I vaguely recall that some years ago, there was an MO question about how to distinguish between the complex numbers $i$ and $-i$, and in what sense this might be meaningful.
I also recall that I ...
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One person creating multiple Riemann Hypothesis-related accounts
I have been flagging these posts individually, but I thought maybe a meta question would be a good follow-up, in case the moderators are not aware of the behaviour. As @YemonChoi points out, the ...
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Should OEIS links be updated?
Historic links to the OEIS are of the form http://www.research.att.com/~njas/sequences/A097048. These links no longer work: Neil has retired from AT&T, and in the meantime has set up the OEIS ...
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MathOverflow @ ICM2014 : We Want You!
This post will raise several questions/issues on which I want
community feedback.
Background: Inspired by Tim Post's offer
Mugs, Stickers And Shirts - Now With 100% More MathOverflow! , I++ decided ...
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Encouraging new users to provide a name or a nickname
After the transition to MO 2.0, I noticed an increased influx of anonymous users, with user names like user####. Of course, people can have all kinds of reasons to ...
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Publicizing conjectures on MO
This question
Positive integers written as $\binom{w}2+\binom{x}4+\binom{y}6+\binom{z}8$ with $w,x,y,z\in\{2,3,\ldots\}$
is basically just a statement of a few conjectures by the asker. The "...
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Stack-exchange devoted to research problems, the suggested approaches and updates
The idea is to have a database of open research problems where the answers will be updates or suggested approaches. One research problem per post. This is in the spirit of Polymath.
Reasons:
...
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It's been another year...MO exists since six years!
As provable by Question Number 1 the site started to exist almost exactly six years ago.
Everybody who feels like saying something on this occasion, feel free to post an answer.
user9072
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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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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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Questions on Coq
Now I'm awake again, I can raise this here in meta, as per quid's request.
I commented on the question How do I verify the Coq proof of Feit-Thompson?
I like this question, and would defend it ...
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Voting on meta questions to indicate agreement or disagreement
We've previously discussed the meaning of a downvote on meta, and I think that's worth reading before discussing anything further here.
I don't at all like that perfectly reasonable questions (...
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Can MO go back to +5 rep for questions? Should it?
In case you missed the news, upvotes on questions now grant +10 reputation instead of +5, and the change has been implemented retroactively (most if not all users have already had their reputation ...
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Should I give a link to my recent published paper to an old question of mine on MO?
4 years and 6 months ago I asked on MO: "Who introduced the terms “equivalence relation” and “equivalence class”?" It was somehow a resting stone of a long journey that started 13 years ago from today ...
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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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Is my question suitable for MO?
Around a month ago I asked a question on ME here. It was well received (got seven up votes). Sadly nobody was able to help much. To get more attention I also placed a bounty on it. Still no luck. The ...
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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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How can I tell if my question is appropriate to MathOverflow or if I should just put a bounty on it at Math.SE?
I have at least two questions which are about graduate level mathematics on Math.SE, but about which I have serious doubts regarding whether or not they are "research level". In other words, I don't ...
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Deletion of on-topic comment threads
This question is about suppression of threads of comments by moderators, moved to chat with the message "Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat", ...
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Removing questions after answers
I recently gave a simple counter example to a question posed (I'm sure the mods can see the question). Probably the user was embarrassed by this. The question was promptly deleted and with that my ...
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What's the point of having an *MO* chat without LaTeX enabled?
The title says it all. :-)
In response to the automatic disapproval of the question body:
I tried to edit the chat messages after submitting but couldn't figure out how to do that either. (And I ...
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On the recent question "Is Euclid dead?", or: Is it considered good practice to use MathOverflow for a campaign?
Yesterday, a question entitled Is Euclid dead? has been asked
in which the OP states:
"Currently I am leading a campaign for the return of EG to the syllabus
of the high schools of my country (...
Stefan KohlMod
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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, ...
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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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KaTeX vs MathJax
According to some benchmarks, it seems that KaTeX renders latex much more faster than Mathjax.
Is there any chance to use KaTeX in place of Mathjax?
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Noncommutative rings/algebra tags
I'm suggesting to make noncommutative-rings a synonym to noncommutative-algebra, in the same way as commutative-rings has been made to ac.commutative-algebra.
Initially asked there, I'm asking it ...
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Proposal for Mathematics Learning, Studying, and Education
In view of https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/12470/forum-for-chatty-math-education-questions, I thought to create this proposal. I'd appreciate your support and contributions. Please allow ...
user37428
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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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Math Educators Stackexchange is live!
The new site http://matheducators.stackexchange.com is now up and running! This site is for questions about course-design, exam-writing, teaching methods, intuition and examples, etc.
Check out our ...
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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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Recognizing identifiable users changing user names
I noticed recently regular users changing usernames (for instance, changing to a username supporting some particular political issue).
The purpose of this post is not to discuss whether this should ...
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Would disallowing displayed equations ("double dollars") in titles be useful?
If a poster includes in the title some formula in enclosed between $$, like $$x^2+y^2=z^2$$
$$x^2+y^2=z^2$$
the title of the ...
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Site statistics: Effectivity of the advice to edit a question which is closed as "unclear what you're asking"
When a question is closed as "unclear what you're asking", it gets
attached the following message:
Please clarify your specific problem or add additional details to
highlight exactly what you ...
Stefan KohlMod
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Is there a problem with answers clarified in comments, but the clarification not reflected in the answer itself?
Occasionally I am re-reading my answers in case I've overlooked something or left some misguiding misprint or something. What I noticed is that there are a couple of them where I was not entirely ...
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What statistics would be interesting for a usage report?
Suppose MathOverflow were to start having quarterly or annual usage reports. What statistics would you like to see reported there?
Some are obvious — new questions, new answers, new users, etc. ...
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"Questions" of the type "I have written something, please give me feedback"
I have now today seen several questions (this and this)
which asks for feedback on research articles, rather than stating explictit questions.
There is of course a gray zone, but I wonder a bit what ...
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Scope and mission of MathOverflow
I followed with much interest the recent discussions on Meta about the community being perceived as unwelcoming to outsiders and the importance of looking for solutions (if any).
In order to do this, ...
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Should Kevin Buzzard's Lean question be left in its original state?
Kevin Buzzard asked this question, which incorporated a long section of background discussion. Federico Poloni removed that section. Yemon Choi commented that he thought the question was OK before ...
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Closing as duplicate
Many things changed when MathOverflow joined the Stack Exchange Network a year ago. While most changes were quickly absorbed a few are more subtle and might have been missed by some. In particular, ...
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comments that are not displayed right away ("add/see 10 other comments")
Often when I start reading comments, it is only when I come to the end that I see a link like "add/see 10 other comments". I can understand that if there is a huge list of comments for the same ...
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