Questions tagged [discussion]

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16 votes
1 answer
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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 ...
მამუკა ჯიბლაძე's user avatar
15 votes
0 answers
692 views

"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 ...
Per Alexandersson's user avatar
15 votes
1 answer
668 views

a spate of deletions by "Community"

18 minutes ago (at time of writing) a whole swathe of questions appear to have been deleted, some of which seemed not to be obviously sub-par or off-topic, and some of which had a net rep scoire of 0 (...
Yemon Choi's user avatar
  • 25.5k
15 votes
2 answers
1k views

Why can't I accept two answers to the same question simultaneously?

I asked a question in MO and I received two interesting answers with different approaches. Both of them are very interesting. I wish to accept both of them simultaneously, but it is impossible. ...
Ali Taghavi's user avatar
15 votes
1 answer
284 views

History of Math and Science SE is in commit stage

This is to announce that the History of Math and Science StackExchange proposal on Area 51 has entered the "commit" stage. You can read more about the proposal here and see the proposal itself here. ...
Jack M's user avatar
  • 633
15 votes
0 answers
708 views

The 6 semi-essential meta questions of every SE 2.0 upgrade

In the spirit of The 7 Essential Meta Questions of Every Beta I realized that there were a few things that needed to be decided by a large site that has suddenly gone SE 2.0. Initially I planned to ...
Manishearth's user avatar
15 votes
1 answer
337 views

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 ...
Wolfgang's user avatar
  • 13.2k
15 votes
0 answers
382 views

Area 51 proposal: History of Science And Mathematics

I've created a new proposal on Area 51 for a Stack Exchange focusing on the history of mathematics and science. As a math student, I am constantly studying the history of the subject. I feel that ...
Jack M's user avatar
  • 633
15 votes
3 answers
455 views

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, ...
François G. Dorais's user avatar
15 votes
3 answers
894 views

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, ...
Francesco Polizzi's user avatar
15 votes
3 answers
2k views

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 ...
Neil Strickland's user avatar
14 votes
2 answers
521 views

Is there left any way to highlight part of text after all?

Currently we have quotes, but the quoted text looks more faint than the surrounding text The vertical bar hardly helps, I believe. In fact I think (although I cannot explain it) that this bar ...
მამუკა ჯიბლაძე's user avatar
14 votes
2 answers
652 views

Why is it not possible to offer a bounty for longer than 7 days?

I had offered a bounty for the following question that expires in 7 hours: What did Gelfand mean by suggesting to study "Heredity Principle" structures instead of categories? The results ...
Dmitri Zaitsev's user avatar
14 votes
4 answers
642 views

Removing greetings and taglines

The Stack Exchange Network frowns on greetings and taglines in posts. There were mixed reactions to this before we moved to the network. Should MathOverflow tolerate greetings or not? Is it ...
François G. Dorais's user avatar
14 votes
3 answers
979 views

Is it OK to abuse Mathjax for emphasis?

The author of this question uses Mathjax (in a way different from its intended usage) to make parts of his question stand out more; for instance, to display some headers in red or to alter the spacing ...
Federico Poloni's user avatar
14 votes
1 answer
399 views

change in voting to close

I noticed today that the pop-up screens for voting to close a question have acquired a new layer. Clicking "close" used to produce a pop-up with checkboxes indicating various reasons for closing. Now ...
Andreas Blass's user avatar
14 votes
1 answer
530 views

Interpretation of Time-limit for Editing Comments

Yesterday I had written a comment and, after 4 minutes began editing it. After having finished my editing, I tried to save the comment and was prompted with the message, that editing is only possible ...
Manfred Weis's user avatar
  • 12.6k
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 ...
François G. Dorais's user avatar
13 votes
0 answers
433 views

Use of arXiv tags

When MathOverflow began we decided to start using arXiv classification and created corresponding tags. These are still the most broadly used tags on MathOverflow. However, the usage of some these tags ...
François G. Dorais's user avatar
13 votes
0 answers
333 views

Will MO have Community Promotion Ads?

Community Promotion Ads seem to be a useful tool for helping spread various links that might be useful for users of the site. I have mostly encountered them at MSE. I have learned several ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
13 votes
2 answers
939 views

Reappearance of (topology) tag

I have noticed that topology tag was created again. According to list of new tags it was created Jun 9 at 7:55. There are currently 3 questions having this tag. I was not able to find a discussion on ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
13 votes
4 answers
334 views

Archiving of MathOverflow threads

We've had some discussion of adding an archiving feature to MathOverflow on the private moderators list, and I thought I should report on the current situation. (You might also read earlier threads ...
Scott Morrison's user avatar
13 votes
1 answer
283 views

migration versus on-hold

Several questions have been migrated to m.se of late, and several others have been put "on hold" as off-topic, and I'm having trouble seeing how the distinction is made between the two courses of ...
Gerry Myerson's user avatar
13 votes
2 answers
617 views

What is the intended use of the (proofs) tag?

There is a tag called proofs. This tag has empty tag-info/usage guidance. Without any usage guidance it is quite likely to be used incorrectly. The fact that there are many deleted questions having ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
13 votes
1 answer
517 views

Number of questions posed per day

Right now the sites statistics page shows that MathOverflow is seeing an average of 38 questions per day. Is there a plot of this average over time somewhere? My perception is that it has been ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
12 votes
1 answer
373 views

On convexity tags

The tags on convexity are convex-geometry ($\times$560), convex-analysis ($\times$ 266), convexity ($\times$ 420). Here the number is the current (2019/02/23) number of uses and I ignore some more ...
YCor's user avatar
  • 60.1k
12 votes
1 answer
576 views

Should I delete my own question if it turns out trivial after a comment?

I had not given this question enough thought before asking it. I went straight to looking for a reference without thinking about it. Somebody pointed out the obvious solution in a comment. Should I ...
Thomas Kahle's user avatar
  • 1,961
12 votes
2 answers
530 views

What to do if you want up-to-date answers to an old question on technology

One issue with the site lasting as long as it has is that technology has changed quite a bit since its early days, and so discussions of technology are extremely out of date. In particular, when ...
Ben Webster's user avatar
  • 43.9k
12 votes
0 answers
253 views

Retroactively add linked questions

Any question on MathOverflow (or other Stack Exchange site) shows the list of linked questions in the sidebar on the right. A question is added there if there is a link between the two questions ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
12 votes
3 answers
1k views

Happy tenth anniversary! How did you celebrate?

Question 1 was a test question posted about ten years ago from this one (give or take about an hour). There's been a bit going on since then with the main forum. This post is a place for celebrants ...
Gerhard Paseman's user avatar
12 votes
5 answers
1k views

2013 Community Moderator Election

As the Math Overflow community grows, so does the load on our moderator team. The existing staff is doing an excellent job, and in order to keep up the good work, they've requested a few more sets of ...
12 votes
3 answers
760 views

How to make welcoming comments on "homework-like" posts that will be closed?

We get posts here that are phrased as if from a textbook or homework; the one I have in mind is Find the recurrence relation, but my question is more general. Such posts will certainly be closed. A ...
LSpice's user avatar
  • 11.3k
12 votes
2 answers
354 views

How to find out what activity activated a favorite?

I have several favorite questions and it is a great feature that every time something happens around them, they are flagged up for me. However, when I turn to them, in most cases I cannot figure out ...
მამუკა ჯიბლაძე's user avatar
12 votes
2 answers
678 views

Geographic distribution of people on MathOverflow

Is there a way to answer questions like the following, either by means of the StackExchange Date Explorer or by other means?: How many of the regular MathOverflow users (say, e.g., those who ...
Stefan Kohl's user avatar
  • 19.5k
12 votes
0 answers
343 views

OpenScience Q&A just went live

Perhaps you are aware of the fact that there was an Open Science private beta at StackExchange that did not quite manage to develop enough traction so it was closed down recently. Some people want to ...
user avatar
12 votes
1 answer
501 views

Altering the question in a way that makes an answer obsolete

I've seen that several times: an answer makes OP want to change the question in a way that would damage the answer. Obviously this should not be done. In fact I think it is better to delete the ...
მამუკა ჯიბლაძე's user avatar
12 votes
0 answers
434 views

What do moderators do these days?

More than 7 years ago, Scott Morrison asked a great meta question: What do moderators do?, and recorded some useful answers. Some seem to be of general significance, but many of the answers were ...
Tim Campion's user avatar
  • 60.6k
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 ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
12 votes
2 answers
482 views

Call for question titles: Mathematical modeling/applied mathematics SE proposal needs 33 more sample question titles

Edit: I wanted people to realize that they only need to write the question title, and not the question body itself. The Mathematical Modeling SE proposal (http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/...
Brian Rushton's user avatar
11 votes
1 answer
441 views

Undelete request

This is motivated by this question, see also the comments, and Will Jagy's answer. I was asked to start a formal request, so here it is. A user that has expressed no desire to participate anymore on ...
Andrés E. Caicedo's user avatar
11 votes
0 answers
268 views

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 ...
Alec Rhea's user avatar
  • 8,977
11 votes
2 answers
347 views

Merge complex-analysis and cv.complex-variables?

We have distinct tags complex-analysis and cv.complex-variables, of which the latter is the arXiv standard name. They seem to mean the same thing. Should they be merged?
Nate Eldredge's user avatar
11 votes
2 answers
563 views

Close cross posts between here and MSE

If a question is cross-posted here and on the Math Stack Exchange, what's the policy to deal with these? For example take this question and its MSE twin. Should one of them be closed? If so, which ...
MvG's user avatar
  • 534
11 votes
0 answers
545 views

Primarily opinion-based questions/answers

One closing option is primarily opinion-based: Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on ...
YCor's user avatar
  • 60.1k
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 ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
11 votes
2 answers
1k views

Why adding a comment requires 50 reputation points?

When a new member tries to write a comment he sees “add comment (requires 50 reputation)” but of course he has no so many points. On the other hand, answering does not require any reputation. Then the ...
simeon2's user avatar
  • 31
11 votes
2 answers
654 views

Should top mathoverflow threads get DOIs and be permanently archived?

Josh from The Winnower (thewinnower.com) here. I wanted to reach out and see if users of mathOverflow would be interested in permanently archiving and assigning DOIs to top threads with The Winnower. ...
Josh's user avatar
  • 1
10 votes
1 answer
837 views

Moving back my question to MO

References on Gerbes question is migrated from MO to meta. It was never about MO. I was only giving information about search I have done. None of the comments except one has objection with this. None ...
Praphulla Koushik's user avatar
10 votes
1 answer
493 views

Should there be a "statute of limitations" for closable questions?

Ever more frequently I find in the "close votes" review queue questions which are a few years old. Many of them already have accepted answers, and one can see that they were well received at the time ...
Ramiro de la Vega's user avatar
10 votes
2 answers
504 views

Can a person other than the author start a bounty for a question they like?

Suppose Jack is new to MO and he posts a good question. Tim has a lot of reputations in MO and thinks the question deserves more attentions. Why not we allow Tim to offer some of his reputations to ...
Tony B's user avatar
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