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.
389
questions
6
votes
1answer
265 views
Who decides on a community policy?
Approximately one month ago, I asked whether pronunciation questions should be allowed. The responses I received seemed to suggest that they should, albeit possibly in the form of a handful of ...
6
votes
1answer
238 views
Hard to notice links in comments
This is a conscious duplicate :D
There are at least two more questions about it (The color of links in comments, On the current color scheme, and why it sucks - by the way, when trying to share them ...
6
votes
1answer
371 views
Should meta be Q&A?
Should the meta-MathOverflow have the Q&A format? I don't see any rationale for this. After all, meta is just an auxiliary sub-forum which should help running the main forum. Collecting the ...
6
votes
1answer
1k views
Swinnerton-Dyer passed away?
His wiki article has been updated to say that he passed away recently. Are there any other sources confirming that? Thanks.
If it is more appropriate for another stackexchange site, please feel free ...
5
votes
0answers
248 views
Would this M.SE question that has received no answers be appropriate for MO? (or could it be tweaked into being appropriate?)
https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/667830/modern-research-into-grassmans-theory-of-forms
When I first posted it on MO, it received a downvote, so I figured there might be something wrong with ...
5
votes
5answers
309 views
Two tags for partially ordered sets
There are currently two tags for partially ordered sets: posets and order-theory. In my opinion, they mean the same thing. I see three posibilities.
Merge the tags.
Make them synonymous.
Keep them as ...
4
votes
3answers
441 views
Problematic wording of the TOS, take two
The Stack exchange terms of service have been recently changed since a sentence in them was perceived as too strict by many users.
The change was in this paragraph:
In the event that You post or ...
4
votes
2answers
178 views
Tag [upper-bounds] is nowhere to be found
At the moment, MathOverflow has tag lower-bounds (100 questions), but no tag upper-bounds. Are lower bounds that much harder to compute? Or that much more interesting?
Worse, due to the non-existence ...
4
votes
1answer
180 views
Should [tag:feynman-integral] be a synonym of [tag:path-integral]?
The question is in the title: I see no benefit from having these two tags for essentially the same concept (particularly as the path-integral wiki excerpt refers to the path integral formulation of ...
4
votes
1answer
347 views
Rules for deleting one's own question
Today (2019 July 6) a new user had posted a question that received some upvotes The problem is from contest.Please flag it for removing it and I had provided an answer that didn't solve the problem.
...
4
votes
1answer
426 views
moving questions between MO and math.SE
How does one decide if a question is good for MathOverflow or Math.StackExchange?
I've been using the criterion of being "research-level" but that can be subjective. An expert may consider a ...
4
votes
1answer
396 views
What are our copyright policies?
Interesting questions, answers and ideas overflow everywhere in MathOverflow. Users can use them in their lectures, papers, teachings, etc. Of course it is the main propose of this free math ...
3
votes
0answers
88 views
What subject specific tags could replace the tag 'divisors'?
A few names are used in different subjects in mathematics with completely distinct meanings. A couple of common examples are "spectrum" and "regular". Sometimes, this creates ...
3
votes
1answer
293 views
Are all terms clearly defined in Help fragments? If not, who can contribute?
I could be hypocritical and not specify the specific case that induced this question. But actually I am after a golden badge :D
Its description says this:
Ask a well-received question on 100 ...
3
votes
1answer
113 views
What is the procedure to initiate merging of questions?
My previous question What to do with useful answers to questions closed as duplicates (or by some other reasons)? got an answer which satisfied me entirely: if a duplicate question has got a nice ...
2
votes
1answer
358 views
Why downvote on meta?
I only posted two questions on meta, both fact based and both about the way MO is supposed to work. Today, I realized that I have received three down-votes. I have a feeling about down-votes (and up-...
2
votes
2answers
524 views
Should we start a "PolyMathOverflow" project?
Recently polymath projects seems to have stopped.
One reason for this could be that running such a project requires a lot of effort from at least one person running it.
I was thinking if it were ...
1
vote
0answers
77 views
Does it make sense to have both "surfaces" and "curves-and-surfaces" tags?
I have noticed that there currently exist tags surfaces (with description "A surface is a two-dimensional topological manifold. The term can also be used to describe a smooth surface, depending on the ...
1
vote
0answers
193 views
Why was this question made community wiki?
Yesterday I asked a question seeking published references studying popular games, to start building up an undergraduate research program. Today I woke up to find it had been made community wiki. Now, ...
1
vote
0answers
126 views
Is it appropriate to ask for references and point to a blog with the same question
I wonder if the community would find it appropriate if I ask a question like
"
Is this or that known? It would be interesting for this and that reason. For details see our blog "blah" where we ask ...
1
vote
1answer
284 views
Paper request(s)
Can we have a thread here where one might ask for help accessing to some papers ?
E.g. If someone has access to
https://projecteuclid.org/euclid.dmj/1077468920
Pairs of commuting matrices over a ...
1
vote
0answers
179 views
The tags (transcendence) and (transcendental-number-theory)
There exist tags transcendence and transcend.-number-theory (probably shortened from transcendental number theory to fit 25 characters limit for the tag name). At the moment, the tag-info is empty ...
1
vote
0answers
247 views
Preferred Conciseness of Contributions
This is a followup question to Appropriate Reaction to a Failed Reference Request on MO related to Reference Request for Integer factorization with LP/ILP
I'm about to prepare an answer that ...
1
vote
0answers
174 views
Why do we need the general-mathematics tag?
I recently came across the general-mathematics tag. It has no usage guidelines, nor do I think it should exist. Do any of you know the historic reasons for its existence, or think it should stay as it ...
1
vote
1answer
256 views
What happens to reputation when I get merged?
A while ago I sent an email to the stackexchange team on recovering my account https://mathoverflow.net/users/21278/ben-lim. They said I should create a new account and merge it with the old one. This ...
1
vote
3answers
675 views
Down vote without comment
I received a down vote on this question without any comment.
Can one help me to understand how this question could be improved?
I think that a moral and implicit policy of MO is that a comment ...
1
vote
0answers
42 views
Should I rewrite my question, or create a new one
I posed this question two days ago, which effectively asks "Has X hard-to-describe special case on Barnette's Conjecture been proven?". In retrospect, I believe it was a poor question.
What I now ...
0
votes
3answers
1k views
Winter Bash on MO?
I noticed that the Stackexchange sites are having a Winter Bash, and one of my friends recieved 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
votes
1answer
490 views
Can we change the reference to "professional mathematicians" on the main page?
I'm personally quite bothered by the statement on the MathOverflow main page (when not logged in) that "MathOverflow is a question and answer site for professional mathematicians." It seems both false ...
-1
votes
1answer
769 views
How can I convince mathematicians that my question on Fourier transforms and singularities is very important to be solved and it is worth their time
How can I convince mathematicians that this question is very important to be solved and it is worth their time. This question has practical applications, but I don't know the right procedure/forum to ...
-1
votes
1answer
242 views
Change a question after counter example
This following question was motivated by this question, though many of similar nature can be found throughout MO.
The Problem: The question asks whether any bound exist on an expression, and ...
-4
votes
1answer
377 views
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.
...
-4
votes
2answers
529 views
How do people determine if other people's questions are research level or not?
I post a question here:
https://mathoverflow.net/questions/159016/on-convexity-of-function-in-c10-infty
(now deleted).
Obviously, those who closed it think it is too elementary.
But how do they know ...
-5
votes
1answer
1k views
Protest for my account suspension [closed]
I posted this question about two month ago. Shortly after this, I got a moderator private message.
It says:
We've noticed that you have a pattern of engaging in lengthy discussions in comments, ...
-5
votes
4answers
706 views
Migrating a question which is already posted on the other site [closed]
When a question begins by saying "This question appeared earlier on math.stackexchange.com" and links to that earlier posting, how does it make sense to migrate it to math.stackexchange.com (thereby ...
-7
votes
1answer
581 views
More precisely defining the scope of mathoverflow's subject matter
A few months back someone asked about the difference between questions appropriate for mathoverflow.net and those appropriate for math.stackexchange.com. And someone answered, saying something along ...
-7
votes
1answer
169 views
adding n cat lab tag
I propose adding n cat lab tag with an intention to discuss mathematics that is written in https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/HomePage.
As https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/HomePage has large amount of ...
-7
votes
1answer
567 views
The question 'Mathematical work of Jonathan Gleason' disappeared
The question
https://mathoverflow.net/questions/291518/mathematical-work-of-jonathan-gleason
was deleted by some unknown person, not long after Jonathan Gleason passed away. I am shocked with the ...
-10
votes
2answers
347 views
Why was my answer deleted?
The axiom of choice as a consequence of a stronger semantics?
On what grounds?
"It is not people who break ethical standards who are regarded as aliens. It is people like me who are isolated." (...