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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On the viXra question
Should Hard maths on viXra? be reopened?
Is it appropriate for the site?
Why or why not?
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Is this ("Is this a good research question?") a good MathOverflow question?
I apologize if this has been covered before. A cursory search of meta.mathoverflow does not reveal it.
There are reasons not to make research topics public. (I have some topics that I am not ready ...
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Can I ask this question here?
I recently posted this question on Math Stack Exchange, in which I asked for a published reference containing the proof of a certain fact. What I got instead was a very rough outline of a proof. I've ...
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Are we ready for a MathOverflow Overlay?
As varied as my participation in MathOverflow has been, I seem to gravitate towards number-theoretic issues involving $\phi$ and $\sigma$. I am considering writing an overlay article. This would be ...
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Shall I ask my questions about Algebraic geometry on MO instead of MSE?
I searched for similar questions on MSE, like this and this, but couldn't figure out my solution. And since I intended to ask whether I can post my questions on MO, so I think I should ask here.
I ...
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How much detail do I have to provide in an answer?
In a mathoverflow answer, one usually doesn't want to provide all the details of a proof, especially if the question is not really research level (but not trivial enough to be closed). I feel that a ...
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What are the precise steps of processing a feature request?
There are many feature request posts on meta. Some of them turned into special features of Mathoverflow after receiving positive feedback of the community but most of them never became anything more ...
user82800
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On Notification Mechanisms in MathOverflow
Inbox is where a typical user receives most notifications in Mathoverflow. One also receives moderators' private messages through mail. My question is:
What other notification mechanisms are ...
user82800
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How the moderators/admin decide the significance/research orientation of any question before closing it? is it intuitive to them?
I am not sure whether there exists some kind of objectivity in taking a decision in closing a question. For example my question https://mathoverflow.net/questions/226226/a-symmetric-function was ...
K A Khan
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1
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What to do in case of missing feedback on an idea?
I recently posted this question Bellman-Ford for Matching Problems? on MO and got an answer stating that the occurence of negative odd cycles would be inevitable.
Upon reading that claim, I had an ...
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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 ...
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Research-level mathematics
I recently asked two questions: Simultaneous coset spaces and Manifolds as simultaneous coset spaces which appear to be quite similar. The first was closed as 'not research-level mathematics' while ...
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Learn from my mistake
The question "What is the spin connection in 9 dimensions as opposed to 5 dimensions?" received two down votes. I would like to know what I can do to improve the quality of this question. Thank you ...
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Proposed merger of tags
I would like to get some reactions to the idea of merging several tags under an umbrella "infinitesimal". The motivation is that the individual tags each have few questions, and the existence of ...
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Is this question migratable to MO?
Is it worth migrating this question to MO, from math.SE?
It seems elementary but did not get any response on MSE even after 10 days.
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Can there be a MathOverflow Careers?
SO has a Careers site* for finding a programming-related job. Would a Careers site be feasible on MO?
$^*$ When you are on StackOverflow, the top menu looks like this...
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Cross posts to Math SE
Are cross posts to Math SE allowed? As in almost exactly the same text, just posted there. Of course the sites are meant for difference things, but still just wondering. And if yes, should one link ...
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I fixed my question. Can it please be taken off hold now?
Yesterday I asked a question on parameterizations of knotted surfaces in $\mathbb R^4$. After I stated in the comments that I wanted the question to be kept to the case of a general surface, the ...
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Why is my question on martingales off-topic and not migrated?
Here is my question: https://mathoverflow.net/questions/225181/show-that-ex-t-t-infty-le-ex-0-and-cp-sup-x-n-ge-c-le-ex-0
I said in the beginning to please migrate if needed. Could it be on-topic ...
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Are MO Titles questions or Headlines:
This is a very soft question, that is inspired by an edit to one of my questions, which involved a change of the capitalization in the title; the details are not important and I don't mind such kind ...
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New queue for questions without an accepted answer
In the questions section one can find a special queue for unanswered questions. It is for attracting more attention of the community and getting a possible answer in the future.
Is it possible to ...
user82843
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Can we publicise the brilliant "insert citation" button? [duplicate]
This question is really just a heads up for the insert citation button. I'm a fairly regular user of MO, but I had no idea about this button until it was mentioned by Joe Silverman in an answer.
I ...
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Why does mathoverflow encourage only research level questions while stackoverflow encourages ANY questions?
Why does mathoverflow encourage only "research-level" questions while stack overflow encourages "all-level" questions?
I understand that the two communities seem to have different mentalities towards ...
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MO-clones on other sites
I don't know how to find the earlier discussions of the problem, that unrelated sites seem to hold copies of MO (and/or of other SE sites) [I searched meta.mo with keywords "clone", "copy" "piracy"... ...
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Is asking question from graduate books allowed
Is it ok to ask questions from books like Probabilistic Method by Noga Alon, the * marked ones, since they are tough questions but not exactly research level questions.
I had already asked this ...
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New feature - citation helper
At the request of the moderators, we have added a citation helper (based on the citation helper user script by Scott Morrison).
If you are familiar with the original script, you will note a few ...
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referencing a MO reply [duplicate]
In a book or article, how should I reference a helpful reply on mathoverflow? Can I give the web reference to the question? If so, in what form? I would rather do this than the catch all `personal ...
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Anonymity Policy
In view of recent events, we've been reconsidering having some policy against anonymous users. We've always encouraged users to use real names though we have been tolerant of pseudonymous and ...
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Is this question appropriate for MO? (Instability of Newton basins of polynomials at multiple roots)
About a year ago I asked on MO when a Newton basin fractal is continuously determined by the roots of its polynomial. I mentioned in that question that I had convinced myself that the roots of the ...
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Right-clicking on a mathjax link does wrong thing
Surely I am not the only user of this site with this habit - if I want to have look at the linked content I right-click on the link to open it in a new tab, so when I finish reading I then turn to the ...
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Color of links (both in posts and comments)
I know the issue has been discussed before in the last couple of years (here, here and kind of here), but nothing has been done to solve it, so I thought it would make sense to bring it up again. If ...
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MO answers that are Google top hits
The question "Who is L. A. Balashov?" shows the following curious behavior: Only a few minutes after posting, it became a Google top-hit for the search terms "mathematician balashov":
https://www....
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Should my question be closed?
See the question "On the number of $n$-perfect numbers". Some people claimed that it should be closed because I know the answer while I don't simply because they are hard open problems in number ...
user82509
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The strange case of a declined comment flag
I came across this question and noticed there were four comments stating the current number of deleted answers.
However, as none of them were up-to-date, I decided to flag them as obsolete.
But here'...
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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 makes you vote to reopen a question?
This is the dual form of a question posted by quid:
What makes you vote to close a question?
As the entire description in that question is applicable here I avoid adding extra points about why this ...
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Are these close-votes cast correctly?
I asked this question on MSE. It received up-votes and one answer that seems imprecise and unsatisfactory to me. Then I posted it here on MathOverflow for answers of higher quality, and it was also ...
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Reviewing first posts that are answers or late answers
When reviewing first posts that are answers or late answers to questions that have existing answers I invariably go to the original question to see these answers since I want to check if these new ...
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VIndictive downvoting--what can be done about such childishness, errh, lack of professionalism?
Clearly, from my reputation record, there has been some vindictive downvoting in the last three days or so. MathOverfflow is a community of people, not saints, and things like this are expected to ...
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Are interdisciplinary questions about mathematics of musical instruments on-topic here?
I have some mathematical questions that lie between music and mathematics, particularly applications of mathematics in building musical instruments.
As an example see this paper: The Mathematics of ...
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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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Downvoting and Closing of a Good Question
This seems to be a perfectly good (i.e. interesting and nontrivial) question that was downvoted and closed for mysterious reasons. As far as I can tell, the main objection is that the author ...
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Site updates are live
A majority of the changes are not be visible; these tweaks go along with recent updates that were made to Stack Overflow:
We have updated the site's CSS to a newly refactored LESS system, so that it'...
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Next badge appeared and disappeared
A few days ago I noticed that under the recent achievements tab there were two status bars showing how far along you were to the next privilege and next badge. I liked this but it has now disappeared. ...
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What points should someone think about before joining MathOverflow?
What points should I tell to someone whom I'm encouraging to join MathOverflow for a better contribution to this site and avoiding problems of any type as much as possible?
user80451
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Is it good to ask somebody else's question on MathOverflow?
It happens for me in the face to face meetings or emails that my friends ask me about some mathematical questions that I don't know their answer. In such cases I sometimes ask their questions on ...
user80450
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What to do when the answer makes details of the question moot?
In this question I asked about a theorem in an old paper. I gave many details explaining the difficulty I was having in following the proof. The author of the paper kindly replied, pointing me to a ...
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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 ...
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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. ...
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My question is flagged as being potentially subjective and therefore liable to be closed. Opinions please
I have a 'soft' question as follows:
'How did you first become interested in becoming a mathematician?'
The sort of answers I'm seeking are factual rather than subjective,
e.g.
I first ...
