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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Can I see who voted for what after I die?
I would like to know who has up- and (most importantly!) downvoted my questions. Will I find out after I die? What do different religions/beliefs say about this? I would happily convert to see the ...
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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 ...
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Recurrent posting about «Matrix polynomials» and so on
MO is currently being the focus of what I guess to be a single particular individual R.T.Man sporting multiple unregistered users identity (like Eskand or H.night). S/he's asking multiple very similar ...
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Appropriateness of intuition pump question
Before I begin, please note that I am not troubled by the votes to close of my question here, but I'm somewhat puzzled about them. The purpose of this meta thread is for someone to explain why the ...
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Why is my question on hold?
Why is this question fine, but mine is put on hold? They seem to be very similar questions? Or is there some distinction that I'm not getting?
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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 ...
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Humans, Go, Computers, Math
This is the meta thread for What advantage humans have over computers in mathematics?
It was closed, got reopened and reclosed, and reopened again.
In an effort to close the barn before the horse ...
user9072
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Appropriateness of question on delay differential equations
Would my question below, posted on Mathematics Stack Exchange in May 2015 and having received no answers, just a couple of upvotes, be appropriate in level for MO? I recognize that cross posting is ...
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What "lattices" do we need?
The tag lattices is a problem since a long time. Over the years there were varied discussions about this, but no clear resolution emerged, though some things were done to better the situation. This is ...
user9072
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Decluttering MathOverflow
There are quite a few very poor questions (all being put on hold quite soon after they've been asked), such as this. These questions stick around unless they get deleted by the OP (which they almost ...
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Can I ask a question here whose answer I did not get at math.stackexchange?
I have asked a question about solution of heat equation at math.stackexchange but no one answered. I think may be the question is too professional to be asked from learners. As this platform is for ...
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Time to close this question
Despite promising to stop editing it, the OP has now made his 24th edit to his question
https://mathoverflow.net/questions/208867/eliminating-gibbs-phenomenon-and-approximating-with-jumping-...
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Is there a way to measure the effectiveness of MO?
One way to measure the effectiveness of MO is to track how often it leads to publishable research. That angle has been discussed before.
I'm wondering if there are other metrics that can be used to ...
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Tag for errata of books
Navigating MO, it is possible to view two kinds of questions regarding errors within a book. The first kind are community-wiki questions which answers are a collaborative listing of found errors in a ...
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Appropriate or not: "To what extent are the results in Paper X correct?"
I have found a counterexample to the main theorem of a 20-year-old paper. The paper does not seem to be well known but it was written by reputable mathematicians and published in a highly regarded ...
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Need help on my closed question
It is about this question on periodic structures: my question
Currently I don't have any idea what is wrong with the question? It was totally rewritten by me and edited by other users, so now it ...
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How to discourage excessive self-edits?
My question is prompted by the reappearance of this post on the front page. A glance at the edit history shows that the OP has edited his own question thirteen times. This user has a history of ...
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Appropriateness of recent LIGO question for MO
There had been numerous comments under the question Recent observation of gravitational waves that discuss whether it is appropriate for MathOverflow. That discussion is properly a concern of MO meta, ...
Todd TrimbleMod
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Should I re-try a rejected edit with modifications?
Generating Classical Groups over Finite Local Rings asks a question that, according to the poster's own 'answer' https://mathoverflow.net/a/19098/2383, is not what was actually meant. I edited the ...
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Are bounty reputation points assigned to unanswered question returned back?
Are bounty reputation points, being assigned to unanswered question, returned back to the issuer of the bounty?
If "yes" - when? If not - why?
Alternatively (instead of direct "refunding") in the case,...
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What is the policy on "shortening titles" on MO?
A MO user (Myshkin) has just edited the title of a question of mine (here) to make it shorter. The old title was:
Ref request: If the natural density (relative to the primes) exists, then the ...
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Should this teaching question about Graph Theory be reopened?
Should What (fun) results in graph theory should undergraduates learn? be reopened? In the comments, Andrej Bauer suggests that it is should be moved to Math Educators Stack Exchange, while Fedor ...
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Can some higher power merge the enumeration and enumerative-combinatorics tags? [duplicate]
I tried to do this myself, but I do not have sufficient privileges to do so. It seems like I cannot even suggest one as a synonym of the other. As a side question, is having an approved synonym the ...
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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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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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