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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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Undelete request, question 23943

NEVER MIND --- the same moderator who suggested I post here has solved the problem by deleting my copy-paste job and undeleting the answer we wanted undeleted. [or maybe it got undeleted by some other ...
Gerry Myerson's user avatar
8 votes
3 answers
789 views

Should we request a Private Message system?

One convenient thing on AoPS that is missing on MO is the private message system where you can send and receive private messages to other users without figuring out who they are outside the internet ...
fedja's user avatar
  • 56.6k
8 votes
2 answers
231 views

'Tag-removed' tags where they possibly shouldn't be

See Why is differentiating mechanics and integration art? Which functions of one variable are derivatives ? both of which are tagged [tag-removed]. Also, both of these seem to have had these tags ...
David Roberts's user avatar
  • 32.2k
12 votes
5 answers
991 views

When a MSE user is suspended, should the suspension apply to MO as well?

I'm just asking. When an MSE account is temporarily suspended to cool down, then the expected outcome is that the user would start doing the same things on MO which led to the MSE suspension. This ...
Michael Zieve's user avatar
11 votes
3 answers
382 views

Should there be a general policy for putting comments on "not-suitable-for-MO" questions?

Right now, there is a question posted on MO that rightly does not belong to MO: The equivalence of the mathematical induction and the principle of the smallest. Of course, such questions comes and ...
Amir Asghari's user avatar
  • 2,259
16 votes
4 answers
2k views

Tags that encourage off-topic questions

MathOverflow has a few problematic tags which are not inappropriate by themselves but suggest off-topic ideas. A prime example of this is the calculus tag. Sometimes a research-level mathematics ...
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
18 votes
1 answer
579 views

How long until MathOverflow will be part of the Stack Exchange Data Explorer?

According to this answer and this answer, MathOverflow will eventually appear on the Stack Exchange Data Explorer. A couple of weeks have passed since these answers were given and MO is still missing ...
Michael Albanese's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
852 views

Does deleting an MO account delete other StackExchange accounts?

If a user deletes their account on MO will all the associated accounts on other StackExchange sites be deleted as well?
Michael Albanese's user avatar
6 votes
1 answer
281 views

On an answer containing pre-formatted text

I just came across an answer by a new user which looks very unusual to me: https://mathoverflow.net/a/139275/21095 Specifically, there is very little mathjax in this answer. Instead the vast majority ...
Ricardo Andrade's user avatar
132 votes
60 answers
19k views

Best of MathOverflow, or papers inspired by MathOverflow

This is a place to collect MathOverflow success stories! Was some of your research inspired by something on MathOverflow? Do you know questions & answers that led to interesting research? ...
9 votes
0 answers
639 views

Collatz Question

I voted to close this question about a "5n+1" version of the Collatz conjecture because it appears to be entirely unmotivated, with no heuristics and not even any substantial numerical evidence. I ...
Steven Landsburg's user avatar
8 votes
0 answers
288 views

Users with multiple accounts

In the old meta we had a very useful thread where one could point to moderators multiple accounts to be merged. Since things have changed, would there be a point on having such a thread here, or what ...
Andrés E. Caicedo's user avatar
16 votes
5 answers
1k views

Do we have an unofficial quota on how many old questions one should bump for minor edits in a single day?

I noticed tonight that a well-intentioned user has been doing a lot of minor edits of formatting of old questions with the effect of filling most of the active question list with old questions bumped ...
Benjamin Steinberg's user avatar
14 votes
3 answers
1k views

List of recurrent technical problems involving MathJax

Edit: I have retagged this question 'feature-request' in an attempt to expedite action on these issues. I request that the MathOverflow developers implement an automatic fix of the issues in the ...
Ricardo Andrade's user avatar
22 votes
4 answers
2k views

Editing titles to include $\mathfrak{LaTeX \; Math}$

Should question titles, which sometimes intentionally avoid LaTeX math for those who choose faster rendering, be edited to insist upon LaTeX math? A recent instance that prompted my question is "two ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
7 votes
1 answer
606 views

Who owns the content of MO, and why migrating a question is legal?

There is a long list of comments in Migrating a question which is already posted on the other site, and an important question is deep in that list, so I repost it here. Where in the legal agreement, ...
user avatar
-5 votes
4 answers
710 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 ...
Michael Hardy's user avatar
8 votes
3 answers
1k views

Is it good practice to write "@someone" in a question?

On SE and on the old MO have seen @someone in a question. Probably this notifies someone in his inbox and draws his attention (which is the goal). Does it really ...
joro's user avatar
  • 23.8k
12 votes
0 answers
635 views

Is the following question on paper-writing etiquette appropriate for MO?

I'm wondering if it would be appropriate to ask a soft question on MO regarding mathematical etiquette. In more detail, I'm writing a paper that cites a well-known paper in my field, but I've been ...
Chuck Hague's user avatar
  • 3,587
4 votes
1 answer
284 views

Soft question on history of Cohen Macaulay rings

A user over at MSE flagged https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/455506/why-cohen-macaulay-rings-have-become-important-in-commutative-algebra#question suggesting that it is suitable for MO. The ...
Willie Wong's user avatar
  • 33.9k
11 votes
2 answers
897 views

Where to share MathOverflow success stories?

We had an old thread about this at tea.mathoverflow.net but this is not the most obvious place for that. Where should we keep track of cool success stories like this recent gold nugget? Update: The ...
François G. Dorais's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
349 views

Improving Anglo-American relations

Evidently maths.stackexchange redirects to math.stackexchange, but there is no apparent mathsoverflow.net. Granted, sover is not a word. Anyway, the suggestion is to create a thing called ...
Will Jagy's user avatar
  • 24.9k
2 votes
1 answer
363 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-...
Amir Asghari's user avatar
  • 2,259
21 votes
2 answers
1k views

Ignoring certain users' postings

This old post on meta stackexchange contains a script that hides posts from users of your choice. There were some negative comments there and the script doesn't seem to be working anymore (maybe ...
Felipe Voloch's user avatar
8 votes
2 answers
579 views

Getting Experts Opinions on Mathematical Results

I would like to know, whether it is in the line of MO rules to present a result and ask for "opinions" like whether it is already known or worth pursuing and, who might be interested in the result. ...
Manfred Weis's user avatar
9 votes
1 answer
3k views

Clarify meaning of "No action needed" in review queue

The review queue for late answers and first posts has the option "No action needed". Its description says that I should use it if no action is needed from me. This specific description confused me ...
Ricardo Andrade's user avatar
-14 votes
1 answer
389 views

on- and off-topic questions [closed]

When might it be reasonable that a question is closed as off-topic because it "does not appear to be research-level mathematics" while one of many narrow special cases of that question, posted ...
Michael Hardy's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
279 views

Why was my question closed?

I had a question that was on hold with a -1 vote. The vote increased to 0, presumably due to my edit. However, I see that it has been closed. I'm unclear as to why. The question is here: Torsion and ...
Oliver Jones's user avatar
  • 1,338
12 votes
0 answers
190 views

Remove substantial tag score requirement for suggesting tag synonyms?

I have recently attempted to create the obvious tag synonym 'dg-algebras' <--- 'differential-graded-algeb'. However, my attempt was thwarted by the system's insistence that I need five total score (...
Ricardo Andrade's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
924 views

Is this non-technical question appropriate?

I am interested in asking the following question, and would like some indication as to whether it is appropriate or not before I do. The question would be entitled something like 'Mathematical ...
Marius Kempe's user avatar
8 votes
0 answers
152 views

Appropriate procedure for removing little used tags which are too specific

What is the correct procedure for removing tags which only have a single question, and would be better off with a less specific tag? My example is a question which was tagged 'relative-entropy'. ...
Ricardo Andrade's user avatar
27 votes
2 answers
2k views

Explicitly pointing out math.stackexchange when (new?) users ask a question

I have recently flagged several questions for migration to math.stackexchange which were fairly clearly not about mathematics research and related topics. It was clear that in some cases these new ...
Ricardo Andrade's user avatar
10 votes
1 answer
784 views

Meaning of "hot questions" index?

What is the meaning of the numbers in the leftmost column: $94$, $70$, $54$, ...? Uncharacteristically, neither hovering nor clicking reveals the meaning.        &...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
120 views

Order of answers

Looking at the answers on a recently closed CW post about applications of pure math, I noticed that the answers were ordered by time posted, and not votes. Is this a new change? Is there a way to ...
Brian Rushton's user avatar
10 votes
0 answers
587 views

On "How does the work of a pure mathematician impact society?"

The question How does the work of a pure mathematician impact society? was originally quickly closed, relatively quickly reopened, after a longer time closed again and has at the time of this edit a ...
user avatar
6 votes
2 answers
318 views

Can I ask on the main question board about what are the recent research in some area?

I'm not a researcher yet, I'm defending my thesis next year and would like to get acquainted with recent results and branches of representation theory Mainly groups and C*-algebras Can I ask this in ...
Henrique Tyrrell's user avatar
13 votes
3 answers
567 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
5 votes
1 answer
460 views

Why the downvotes on off-topic questions

I am not that active on MathOverflow but I notice that almost every off-topic question is closed within an hour. Why is a flag (if you lack of reputation) or a close vote (and in both cases a comment) ...
Dominic Michaelis's user avatar
10 votes
1 answer
382 views

Questions answered in a comment

It may happen that a question has zero answers, but is actually already answered satisfactorily in a comment. An example is this question. I think this is somewhat misleading, as the "0 answers" ...
Stefan Kohl's user avatar
  • 18.7k
22 votes
4 answers
1k views

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 ...
Igor Khavkine's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
421 views

Would the question "Fourier series is to Fourier transform what Laurent series is to …?" be on topic at MO?

I asked the question Fourier series is to Fourier transform what Laurent series is to …? over at MSE, since that's where my questions usually belong to. But since I couldn't find any resources on it, ...
Tobias Kienzler's user avatar
12 votes
2 answers
722 views

Should questions to which I already know the answer in advance be appropriate for MO?

I was just asking Is it appropriate to ask for references and point to a blog with the same question and started to read http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/07/its-ok-to-ask-and-answer-your-own-...
Christian Stump's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
129 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 ...
Christian Stump's user avatar
5 votes
2 answers
460 views

Adding \LaTeX to old questions and answers

Maybe some context in the beginning. It is my second year in university so I am far away to be good enough to answer questions here, but from time to time I enjoy reading questions and answers. I ...
Dominic Michaelis's user avatar
26 votes
4 answers
7k views

On using MathJax to create 'white space'

The purpose of this post is, first, to raise awareness (as this, reasonably, might not be clear) that the way some (and it seems to me the number is growing) use MathJax to create 'white space' (or to ...
user avatar
6 votes
4 answers
296 views

What should the "hover text" for the MathOverflow link on all SE sites be?

If you go to the bottom of any page in the SE network (e.g. this one!), you'll see a list of SE sites. In particular there's a link to MathOverflow, that is potentially seen by a large number of ...
4 votes
1 answer
405 views

The mysterious Sportsmanship badge

MO 2.0 has a new badge: Sportsmanship: Up voted 100 answers on questions where an answer of yours has a positive score. I'm curious whether this badge really makes sense in our community- I think I ...
Daniel Moskovich's user avatar
9 votes
4 answers
1k views

How to treat `polymath' questions?

W. Kuperberg asked a question about plane geometry, which invites contributions to solving a research problem which he has worked on. Small quadrilaterals containing a given convex region Given that ...
Daniel Moskovich's user avatar
67 votes
6 answers
3k views

The Association Bonus

One new feature that's come along with the transition is the "association bonus", which allows members of Math Stackexchange --- and other sites that are much further removed from the mission of MO ---...
Steven Landsburg's user avatar