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 ...
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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 ...
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'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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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?
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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 ...
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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? ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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, ...
user6976
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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-...
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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 ...
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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.
...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 (...
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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 ...
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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'. ...
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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 ...
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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.
&...
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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 ...
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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 ...
user9072
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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) ...
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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 KohlMod
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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 ...
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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, ...
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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-...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
user9072
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ---...
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