Questions tagged [discussion]

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MathOverflow conferences

What would the appropriate initial steps be to host a MathOverflow conference? Back in 2019 I hosted a party for the 10th anniversary of MathOverflow, and it was a blast.$^*$ Since then I've ...
Alec Rhea's user avatar
  • 8,977
18 votes
11 answers
900 views

2022 Moderator Election Q&A – Question Collection

The purpose of this thread was to collect questions for the questionnaire. The questionnaire is now live, and you may find it here. MathOverflow is scheduled for an election next week, 2022-09-19. In ...
Catija's user avatar
  • 101
5 votes
0 answers
216 views

Partial answer accepted, thinking it could have been easily extended and provided enough insights

Some days ago I posted a question and I accepted an answer, "although it’s only a very partial answer," as the answer author wrote in a comment. I accepted it because I thought that it ...
Penelope Benenati's user avatar
3 votes
2 answers
198 views

Should we allow link-only answers that point to stable, well known and respectable sites?

I have just been presented with an answer in the VLQ queue that consisted essentially in a link to a preprint on arXiv. The user having posted it is a high reputation user, so he definitely knows the ...
Alex M.'s user avatar
  • 5,207
0 votes
0 answers
163 views

Asking if a post about a mathematical characterization of gravitational geons can be potentially interesting for the main site MathOverflow

I would like to ask about if a question about the following subject can be potentially interesting and on topic on MathOverflow. I would like to ask on the main site of MathOverflow about the ...
user142929's user avatar
23 votes
0 answers
917 views

Upcoming election announcement (2022)

It has been quite some time since the last moderator election, and we decided that it would be a good idea to hold one soon. This is just a preliminary announcement to let you know that this is going ...
Asaf Karagila's user avatar
  • 38.1k
5 votes
0 answers
239 views

Would such a "big list" on known bounds for distances between $2^S-3^N$ be appropriate for MO?

After new questions and/or activities on older questions on "bounds for distances $2^S-3^N$" appeared in MO I thought whether a [BigList] or [CommunityWiki] on known such bounds (their ...
Gottfried Helms's user avatar
3 votes
0 answers
155 views

Planar geometry on MO

"Planar geometry" here is 2-dimensional Euclidean geometry, usually used as Olympiad geometry problem, its objects just be a bunch of lines and circles, it has no Combinatoric aspect and not ...
Veronica Phan's user avatar
11 votes
0 answers
375 views

To which extent should spam posts on meta be considered a problem?

MathOverflow is one of the few sites in the Stack Exchange network where users with reputation 1 can post on meta.1 Clearly, this has some advantages2 and some disadvantages. Probably one of the ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
10 votes
4 answers
305 views

Is it possible to see the source for a comment?

Although this question seems to be new to M.MO, @MartinSleziak points out several related posts on Meta.MSE. I was curious about the diagrammatic magic of @YaakovBaruch's recent comment, and so ...
LSpice's user avatar
  • 11.3k
13 votes
2 answers
648 views

Questions about correctness of published papers

A recent thread brought up the issue of the appropriateness of discussing correctness of a published paper on MO. Correctness of Thierry Aubin's argument about positive Ricci curvature I did a ...
Ryan Budney's user avatar
  • 42.8k
2 votes
2 answers
169 views

When, precisely, should history of math questions be CW?

I don't have much experience with "history of math" questions or the ho.history-overview tag. I tried to distill an answer to my question from looking at existing questions, but failed to ...
David White's user avatar
  • 29.4k
11 votes
0 answers
360 views

Keeping a question on track or allowing people to chime in with stuff they'd like to mention?

I am slightly unhappy with the direction of drift to answers to this question. On my reading, the OP mentioned a phenomenon and asked how editors should react to it. This seems to have been taken by ...
Yemon Choi's user avatar
  • 25.5k
1 vote
1 answer
252 views

Why are some non-research questions so highly upvoted?

It is not difficult to find soft questions on the website which do not clearly strike as research level. To give examples of some: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Yet some of them are upvoted so highly that even many ...
Shimura Variety's user avatar
11 votes
0 answers
268 views

New community close vote reason

While doing some cleanup on the home page just now, I noticed that we have a new community specific reason to close. The second option in the list is new, and leaves me slightly confused. While I ...
Alec Rhea's user avatar
  • 8,977
12 votes
1 answer
569 views

Was the custom close reason mentioning Math.SE removed?

For a long time, these two custom close reasons used to be available: This question does not appear to be about research level mathematics within the scope defined in the help center. MathOverflow ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
6 votes
2 answers
368 views

Citing papers in questions/answers

Is there an established policy for how to cite a paper you link to in a question/answer? If not, what does etiquette dictate appropriate for citations? I used to be careful to include full citations ...
Alec Rhea's user avatar
  • 8,977
7 votes
1 answer
377 views

How to make it easier to moderate blatantly off-topic questions?

As many of you have noticed, there's a lot of new users asking basic mathematics questions. This is not the only site in the network with this kind of problem; on Meta Stack Exchange we get all kinds ...
Glorfindel's user avatar
  • 2,743
1 vote
1 answer
122 views

Downvote and vote to close of a recent question

I recently asked the following question on God's number for higher dimensional sequential move puzzles. It was downvoted once and has a vote to close, even though it is in my eyes a perfectly good ...
Max Muller's user avatar
  • 4,485
14 votes
2 answers
916 views

Revamping the closure reasons in 2022

Prompted by Gro-Tsen's recent meta question, it appears that now may be a good time to rethink our site-specific close reasons here on MathOverflow. Background: If you have sufficient rep, you can ...
Tim Campion's user avatar
  • 60.6k
7 votes
2 answers
566 views

Are there policies to respect in order for MathOverflow Q&As to be tracked back in relevant zbMATH Open reviews?

Are there policies to respect in order for MathOverflow Q&As to be tracked back in relevant zbMATH Open reviews? I am asking this since I noticed that all questions and answers to which I ...
Daniele Tampieri's user avatar
6 votes
6 answers
775 views

I have a question which is a near fit for MathOverflow. What are some other resources I might consult?

What are some other resources which might be useful for somebody considering asking a MathOverflow question, especially if their question is not quite a perfect fit here? In asking this, I have ...
Tim Campion's user avatar
  • 60.6k
11 votes
1 answer
531 views

Could we add another reason for closing that's more appropriate for "check this (dis)proof of RH"-type questions?

I wanted to vote to close this question which claims to disprove the Riemann Hypothesis, but I realized that, even though we get questions of this kind occasionally, none of the reasons to close is ...
Gro-Tsen's user avatar
  • 29.9k
6 votes
0 answers
266 views

Might featuring some FAQ posts on meta be useful?

Among the things on the site which can be directly influenced by the site moderators (without any involvement of Stack Exchange staff), probably the community bulletin has the most visibility. The ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
4 votes
0 answers
359 views

1000 Questions by Dominic van der Zypen!

Amazing milestone! Our first $1000$-question user. Question # $1000$: "Edge sets on 𝜔 maximal with respect to chromatic number".
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
3 votes
0 answers
158 views

Would this question be appropriate on the main site?

I would like to ask a "big list" style question on the main site. The question would be "How do we pronounce the names of famous mathematicians?". Each answer would be an audio ...
Steven Gubkin's user avatar
-7 votes
1 answer
224 views

Do we have a privacy problem when people try and leave the mathoverflow community?

Do we have a privacy problem when people try and leave the Mathoverflow community? Due to my objections regarding MO I deleted my profile. While I understand not deleting my questions and answers, I ...
user avatar
20 votes
2 answers
974 views

Can (and should) Project Euclid links be replaced in bulk?

In February 2021, Project Euclid made some changes on their website: Project Euclid Platform Migration FAQs. It is probably a consequence of this that the links starting with ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
277 views

Mystery popup window

Last week or so, when I get into an SE site (MO in particular), a popup window appears in the lower left corner for few milliseconds. Some kind of clickable button there, with not enough time for me ...
მამუკა ჯიბლაძე's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
238 views

Citing a mathoverflow comment

One can easily cite a mathoverflow answer as there is an option "cite" below every answer. But there is no cite option to any mathoverflow comment to a question. One is then forced to cite ...
HARRY's user avatar
  • 267
15 votes
0 answers
679 views

MathOverflow related ICM satellite event (2022)?

I read in Terence Tao's blog about the 2022 ICM satellite coordination group. As the ICM is now online, the IMU encourages grassroots efforts to supplement the core program with additional satellite ...
Steffen Plunder's user avatar
9 votes
1 answer
273 views

Editing old question, can't submit as title is too long

I'm editing Is there a canonical map from the cohomology of orbifold Chiral de Rham on an orbifold to the cohomology of Chiral de Rham on a crepant resolution? as there was a broken arXiv Front link (...
David Roberts's user avatar
  • 33.8k
5 votes
0 answers
296 views

What should I do if I believe to found the answer to my question but I'm not sure?

Four months ago I asked one question in MO and had no expected answer. After following the clues from comments of other users I realized that, in that time, I didn't even know how to properly ask what ...
Diego Santos's user avatar
17 votes
1 answer
917 views

How to respond to well-known sockpuppeters

Frequent sockpuppeter/spammer Wolfgang Muckenheim is back, and across multiple SE sites (philosophy, mse). This leads me to ask: Is there anything specific we should do in a situation like this, ...
Noah Schweber's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
310 views

Automatic comments by Community

There seem to be automatically generated comments by "Community". As an example, this question by a new user has Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to ...
YCor's user avatar
  • 60.1k
3 votes
3 answers
697 views

Has MO traffic decreased a bit since the invasion of Ukraine?

I check the review queues several times a day, each day. I have noticed a significant drop of posts in the queues that I am watching (First questions, First answers, LQP, Late answers). Even the ...
Alex M.'s user avatar
  • 5,207
13 votes
1 answer
779 views

Best way to correct "Cauchy-Schwarz" misspellings

I would like to apologize because the top questions page is currently overrun by questions I just edited. I just noticed that Cauchy-Schwarz is often incorrectly spelled Cauchy-Schwartz and so I made ...
coudy's user avatar
  • 18.5k
16 votes
2 answers
447 views

Feature request: add short "about MathOverflow" section to the front page

Until a few years ago MathOverflow front page had a short section at the top describing what the site is for. I am not sure when it disappeared or why but I would like to see it restored. Currently ...
Vitali Kapovitch's user avatar
4 votes
0 answers
441 views

Is this soft question acceptable?

Edited version: What are great examples of comprehensively archived mathematical correspondence (including both handwritten and electronic items)? Previous version : How should mathematicians archive ...
Thomas Sauvaget's user avatar
16 votes
2 answers
285 views

Bringing back the old front page with custom CSS: a guide

As mentioned in a recent meta question, the Stack Exchange development team pushed changes to the front page affecting how views, vote counts, and answer counts are displayed. A few hours ago, these ...
Emily's user avatar
  • 10.3k
6 votes
1 answer
276 views

Bountied question has already been answered elsewhere

This question, while somewhat old, recently had a 250 point bounty placed upon it by David E. Speyer. However, as I remarked in the comments, it has already been answered by Harry West, but in the ...
Gro-Tsen's user avatar
  • 29.9k
0 votes
2 answers
321 views

Why has my question on Aristotelian Spaces been closed for being 'insufficiently focused'?

My question on Aristotelian spaces begins with a motivating preamble and ends with a specific and focused request as to a property which I say would help characterise these spaces. I've bolded this ...
Mozibur Ullah's user avatar
12 votes
0 answers
494 views

New Stack Exchange site for proof assistants and automatic theorem provers

Stack Exchange will soon create the Private Beta site for Proof Assistants and Automatic Theorem Provers. If you want to see what a Stack Exchange site is like in its initial beginnings, want to help ...
Nike Dattani's user avatar
38 votes
1 answer
2k views

Viewing reputation and badges is now opt-in and compatible with the new front page

This announcement is a little late (see the discussion here), but in response to discussions over many years, we (the moderators and board) have implemented a change to the site where by default, ...
Ben Webster's user avatar
  • 43.9k
14 votes
0 answers
337 views

2021: a year in moderation

As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year. As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange ...
JNat's user avatar
  • 101
-2 votes
1 answer
168 views

Asking the same (subjective) question on Math.SE and MO

I asked a question a couple of years ago on MathStackexchange which was quite popular. I would like to ask it on MathOverflow as well, since I'd be interested in the answers there. But I'm never ...
tomos's user avatar
  • 1,096
7 votes
1 answer
340 views

Top-voted questions for the year?

This link shows the top-voted questions:       https://mathoverflow.net/questions?tab=Votes In a New Year's spirit, how can I restrict this query to top-voted ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
12 votes
3 answers
760 views

How to make welcoming comments on "homework-like" posts that will be closed?

We get posts here that are phrased as if from a textbook or homework; the one I have in mind is Find the recurrence relation, but my question is more general. Such posts will certainly be closed. A ...
LSpice's user avatar
  • 11.3k
0 votes
0 answers
100 views

Hinting votes for CW contributions

I would like to learn about opinions about visually indicating votes for contributions to community wiki; what I have in mind is something analogous to the green button in the "menue-line" ...
Manfred Weis's user avatar
  • 12.6k
36 votes
3 answers
2k views

Welcoming new user: on a recent question about connections

I think that the history of this question about connections is unfortunate. I would like to discuss (respectfully, without throwing blame around) whether/how a better outcome might have been achieved....
Neil Strickland's user avatar

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