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.
316
questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
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Thank you letter!
I am quite aware that meta has not designed for what I am about to write, but I cannot help myself. This concerns a recent "question" on MO: US editors and reviewers vs Iranian Authors? Indeed, it ...
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Vandalism edits by apparently-anonymous users
There is an answer to an old community wiki question that was edited about 45 mins ago to make it sexually explicit, with a second attempted edit pending approval to make it even more so.
I rejected ...
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Diminished activity during pandemic?
There has been a reduction in "traffic," but not nearly as
much as I anticipated. This chart is maybe a few days
behind a fast-moving situation, but I find it somehow
comforting that math "goes on." ...
- 149k
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What should the tag (open-problems) be used for?
Since this issue came up in comments to another questions on meta, I'll ask about the intended issue of the open-problems tag.
Question. What is the intended usage of the open-problems tag? Should it ...
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How to "cite" MathOverflow answer?
I am writing a paper at the moment and for one proof I use an idea which I got from a MathOverflow answer (at the time I was asking idle questions but later of course found a way to use it). I of ...
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Users with many questions having negatives votes
I am a bit hesitant to bring up this issue, but since it does bother me a good deal here goes. It has similarities with this other meta question but with a more objective edge maybe.
It is a fact ...
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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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Is this question appropriate for MO? (Recognizing cohomological ideas)
About two weeks ago I asked this question on MSE: https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1085946/when-should-i-be-doing-cohomology. (Short version: what are some ways I can tell that some sort of ...
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Should/may I delete this flawed question?
Two days ago I asked the following question: Does a lisse $\ell$-adic sheaf give rise to an affine group scheme?
Even though I had been thinking about the question for half a week, I was half an hour ...
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Asking exactly what you need
If you compare my remarks in
Do partitions of unity exist if we impose additional conditions on the derivatives?
and
Exponential sums
you'll see that the problem and my request were exactly the ...
- 59.8k
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0
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MathOverflow Weekly Newsletter / Greatest hits from previous weeks
I don't know how many look at the MathOverflow Weekly Newsletter, but these were
the "Greatest hits from previous weeks":
"Video lectures of mathematics courses available online for free" from Feb ...
- 149k
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Will MO have Community Promotion Ads?
Community Promotion Ads seem to be a useful tool for helping spread various links that might be useful for users of the site.
I have mostly encountered them at MSE. I have learned several ...
- 4,618
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433
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Use of arXiv tags
When MathOverflow began we decided to start using arXiv classification and created corresponding tags. These are still the most broadly used tags on MathOverflow. However, the usage of some these tags ...
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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 ...
- 436
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What do moderators do these days?
More than 7 years ago, Scott Morrison asked a great meta question: What do moderators do?, and recorded some useful answers. Some seem to be of general significance, but many of the answers were ...
Tim CampionMod
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Retroactively add linked questions
Any question on MathOverflow (or other Stack Exchange site) shows the list of linked questions in the sidebar on the right. A question is added there if there is a link between the two questions ...
- 4,618
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2019: a year in moderation
Since the start of the new year, I've been posting questions on various sites detailing how the various moderation actions taken on these sites break down between Moderators and ordinary members of ...
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Removal of the "symplectic" tag
There is a symplectic tag on MO that currently contains just two questions. The first question so tagged dates from March 26 2017, so this makes this tag at least 1 year and 4 months old. I believe ...
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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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OpenScience Q&A just went live
Perhaps you are aware of the fact that there was an Open Science private beta at StackExchange that did not quite manage to develop enough traction so it was closed down recently. Some people want to ...
user80006
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0
answers
517
views
2% of viewers vote?
Maybe this is not possible to quantize accurately,
but might it be the case that
Q. Approximately 2% of those who view a posting on MO vote +/- on the question?
That's approximately true for my ...
- 149k
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answers
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Why is my question apparently not research-level?
I just posted this question a few hours ago, and it's already had two votes to close for being off-topic (i.e., not of "research-level mathematics"). Considering it's ultimately a question about ...
- 1,025
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636
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 ...
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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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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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answers
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Can I undelete questions deleted by the OP if I find them interesting?
I am not sure and I could not find anything about the ethical guidelines. A new user recently asked a question, which I've found interesting, as well as others, as it started some discussion, and then ...
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390
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Utility of Mathematics: Is this question appropriate here, and if not/if so, how can I phrase it better?
I would like to know if this question is appropriate for Math Overflow, and if so, how I can phrase it better to get the best results.
Question:
I recently spoke with a very nice mathematician who ...
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354
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Role of the tag "gm.general-mathematics"
This question is about the tag gm.general-mathematics. A meta question about it already occurred here, but was less specific (and didn't generate much discussion). See also the discussion in the ...
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544
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Appropriateness of proposed question on applications of number theory in dynamical systems?
Update: the question has now been asked on the main site - Applications of number theory in dynamical systems
I am considering asking a reference-request type question on MO about significant and/or ...
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551
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Primarily opinion-based questions/answers
One closing option is primarily opinion-based: Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on ...
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One more reason to reject an edit: too much alteration
I encountered this now, and have seen it quite frequently before: I would like to reject an edit, and the reason is something between "attempt to reply" and "clearly conflicts with author's intent". ...
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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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Quick or easy methods to post math or diagrams on chat
One of the seeming obstacles to having scheduled informal seminars on chat is the extra work, probably mostly for the leader of the discussion (should there be one), in presenting ideas on the chat ...
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552
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Rationale for reputation change on "my" reputation page that says 'User was removed'
At MathOverflow > Help center > Reputation & Moderation I see the following:
[...] a user who voted for one of your posts had their account deleted (either by request or due to violating ...
- 118k
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Bounty awarded to an immediately deleted answer
Something peculiar has just happened. A week ago a 300 point bounty has been added to this question (I think its content is hardly relevant to this meta question) [note: the bounty was added by a user ...
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What should you do if you find old duplicates?
Sometimes I discover that "old" MO questions are duplicates of even older MO questions.
Two examples:
Embarrassingly, I found out that my own question: Formula for number of permutations ...
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What to do with the synonyms for the deprecated tags?
Recently, the following tag synonyms were created by a MathOveflow moderator: abstract-algebra $\to$ ra.rings-and-algebras, geometry $\to$ mg.metric-geometry and discrete-mathematics $\to$ co....
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2018: a year in moderation
Good morning, all! I'm a Community Manager here at Stack Exchange; some of you might remember me from classic answers such as a temporary change now approaching 6 years live and a list of possibly ...
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Question mysteriously deleted
I answered a question earlier today. It asked something like for an element $g$ of a free group, does there exist a finite-index subgroup of the free group such that g is a basis element of the ...
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Probability question migrated to stats.stackexchange
What has happened to the following question?: https://mathoverflow.net/posts/202242/revisions
Firstly, it looks like a reasonable question to me (although the notation could be improved). Why was it ...
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Is it appropriate to post question asking to prove NP-completness of more than one problem?
I believe that I discovered a method to generate several NP-complete problems. The NP-completeness proof is not immediately apparent to me. I did not find any reference in complexity literature to my ...
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991
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Extending questions and answers gradually
If someone answers my question and I want to generalize it, how should I do it? Is it ok to gradually extend my question as answers improve? An answer to a question I wanted to ask may show me that I ...
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Area 51 Proposal: Sage and its subcomponents
I proposed a Q&A site for Sage and all its subcomponents viz. GAP, Pari, Singular, Sympy, ... on Area51 here. I thought many mathematicians here who use Sage in their research and teaching here ...
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When reviewing suggested edits, cancel rejection and approval votes
I have seen many edit suggestions approved which I consider to be minor edits to old posts (which bump them to the front page), or to actually reduce the quality or readability of the post. Other ...
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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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2023: a year in moderation
It’s that time of the year again! As we wave goodbye to last year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.
As most of you here might be ...
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New tag for "stochastic partial differential equations" (SPDEs)
Since there are separate tags for a) ODEs, ca.classical-analysis-and-odes and differential-equations and for b) ap.analysis-of-pdes but only one tag for stochastic-differential-equations, I was ...
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Why are there two separate tags (open-problem) and (open-problems)?
I assume that most likely this was just an oversight - but since it was a result of a moderator's action, it is probably better to ask than just remove the tag singlehandedly.1
Question: At the moment ...
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