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.
311
questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
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Probable Homework
This post asks for the solution of a problem subject to various artificial constraints of the sort that frequently arise in homework problems. When asked repeatedly why he wants to impose these ...
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Is this question appropriate for MO? (Instability of Newton basins of polynomials at multiple roots)
About a year ago I asked on MO when a Newton basin fractal is continuously determined by the roots of its polynomial. I mentioned in that question that I had convinced myself that the roots of the ...
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Questions on Mathematical Writing
Where should I ask about how to approach Mathematical paper writing? For example, the question [How to write an abstract for a math paper? ] was put on hold? Which stack exchange site should I have ...
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Suitability about a question on amenability of Thompsons group $F$
I was wondering if a question along the lines of the following would be appropriate for MO:
An open problem that seems to get a lot of attention every once in a while is the amenability of ...
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Why this is off-topic?
I posted a question on MSE for two months and received no helpful answer. So I tried the same question on MO. I got 4 off-topic votes and so the question got migrated back to MSE. I'd like to mention ...
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Why was the question about "expected difference of random variables" put on hold?
As I explained in the answer to the question The metric of the expected difference of random variables, I don't see any reason for closing it other than simple misunderstanding (to put it mildly) on ...
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The Math Teaching Stackexchange proposal is registering 38 more users for a private beta
Edit: Thanks to everyone who has signed up. There are already 162 participants, a number which usually takes several months to acheive.
As mentioned in this post, there is a proposal on Area51 for a ...
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Is this question appropriate? (Counterexamples in Universal Algebra)
I have a question which I'd like to ask, but I'm not sure it's appropriate for MO, and I wanted to get some feedback.
The reasons I'm worried it might be inappropriate are: (1) there are already ...
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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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Tag for Fragments of Peano Arithmetic
There are quite a few questions on the main site related to (first-order) Peano Arithmetic and its fragments. Here are two examples: 1, 2 (but there are many others).
It would be nice, and feels ...
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2022: 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 ...
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What happened to the fonts?
It appears that MO (including MO Meta) has recently changed the display fonts:
I couldn't find any topics on MO Meta pertaining to this new change, hence this question. SO has also switched the fonts,...
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2021 Community Moderator Election
The 2021 Community Moderator Election is now underway!
Community moderator elections have three phases:
Nomination phase
Primary phase
Election phase
Most elections take between two and three weeks, ...
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Is there such thing as "typical user reputation curve"?
This question is driven by sheer curiosity - maybe even vanity?
My reputation curve acquired curious shape lately:
I can even guess reasons (mostly personal) why the pace is so slow ever after June ...
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MathOverflow in the news
What are some instances of MathOverflow being mentioned in the media?
Now that MathOverflow has recently had its tenth anniversary, I would be interested to learn of any mentions of it in the mass ...
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Between math stack exchange and mathoverflow
Suppose that I posted a question on mathstack exchange and no one has answered it. In my opinion it is not enough reason to post it on mathoverflow but if I also awarded a bounty and still didn't get ...
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Downvoting and Closing of a Good Question
This seems to be a perfectly good (i.e. interesting and nontrivial) question that was downvoted and closed for mysterious reasons. As far as I can tell, the main objection is that the author ...
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Can we bring back the question about Gauss-Legendre nodes and weights?
The question
Computing Gauss Legendre Quadrature for Large N
was voluntarily removed by its author, after I implied (with a link to Wikipedia) that the answer was trivial and well-known. I have ...
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How does MathOverflow deal with the liability for the content of the site?
As can for example be read here and here, creators or webmasters of websites are responsible for the content of their website, even if the material leading to legal issues (for example disputes ...
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Asking two questions, one of which implies the other
I have two statements, A and B, and I want to ask on MO whether they are true. They are not obviously related, but I have a (simple) argument to show that A implies B. Should I:
Ask about both in ...
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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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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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Feature: Making the MO-guidelines visible while editing questions?
I noticed that some of the MO questions that get closed are clear-cut going against the MO-guidelines eg. "here is the link to my new result" or "here is the jpg file of my homework ...
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Is this an AI bot? Can't tell if answer is from a real person
This question of Baez is getting a string of strange answers. I can't tell if the author is a mathematician, but their answers don't make much sense to me.
Which finite abelian groups aren't ...
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Will the closure of Gfycat affect MO?
Gfycat is a hosting service for (animated) GIF files, which will close on September 1st, 2023. Since some MO users might have included GIF files hosted on Gfycat in their posts, does the service's ...
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How is TeX rendered in edit summaries?
I recently edited a question Dynkin type classification for 2-dimensional hypersurfaces in non-commutative space, and entered as my edit summary "$<x,y>$ -> $\langle x,y\rangle$" <...
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`positive-characteristic` and `characteristic-p` are synonyms
I thought that tag synonyms were meant simply to be proposed and left to survive or die on their own, but I see another question in HNQ about tag synonyms, so maybe one is supposed to raise a ...
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2020: 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 past 12 months.
As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network ...
- 101
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Editing an old post to add MathJax
Sometimes I come across an old post which does not use MathJax. Is it OK to edit such a post if the edit improves readability?
This question (and its answers) motivated this post. I know some users ...
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Are these questions of mine, (seemingly too hard for MSE?), suitable for MO?
The questions at issue are this and this. If they get no answer even after the end of bounties, might I post to MO?
And how about evaluating $\displaystyle \sum_{m=0}^\infty \sum_{n=1}^\infty \frac{(-...
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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 ...
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Nominate bountied question for closure
Bountied questions cannot be closed: this prompted this meta-MO question. In the answer to that question, the reasons for this feature are explained (closure would shorten the bounty period, possibly ...
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Only one addtional @user
Why do we have this restriction?
There are many circumstances where it is natural to
cite several users (especially when several=two) in one comment.
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Should I give a new answer or change the old one?
Related, but not exactly the same, to this question: "Should I rewrite my question, or create a new one?"
Recently I gave a "quick and dirty" answer (in fact I just googled for getting it) to this ...
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Compulsive question editing
There is a user that is modifying a lot of question in the last couple of hours, in particular, converting to latex any plain text that he considers that should be in math mode. It is getting annoying ...
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No reputation change signals if subtracted from bounty?
Right now I am observing the following.
Usually every time I get an upvote somewhere, I get a signal about it in the upper right corner. Recently I declared a bounty (and awarded it for an answer) at ...
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What is the correct way to handle questions with deprecated tags?
Occasionally some tags on MathOverflow are deprecated - it is decided that they should no longer be used.
If a deprecated tag is only used in a few questions, then it can be removed manually - the ...
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Merging old duplicates?
New to meta, so apologies for any breaches of etiquette.
I've just noticed that these two old questions are duplicates:
Smallest permutation representation of a finite group?
Smallest n for which G ...
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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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Requesting solutions to graduate textbooks is off-topic?
Today this question was put on Hold as off-topic
https://mathoverflow.net/questions/186117/solutions-for-categories-for-the-working-mathematician
I wander if this is a disservice in fact. I suspect ...
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What are mirrors of mathoverflow?
I am looking for mirrors of mathoverflow.
Searching for questions so far found:
http://lfhck.com/site/mathoverflow/1
http://mathdiscussions.aircraftdata.net/
http://hwnvoc.youdegreeearn.com/...
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Should this question remain closed?
The OP of How to project a vector onto a very large, non-orthogonal subspace has written to complain that the question was closed unfairly. The question is too far from my area of expertise to be ...
Todd TrimbleMod
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Must I be precise when asking questions, or will readers fill gaps based on context?
Suppose I asked a question about graphs; do I always have to precisely define, what kind of graph I mean (directed/undirected, with/without parallel edges, with/without loops, connected or not, with ...
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Editing of the help center and about
Try to add some meat to the on topic page. Also, in the about page, you can edit the site target audience, the example question, and the bullet points that define what to ask about/what not to ask ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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How to find out why a post was deleted
It would help to know why a post was deleted, I believe in this case automatically by a MO monitoring robot. I am not judging the decision, but would like to know why, to avoid asking such questions ...
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Help center text references a thread but doesn't indicate which one
In the "What about open problems?" section of https://mathoverflow.net/help, the last line says "To join the discussion about how MathOverflow should deal with open problems, go to this ...
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Deprecating an old link
This question comes from this list of edits: https://mathoverflow.net/posts/86827/revisions
An old answer included a link to a now-deprecated website (which has been taken over by a porn website); a ...
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