Questions tagged [etiquette]
This tag is aimed for discussions about etiquette: how to behave on the site and the chat.
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Difference between Mathematics SE and MathOverflow
If I post a question that I invented myself on Mathematics SE, I receive comments like "did you do homework?" and, eventually, "why do you ask if you know?". Fair enough. It seems ...
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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 ...
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What is the correct action if the OP finds an answer incorrect (with a recent example)?
While I certainly think that the OP of the question Non trivial zeros of Riemann zeta function definitely abuses MO in a couple of ways, still I believe it is a good example for the question in the ...
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Is it allowed to use images for pasting math formula?
Is it allowed to use images to paste math formula in mathoverflow.net ?
I think this is high efficiency, and few people search math questions by LaTeX.
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Strange username
We have a new user called Asian but no Chinese. It's not spam, and I guess it's not offensive, but it seems … weird. I couldn't find a tag related to username issues on the only other post I ...
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Should I rewrite my question, or create a new one
I posed this question two days ago, which effectively asks "Has X hard-to-describe special case on Barnette's Conjecture been proven?". In retrospect, I believe it was a poor question.
What I now ...
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MO policy regarding pseudonyms that are other people's real name
I have noticed just now that a user has chosen as pseudonym "Alexander Grothendieck", which I'm a bit unconfortable with (the probability that it is also that user's name is extremely low, hence my ...
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Is it bad practice to edit my own question with details from the paper provided in the top answer?
I asked a question and received a helpful answer that showed me work that I did not know how to search for. The answer was a link to the author's paper and some context on its relevance. While I could ...
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Using results from refereed papers
If a question pops up which is answered by a theorem inside some paper I’ve refereed that isn’t in print yet, is it appropriate to answer the question and cite the (presumably) forthcoming paper or ...
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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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Guidelines for contacting author of paper directly as opposed to asking on mathoverflow
Every now and again I will have a very specific question about a paper or book, for which I think there is a high likelihood that only the author(s) of the paper or book can give a definite answer. ...
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Altering the question in a way that makes an answer obsolete
I've seen that several times: an answer makes OP want to change the question in a way that would damage the answer. Obviously this should not be done. In fact I think it is better to delete the ...
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Some proposals for modifications of the process of closing/reopening questions
I wish to make a modest proposal on closing/reopening questions. Let me begin by noting that by far the most frequent reviews are Close votes -- almost 37,000, and looking quickly most of the close ...
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Appropriate or not: "To what extent are the results in Paper X correct?"
I have found a counterexample to the main theorem of a 20-year-old paper. The paper does not seem to be well known but it was written by reputable mathematicians and published in a highly regarded ...
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How to discourage excessive self-edits?
My question is prompted by the reappearance of this post on the front page. A glance at the edit history shows that the OP has edited his own question thirteen times. This user has a history of ...
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What is the policy on "shortening titles" on MO?
A MO user (Myshkin) has just edited the title of a question of mine (here) to make it shorter. The old title was:
Ref request: If the natural density (relative to the primes) exists, then the ...
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Is this ("Is this a good research question?") a good MathOverflow question?
I apologize if this has been covered before. A cursory search of meta.mathoverflow does not reveal it.
There are reasons not to make research topics public. (I have some topics that I am not ready ...
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Are MO Titles questions or Headlines:
This is a very soft question, that is inspired by an edit to one of my questions, which involved a change of the capitalization in the title; the details are not important and I don't mind such kind ...
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Is it OK to direct attention of a particular user to a particular question of mine?
About a year ago I asked a question which did produce very little feedback; today I've noticed that a specialist in the field recently joined MO. I think it would make sense to somehow ask this user ...
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Should I delete my own question if it turns out trivial after a comment?
I had not given this question enough thought before asking it. I went straight to looking for a reference without thinking about it. Somebody pointed out the obvious solution in a comment. Should I ...
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Delete wrong answers or leave them for instructional purposes
It is tempting to just delete a wrong answer on mathoverflow.net. However, some errors are subtle, and it might be instructive to label some wrong answers as such, but leave them on MO to highlight ...
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Reposting a Deleted Question
What are the opinions about reposting a question that come up with the discovery of a new algorithm, but had to be deleted because an "interested party" wanted to do some checking before deciding on ...
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Giving a question a recent "activity" though nothing is visible?
It happens occasionally that a question is marked "Active: Today" but clicking on this doesn't show any recent activity.
I guess that this happens whenever somebody deletes his/her answer. So far so ...
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Subquestion of Original Post
On this question, I asked broadly about computing the Gauss Legendre quadrature for large N. However, I've mentioned there in the "edit" section an algorithm I've found on the web, which theoretically ...
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Editing etiquette
What are some general guidelines for editing a MathOverflow post? Are there some "do"s and "don't"s I should know about?
(The material that was previously in this question box has been moved to an ...
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Should I edit this question or make a new question?
Should the Grothendieck ring of varieties be K_0 of numerical motives?
I want to change it to:
1) Asking about after tensoring with $\Qb$
2) Asking if there is a map in some direction and if ...
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Is it appropriate to edit a question for the sole purpose of having it highlighted?
I recently asked this question on the main site; after one day it didn't receive much attention and I decided to completely restyle it to make it more appealing, it got to the top of the "Recently ...
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Bizarre Recent Upvotes
Just in the last day or so, the following extremely low-quality posts have all received upvotes:
https://mathoverflow.net/questions/190836/how-to-calculate-math-expectation
https://mathoverflow.net/...
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Community standard for contacting users off of MO?
If a user is using their full name as their user name, what, if any, is the community standard with regards to emailing that user using their independently found work email address about their ...
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Risqué and uninformative title.
I found the previous title of
Realizing proper pure octonions as conjugates
slightly risqué and also uninformative. So in the spirit of being bold I just changed it to something mathematical. I'...
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Politeness on MO/MetaMO
On at least two occasions some advanced MO users included in their comments phrases which were less than polite. I hope that these are isolated instances or else I would quietly and simply leave MO ...
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Question with several subquestions
Suppose one question posting contains several question. If I can answer one question, but cannot answer all of the questions, is it ok to post my answer as an answer, and not just as a comment?
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Found an answer to my question, and want to change my question accordingly
A few months ago, I asked this question, which has gotten no response whatsoever. It asks to prove a statement, or to provide a counterexample.
Today, I found a counterexample, but it is in a very ...
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Accepting One's own Answer
Is there a way to accept one's own answer?
I know, that question is a bit strange, but I can imagine situations, where that could make sense, e.g. to indicate that the author of the questions ...
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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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May I borrow the question/answer editing/preview gadgets?
That is, I really like the feel and responsiveness of these gadgets (much better than LyX, for instance) and would like to use them offline. Is this actually possible? Are there licensing issues?
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the correct way to "cross-post"?
Obviously is to not cross-post at all. If I asked a question on Math.SE the crickets chirp, how do I move it to MO? Or rephrase in an acceptable way?
I think we've all done it one or twice asked a ...
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Reference to Mathoverflow
I feel a bit awkward, but my question is this: Someone asked questions on Mathoverflow and I gave answers. The whole thing was not very deep and I could provide rather standard examples to show ...
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On: Graph Theory is the s(c/l)um of Topology (?)
Recently a question got asked that effectively asked for the origin of the quote "Graph theory is the scum of topolgy" indicating it might not be the exact quote but something along these lines.
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user9072
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What should I do about a wrong tag added by an editor?
I posted a question and tagged it "infinite-sequences". A high-reputation editor added a more general tag: ca.analysis-and-odes. Now, in principle, having a more general tag is fine---but this tag is ...
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"This question has been answered in the comments."
Athanagor Wurlitzer has recently been adding answers saying "This question has been answered in the comments" (see, e.g. https://mathoverflow.net/a/156051/3).
I'm inclined to delete these answers (...
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Dealing with possible incorrectness
I have seen a few responses on MO that I think are either incorrect or possibly incorrect.
What is the best way to draw attention to possible incorrectness?
(I provide two examples below; if this is ...
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Answering not research level questions
I just commented the solution to a question that was obviously not research level. Then I deleted the solution again since providing it might encourage people to again asking such questions.
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On the recent question "Is Euclid dead?", or: Is it considered good practice to use MathOverflow for a campaign?
Yesterday, a question entitled Is Euclid dead? has been asked
in which the OP states:
"Currently I am leading a campaign for the return of EG to the syllabus
of the high schools of my country (...
Stefan KohlMod
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Is it morally all right to link to a particular bookseller?
I've just answered a question on MO by introducing a book. I was about to hyperlink the book to a particular bookseller then suddenly I doubted if it is all right to do so. Is it?
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Using Math Overflow to check whether or not a proof is correct
A user named Jürgen Böhm recently posted two questions which boiled down to checking whether or not his proof is correct. I left a comment on the second one saying that I don't think this is ...
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Is it considered good practice to clean up one's "useless" comments?
Hovering with the mouse above the upvoting arrow of a comment shows the text "this comment adds something useful to the post". Therefore arguably the number of upvotes a comment receives equals the ...
Stefan KohlMod
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Do your own homework
Occasionally, we get questions on main taken from old contests, such as Olympiads and Putnam exams. These questions are inappropriate for MO, and they get closed, which is as it should be. However, ...
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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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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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