Questions tagged [tags]

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25 votes
25 answers
3k views

Help cleanup tags!

This is meant to agglomerate tags that need (occasional or regular) cleanup. That is tags that mean multiple unrelated things and need to be separated into more specific tags. Please follow the ...
17 votes
3 answers
1k views

Frequently asked questions about tagging on MathOverflow

Due to several discussions on the main site, I am asking this question concerning the best practices for tagging questions on MathOverflow. Unfortunately, the relevant documentation page https://...
17 votes
24 answers
3k views

Help improve tagging!

Please help by writing tag wikis for your favorite tags! Use answers to this post to suggest tag synonyms. Finally, if you're a 10k+ user, note how easy it is for you to edit tags now!
12 votes
1 answer
647 views

Why are MO tags formatted as they are?

I noticed that some of the more frequently used MO tags are formatted according to a certain pattern, e.g.: nt.number-theory pr.probability lo.logic fa.functional-analysis Why are the tags formatted ...
Newb's user avatar
  • 201
22 votes
5 answers
2k views

What should be the policy on "open problems" on MO?

The subject of this discussion are questions on "open problems" on MO. There is an existing policy on "open problems" reproduced from the (old) FAQs, which involves an open-problem tag. The ...
user avatar
16 votes
4 answers
2k views

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 ...
14 votes
2 answers
618 views

Recent suggested tag wiki edits

Today [Apr 21 '16] and yesterday there were a considerable number of suggested edits to previously empty tag wikis and tag wiki excerpts (browse here; viewing the full list requires >=10K points, I ...
Stefan Kohl's user avatar
  • 19.5k
6 votes
0 answers
450 views

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 ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
16 votes
0 answers
581 views

The existing deprecated tags should be blacklisted

TL;DR: I suggest to blacklist the deprecated tags that still exist on some questions, in order to prevent them from being added to new questions. There are a few tags which are deprecated and should ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
9 votes
1 answer
318 views

How do I delete an accidentally created tag?

While posting this question, I meant to put the constructive-mathematics tag, but I accidentally just typed "con", thereby creating a "con" tag in MathOverflow. How can I delete it?
Keshav Srinivasan's user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
184 views

How to (re)tag such that migration works?

As discussed elsewhere it is crucial that a question that should be migrated has a matching tag on the target site (otherwise the migration is rejected and the question closed on the source site). ...
user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
295 views

Tag warnings on MO

In the last few months, Stack exchange has introduced tag warnings, that is, a text that is displayed when a user creates a new question that contains a specific warning, such as this example. ...
Federico Poloni's user avatar
18 votes
0 answers
527 views

What "lattices" do we need?

The tag lattices is a problem since a long time. Over the years there were varied discussions about this, but no clear resolution emerged, though some things were done to better the situation. This is ...
user avatar
8 votes
2 answers
278 views

Should tag-wiki include a source where it is taken from?

The main purpose of the tag-info (and especially the tag-excerpt) is to help with tagging. This is especially important for the tags with ambiguous name. But usually tag-info also contains some brief ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
8 votes
2 answers
232 views

'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 ...
David Roberts's user avatar
  • 33.4k
46 votes
2 answers
1k views

arXiv vs MathOverflow - popularity of disciplines

Inspired by the comparison of programming languages by GitHub and Stack Overflow activity (e.g. this one for 2015) I decided to look at the popularity of mathematical disciplines by using data from ...
Piotr Migdal's user avatar
  • 1,592
32 votes
1 answer
606 views

Potential "technical" obstacle to migrations, and suggestion for a solution

Practical advice: If you want to/vote to migrate something to another site (especially math.SE) please make sure that at least one of the tags on the question exists on the target site (math.SE). ...
user avatar
24 votes
5 answers
2k views

How should we react to the existence of Math Educators SE?

As was previously announced at meta, there is now an SE site for mathematics education (MESE). My broad questions is this: Should we react to this somehow? (More specific questions are below.) Does ...
Joonas Ilmavirta's user avatar
20 votes
0 answers
757 views

Which "non-arxiv" tags are de facto top-level tags?

The tag system on MathOverflow is designed in such way that each question should contain top-level tag; these are the tags which correspond to subject areas on arXiv and generally have format such as ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
12 votes
0 answers
350 views

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 ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
10 votes
0 answers
352 views

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....
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
542 views

On the top-level tag ra.rings-and-algebras

I'm confused about the scope of the ra.rings-and-algebras The problem is related to the ambiguity of the word "algebra", which essentially has two (rough) meanings the meaning "ring&...
YCor's user avatar
  • 60.1k
-3 votes
1 answer
433 views

Should we create an Erdős tag?

I was thinking about creating tags for some famous or important people, like Erdős (that already exists, as pointed out by Joonas: erdos), that could be used for questions related to their work. ...
domotorp's user avatar
  • 18.3k
44 votes
0 answers
1k views

An interactive graph of MathOverflow tags

I created a graph of tags from Stack Exchange sites (including MathOverflow), TagOverflow. It is a continuation on my previous project - plots with static graphs and (sadly) without MO (due to API ...
Piotr Migdal's user avatar
  • 1,592
19 votes
1 answer
616 views

Creation of "procrastination" tag

One user has created the tag procrastination: see this question. In principle I would have immediately deleted it as totally irrelevant (in the same way I would delete "Stupid question" or &...
YCor's user avatar
  • 60.1k
17 votes
1 answer
432 views

Noncommutative rings/algebra tags

I'm suggesting to make noncommutative-rings a synonym to noncommutative-algebra, in the same way as commutative-rings has been made to ac.commutative-algebra. Initially asked there, I'm asking it ...
YCor's user avatar
  • 60.1k
13 votes
0 answers
433 views

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 ...
François G. Dorais's user avatar
13 votes
2 answers
617 views

What is the intended use of the (proofs) tag?

There is a tag called proofs. This tag has empty tag-info/usage guidance. Without any usage guidance it is quite likely to be used incorrectly. The fact that there are many deleted questions having ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
13 votes
0 answers
161 views

Improve management tools of favorite and upvoted questions/answers

Here is my wish list: When one marks a question as favorite or upvotes it, give a chance to: Mark the question with a private tag. Add a private comment to the question. Its length could be limited ...
Adam PrzeÅŗdziecki's user avatar
13 votes
2 answers
939 views

Reappearance of (topology) tag

I have noticed that topology tag was created again. According to list of new tags it was created Jun 9 at 7:55. There are currently 3 questions having this tag. I was not able to find a discussion on ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
12 votes
1 answer
373 views

On convexity tags

The tags on convexity are convex-geometry ($\times$560), convex-analysis ($\times$ 266), convexity ($\times$ 420). Here the number is the current (2019/02/23) number of uses and I ignore some more ...
YCor's user avatar
  • 60.1k
11 votes
2 answers
347 views

Merge complex-analysis and cv.complex-variables?

We have distinct tags complex-analysis and cv.complex-variables, of which the latter is the arXiv standard name. They seem to mean the same thing. Should they be merged?
Nate Eldredge's user avatar
8 votes
0 answers
153 views

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'. ...
Ricardo Andrade's user avatar
8 votes
2 answers
452 views

Currently, is it possible to have relevant question under the latex tag

A question using the latex tag was recently posted, which received a number of down votes and comments which directed to post on tex.stackexchange.com. MO predates tex.stackexchange.com and so at ...
Neil Hoffman's user avatar
  • 5,221
7 votes
4 answers
151 views

How should I use the meta-tags [feature-request], [bug], [support], and [discussion]?

On meta, each post must be classified into one of four classes. Which should I use? Note that in addition to these four classes there are numerous other tags on meta that can and should be used in ...
6 votes
2 answers
365 views

Tag referring to a book/ specific collection of problems

The scottish-book has been created today by one user, posting various questions from the given book, or adding references and retagging existing a few questions when they appear in the given book. ...
YCor's user avatar
  • 60.1k
5 votes
1 answer
252 views

Should MathOverflow request suggested tags feature?

There is a feature of showing suggested tags after the body of a question is included. These suggestions are based on the body of the question. More details can be found in these posts: Automatically ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
5 votes
5 answers
319 views

Two tags for partially ordered sets

There are currently two tags for partially ordered sets: posets and order-theory. In my opinion, they mean the same thing. I see three posibilities. Merge the tags. Make them synonymous. Keep them as ...
Gejza Jenča's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
197 views

Should [tag:feynman-integral] be a synonym of [tag:path-integral]?

The question is in the title: I see no benefit from having these two tags for essentially the same concept (particularly as the path-integral wiki excerpt refers to the path integral formulation of ...
gmvh's user avatar
  • 2,758
4 votes
3 answers
572 views

Creating theories-of-arithmetic logic tag

It seems to me that a tag for "arithmetic logic" is missing while it concerns a significant number ($\sim 500?$) of questions, which currently have no common tag other than the very broad lo....
YCor's user avatar
  • 60.1k
4 votes
2 answers
120 views

What is wrong with the tag excerpts?

Looking at the list of tags https://mathoverflow.net/tags it seems that all the tags are surrounded by html <p>...</p>. This seems to be happening ...
Ricardo Andrade's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
191 views

Tag [upper-bounds] is nowhere to be found

At the moment, MathOverflow has tag lower-bounds (100 questions), but no tag upper-bounds. Are lower bounds that much harder to compute? Or that much more interesting? Worse, due to the non-existence ...
Rodrigo de Azevedo's user avatar
3 votes
4 answers
573 views

Creating tag "small-uncountable-cardinals"

Looking through meta-MO I have found a proposal of Martin Sleziak to create a new "small-uncountable-cardinals", which I liked since many of my (and not only my) questions fall under this tag. So, I ...
Taras Banakh's user avatar
  • 40.7k
3 votes
0 answers
89 views

What subject specific tags could replace the tag 'divisors'?

A few names are used in different subjects in mathematics with completely distinct meanings. A couple of common examples are "spectrum" and "regular". Sometimes, this creates ...
Ricardo Andrade's user avatar
2 votes
3 answers
343 views

Numerical Analysis - SO Vs MO

though I'm a relative newbie to the "Stack" community, my research interest has brought me to a dilemma. The area of Numerical Analysis is theoretically covered by both MO and SO, but is practically ...
Amir Sagiv's user avatar
  • 3,544
1 vote
0 answers
81 views

Does it make sense to have both "surfaces" and "curves-and-surfaces" tags?

I have noticed that there currently exist tags surfaces (with description "A surface is a two-dimensional topological manifold. The term can also be used to describe a smooth surface, depending on the ...
Alex M.'s user avatar
  • 5,197
1 vote
0 answers
184 views

Why do we need the general-mathematics tag?

I recently came across the general-mathematics tag. It has no usage guidelines, nor do I think it should exist. Do any of you know the historic reasons for its existence, or think it should stay as it ...
Amir Sagiv's user avatar
  • 3,544
1 vote
0 answers
186 views

The tags (transcendence) and (transcendental-number-theory)

There exist tags transcendence and transcend.-number-theory (probably shortened from transcendental number theory to fit 25 characters limit for the tag name). At the moment, the tag-info is empty ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
-7 votes
1 answer
185 views

adding n cat lab tag

I propose adding n cat lab tag with an intention to discuss mathematics that is written in https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/HomePage. As https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/HomePage has large amount of ...
Praphulla Koushik's user avatar