# All Questions

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### Anton's departure as moderator

Does outgoing moderator Anton Geraschenko deserve our heartfelt thanks, or what?
8k views

### MO-Hard Questions

The term "MO-Hard" has entered the mathematical vocabulary, describing interesting questions that were asked on MathOverflow but haven't been answered in spite of efforts by many community members. ...
14k views

### Best of MathOverflow, or papers inspired by MathOverflow

This is a place to collect MathOverflow success stories! Was some of your research inspired by something on MathOverflow? Do you know questions & answers that led to interesting research? ...
23k views

### Is there a way to discuss the correctness of the proof of the RH by Atiyah in MO?

I just made a question in MO to discuss the correctness of the proof provided by Prof. Atiyah for the Riemann hypothesis (link here: Is there an error in the pre print published by Atiyah with his ...
2k views

### Donations to MathOverflow, Inc

Long time followers of MathOverflow will know that as well as the website, hosted by StackExchange, and moderated by the moderation team with all of your help, there is an independent 501(c)(3) ...
1k views

### Should this site be “a shortcut to substitute for literature searches”?

On Reference for invariance of essential spectrum under relatively compact perturbations, Michael Renardy voted to close with the comment "This site should not become a shortcut to substitute for ...
3k views

### Why all the negativity?

I've been on this site for several years and I appreciate the site a lot but I don't like to post here anymore because no matter what I write I get some kind of sarcastic comment, or put-down, or ...
2k views

### Should we exercise a bit more tolerance towards newcomers?

What bothers me quite a bit is that many people come to MO to get some help with their mathematical problems and are met with nothing but our standard "closed as not research level" verdict and a few ...
2k views

### Happy 5th anniversary, MathOverflow!

MathOverflow first came online on September 28, 2009! Let's celebrate five years of MO! I bought a delicious cake from the best bakery in the area to have with dinner tonight. I'm sure you will also ...
3k views

### The Association Bonus

One new feature that's come along with the transition is the "association bonus", which allows members of Math Stackexchange --- and other sites that are much further removed from the mission of MO ---...
3k views

### Mugs, Stickers And Shirts - Now With 100% More MathOverflow!

The MathOverflow Foundation has given Stack Exchange permission to print and ship (at our expense) free gifts for outstanding users of the site that want them, or that will be attending conferences ...
8k views

### Why is “what is the difference between mathoverflow and math.stackexchange?” not prominently displayed?

It is a truth not-quite-universally acknowledged that a newish Stack Exchange user in possession of the knowledge that there are two sites named "Math Overflow" and "Math.StackExchange" will be in ...
6k views

### Flood of Similar New User(s)

The following thirteen(!) users: goingfullscheme valua_aint_no_galois going-full-isomorphic logicians_rule, martintzar royalroadtogeometry bundlist compactbut faptoint you_dont_mess_with_ron ...
1k views

### Deleted answered question / arXiv posts based on unacknowledged MO posts

I'd like to mention here two possibly related facts: (a) Soon after this question was answered, there was an arXiv paper posted providing the same answer (b) Soon after this closely related ...
556 views

### Minor edits, subject to review

Now that MathOverflow has moved to 2.0, there is a potential solution to the long-standing tension between people wanting to make minor improvements to old posts, and others not wanting the 'active ...
700 views

### Can we have the window title for a question start with the question?

The title attribute in the page of a question like Comparison between $E_2$-terms of Leray and “second hypercohomology” spectral sequences is currently set to "ag.algebraic geometry - Comparison ...
6k views

### What happened to the dear user “quid” (9072), they appear deleted?

What happened to the dear user "quid" (9072), they appear deleted? Noticed this by edits I remember were from them. Google still remembers them and the user page of user number 9072 returns 404 (...
2k views

### Who owns MathOverflow?

Is MathOverflow a subsidiary of Stack Exchange? Did MathOverflow lose its independence when it migrated to the Stack Exchange network?
1k views

### Formatting citations to the literature on MathOverflow

We'd like to make it easier to cite articles from the literature, on MathOverflow. I propose adding a single button to the edit toolbar while writing posts, which will pop up a search dialog, allow ...
3k views

### What do you want to do in September for MO's tenth anniversary?

On Sep. 28, 2009, MathOverflow went online, and has almost ten years of almost constant operation, thanks to StackExchange. There will be an obligatory post observing the anniversary. The board of ...
1k views

### 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 ...
5k views

### PhysicsOverflow just went live

The new site is now up and running (outside the SE network) here http://www.physicsoverflow.org PhysicsOverflow is meant to be some kind of a rebirth of the untimely passed away Theoretical Physics ...
3k views

### On discussion of published papers at MO

There is an interesting discussion taking place at MO over the suitability of this question: Complex structure on $S^6$ gets published in Journ. Math. Phys. The question is about the correctness of a ...
2k views

### How much is MathOverflow exposed to recent events on StackExchange?

[Long-time 10k+ MO user here, asking this question anonymously for reasons that should be obvious. Added Oct 16: My access to this account will self-destruct in 3, 2, 1 .... (sorry, won't be able to ...
802 views

### I don't like the new design and I am not the only one

MathOverflow isn't some experiment in website design. I knew where everything was and what colour it was meant to be. The tabs are now small and harder to click on. The colours are different shades ...
3k views

### How to write a good MathOverflow question?

How do I write a good MathOverflow question? Got any advice for me?
1k views

### Restoring Bill Thurston's figures in an answer

The question Floating polyhedra with fair equilibria was answered by Bill Thurston, but his (typically amazing) answer contains links to 7 figures, all now broken. I don't know how to retrieve those ...
2k views

### Why was the whole math jokes thread deleted, and should it have been?

[Topic very similar to several other recent questions, but the central question is I think not a duplicate.] The meta thread Should these sexually suggestive jokes be kept or deleted? raised the ...
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 ...
966 views

### ImageShack images turning into ad banners

It's been fairly well known for some time that ImageShack is a poor image host for Stack Exchange, because they frequently delete old images and replace them with placeholders. Recently, however, ...
2k views

### “Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming.” — are we?

There is a new posting on the Stackoverflow blog, entitled Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming. It’s Time for That to Change. A quote: Too often, someone comes here to ask a question, only to be ...
3k views

### Interesting (and not sufficiently answered) questions on math.SE

In light of the generally positive response to this meta-thread, I am creating this to help advertise (and hopefully fully resolve) "interesting" questions on math.SE. I'm not really certain what the ...
1k views

### A blog for MathOverflow

Amongst the moderators we've recently been discussing starting a blog for MathOverflow. The immediate goal is to have a good place to describe the current 'institutional setup' of MathOverflow (e.g. ...
949 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 ...
1k views

### Cancel the association bonus

There has been some previous discussion of the association bonus, c.f. The Association Bonus Is there an association bonus for this site? Can we please get rid of the association bonus for other ...
2k views

### How is this site different from Mathematics Stack Exchange?

I've just spotted this site on the blogs. At least that's where I think I saw it first. How is this site different from math.stackexchange.com?
2k views

### Have any MO-hard problems ascended to “real” open problems in their fields?

Have any questions first proposed on Mathoverflow attracted enough interest from experts in their field that solving them would be considered a significant advance? I don't want to count problems ...
4k views

### News of potential interest to the MO community

Occasionally, there has been a suggestion to start a meta question to collect information that might be of interest to the MO community. This is an attempt to start such a thread. Is there any ...
2k views

### A StackExchange website aimed at graduate students?

There has been a lot of discussion about questions that do not get answered on MSE, but are not considered 'research level' on MO and thus get closed. The problem seems to be that certain questions ...
668 views

### Discreet editing

After I edited someone's Question or Answer, it feels real awkward to see my name mentioned in front of the author of the respective Q. or A. I feel that instead of displaying editor's name there ...
449 views

### Is it worth editing old posts to add links for references?

I always appreciate when citations to papers in MO answers/questions have a hyperlink — it’s very convenient for the reader, especially in cases where the referenced paper is non-trivial to find. ...
1k views

### Who owns my MathOverflow posts?

Does Stack Exchange or MathOverflow own my posts? Can I reuse my posts elsewhere? Do I need to cite MathOverflow if I want to reuse my posts elsewhere?
1k views

### How to cite comment by unknown user disproving Erdős conjecture?

I believe that fedja has disproved a conjecture of Erdős et al. when commenting on my question Almost monochromatic point sets, but I'm unable to contact fedja regarding this. What shall I do? Shall I ...
867 views

### Improving citations of MathOverflow posts

There are already a lot of citations of MathOverflow in the literature. Nevertheless, there is some resistance in the greater mathematical community since MathOverflow is not a traditional medium. ...
454 views

### Happy 4th anniversary, MathOverflow!

As some will cerainly know today (September 28th) is MO's anniversary, its fourth to be precise. Since this year it appears there is no system-message to celebrate the event, I thought I create this ...
3k views

### Big list of feature requests and suggestions for a fantasy MO 3.0

I feel that MathOverflow is unique in the StackExchange network. There are features which we might want which might be unique to this site, and which might not be immediate feature requests or ...
2k views

### What shall we do with stone soup?

Sometimes, a question is asked that isn't up to the standards of MathOverflow. Maybe it's worded vaguely, maybe it's too open ended, or maybe the asker fundamentally misunderstood something important. ...
774 views

### Using ideas found in MO and MSE in a paper

If there is an answer to a question that I have asked on MathOverflow or MathStackExchange which helps me to prove a result appropriate for a published paper, what should I do: (1) Cite the MO or MSE ...