# All Questions

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### Requests for reopen and undelete votes for on-hold, closed, and deleted questions

Since I expect this may prove rather useful, I'm blatantly purloining Asaf's question from meta.math.se. Please post general requests for reopen votes as answers below. Beware that "short" ...
3k views

### How to write a good MathOverflow question?

How do I write a good MathOverflow question? Got any advice for me?
3k views

### Who owns MathOverflow?

Is MathOverflow a subsidiary of Stack Exchange? Did MathOverflow lose its independence when it migrated to the Stack Exchange network?
16k 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? ...
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 ...
889 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://...
716 views

### What outgoing migration paths should we have?

Now that we can migrate off topic questions, what sort of migration paths should be useful to have? I think that adding at least Cross Validated, if not one or two of the other science sites, would ...
4k 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 ...
2k 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!
1k views

### 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 ...
3k views

### History of MathOverflow

What is history of this site? When and by whom was it created? What were the important milestones of this site?
1k views

### Should users be shown some basic information before posting the first question? [duplicate]

In an answer to another question discussing possibilities how to decrease the number of off-topic questions1 it was mentioned that: Perhaps we should force a person to read the rules before posting ...
676 views

### Who are the MathOverflow moderators?

Where can I find the list of MathOverflow moderators? How can I contact them?
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 ...
629 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 ...
2k views

### What's our consensus on people resurrecting old questions just to edit formatting?

I think the title says it all. Personally, as someone who uses the "newest questions" as the front page, I'm not keen on people tweaking questions or answers that seem to have outlived active interest....
2k views

### Frequently Asked Questions: MathOverflow FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions for MathOverflow What kind of questions can I ask here? What kind of questions should I not ask here? What about open problems? Where's the rule that says I have to wear ...
1k views

### Specialized chat rooms

Would there be an interest in having more specialized chat rooms, like the one for homotopy theory that currently exists? So far, the homotopy theory one seems to be fairly successful, and it seems ...
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 ---...
1k views

### My question was closed on MO because it is not research level. Where should I ask instead?

If a question is closed (put on hold) on MathOverflow as off-topic for not being research level-question, but it is still a question about mathematics. What might be a suitable place for such question?...
964 views

### 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 ...
1k views

### List of recurrent technical problems involving MathJax

Edit: I have retagged this question 'feature-request' in an attempt to expedite action on these issues. I request that the MathOverflow developers implement an automatic fix of the issues in the ...
546 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 ...
1k views

### Should we try to re-start manual deletions or is the situation fine anyway?

On MO 1.0 we had, after some discussions and conflicts but still, what I think was a quite smoothly and efficiently working process of deleting "bad" content. It seems with the move to MO 2.0 this ...
730 views

### Can I somewhere see my own deleted questions?

Don't worry, I won't try to sneakily repost them or otherwise bother anyone else besides me with them. I just felt like it would be nice to see what sort of questions I was thinking about a couple of ...
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

### Measures to separate math overflow from the rest of the stack exchange network

It seems that there is a widespread concern about the influence that in many ways the switch to the stack exchange network has on this site. I infer this from the many questions on meta on this ...
1k 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 ...
2k views

### How can I log in into my old mathoverflow account?

I had a separate log in account for mathoverflow. Now, I'm unable to log in into that. I see only options of logging in using google, facebook, stack exchange etc but no option of logging using ...
1k views

### What are reasons for allowing anonymous voting?

What reasons for anonymity of voting overcome the following objection? A down-vote fails to communicate what is thought to be wrong. Suppose I post a question that says "Doesn't the fact that $2+3=5$...
1k views

### Has the switch to SE 2.0 increased the rate of low-level / inappropriate questions?

I would be curious to know whether, now that links to MO appear in the footer of every SE 2.0 site, and in the "hot questions" list of the Stack Exchange button, the rate of inappropriate questions ...
1k views

### New feature - citation helper

At the request of the moderators, we have added a citation helper (based on the citation helper user script by Scott Morrison). If you are familiar with the original script, you will note a few ...
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. ...
1k views

### Comment template for questions more appropriate for MSE

I think it would be nice to have a comment template that everyone could use when a (new) user asks a question on the site which is clearly more appropriate for MSE. Here's what I've been using today: ...
554 views

### Migrating to Math.SE: too many close reasons

As everyone knows, we get a fair number of questions on this site that are not research level, but would be appropriate for http://math.stackexchange.com. As a frequent Math.SE user, I have an ...
886 views

### On the current color scheme, and why it sucks

Being color blinded is not very easy. You end up wearing black shirts and blue jeans, because it's easier. When you look at a computer monitor sometimes the red and green mix together, all sort of ...
556 views

### Customize the modal window for the first-time askers

When a user asks their very first question on a Stack Exchange site, they are shown a modal window with a short advice. The content can be either a generic message or it can be customized for a ...
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 ...
539 views

### Completely Unexplained Downvotes

I came across this question recently and asked the OP to explain some notation (see my comment below the question). As the OP was addressing my concerns, there was suddenly a down-vote (along with the ...
2k views

### early graduate level questions: MO or Math.SE?

When I first began on this site MathOverflow took questions at all levels. Then Math.SE was created and the level of MO has crept up steadily with Math.SE not necessarily absorbing the remainder ...
573 views

### How to emphasize MathOverflow's best content?

There have been a few efforts to do this, such as the Best of MathOverflow thread. We could do more in this direction and this could have interesting repercussions. Vidit Nanda recently suggested that ...
2k views

### Diagrams in MathJax via xypic.js

Apparently, the Stacks project can load a MathJax extension called xypic.js (check the source code) and then has access to ...
886 views

### How can we visually differentiate MathOverflow from MathStackExchange within the constraints of the new design themes?

The new design theme introduced for MO here is now live. Several issues with the new theme were raised in that discussion. I'd like to discuss one of them, which is sort of buried in my answer and ...
1k views

### Long-term archiving of MathOverflow

Suppose 'the worst' happens. Stack Exchange folds (commerical entities have been known to), and at the same time the moderators lose all interest and/or decide the despise mathematics. Where would ...
645 views

### Why are MO accounts not listed among other SE accounts?

When I go look at my accounts in SE network, mathoverflow is not listed there. (You can get to the list of accounts, for example, from your profile page. Other SE accounts are listed on profile page.) ...
494 views

### What would be good place to list unresolved bounties?

Probably at least some MathOverflow users have been in a situation like this. I have placed a bounty on some question in hope to get an answer (or a better answer or a specific type of answer, for ...
2k views

### How does one type mathematical formulas on this site?

I can see that the posts on this site contain nicely displayed mathematical formulas. How can I get such formulas in my posts? What syntax is used to typeset them? Note: This is an attempt to make at ...
587 views

### Revamping the closure reasons

Motivation 1 Currently the custom off-topic reasons for MathOverflow read: This question does not appear to be about research level mathematics within the scope defined in the help center. ...