All Questions
1,512
questions
0
votes
2answers
94 views
Why is my question is closed and do I get views?
I have a question about my MathOverflow post: the minimum amount of x, x(x(125x + 300) + 240) + 64 is zero, what is 5 times of x?
Why is my question is closed and do I get views?
23
votes
2answers
552 views
Answers in comments are increasingly more common
I have checked a random sample of questions in the main page, and it seems that almost every one of them has some form of answer in the comments, apart from completely unanswered/untouched ones.
This ...
5
votes
0answers
168 views
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 ...
2
votes
1answer
42 views
Why isn't the link processed in this comment?
At The concept of duality, it looks like the link in the comment is perfectly well formed. Why isn't it parsed as a link?
8
votes
2answers
368 views
Do we use the downvote button more than other sites?
Is there data available (besides crawling thousands of questions) on how often we use the downvote button, and how quickly?
The motivation for this question is Carlo Beenakker's recent answer on MOM.
...
5
votes
0answers
107 views
Is anybody else not seeing comments on their iPhone?
Starting last night I can no longer see comments when using the site on my iPhone, nor can I comment. Things are fine on my iPad just not my iPhone. I am wondering if anybody else has ever had this ...
11
votes
8answers
2k views
What do we mean by welcoming when we're a site aimed at researchers?
I was just browsing the main page this morning, and I decided to look at some of the posts by new people. One of the questions had garnered three votes to close and a comment from a regular user to ...
5
votes
1answer
96 views
Why is my feature-request not showing on meta?
I posted my feature request (Feature request: a possibility to leave mathoverflow) yesterday, yet it is not showing on the list of most recent questions.
I thought it might be the negative votes but ...
-11
votes
0answers
222 views
Feature request: a possibility to leave mathoverflow
I would like to see implemented a real possibility for a user to leave MO for good. To be precise, I imagine that such a feature, if a user chose to implement it, would:
1.- Remove all answers, all ...
15
votes
3answers
815 views
Scope and mission of MathOverflow
I followed with much interest the recent discussions on Meta about the community being perceived as unwelcoming to outsiders and the importance of looking for solutions (if any).
In order to do this, ...
-6
votes
1answer
472 views
A radical proposal on votes and reputation
I was trying to explain the current controversy how “welcoming” MO is to a non-mathematician friend. The current best hypothesis for why MO is either attractive or repellent in general is that it has ...
18
votes
5answers
2k views
MathOverflow policymaking and transparency
There goeth rumours abroad that some off-site groups are seeking a private forum together with the moderators here in order to make policy for MO.
I hope that the moderators will commit to ...
22
votes
3answers
483 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 ...
6
votes
1answer
275 views
Once a thread is deleted, is it really too late to bring it back?
I was under the impression that "deleted" threads were still visible by moderators or other high-level members of the community. Is this correct? If a post was deleted that shouldn't have ...
5
votes
2answers
121 views
“Scope” of being blocked from asking
As you know well, when one attempts to delete a question that has already received an answer, the following message is displayed.
"Repeated deletion of answered questions can result in your ...
2
votes
0answers
76 views
Appropriateness and cross-posting
I am interested in this question on math.stackexchange. To me it is interesting because while it looks "obvious" that there isn't a solution with 6 turns (I have some very partial results ...
1
vote
2answers
194 views
A question of notation: what does $x\lt y\in S$ mean? [closed]
I've seen expressions like $x\lt y\in S$ used on this site to mean "$x\lt y$ and $x\in S$ and $y\in S$." This has me worried because I sometimes use $x\lt y\in S$ to abbreviate "$x\lt y$...
26
votes
3answers
2k views
What are our procedures if a user complains about harassment or abuse?
Context for this question: I am writing an article on MathOverflow for the Notices of the AMS. One thing I try to address is the apparent gender skew of our website. One of the readers of my draft ...
1
vote
0answers
75 views
Can I ask for advice or opinions about the choice of a variant of a theory?
Basically, I have 2 versions of a theory. This is like having two competing theories of complex numbers, one where $i^2=-1$ and the other where $j^2=1$ (hyperbolic numbers) or extending reals with $+\...
4
votes
1answer
72 views
`\DeclareMathOperator` at the beginning of a comment disables some link parsing
In a comment of the form $\DeclareMathOperator\a{a}$Here's a [link](http://mathoverflow.net) and [another link](http://mathoverflow.net) $\a$, neither link is ...
8
votes
5answers
252 views
Is it possible to temporarily comment out part of a post?
Scenario (true story): after posting something I became doubtful about certain claim there,
so I want to hide it until I clarify my doubts.
Of course I could just move that part to a temporary file, ...
13
votes
1answer
240 views
Should we have a tag for second-order logic?
There are a number of questions on this site about second-order logic (admittedly I may have asked a few more of them than is reasonable). For example, searching "second-order logic" (in ...
1
vote
1answer
79 views
Question visibility and reputation
I wonder whether the visibility of a post changes according to the user's reputation asking the question. Is it also known if a user's posts' visibility is affected by other actions, like having ...
-7
votes
1answer
154 views
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.
12
votes
0answers
381 views
Utility of Mathematics: Is this question appropriate here, and if not/if so, how can I phrase it better?
I would like to know if this question is appropriate for Math Overflow, and if so, how I can phrase it better to get the best results.
Question:
I recently spoke with a very nice mathematician who ...
5
votes
0answers
333 views
Question on topic for Mathoverflow?
My question, asked months ago, was well received. Now...
I'm wondering if this question is on-topic for MathOverflow:
Consider a semi-Riemannian manifold $\zeta^{2,2}$ with metric, $g=\frac{dxdy}{xy}+...
3
votes
1answer
213 views
Questions seemingly/apparently/ostensibly too elementary for overlfow
Well I don't really get notifications of flag responses sooo...
Nov 6 at 14:01 helpful - I suggest you take this up in meta; there is not enough space to answer here. But there are a number of ...
0
votes
0answers
89 views
Please help me improve my Q&A and possibly reopen certain questions
Prepare to downvote me. But don't think of not downvoting me just because I pre-emptively self-deprecated myself to put a show of humility. Just pretend I'm as arrogant as I may be perceived to be in ...
2
votes
0answers
57 views
Why is the ‘mathematical logic’ tag spelt [lo.logic]? [duplicate]
On MathOverflow, questions about mathematical logic bear the tag lo.logic, which has a synonym of logic.
Where did this lo.logic spelling come from? Why is it not ...
3
votes
1answer
63 views
Is linking to comments possible?
I vaguely remember seeing links to comments somewhere, was it a dream or it is indeed doable?
14
votes
0answers
795 views
Vandalism edits by apparently-anonymous users
There is an answer to an old community wiki question that was edited about 45 mins ago to make it sexually explicit, with a second attempted edit pending approval to make it even more so.
I rejected ...
5
votes
2answers
78 views
How to tell who created a tag?
The "stats" section of a tag's page says how long the tag has existed, and the tag description history says who created the tag description. However, I don't see how to find who created the ...
4
votes
2answers
196 views
How can this question have more downvotes than views?
An off-topic question recently appeared on the main site. It was heavily downvoted and got deleted after only a few minutes. But at one point before the question was deleted, I noticed it had been ...
0
votes
1answer
108 views
Site for reviewing articles, formulas, theorems, etc?
This question might be weird, I wouldn't feel bad if it is closed.
I know that MathOverflow is for mathematicians and math StackExchange for people studying math at any level. But questions like "...
1
vote
0answers
84 views
Why did my profile picture disappear?
I discovered few days ago that my profile picture is gone, had to reupload it.
Did anybody else encounter this? Do you know the reason?
0
votes
1answer
235 views
Are new users with inappropriate questions given help or rudely dismissed?
I often see questions like this: co.combinatorics - Given index $i$, what element is at position $i$ in sorted subsets that are obviously better suited for the Math.SE site.
This particular question ...
15
votes
2answers
432 views
Is there left any way to highlight part of text after all?
Currently we have quotes, but
the quoted text looks more faint than the surrounding text
The vertical bar hardly helps, I believe. In fact I think (although I cannot explain it) that this bar ...
10
votes
0answers
502 views
Bounty awarded to an immediately deleted answer
Something peculiar has just happened. A week ago a 300 point bounty has been added to this question (I think its content is hardly relevant to this meta question) [note: the bounty was added by a user ...
6
votes
2answers
343 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....
0
votes
0answers
182 views
I want to answer a closed question
Please reopen this question:
A problem of an infinite number of balls and an urn
I have a nice answer.
(Added (DR): now re-opened. Please note there are ten deleted nonsense answers, which I imagine ...
6
votes
0answers
234 views
Platform-wide suspenson but not on MO?
At this closed question the user seems to be playing ignorant, but I looked at their network profile and some of the other StackExchange sites, and there is a prominent banner
This account is ...
-1
votes
2answers
145 views
Should “does anyone access this paper” questions be community-wiki?
Should questions consisting in barely asking for a copy or link to some given paper be community-wiki?
A recent example, among others, is and Reference of J.L. Waldspurger's paper on Shimura ...
5
votes
0answers
72 views
Dollar sign in image title works in preview, but not in actual post
I was just trying to clean up Understanding why $\pi_{3}(N) = \mathbb{Z}_{(2n, n^2)}$? , which was originally almost entirely cut-and-pasted images without any alternate text. For the first image, I ...
10
votes
0answers
301 views
What should you do if you find old duplicates?
Sometimes I discover that "old" MO questions are duplicates of even older MO questions.
Two examples:
Embarrassingly, I found out that my own question: Formula for number of permutations ...
2
votes
0answers
256 views
Is asking about name of a curve a research level question?
In my opinion this post is not a research level topic but surprisingly it has been received 22 votes.
Is the linked post a research level question and appropriate for MO?
I think it is more ...
13
votes
1answer
324 views
Any policies around Dead links?
I have been reviewing a lot of older posts (~10 years old) and there are quite a few with links that are either dead or links that point to sites that no longer contain the relevant information that ...
14
votes
1answer
308 views
Can I retag questions to get a topic badge?
This is just something I was wondering: I currently have 19 non-CW answers in real-analysis. Could I just go through my old answers looking for a question which involves real analysis but hasn't been ...
1
vote
1answer
109 views
Updated questions
The following question of mine frequently appears as recently updated question so I frequently find it at front page. But neither me nor other participants did any revise or edit on this post and its ...
43
votes
6answers
1k views
Should graduate students be encouraged to participate in MO? If so, at what stage?
When I started graduate school ten (!) years ago, a more senior Ph.D student at the time told me about MathOverflow and encouraged me to participate. Ever since then I have found it immensely useful. ...
-11
votes
1answer
195 views
Why are votes secret?
It would be more correct if at least those who receive a vote know who it comes from.
It would be even more correct if the vote were motivated.