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2013 Election Results

The election process is over, and now it is time to declare the winners: Good luck in the new position, I'm sure that you'll prove to be a great addition to the community and its moderators! On ...
Asaf Karagila's user avatar
  • 38.1k
30 votes
2 answers
921 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 ...
Asaf Karagila's user avatar
  • 38.1k
30 votes
1 answer
971 views

How can a nonacademic with research level questions know which questions are research level?

I am actually still in High School, but I enjoy some more advanced forms of mathematics. I asked a question, and it generated a great response, and I really enjoyed the process, so must have come of ...
Christopher King's user avatar
30 votes
1 answer
421 views

Text on some buttons has become unrecognizable

Very recently (I think today) the buttons with "Post your answer", "Answer your question" and some others became black, with the text hardly readable. With me it happens on Windows 10 with latest ...
მამუკა ჯიბლაძე's user avatar
29 votes
3 answers
3k views

Celebrity usernames

The question "naive de Rham cohomology fails for singular varieties" (naive de Rham cohomology fails for singular varieties) recently received an apparently useful answer from a user with the name "...
Sam Hopkins's user avatar
  • 22.7k
29 votes
6 answers
1k views

MathOverflow at the Joint Mathematics Meetings, Baltimore, January 2014

The 2014 Joint Mathematics Meetings will be held January 15-18, 2014 in Baltimore, with hundreds thousands of mathematicians attending. It happens that I plan to attend, and since I'd enjoy going to ...
Joel David Hamkins's user avatar
29 votes
1 answer
902 views

Using MO as a platform to discuss papers in math?

A use case scenario: I am reading a paper and I get stuck on some point. It is obvious to me that everyone else who tried to understand this point would get stuck. I ask around, people either haven't ...
Anton Mellit's user avatar
  • 3,572
29 votes
3 answers
727 views

When asking a question on MO it seems there's far too little information on what MO is about

When we switched from the old format to the MSE 2.0 format, almost all the information about what MO is about, and what is expected from a good question was been stripped from the site. I mean, one ...
Ryan Budney's user avatar
  • 42.8k
29 votes
0 answers
515 views

Moderation strike update 3

There was a lull in the negotiations, for various innocuous reasons that are not relevant. But on 20th July 2023, the following update was posted to Discord by negotiator Mithical, and reposted at the ...
David Roberts's user avatar
  • 33.8k
28 votes
4 answers
1k views

What would be the disadvantages of a (hypothetical) MOexit?

The hypothetical possibility of MO leaving StackExchange was mentioned here on meta.MO a few years ago and was mentioned again recently. In a comment, Sam Hopkins asked what I think is a good ...
Timothy Chow's user avatar
  • 78.1k
28 votes
3 answers
1k views

Asking questions with out answering any one else’s question

Here I only ask questions and do not (can not answer for lack of knowledge) answer any of the questions. Sometimes I feel it is bad. Some questions that I know answer to are either closed as not ...
Praphulla Koushik's user avatar
28 votes
5 answers
1k views

Drastic locking of the question "Examples of common false beliefs in mathematics"

The question Examples of common false beliefs in mathematics, was one of the best and most successful questions in the history of MO. When we discussed closing it, it was argued that after 164 answers ...
Gil Kalai's user avatar
  • 24.2k
28 votes
12 answers
1k views

Site updates are live

A majority of the changes are not be visible; these tweaks go along with recent updates that were made to Stack Overflow: We have updated the site's CSS to a newly refactored LESS system, so that it'...
Kurtis Beavers's user avatar
28 votes
8 answers
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 ...
Oded's user avatar
  • 101
28 votes
4 answers
1k views

What do you want to do in Rio?

Four weeks from tomorrow (at this writing) is March 5, the deadline for submitting abstracts for Short Communications for the ICM 2018 (International Congress of Mathematicians) happening In the first ...
Gerhard Paseman's user avatar
28 votes
2 answers
1k views

Using MathOverflow to get new results in your research and publish them afterwards

So, MathOverflow is mainly used for posting research problems. Assume I have a research idea on which I want to write a paper. I developed it to some extent, but I am stuck somewhere and I post the ...
sdd's user avatar
  • 109
28 votes
1 answer
972 views

Prosus' acquisition and its effect on MathOverflow

Just saw the PROSUS acquisition news of StackOverflow. Does it have any effect on MathOverflow? In what way would it help or not help MO? Thanks beforehand.
vidyarthi's user avatar
  • 2,007
28 votes
2 answers
925 views

Concern about sending to academia.stackexchange

There have been two questions today with suggestions (one acted on, at time of writing) to close, with the question being better asked at academia.stackexchange: Referee reports and Covid lessons. In ...
Matthew Daws's user avatar
  • 18.5k
28 votes
2 answers
673 views

Migrating to Math.SE: too many close reasons [duplicate]

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 ...
Nate Eldredge's user avatar
28 votes
2 answers
769 views

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 ...
András Bátkai's user avatar
28 votes
1 answer
897 views

MO in the Notices of the AMS

On page 333 of the March 2010 issue, John Baez wrote that "MathOverflow has become a universal clearinghouse for math questions." The March 2017 issue features an interview with Prof. Ken Ribet--the ...
José Hdz. Stgo.'s user avatar
27 votes
3 answers
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 ...
David E Speyer's user avatar
27 votes
2 answers
662 views

Would newly elected moderators join the board of MathOverflow Inc.?

MathOverflow is a bit different from most of the sites in the network in that it is not operated only by Stack Exchange, but it "belongs" also to the nonprofit MathOverflow corporation. If I ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
27 votes
2 answers
1k views

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 ...
Thomas Sauvaget's user avatar
27 votes
1 answer
1k views

Is it okay to put on your profile that you're looking for a job?

The title says it all. I do not see why it should be a problem, but I realize I have never seen anyone doing that here (or I forgot), so I ask.
Joël's user avatar
  • 25.7k
27 votes
2 answers
2k views

Explicitly pointing out math.stackexchange when (new?) users ask a question

I have recently flagged several questions for migration to math.stackexchange which were fairly clearly not about mathematics research and related topics. It was clear that in some cases these new ...
Ricardo Andrade's user avatar
27 votes
3 answers
2k views

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, ...
Gerry Myerson's user avatar
26 votes
6 answers
2k views

Anonymity Policy

In view of recent events, we've been reconsidering having some policy against anonymous users. We've always encouraged users to use real names though we have been tolerant of pseudonymous and ...
François G. Dorais's user avatar
26 votes
7 answers
3k views

Should we have new moderator elections?

Mathoverflow has seven moderators, but many of them seem to be inactive (at least from the point of view of an unprivileged user): for instance, they are not active on meta, and they moderated few ...
Federico Poloni's user avatar
26 votes
3 answers
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 ...
Zev Chonoles's user avatar
  • 6,712
26 votes
4 answers
841 views

Which Latex / MathJax features do we need or want to have supported on the site?

As we've started discussing, Stack Exchange is planning to redo the editor for all questions and answers across all their sites. As articulated by Emilio Pisanty, these changes will have significant ...
Tim Campion's user avatar
  • 60.6k
26 votes
1 answer
1k views

Why is “MathOverflow” spelled without a space when “Stack Overflow” is spelled with a space?

I assumed the name of our site “MathOverflow” is derived from the name “Stack Overflow” of the first and largest site that used the same base software (Stack Exchange). Is this so? If it is, then ...
Zsbán Ambrus's user avatar
26 votes
2 answers
1k views

Policy toward GPT-generated conjectures?

The recent MO post, A number theoretic conjecture by Chat GPT, posed a conjecture that was generated by ChatGPT. In my opinion, it was not a particularly interesting conjecture. For me at least, the ...
Timothy Chow's user avatar
  • 78.1k
26 votes
4 answers
8k views

On using MathJax to create 'white space'

The purpose of this post is, first, to raise awareness (as this, reasonably, might not be clear) that the way some (and it seems to me the number is growing) use MathJax to create 'white space' (or to ...
user avatar
26 votes
2 answers
1k views

Slight downward trend in Q & A

I thought MO users might be interested in this graph constructed by Neal Young in a discussion at meta.cstheory about the more pronounced downward trend in cstheory. It shows MO Q&A activity ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
26 votes
1 answer
842 views

Should I start posting my questions on MO?

I have been a member of MO and of math.SE for a long time now. My participation in MO has been mainly lurking because I am not a researcher but a student who aims to become one. So, logically, I have ...
Bruno Stonek's user avatar
  • 2,914
26 votes
0 answers
611 views

The color of links in comments

In the following image, depicting a piece of a comment on MO.se the words «this link» are a link to some URL, yet the styling makes it quite not apparent; the only styling I can see is a ...
Mariano Suárez-Álvarez's user avatar
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 ...
25 votes
2 answers
1k views

My question has already been asked, but not really answered? What should I do?

I have a question I am curious about: call it $Q$. There exists a posted question $P$ on MO which asks my question $Q$. More precisely, $P$ states a series of (slightly vague) questions, one of ...
Charles Rezk's user avatar
  • 26.6k
25 votes
5 answers
1k views

Community Peer-Review in Mathoverflow

I was recently surfing around the Physicsoverflow and I have to admit I was impressed by their Review section. I could not help myself from thinking how -and if- such a feature could also be ...
Konstantinos Kanakoglou's user avatar
25 votes
1 answer
830 views

Why is the update so awesome?

I mean, we really don't deserve it. It's awesome. Good work everyone, high-fives all around. Cheers (for those of you from across the pond, so-to-speak).
Jonathan Beardsley's user avatar
25 votes
5 answers
2k views

Updated: Is it time to replace links to the UCDavis arXiv frontend?

This question from March 2020 points out that many questions/answers link to papers at the http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/ frontend instead of at the arXiv itself, but that the frontend had been down a ...
Peter LeFanu Lumsdaine's user avatar
25 votes
4 answers
1k views

Examples of mathematical exposition arising from MO answers

I could imagine that several very long Mathoverflow answers have eventually turned into expository papers. For example, I have posted this (unpublished) expository paper on the arxiv about various ...
Joseph Van Name's user avatar
25 votes
1 answer
1k views

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 ...
David White's user avatar
  • 29.4k
25 votes
4 answers
2k views

How to handle crankery on MathOverflow 2.0?

On the previous MO we had a thread on Tea called "crank post to flag as spam" in which crank posts were pointed out so people could flag them as spam and have them deleted. Seeing how we are now ...
Asaf Karagila's user avatar
  • 38.1k
25 votes
1 answer
832 views

"Is this a known/interesting result?"-type questions

Are questions of the form "Is this a known result?" and "Is this an interesting result?" legitimate for MO? I have sometimes found myself staring at results that were new to me and unsure whether ...
mweiss's user avatar
  • 525
25 votes
1 answer
3k views

Jean-Christophe Yoccoz

I've heard today that Jean-Christophe Yoccoz passed two days ago: Le mathématicien français Jean-Christophe Yoccoz, médaille Fields, est mort [archived], Libération, 05.09.2016. I think people would ...
DamienC's user avatar
  • 8,103
25 votes
2 answers
988 views

Request from PRIMES to keep an eye out for their problems

On m.SE last year there was a problem with someone cheating on the entrance problem set for the PRIMES high school research program at MIT. Selection for PRIMES for this year has begun, and they're ...
Noah Snyder's user avatar
  • 27.8k
25 votes
4 answers
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 ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
25 votes
0 answers
1k views

Unregistered Users (in Theory and in Practice)

There's been past discussion (e.g. here) about whether MathOverflow should allow posts from unregistered users. I am fully on board with the apparent consensus that the answer is yes, because of the ...
Steven Landsburg's user avatar

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