# All Questions

1,740 questions
Filter by
Sorted by
Tagged with
23 votes
4 answers
986 views

### What makes you vote to close a question?

Some recent exchanges and observations suggest to me that users not only have different thresholds for voting to close a question yet still applying the same criteria, but that they even apply so ...
23 votes
3 answers
1k views

### "Newbie-style" questions: is there an "official" viewpoint of MO?

(Neil Strickland provided a link to early graduate level questions: MO or Math.SE? which more or less answers this, so I have marked it as a duplicate) Every now and then I encounter questions which ...
• 16.7k
23 votes
3 answers
885 views

### How can I donate to MathOverflow — if I should?

I understood from this meta question that MathOverflow is a nonprofit nonstock corporation dedicated to keeping this site running and that the nonprofit status allows receiving donations. What is the ...
• 7,673
23 votes
1 answer
3k 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?...
23 votes
2 answers
820 views

### Can the clutter of obviously off-topic questions be removed faster?

I have noticed a number of blatantly off-topic questions that hang around for a long time despite heavy down-voting and calls for removal by senior users. I found somewhere on the site (although I can'...
• 2,417
23 votes
1 answer
488 views

### If I see spam together with mathematical content in an answer, should I edit out the spam?

The title almost says it all, except that I should say that 'spam' here has the strict meaning where a vendor inserts a unsolicited link to a page that advertises or sells a product. There may be ...
• 51.1k
23 votes
3 answers
1k views

### Does Mathoverflow really want the 'Publicist' badge?

I enjoy the rewards system on the Stack exchange network. I learned some time ago that you can easily earn gold badges on all sites by picking the most interesting questions and using the "Share" ...
• 3,291
23 votes
2 answers
1k 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 ...
• 51.1k
23 votes
1 answer
653 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.) ...
• 4,570
23 votes
2 answers
844 views

### Crazy idea about soft questions

I was thinking the other day about big list and other soft questions and had the following crazy idea. It seems to me that what we want is to occasionally have good soft questions. The main thing ...
• 27k
23 votes
2 answers
861 views

### Featured MO questions on the hot list: what benefits, if any, do these bring?

“Measures to separate MO from the rest of the stackexchange network”, and various other recent meta questions, have discussed (among other things) opting out of the stackexchange-wide hot list. I’ve ...
23 votes
0 answers
910 views

### Upcoming election announcement (2022)

It has been quite some time since the last moderator election, and we decided that it would be a good idea to hold one soon. This is just a preliminary announcement to let you know that this is going ...
• 36.6k
23 votes
0 answers
911 views

### Request to keep an eye out for PROMYS admissions problems

Many of you may be familiar with PROMYS, a camp based out of Boston University which teaches number theory to high school students each summer. Students applying to the program are asked to submit ...
• 143k
23 votes
0 answers
731 views

### Should "The probability for a streak when tossing a coin" be reopened?

The question "The probability for a streak when tossing a coin" is on hold. [Edit: It has been reopened.] I disagree with closing the question and voted to reopen. This problem may sound like it is ...
• 27.6k
22 votes
13 answers
2k views

### 2021 Moderator election: suggestions for nominees?

As you may have seen, the nominations for the 2021 moderator election will be open on March 29. Per StackExchange rules, MO users are expected to nominate themselves for the election. For some ...
• 42.8k
22 votes
3 answers
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 ...
• 25.2k
22 votes
3 answers
1k views

### Answering not research level questions

I just commented the solution to a question that was obviously not research level. Then I deleted the solution again since providing it might encourage people to again asking such questions. ...
• 3,191
22 votes
3 answers
903 views

### Pronunciation questions

Every so often, I have a question about the correct pronunciation of a math term/name that I’ve only read, and the answer isn’t on Wikipedia. Some examples from my past: “Hartshorne” (I ended up ...
• 2,981
22 votes
4 answers
741 views

### Customize the modal window for the first-time askers [duplicate]

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 ...
• 4,570
22 votes
1 answer
694 views

### Why are we now getting 'hot network questions'?

I notice that we are now getting a bar listing hot questions from across the SE network. I thought we'd settled for no cross-site advertising in MO2.0.
• 31.9k
22 votes
1 answer
710 views

### Should OEIS links be updated?

Historic links to the OEIS are of the form http://www.research.att.com/~njas/sequences/A097048. These links no longer work: Neil has retired from AT&T, and in the meantime has set up the OEIS ...
22 votes
4 answers
1k views

### Encouraging new users to provide a name or a nickname

After the transition to MO 2.0, I noticed an increased influx of anonymous users, with user names like user####. Of course, people can have all kinds of reasons to ...
• 18.5k
22 votes
1 answer
1k views

### One person creating multiple Riemann Hypothesis-related accounts

I have been flagging these posts individually, but I thought maybe a meta question would be a good follow-up, in case the moderators are not aware of the behaviour. As @YemonChoi points out, the ...
• 9,467
22 votes
2 answers
2k views

### MathOverflow @ ICM2014 : We Want You!

This post will raise several questions/issues on which I want community feedback. Background: Inspired by Tim Post's offer Mugs, Stickers And Shirts - Now With 100% More MathOverflow! , I++ decided ...
• 3,181
22 votes
1 answer
5k views

### Why was my dissenting viewpoint in a post about diversity censored?

In a question about special lectures for the ICM, the following answer proposed that a lecture on how to make the mathematical field more diverse be given. The answer contains some rather bold ...
• 988
22 votes
1 answer
1k views

### Why do we link to Twitter, Facebook or Google+ below every question?

I edit this old feature request of mine, in the hope that mentality have evolved and some consensus can be reached and some action be taken: After each question on MO (with no answers yet), we can ...
• 25.2k
22 votes
0 answers
208 views

### Questions containing my "favorite tags" are barely distinguishable

I liked the fact that in MO v1, any question which contained one of my list of favorite tags was noticably highlighted (a brown-orange color, if I remember correctly). In the new version, such ...
• 26.1k
21 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 ...
21 votes
3 answers
2k views

### Question about $i$ versus $-i$

I vaguely recall that some years ago, there was an MO question about how to distinguish between the complex numbers $i$ and $-i$, and in what sense this might be meaningful. I also recall that I ...
• 21.4k
21 votes
1 answer
846 views

### Will ads appear on MO?

It looks like the Stack Exchange network is trying to monetize the various stack sites as much as possible, to the dismay of users across the board. Will this affect MO? If I recall correctly we ...
• 7,697
21 votes
4 answers
2k views

### Publicizing conjectures on MO

This question Positive integers written as $\binom{w}2+\binom{x}4+\binom{y}6+\binom{z}8$ with $w,x,y,z\in\{2,3,\ldots\}$ is basically just a statement of a few conjectures by the asker. The "...
• 5,385
21 votes
2 answers
1k views

### Ignoring certain users' postings

This old post on meta stackexchange contains a script that hides posts from users of your choice. There were some negative comments there and the script doesn't seem to be working anymore (maybe ...
• 29.8k
21 votes
2 answers
625 views

### Data on voting by 'association bonus only' users

There's recently been some discussion of the potential impact on voting of users whose only MathOverflow reputation comes from the network association bonus. I asked the SE team about this, and ...
• 7,359
21 votes
2 answers
778 views

### How do off-topic question askers find MO?

Apologies if this has been addressed on Meta before (it's a little hard to know the right keywords to search for Meta questions with). Question: Has there been any systematic attempt to try to figure ...
• 20.3k
21 votes
1 answer
795 views

### Mathoverflow lecture series using chat

This was something that came up recently in the homotopy theory chat room. Even if it wasn't to homotopy theory, has MO ever considered asking active users with interesting research to host lectures ...
• 9,645
21 votes
2 answers
742 views

### Stack-exchange devoted to research problems, the suggested approaches and updates

The idea is to have a database of open research problems where the answers will be updates or suggested approaches. One research problem per post. This is in the spirit of Polymath. Reasons: ...
• 2,394
21 votes
1 answer
660 views

### Tea archive (mathoverflow.tqft.net) seems to be down

It seems that the link http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/ (which, according to this announcement, serves as an archive of the old tea, i.e. the previous incarnation of MathOverflow Meta) no longer works. ...
• 4,570
20 votes
7 answers
2k views

### Can MO go back to +5 rep for questions? Should it?

In case you missed the news, upvotes on questions now grant +10 reputation instead of +5, and the change has been implemented retroactively (most if not all users have already had their reputation ...
• 25.2k
20 votes
7 answers
2k views

### What is needed to succeed in keeping up the level of the site and retaining the good contributors?

MathOverflow is a nice high-level communitiy with a good collegial academic atmosphere. I'd like to know about how this can be achieved; for example how does MathOverflow keep up the good qualitiy of ...
• 408
20 votes
3 answers
887 views

### Is there a consensus on whether history of mathematics questions are acceptable on MO?

I recently stumbled across an old meta discussion in which some people suggested that history of mathematics questions were off-topic for MO. This took me by surprise and I would like to ask for ...
• 69.7k
20 votes
1 answer
957 views

### What to do with links to arXiv front end?

There are quite a few posts which link to some paper at http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/ rather than directly at https://arxiv.org/ The front for arXiv at UC Davis seems to be down for some time. (I ...
• 4,570
20 votes
2 answers
1k views

### Why do non-research and soft questions get closed if and only if the poster lacks high reputation?

The title says it all. Don't get me wrong. I have actually enjoyed my first few weeks on MO. I am not writing out of personal vendetta. That is, I have not had any of my own questions closed and I ...
• 1,071
20 votes
2 answers
871 views

### Questions on Coq

Now I'm awake again, I can raise this here in meta, as per quid's request. I commented on the question How do I verify the Coq proof of Feit-Thompson? I like this question, and would defend it ...
• 31.9k
20 votes
3 answers
2k views

### Formatting a citation to a MathOverflow answer

What's a good way to format a citation to a MathOverflow post in a paper? Here is a first draft (with hyperlink, and assuming it's reference number 16, say), but maybe people can think of ...
• 24.1k
20 votes
2 answers
882 views

### It's been another year...MO exists since six years!

As provable by Question Number 1 the site started to exist almost exactly six years ago. Everybody who feels like saying something on this occasion, feel free to post an answer.
20 votes
1 answer
823 views

### What is MathOverflow's "agreement" with Stack Exchange?

On June 24, 2013, MathOverflow signed an agreement with Stack Exchange, Inc., to migrate the original site to the newer Stack Exchange 2.0 platform and join the Stack Exchange network. François G. ...
• 1,307
20 votes
2 answers
910 views

### Can (and should) Project Euclid links be replaced in bulk?

In February 2021, Project Euclid made some changes on their website: Project Euclid Platform Migration FAQs. It is probably a consequence of this that the links starting with ...
• 4,570
20 votes
1 answer
673 views

### How to respond to premature crossposts from Math.SE?

There seems to be a general feeling (if not policy) to the effect that questions should not be simultaneously posted to MathOverflow and Math StackExchange (Math.SE). (I think there may have been a ...
• 28.1k
20 votes
2 answers
2k views

### Any other site besides mathoverflow and mathematics stackexchange?

I know the differences between mathoverflow and math-stack but I have been wondering: Are there legitimate mathematical questions that would not get answered at math-stack because there is no ...
20 votes
1 answer
1k views

### Someone is trying to delete the Memorable Titles thread

There is currently a vote to delete this very old thread. I am writing to register my strong protest against this and bring it to the attention of other users here on meta. Most memorable titles
• 19.1k

15 30 50 per page