All Questions
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2022 Moderator Election Q&A – Question Collection
The purpose of this thread was to collect questions for the questionnaire. The questionnaire is now live, and you may find it here.
MathOverflow is scheduled for an election next week, 2022-09-19. In ...
- 101
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4
answers
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What areas/aspects of mathematics are underrepresented on MO?
The question:
What areas/aspects of mathematics are underrepresented on MO?
- 24.5k
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votes
4
answers
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Mathoverflow and the mathematical community
What is the general point of view of the mathematical community about MO ?
Do you talk about MO with your colleagues non-"MO users" ? What are their views?
Is it acceptable to cite MO's posts in ...
- 26.4k
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votes
5
answers
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Is it frowned upon to answer a question and vote to close?
Is it frowned upon to answer a question and vote to close it? I did this for
MO166234 and received this comment from a high-rep user:
...
- 6,397
18
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5
answers
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On the recent question "Is Euclid dead?", or: Is it considered good practice to use MathOverflow for a campaign?
Yesterday, a question entitled Is Euclid dead? has been asked
in which the OP states:
"Currently I am leading a campaign for the return of EG to the syllabus
of the high schools of my country (...
Stefan KohlMod
- 19.6k
18
votes
2
answers
685
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Proposal to more aggressively delete off-topic questions
We are going to get many more off-topic questions now.
Can we agree to vote to delete on them so as not to pollute the site?
It takes a few votes from users who can vote on such things and/or one ...
- 47.1k
18
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1
answer
756
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18
votes
1
answer
588
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How long until MathOverflow will be part of the Stack Exchange Data Explorer?
According to this answer and this answer, MathOverflow will eventually appear on the Stack Exchange Data Explorer. A couple of weeks have passed since these answers were given and MO is still missing ...
- 19.2k
18
votes
2
answers
607
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What's the point of having an *MO* chat without LaTeX enabled?
The title says it all. :-)
In response to the automatic disapproval of the question body:
I tried to edit the chat messages after submitting but couldn't figure out how to do that either. (And I ...
- 61.5k
18
votes
1
answer
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Is the [completeness] tag necessary?
I have noticed today that we have a completeness tag. It currently houses seven different questions on widely different notions of completeness.
Since there are widely different notions of ...
- 39k
18
votes
3
answers
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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:
...
- 19.2k
18
votes
1
answer
612
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Influx of ridiculous number of spam users – what to do?
There is currently an absolutely ridiculous influx of spam user profiles: almost the entire "recent badges" section in the right-hand column of the main page is full of Autobiographer badges ...
- 2,838
18
votes
3
answers
414
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Community Wiki in the hands of moderators
I don't understand the wisdom of removing the CW button from the control of an author of a question, and having always to pester the moderators to turn it on. Might it be possible to return this ...
- 53k
18
votes
1
answer
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Splitting a question
I recently asked a rather broad question, with four parts. I quickly received an excellent answer which solved three of them, but the fourth seems to be less related than I thought, and is still ...
- 20.8k
18
votes
9
answers
769
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Requests to remove community wiki
In the old days of MathOverflow, community wiki status was irreversible. This is no longer the case! There are many old questions and answers that became community wiki by accident or other reasons. ...
18
votes
1
answer
452
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Please BCC moderator private messages to [email protected]
(This is a feature request only really relevant to moderators, but feel free to vote or comment anyway!)
With the move to 2.0, the moderators now have a new mechanism for contacting users, called a ...
- 7,780
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votes
0
answers
625
views
goo.gl is closing down
goo.gl, a URL shortener service from Google, is shutting down, and in one year it will no longer work: https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/07/18/216211/google-url-...
- 19.9k
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0
answers
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"In the past one and half years, Stack Overflow has lost 50% of its traffic."
In a tweet by Mahesh Sathiamoorthy, I saw a chart showing a substantial recent drop:
Two questions: (1) Is this accurate? (2) What does the analogous chart for MathOverflow show?
(I can't remember ...
- 150k
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0
answers
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Posting multiple "answers" to an already answered question
This question was asked and correctly answered three weeks ago. Since then another user has posted, as of today, five other "answers" describing his thoughts about related questions, ...
- 42.6k
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votes
0
answers
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Why is the "last seen 96 years ago" feature gone?
User homepages used to display the information "last seen ... (min/days/...) ago". It appears this feature is gone now.
I found it useful, and while it does divulge some otherwise ...
- 23.7k
18
votes
0
answers
439
views
Three-vote close?
MO users might be interested in this StackExchange experiment:
Testing three-vote close and reopen on 13 network sites.
There has been considerable discussion around close-votes in MO Meta over the ...
- 150k
18
votes
0
answers
549
views
Removing questions after answers
I recently gave a simple counter example to a question posed (I'm sure the mods can see the question). Probably the user was embarrassed by this. The question was promptly deleted and with that my ...
- 7,463
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0
answers
527
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What "lattices" do we need?
The tag lattices is a problem since a long time. Over the years there were varied discussions about this, but no clear resolution emerged, though some things were done to better the situation. This is ...
user9072
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0
answers
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Can we replace client-side MathJax with server-side MathJax?
One of the (many) problems with MathJax is that
formulas are rendered using a client-side JavaScript.
Apart from the process itself being ridiculously slow,
this also means that the entire page must ...
- 37.3k
18
votes
0
answers
163
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Making it easier to access hidden comments
This is a follow-up of this recent post, and hopefully a feasible suggestion.
Problem: If a question/answer has many comments (say more than fit on my screen) and I decide to read them all, in ...
- 13.4k
18
votes
4
answers
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Deletion of on-topic comment threads
This question is about suppression of threads of comments by moderators, moved to chat with the message "Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat", ...
- 62.6k
17
votes
8
answers
3k
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2021 Moderator Election Q&A - Questionnaire
In connection with the moderator elections, we are holding a Q&A thread for the candidates. Questions collected from an earlier thread have been compiled into this one, which shall now serve as ...
- 101
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24
answers
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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!
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4
answers
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views
Opting out of reputation
[Disclaimer. I'm making this feature request not because I want it nor because I think it's a good idea, but because I heard it so often that there is need to discuss it. Please don't shoot the ...
17
votes
2
answers
1k
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Decluttering MathOverflow
There are quite a few very poor questions (all being put on hold quite soon after they've been asked), such as this. These questions stick around unless they get deleted by the OP (which they almost ...
- 47.9k
17
votes
4
answers
406
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What do moderators do?
What do moderators do? Is it just a matter of dealing with posts flagged for moderator attention, or are there other things too?
- 7,780
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votes
2
answers
633
views
Guidelines for contacting author of paper directly as opposed to asking on mathoverflow
Every now and again I will have a very specific question about a paper or book, for which I think there is a high likelihood that only the author(s) of the paper or book can give a definite answer. ...
- 651
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votes
4
answers
960
views
Should we blacklist or delete the "research" tag?
Should we blacklist or delete the research tag?
This site is about mathematical research, so I don't see how the "research" tag is helpful, any more than a "mathematics" tag would be helpful.
Of the ...
user44143
17
votes
1
answer
934
views
How to respond to well-known sockpuppeters
Frequent sockpuppeter/spammer Wolfgang Muckenheim is back, and across multiple SE sites (philosophy, mse). This leads me to ask:
Is there anything specific we should do in a situation like this, ...
- 20.8k
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3
answers
1k
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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://...
17
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2
answers
783
views
Does anyone remember seeing this answer/comment? (A famous result known earlier than believed)
I remember seeing the following interesting exchange recently on MathOverflow:
someone asked a question about something,
another person ($X$) answered (or commented) that the answer is such-or-such ...
- 31.9k
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3
answers
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Are well-posed questions about the mathematics job search on topic at MO?
When MO was young, it quickly became the dominant forum for mathematical discussions. At the time, the scope was pretty much "anything that is on-topic at a department Tea". For example, we had ...
- 54.2k
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1
answer
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Should the rules for deleting own questions be modified? - an example
I am aware of the own question deletion rules - in particular, kindly provided in an answer to Rules for deleting one's own question by Martin Sleziak. I think these rules have to be changed ...
- 17.9k
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2
answers
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Can we make the cite link bigger?
The cite link in the share box is minuscule:
Since this is a very important feature for MO, it should have much more visibility.
[Related: https://meta.mathoverflow.net/questions/112, Citation ...
17
votes
2
answers
560
views
How to get to meta?
There's a new toolbar for all the SE sites. (That big black thing up there!)
Mostly I think it's pretty awesome.
But how do I get to meta now?
- 7,780
17
votes
1
answer
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views
What should I do when I see a spam post on MO?
What is the correct way to handle spam on MathOverflow? Can regular users do something when they see a spam post?
17
votes
1
answer
898
views
Were there some recent changes to the moderators' team?
I have noticed that Mariano Suárez-Alvarez is no longer listed among the moderators and his profile page no longer shows diamond by his name. (I am pretty sure I remember that he was one of the ...
- 4,658
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votes
2
answers
580
views
How To Ask page
One of the best things on the old MO page was the "How to Ask" link on the top. It is true that SE took the hint and added something like that to the previous FAQ (which is now retired), but the MO ...
- 39k
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votes
1
answer
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imgur will remove some content soon. Does MathOverflow need to save images?
It has been reported that "Hosting site Imgur will remove explicit and anonymous content next month". Are there possibly some images linked in MathOverflow questions or answers, attached to ...
- 6,237
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votes
1
answer
849
views
Really minor complaint about the off-topic close menu
In the off-topic part of the close menu, the radio button for "this question does not appear to be about math" is annoyingly close to the link to the help center, at least for me:
Twice now I've ...
- 118k
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1
answer
475
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Is this question on OCR technology appropriate?
I often end up with PDFs of old math papers and books that are not searchable and cannot be highlighted (basically, they display like images). One way to make them searchable is to apply optical ...
17
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2
answers
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Proposal for Mathematics Learning, Studying, and Education
In view of https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/12470/forum-for-chatty-math-education-questions, I thought to create this proposal. I'd appreciate your support and contributions. Please allow ...
user37428
17
votes
1
answer
435
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Noncommutative rings/algebra tags
I'm suggesting to make noncommutative-rings a synonym to noncommutative-algebra, in the same way as commutative-rings has been made to ac.commutative-algebra.
Initially asked there, I'm asking it ...
- 62.6k
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1
answer
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Math Educators Stackexchange is live!
The new site http://matheducators.stackexchange.com is now up and running! This site is for questions about course-design, exam-writing, teaching methods, intuition and examples, etc.
Check out our ...
- 3,349
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votes
0
answers
251
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Change reputation required to post on meta back to 5 reputation points
Typically, Stack Exchange sites have the restriction that only users with at least 5 reputation points on the main site can post on meta. In this regard, MathOverflow is different. (It is listed also ...
- 4,658