All Questions
1,853
questions
16
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7
answers
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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....
16
votes
5
answers
3k
views
Why was there pushback on a user's profile image?
The comments on the OP for the following question are disconcerting: Why is Voevodsky's motivic homotopy theory 'the right' approach?
From what I can gather, the OP must have had ...
16
votes
6
answers
2k
views
Questions about applied mathematics
There's a discussion taking place at this question Mathematical study of Mpemba effect? where the author UwF is arguing that this question isn't clearly off-topic and would like some explanations for ...
16
votes
4
answers
2k
views
Should there be any concern about the number of questions imported into PhysicsOverflow?
I just happened to note that http://www.physicsoverflow.org/ now exists; this isn't a stackexchange website, but seems to run on similar software, and with similar goals to mathoverflow, which seems ...
16
votes
3
answers
4k
views
What is our policy on asking about correctness of preprints?
We talked about this a lot on the old meta 1, 2 but I don't see a concise statement of policy that I can link to, so I'm asking a meta question in hope of generating consensus on such a statement.
16
votes
5
answers
1k
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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 ...
16
votes
1
answer
647
views
Are "has this been studied before" questions on topic?
I have a fairly elementary question but rather than feeding it straight to the wolves I thought I would ask it here. Well, via a more general question:
Are questions of the form "has $X$ been ...
16
votes
5
answers
746
views
What should the modal window for first-time askers say?
When a user asks their very first question on a Stack Exchange site, they are shown a modal window with some introductory advice. As explained in the March 2020 announcement of this feature, there is ...
16
votes
1
answer
562
views
Is there a problem with answers clarified in comments, but the clarification not reflected in the answer itself?
Occasionally I am re-reading my answers in case I've overlooked something or left some misguiding misprint or something. What I noticed is that there are a couple of them where I was not entirely ...
16
votes
2
answers
285
views
Bringing back the old front page with custom CSS: a guide
As mentioned in a recent meta question, the Stack Exchange development team pushed changes to the front page affecting how views, vote counts, and answer counts are displayed. A few hours ago, these ...
16
votes
2
answers
1k
views
Recognizing identifiable users changing user names
I noticed recently regular users changing usernames (for instance, changing to a username supporting some particular political issue).
The purpose of this post is not to discuss whether this should ...
16
votes
1
answer
594
views
How to deal with answers that should be comments by users with not enough reputation to comment?
Several times I have seen answers that should be comments posted by new users without enough reputation to comment. Sometimes they know it should be a comment, and say so.
Sometimes these get the ...
16
votes
1
answer
593
views
Would disallowing displayed equations ("double dollars") in titles be useful?
If a poster includes in the title some formula in enclosed between $$, like $$x^2+y^2=z^2$$
$$x^2+y^2=z^2$$
the title of the ...
16
votes
5
answers
346
views
What statistics would be interesting for a usage report?
Suppose MathOverflow were to start having quarterly or annual usage reports. What statistics would you like to see reported there?
Some are obvious — new questions, new answers, new users, etc. ...
16
votes
1
answer
814
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 ...
16
votes
1
answer
532
views
What does the graph of MO questions-and-links look like?
Consider the graph $G$ whose vertices are MO questions and edges are links between the questions. What does $G$ look like?
I'm happy to define a "link" in the same way the SE software seems ...
16
votes
1
answer
404
views
Visits per day: 1
From the link that quid usefully provided in another answer:
16
votes
1
answer
1k
views
On a question that was deleted recently.
I noticed that yesterday a question that received many upvotes (>40) and no downvotes, and which mathematically seems quite interesting was deleted by a Stack Exchange Moderator. I definitely don't ...
16
votes
1
answer
840
views
Should moderators in some cases remove a question from the network-wide hot questions list?
Not too long ago - in March 2019 - some changes have been made to the Hot Network Questions (HNQ). Some of the new features are the limit on the number of hot questions from a single site, or limit on ...
16
votes
2
answers
447
views
Feature request: add short "about MathOverflow" section to the front page
Until a few years ago MathOverflow front page had a short section at the top describing what the site is for. I am not sure when it disappeared or why but I would like to see it restored. Currently ...
16
votes
1
answer
600
views
Correcting links with university proxy (especially MathSciNet links)
Let me first say, that I consider links to papers referenced in MO posts a useful things. And so do other users, judging by an older discussion on this topic: Is it worth editing old posts to add ...
16
votes
0
answers
477
views
Studying the MathOverflow data dump with Mathematica
This is just a mention of some work Wolfram has done recently, allowing you to import a database dump of MathOverflow and analyse it within Mathematica.
The Data Science of MathOverflow
Their ...
16
votes
0
answers
1k
views
Can we please reopen the colorful language in mathematics question?
A long time ago, the question
What are some examples of colorful language in serious mathematics papers?
was closed because someone posted a copy of Spencer Bloch's review of Milne's Étale ...
16
votes
0
answers
581
views
The existing deprecated tags should be blacklisted
TL;DR: I suggest to blacklist the deprecated tags that still exist on some questions, in order to prevent them from being added to new questions.
There are a few tags which are deprecated and should ...
16
votes
0
answers
462
views
Site statistics: Effectivity of the advice to edit a question which is closed as "unclear what you're asking"
When a question is closed as "unclear what you're asking", it gets
attached the following message:
Please clarify your specific problem or add additional details to
highlight exactly what you ...
16
votes
0
answers
610
views
Recurrent posting about «Matrix polynomials» and so on
MO is currently being the focus of what I guess to be a single particular individual R.T.Man sporting multiple unregistered users identity (like Eskand or H.night). S/he's asking multiple very similar ...
16
votes
0
answers
585
views
area 51 proposal - Math review
Recently I created a new proposal at area 51; it's called Math Review (http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/90443/math-review), and it is intended to be a Q&A site concerning troubles one ...
16
votes
0
answers
657
views
Help! Help! The colors are off!
I have a deja vu.
Are the colors wrong, completely?
16
votes
0
answers
313
views
Redundant ways to close as off-topic/better on MSE [duplicate]
Right now, there are 4 ways to vote to close a question as off-topic.
"This question does not appear to be about research level mathematics within the scope defined in the help center."
"...
16
votes
0
answers
255
views
Change of colors
I decided to follow up on my own thread regarding the color scheme, and test something up.
Using archive.org, I loaded a copy of MathOverflow from 2011, and it turns out that the questions in one's ...
16
votes
4
answers
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 ...
15
votes
3
answers
894
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, ...
15
votes
2
answers
670
views
How to wake up an old question?
Suppose there is an old question on mathOverflow, asked by someone else, which has been voted up a quite decent number of times, and received several answers which have also been voted up, but no ...
15
votes
2
answers
719
views
Why does mathoverflow constantly compile the latex for my questions and answers?
Whenever I ask or answer questions on mathoverflow, the output is constantly being compiled. While this is sometimes a desirable feature, it turns out that at least for my computer, when I am giving a ...
15
votes
1
answer
1k
views
Spam / Crank users
So I have posted a question on MO. It may not be the greatest question in the world, but for some reason it is attracting the attention of some crank user repeatedly signing up as a new (different) ...
15
votes
2
answers
1k
views
Why can't I accept two answers to the same question simultaneously?
I asked a question in MO and I received two interesting answers with different approaches. Both of them are very interesting. I wish to accept both of them simultaneously, but it is impossible. ...
15
votes
3
answers
2k
views
Should Kevin Buzzard's Lean question be left in its original state?
Kevin Buzzard asked this question, which incorporated a long section of background discussion. Federico Poloni removed that section. Yemon Choi commented that he thought the question was OK before ...
15
votes
2
answers
296
views
When questions are migrated, so are comments, and this can cause misconceptions
I recently noticed a question posted to MO that was migrated to MSE. Furthermore the comment was also migrated along with the question. The content of the comment was "This is not the right site for ...
15
votes
4
answers
610
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 ...
15
votes
1
answer
532
views
Request to consider undeleting an answer
Apologies if this should go in the "requests to undelete questions" thread but this seems to be technically different.
I noticed that this answer https://mathoverflow.net/a/465960/ has ...
15
votes
2
answers
959
views
tea.mathoverflow.net deprecated
The Stack Exchange staff have asked us to remove tea (what came before meta) from the *.mathoverflow.net domain, for security reasons.
The content of tea will ...
15
votes
3
answers
455
views
Closing as duplicate
Many things changed when MathOverflow joined the Stack Exchange Network a year ago. While most changes were quickly absorbed a few are more subtle and might have been missed by some. In particular, ...
15
votes
1
answer
1k
views
10 year 'temporary suspension'?
I recently noticed that Morteza Azad's account is temporarily suspended for what appears to be a period of 10 years unless I'm reading that date wrong.
The linked stackoverflow guidelines indicate ...
15
votes
1
answer
691
views
Should we flag suspected ChatGPT posts?
Another meta question raised the issue of AI-generated (by ChatGPT or similar) posts.
I have a more specific question. If we see a post that we suspect to be of this genre, would the moderators like ...
15
votes
1
answer
668
views
a spate of deletions by "Community"
18 minutes ago (at time of writing) a whole swathe of questions appear to have been deleted, some of which seemed not to be obviously sub-par or off-topic, and some of which had a net rep scoire of 0 (...
15
votes
1
answer
801
views
Who are the MathOverflow moderators?
Where can I find the list of MathOverflow moderators? How can I contact them?
15
votes
2
answers
790
views
Suggestions for the design of a font for math articles/books
Recently I've resumed work on a font I'm currently developing, meant to be released as a completely free, open-source, OFL-licensed font designed specifically for use in papers, theses, books, lecture ...
15
votes
1
answer
337
views
comments that are not displayed right away ("add/see 10 other comments")
Often when I start reading comments, it is only when I come to the end that I see a link like "add/see 10 other comments". I can understand that if there is a huge list of comments for the same ...
15
votes
1
answer
567
views
Tumbleweed Badge: Proper Response
Being a European, I doubtless do not fully understand the associations of the Tumbleweed badge that I have just received. Is there a MO consensus about the appropriate reaction?
15
votes
2
answers
532
views
Trackbacks are no longer being generated for the arXiv
(Although this is a bug report, I or Anton are likely the people who need to fix it; this post is a bug tracking item, not necessarily a plea for help :-)
We previously been scraping the front page ...