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16 votes
7 answers
2k views

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....
Yemon Choi's user avatar
  • 25.5k
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 ...
Samantha Y's user avatar
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 ...
Todd Trimble's user avatar
  • 52.3k
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 ...
Simon Rose's user avatar
  • 6,240
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.
David E Speyer's user avatar
16 votes
5 answers
1k views

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 ...
Benjamin Steinberg's user avatar
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 ...
JP McCarthy's user avatar
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 ...
Tim Campion's user avatar
  • 60.6k
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 ...
მამუკა ჯიბლაძე's user avatar
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 ...
Emily's user avatar
  • 10.3k
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 ...
YCor's user avatar
  • 60.1k
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 ...
Jeremy Rickard's user avatar
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 ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
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. ...
François G. Dorais's user avatar
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 ...
Qiaochu Yuan's user avatar
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 ...
Tim Campion's user avatar
  • 60.6k
16 votes
1 answer
404 views

Visits per day: 1

From the link that quid usefully provided in another answer:
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
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 ...
Lucia's user avatar
  • 43.3k
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 ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
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 ...
Vitali Kapovitch's user avatar
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 ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
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 ...
Scott Morrison's user avatar
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 ...
Harry Gindi's user avatar
  • 19.4k
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 ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
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 ...
Stefan Kohl's user avatar
  • 19.5k
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 ...
Loïc Teyssier's user avatar
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 ...
Conrado Costa's user avatar
16 votes
0 answers
657 views

Help! Help! The colors are off!

I have a deja vu. Are the colors wrong, completely?
Asaf Karagila's user avatar
  • 38.1k
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." "...
Douglas Zare's user avatar
  • 27.8k
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 ...
Asaf Karagila's user avatar
  • 38.1k
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, ...
Francesco Polizzi's user avatar
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 ...
Joël's user avatar
  • 25.7k
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 ...
Joseph Van Name's user avatar
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) ...
martin's user avatar
  • 1,893
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. ...
Ali Taghavi's user avatar
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 ...
Neil Strickland's user avatar
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 ...
Baby Dragon's user avatar
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 ...
François G. Dorais's user avatar
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 ...
Yemon Choi's user avatar
  • 25.5k
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 ...
Scott Morrison's user avatar
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, ...
François G. Dorais's user avatar
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 ...
Alec Rhea's user avatar
  • 8,977
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 ...
Jeremy Rickard's user avatar
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 (...
Yemon Choi's user avatar
  • 25.5k
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 ...
Emily's user avatar
  • 10.3k
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 ...
Wolfgang's user avatar
  • 13.2k
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?
Ian Calvert's user avatar
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 ...
Scott Morrison's user avatar

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