All Questions
1,888
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Effects of the Stack Exchange 'update to Terms of Service' on MathOverflow
Do the recent changes to Stack Exchange Terms of Service affect MathOverflow in any way -- and if yes, what are the concrete effects?
Stefan KohlMod
- 19.6k
17
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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 ...
- 4,658
17
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0
answers
259
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Reviewing first posts that are answers or late answers
When reviewing first posts that are answers or late answers to questions that have existing answers I invariably go to the original question to see these answers since I want to check if these new ...
- 3,984
17
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0
answers
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Booth at Joint Mathematics Meeting?
This is identical to my misplaced "answer" here, written while attending JMM. I am reposting a fresh question at François G. Dorais's request.
I wonder if it make sense, at some future Joint ...
- 150k
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5
answers
2k
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MathOverflow policymaking and transparency
There goeth rumours abroad that some off-site groups are seeking a private forum together with the moderators here in order to make policy for MO.
I hope that the moderators will commit to ...
- 19.5k
16
votes
7
answers
2k
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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....
- 25.7k
16
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5
answers
3k
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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 ...
- 356
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votes
6
answers
2k
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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 ...
- 53k
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4
answers
2k
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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 ...
- 6,260
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3
answers
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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.
- 155k
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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 ...
- 38.2k
16
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1
answer
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Why is the site being flooded with junk right now? What is being done about it?
Right now the site is being flooded with posts from new users, with pseudonymous names, who use a mixture of obvious AI-generated nonsense mathematics and weird sentences (sometimes borderline ...
- 23.7k
16
votes
2
answers
972
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Users using AI to write lots of answers
Recently, there are a lot of new pseudonymous users with a peculiar pattern of posts: only answers, no questions, in lots of widely differing areas of mathematics (where it is unlikely that one random ...
- 2,838
16
votes
3
answers
816
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What to do with homework questions?
I think something should be done with the homework questions: there are too many of them now. I suggest that one reason for closing should be "homework". If at least 3 people vote for that reason to ...
user6976
16
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5
answers
763
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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 ...
- 63.2k
16
votes
1
answer
567
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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 ...
- 17.9k
16
votes
1
answer
705
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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 ...
- 34.7k
16
votes
2
answers
293
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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 ...
- 11.5k
16
votes
2
answers
1k
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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 ...
- 62.6k
16
votes
1
answer
812
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Who are the MathOverflow moderators?
Where can I find the list of MathOverflow moderators? How can I contact them?
16
votes
1
answer
604
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 ...
- 34.7k
16
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1
answer
596
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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 ...
- 4,658
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votes
5
answers
347
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
533
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 ...
- 63.2k
16
votes
1
answer
456
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New bolded tags?
The past few days, I’ve noticed that the question tags on the main site are now bolded; is there any way to revert them back to normal? (Not the end of the world, but I find it distracting more than ...
- 9,901
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1
answer
404
views
16
votes
1
answer
1k
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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 ...
- 43.6k
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votes
1
answer
849
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 ...
- 4,658
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1
answer
286
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History of Math and Science SE is in commit stage
This is to announce that the History of Math and Science StackExchange proposal on Area 51 has entered the "commit" stage. You can read more about the proposal here and see the proposal itself here.
...
- 633
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2
answers
454
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 ...
- 7,832
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votes
1
answer
629
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 ...
- 4,658
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0
answers
481
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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 ...
- 7,780
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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 ...
- 19.5k
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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 KohlMod
- 19.6k
16
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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 ...
- 5,408
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0
answers
592
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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 ...
- 101
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657
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16
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0
answers
313
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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."
"...
- 27.9k
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 ...
- 39k
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votes
4
answers
2k
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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
5
answers
1k
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Public dumps for mathoverflow?
As far as I remember, there was supposed to be a public dump of the MO database just before the migration: http://dumps.mathoverflow.net/ . Not an urgency by any measure, but something that would be ...
- 33.6k
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votes
3
answers
900
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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
5
answers
4k
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Should these sexually suggestive jokes be kept or deleted?
There are a few jokes in "Do good math jokes exist?" that I think are inappropriate.
Specifically:
Nov 21 '09 at 9:01 item (1)
Oct 19 '09 at 16:03
Dec 10 '09 at 23:14
Dec 15 '09 at 1:31
All of ...
- 1,163
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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 ...
- 986
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2
answers
684
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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 ...
- 25.9k
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votes
2
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729
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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 ...
- 28.4k
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3
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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 ...
- 55.7k
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1
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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) ...
- 1,903
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2
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296
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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 ...
- 101
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615
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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 ...