45
votes
Deletion of on-topic comment threads
Vote up this answer if you think the instrument of moving a comment thread to chat
should be used along the lines of Todd Trimble's comment -- i.e. only if a discussion
in comments goes off-topic or ...
Stefan KohlMod
- 18.6k
42
votes
Accepted
How to cite comment by unknown user disproving Erdős conjecture?
This would not be a first, see arXiv:1909.00177
The citation (which I think follows the best practice) is
[6] Fedja, Communication on the MathOverflow website (2018), available
online at ...
- 161k
29
votes
How to cite comment by unknown user disproving Erdős conjecture?
The citation (which I think follows the best practice)
Indeed, that was a good way to handle it :-) The priority here is, as I said many times, to give the due credit to MO and similar sites that ...
- 56.2k
21
votes
Answers in comments are increasingly more common
I saw this just after posting a comment on a question that could be considered a partial answer, but I left it as a comment for two reasons: I am not sure it constitutes an answer since it does not ...
- 7,867
17
votes
Answers in comments are increasingly more common
Idea: If you see an answer offered in the comments and left there, copy it into a community wiki answer.
To answer Federico's comment: If there is an issue with licensing, rephrase the comment-answer ...
- 19.1k
14
votes
Accepted
Is it ok to write a CW answer extracted from a comment of some user?
It's perfectly okay to do this, Praphulla. Usually that would be seen as a service to the community.
Todd TrimbleMod
- 51.3k
14
votes
Answers in comments are increasingly more common
I think one thing that sometimes causes me to answer in a comment is if I suspect that the question, as stated, is not the one the asker meant to ask, and that seeing the answer to the question-as-...
- 62.4k
12
votes
Accepted
Changing mind about upvoting a comment
There's a meta stackexchange thread on this topic, here: Cancelling upvote on comment?. In brief, you can change your mind -- "upvoting" again undoes the upvote -- provided that you do it quickly (...
Todd TrimbleMod
- 51.3k
12
votes
Accepted
Is it possible to see the source for a comment?
One approach would be to use the MathJax contextual menu to select the "Plain Source" renderer, which will show the TeX commands rather than typeset expressions. That means you would not ...
- 101
11
votes
Accepted
Why did flagging a comment for deletion made it disappear immediately?
The related question on Meta.SE popped up today and I looked into this to see if I could figure it out. Looks like the misspelling of "Lipschitz" lead to a word that triggers single-flag ...
- 101
9
votes
Why was my dissenting viewpoint in a post about diversity censored?
Update: I moved all of the comments that were not deleted by commenters to chat. Your comment is restored there.
Older answer: I'll start by mentioning some context for the benefit of people who ...
S. CarnahanMod
- 44.1k
9
votes
Accepted
Can anyone learn anything from a downvote without an accompanying rationale in a comment?
I find this proposal completely unreasonable: "the questioner should have the right to petition the mods for a reversal of the vote."
For one, think of the amount of workload this would add for the ...
- 4,580
8
votes
Accepted
A remark on the abc conjecture
I think the remark you want is on page 361 of the Princeton Companion to Mathematics.
Edit in response to a comment - the paragraph in question follows:
The ABC conjecture has many other ...
S. CarnahanMod
- 44.1k
8
votes
Citing a mathoverflow comment
Comments are ephemeral on Stack Exchange and I wouldn't suggest citing a comment like you'd cite a question or an answer in a journal paper, if this is what you wish to do. It's true that ...
- 263
8
votes
Hyperlink in a comment?
To make a link in a comment you can use the [text](url) syntax. (And, of course, you can use simply a bare URL - but I assume you want something nicer. Having some ...
- 4,580
8
votes
How to find highly upvoted comments?
This seems like something where SEDE could be used as a suitable tool. Using the SQL syntax you can find top comments in the Comments table - and you can add ...
- 4,580
7
votes
Accepted
Searching for comments
The built-in search only searches in posts (questions and answers), so you will not find comments using that.
One method which is reasonable is using Google with restricting to this site. For example:...
- 4,580
7
votes
Accepted
Chat page has disappeared
That room was deleted, since it contained less than 15 messages, see this FAQ. I used my chat superpowers to undelete it, although it is bizarre that this happens for rooms created from comments. I've ...
- 16k
6
votes
Accepted
Is linking to comments possible?
To get a link to a comment, simply click on the timestamp next to it. (If it is your comment, be careful not to click on "Delete" by mistake.)
For example, this is a link to the first ...
- 4,580
6
votes
Accepted
Is it possible to find out why a comment was deleted?
I deleted that comment in response to a 'no longer needed' flag, as it did not contain much concrete information (in contrast to Carlo Beenakker's response). Thus, to answer your question -- the ...
Stefan KohlMod
- 18.6k
5
votes
Accepted
Migrating a question removes some comments?
From the FAQ post on migration: What is migration and how does it work? (in the section "Anything else I should know about migration?"):
Comments on the question that link to the homepage of the ...
- 4,580
5
votes
The math! It's overflowing!
The problem is caused by the fact that if a comment contains many consecutive characters without a space, the Stack Exchange software inserts invisible unicode character (\unicode{x200C}\unicode{...
- 4,580
5
votes
Answer converted to comment, then reverted to answer
For full transparency, this was my request to the moderators after the answer was converted to a comment:
I hope it's OK if I ask why this answer was deleted. The OP asks for
intuition on the notion ...
- 161k
4
votes
Comment template for questions more appropriate for MSE
Recommending Math.SE - but with caveat
This is attempt to expand a bit the suggestion in the question, by adding some links saying what should a question at Math.SE look like.
MathOverflow is a ...
4
votes
Accepted
Should I delete my own question if it turns out trivial after a comment?
To answer the comment question, "Why not just answer the question instead of discussing in comments?", my belief is that your question is both too general and too specific for meta. The specific ...
- 3,179
4
votes
Accepted
How to find the meta-thread of an MO-thread at hand? Is there one? Should there be?
If an MO question has spawned a meta thread, chances are the title of the MO question will appear somewhere in the meta thread, so typing that title into your favorite search engine along with site:...
- 37k
4
votes
Why did flagging a comment for deletion made it disappear immediately?
I don't have a full understanding of the specific process which was at work here, but the action was performed by the Community User which runs automatically in the background. When it saw your flag ...
Todd TrimbleMod
- 51.3k
4
votes
Automatic comments by Community
At least this part of the question has been basically answered in the comments:
Is the algorithm to generate such comments known?
Some of the comments explaining where these comments come from have ...
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible