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39 votes

Is it worth editing old posts to add links for references?

Yes, this is totally worthwhile! Please do this. The value of a linked reference is far higher than the value of an unlinked reference; the latter I fear often simply go unconsulted. I go further ...
35 votes
Accepted

Are edits performed by external, non-SE robots allowed?

Just to give some background on this project: it's indeed something I'm doing on my own, independent of Stack Exchange. There are more independent 'volunteer' projects around the Stack Exchange ...
  • 2,715
33 votes

Nudge: the new Stacks editor has significant implications for this site

New Answer: Upon reflection, Emilio is 100% correct: We need to sound the alarm bells. Here's a link again to Emilio's well-thought-out answer on the main meta site explaining this, which is probably ...
  • 54k
29 votes
Accepted

What to do with links to arXiv front end?

If it's been down for a few weeks it's too early (as you say) but a good idea to mention it now. Your query points to about 600 answers, this is a lot, so the hope, if it's once judged time to make a ...
  • 55.2k
18 votes
Accepted

Altering the question in a way that makes an answer obsolete

As Gerald Edgar said, the most common reason for this situation is that the answer reveals to the OP that they posed the question in a form that did not properly capture what they intended to ask. I ...
17 votes

Editing etiquette

Most of the time, the edits that I see on MO are respectfully and tactfully performed and small in scope, and gratefully received by the post's author as improvements. Occasionally though I see flare-...
  • 51.3k
17 votes
Accepted

Any policies around Dead links?

I guess I usually act as follows: a) If I know how to fix the link (typically, link points to an identifiable paper), I either edit accordingly, or add the link as a comment (I might even provide 2 ...
  • 55.2k
15 votes

Restriction on Number of edits

I probably should write a few lines about this, since the question was obviously a reaction to my edits. (But it will be certainly nice if some more experienced users share their view.) I consider ...
15 votes

How to discourage excessive self-edits?

In the Internet world (and also in the real world) non native English speakers have huge disadvantage. Gaining some attention to one's MO questions and answers due to the need to edit them more is a ...
  • 24k
15 votes
Accepted

Is it possible to temporarily comment out part of a post?

You can hide the part in HTML comments: BEFORE <!-- this is something I want to hide --> AFTER produces: BEFORE AFTER Spoilers would be another option, ...
  • 2,715
14 votes

Proper protocol for edit wars

As a longtime Wikipedia contributor who has been around a lot of truly crazy edit wars, my advice is: never revert more than once even if the other person's edit is terrible. Instead leave a comment ...
  • 1,107
14 votes

How acceptable is prosemirror-math as an editor style for this site?

Personally, I find it less usable than the status quo, but better than the new editor proposed by SE. So if it is inevitable that we will have to settle for an inferior alternative in future, this is ...
13 votes

edits with links to material under restricted access

There is a good reason for linking to a paywalled link. It is usually the official journal link. It is likely to contain the accurate citation information, it is likely to stay on the web for longer (...
  • 36.9k
13 votes

Is it possible to temporarily comment out part of a post?

Since other answers mention HTML comments, let me clarify that using them is only a commonly employed custom on SE sites, which just abuses the fact that it works by accident. In reality, the ...
13 votes

Can (and should) Project Euclid links be replaced in bulk?

Let us collect here various formats of the links to Project Euclid which no longer work. (Some of those following links also appeared in variants with https instead ...
12 votes

Nudge: the new Stacks editor has significant implications for this site

Here is one option put forward by the SE developers: switching from MathJax to prosemirror-math. For a quick look at how it works, I'll just pull this from their readme: Examples Unlike other editors,...
10 votes

How to discourage excessive self-edits?

I am not familiar with software management of MO, so I do not know whether the following suggestion is applicable or no?But I guess that it is easy to be applied. Suggestion 1: Consideration of ...
10 votes

Is it a bad practise to add details (limited) to some one's answer?

I think so. The detail is all there, even if spread into the comments; it's what they are for. If further expansion is needed, why not just ask the person who wrote the answer to expand it? But, as ...
  • 32k
9 votes

edits with links to material under restricted access

On my opinion, links with restricted access are legitimate and desirable when there is no free link to a particular book/paper. After all, this is a site for professional mathematicians, and majority ...
9 votes

Updated: Is it time to replace links to the UCDavis arXiv frontend?

As of 29 March 2022, I claim all the links in questions and answers to front.math.ucdavis.edu that predate April 2007, when the arXiv moved to the new, uniform ...
  • 32k
8 votes

Is it a bad practise to add details (limited) to some one's answer?

My personal opinion is that there are two options, depending on the situation: You could post a separate answer, clearly explaining that this is a more detailed elaboration of the other answer - both ...
8 votes

Updated: Is it time to replace links to the UCDavis arXiv frontend?

I've reviewed your request and - while I'd generally want to say "yes, we can do this" - in this case, I'm sorry to say that I don't think it will be possible - at least, not without some ...
  • 101
7 votes

Autosave of drafted questions or answers

According to waffles's answer on Meta Stack Exchange, drafts (of questions and answers; not edits) should be automatically saved about once every 45 seconds, so part of this feature request is already ...
7 votes

Is it possible to temporarily comment out part of a post?

Since Stack Exchange allows also some limited use of html, you can use <!---...---> to make a "comment" inside ...
7 votes

How acceptable is prosemirror-math as an editor style for this site?

Let me start with a positive: AMScd diagrams are supported! It seems I don't even need to explicitly include a \require{AMScd} command (at any rate, when I did, ...
  • 54k
7 votes

Updated: Is it time to replace links to the UCDavis arXiv frontend?

As some of you may have noticed, I have a script which repairs broken links / images, with some more options than the mass-replacement tool available to Stack Exchange staff. It can do all kinds of ...
  • 2,715
7 votes

Best way to correct "Cauchy-Schwarz" misspellings

This is basically summarizing what has already been said in comments (and what was said many times in various other places). But perhaps a summary in one place might be useful. (And people who are ...

Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible