28
votes
MO policy regarding pseudonyms that are other people's real name
I think that it makes a difference whether there is any chance that the person using the pseudonym could be confused with a more well-known person with that name.
There are a number of users who have ...
- 76.9k
26
votes
Appropriate or not: "To what extent are the results in Paper X correct?"
One approach is to find a different stakeholder: see who cites the paper and uses the result. Then ask them if they are interested in your counterexample. If they are responsive, they may give you ...
- 12.9k
23
votes
Appropriate or not: "To what extent are the results in Paper X correct?"
I propose to ask it as follows: In my view such a question written clearly is suitable for MO.
A question about X's paper on Y
The main theorem of X's paper on Y is
"quote (precisely) and if ...
- 24.1k
21
votes
Guidelines for contacting author of paper directly as opposed to asking on mathoverflow
Upon thinking a little longer about my question, it seems to me that the following should often constitute a sensible procedure:
If you think the answer would be of public interest, ask on ...
- 641
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 ...
- 54.6k
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 ...
- 24.1k
14
votes
Accepted
Strange username
The user has changed to another username Math is like Friday.
(Just answering to make the possibility of considering the issue as solved.)
- 59.3k
12
votes
Guidelines for contacting author of paper directly as opposed to asking on mathoverflow
Stefan Kohl has the right idea, which I amplify.
Authors are usually interested in sincere feedback and appropriate level questions about their work. It is not clear to me how your question will be ...
- 12.9k
11
votes
MO policy regarding pseudonyms that are other people's real name
It is evidently inappropriate to use someone else's identity to post on MO (or anywhere else!).
That said, people's chosen username is a sensitive issue. If someone is legitimately known as "...
- 43.5k
10
votes
Accepted
Are MO Titles questions or Headlines:
Both systems of capitalization are OK for use here:
How to Answer Questions on MO.
How to answer questions on MO.
Conclusions:
Which system should you use? The one most comfortable to you.
Should ...
- 40.1k
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 ...
- 270
9
votes
Citing papers in questions/answers
I would say that to some extent this could be simply based on common sense. And perhaps you could take into account your estimate whether you think that your answer (and the link/citation) might be ...
- 4,588
7
votes
Citing papers in questions/answers
I post my comment as an answer: it is definitely good to use the citation helper (see New feature - citation helper). It makes citation easy, and puts all the information needed into the post. Ideal ...
- 4,679
6
votes
Is it good practice to write "@someone" in a question?
@-notifications don't work in questions, as @MadScientist wrote.
Nevertheless, I still prefer to write @ in front of an username in a question, as a graphical cue ...
- 19k
4
votes
How to discourage excessive self-edits?
Isn't there a disincentive built into MO by automatically making a question with 8 edits become CW? After that the user can still bump the question with minor self edits (at the expense of others), ...
- 25.5k
4
votes
Are MO Titles questions or Headlines:
I suppose that all of us who don't have English as mother tongue would rather not have the idea of capitalizing nouns or other "key words" in titles. At least to me that idea has never occurred for a ...
- 13.1k
3
votes
How to discourage excessive self-edits?
At the given time let $P$ stand for the position of a question on the list of all questions, where the top question has position $0.\ $ Let $E$ be the number of edits. Say 5 edits is reasonable easy ...
- 7,424
2
votes
Accepted
Is it allowed to use images for pasting math formula?
I stumbled upon this post on Meta Stack Exchange, where various reasons why typing the math formula is preferred over including images: Why are images of text, code and mathematical expressions ...
- 4,588
2
votes
Is it good practice to write "@someone" in a question?
As explained in other answers, writing at_username in a question/answer does not notify a user. This would not matter that much - experienced users know that you ...
- 4,588
2
votes
How to discourage excessive self-edits?
I personally would not like to force anyone to refrain from editing her/his question in cases where she/he believes that it is not properly stated. What I would suggest is to ask the people who ...
- 4,858
1
vote
Appropriate or not: "To what extent are the results in Paper X correct?"
Before you ask here:
Try to find errata for the paper. 20 years old makes that harder, since most things were not on the net then. Maybe you can contact an author of the paper?
Also look for ...
- 40.1k
1
vote
On using MathJax to create 'white space'
The answer that I found that works for me is backslash semicolon
\;
I found this answer at https://texblog.org/2014/04/09/whitespace-in-math-mode/
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