59 votes

Can MO go back to +5 rep for questions? Should it?

Let me answer from the perspective of someone who is not a mathematician but follows this community for certain topics of interest. This is a community of professional mathematicians where, indeed, ...
Massimo Ortolano's user avatar
27 votes
Accepted

Community Peer-Review in Mathoverflow

I am intrigued by this idea and I think it would be a wonderful thing if it gained the support and acceptance of the MathOverflow community. So I am supportive of further discussion of the proposal. ...
Joel David Hamkins's user avatar
26 votes

close/reopen wars on Mathoverflow

I am profoundly opposed to the "cargo cult" question. The internet is full of places where one can indulge in the pleasures of righteous indignation by mocking the failings of others. I absolutely ...
Neil Strickland's user avatar
25 votes

Using MO as a platform to discuss papers in math?

If there is a specific mathematical question about a specific point in the paper, then there is no problem with discussing it on MO. This has been established by consensus on numerous occasions. In ...
S. Carnahan's user avatar
  • 45k
21 votes
Accepted

Should the rules for deleting own questions be modified? - an example

There are few things on MO more annoying than posting an answer and then seeing that answer deleted before it even had a chance to be seen (except by the account that asked the question). All that ...
Todd Trimble's user avatar
  • 52.3k
19 votes

Can MO go back to +5 rep for questions? Should it?

I received a huge reputation boost from this change, but I still think that answering a question still takes much more effort than writing well-posed questions. Coming up with a good mathematical ...
HenrikRüping's user avatar
19 votes

Revising the help page on "What topics can I ask around here?"

The vast majority of people who write the most common low-quality questions are not going to read this page at all. I think the people much more likely to read this page are those, especially graduate ...
Will Sawin's user avatar
  • 135k
18 votes

Proposal for a new rule for down-vote

Other reasons to downvote a question is if one doesn't think it demonstrates sufficient research effort, or isn't deemed to be useful. In fact, the question-downvote tooltip says this explicitly: ...
user642796's user avatar
18 votes

Which Latex / MathJax features do we need or want to have supported on the site?

Need: Most importantly, a true preview which shows me exactly what I have written and which I can look at without affecting my LaTeX. Support for at least the symbols in standard LaTeX and amssymb (...
David E Speyer's user avatar
17 votes

Which Latex / MathJax features do we need or want to have supported on the site?

This is not an answer expressing a preference, but one giving some resources for people to consider. Intmath.com made a Speed Comparison Test between KaTeX and MathJax. MathOverflow is currently ...
Willie Wong's user avatar
  • 36.9k
16 votes

Why can't we close questions that have a bounty?

Closing a question prevents new answers to be added. If one could close a question with a bounty, the net effect would be to shorten the bounty period, possibly causing the loss or misattribution of ...
François G. Dorais's user avatar
15 votes

Can MO go back to +5 rep for questions? Should it?

I don't have a strong opinion on this subject, but insofar as I have one, it is this: Changing the rules is more trouble than it's worth. I lost points back when +10 was downgraded to +5, and I ...
Timothy Chow's user avatar
15 votes
Accepted

Filtering out the Autobiographer badge from "Recent Badges"

UPDATE: We've blocked Autobiographer from appearing in the recent badges list network-wide so I've removed the general block of bronze badges described below. For more information on the changes that ...
Catija's user avatar
  • 101
14 votes

Public dumps for mathoverflow?

Just to bump this question: StackExchange Inc. turned off the periodic network-wide data dump earlier this year, and it can apparently only be resumed with permission from very high in the company. I ...
David Roberts's user avatar
  • 33.4k
14 votes

Deleting others' work

Here is a specific example Embed a bordered Riemann surface into punctured Riemann surfaces? The user apparently asked only one question, it scored 4 and was deleted 2 minutes after I entered the ...
Alexandre Eremenko's user avatar
14 votes

Can we get rid of the "featured on meta" main meta links?

As mentioned in Emil Jeřábek's comment (which quickly gained several upvotes), at least some of the "network-wide stuff" (Meta Stack Exchange posts, blog posts) can be useful also for MathOverflow ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
13 votes
Accepted

Numbering and cross referencing of equations in questions and answers

MathJax supports manual numbering using $$\tag{…}$$, as below: $$\tag{1}\label{grz}\Box(\Box(p\to\Box p)\to p)\to p$$ $$\tag{1}\...
Emil Jeřábek's user avatar
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

Would disallowing displayed equations ("double dollars") in titles be useful?

I understand the sentiment to have this blacklist, but I don't think it's really important for MathOverflow to have it. Very few questions have ever had $$ in their ...
user642796's user avatar
12 votes

Make it evident that bounties are non-refundable or refund them on other people's questions

The fact that the bounties are not refundable is pointed out in the help center and marked in bold: All bounties are paid for up front and non-refundable under any circumstances. Also the dialog ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
11 votes

Deleting others' work

What Stefan wrote in his comment is germane: if an answer has a positive net score, then the OP cannot delete the post: How can I delete my post on Stack Overflow?. Moreover: the moderators get a lot ...
Todd Trimble's user avatar
  • 52.3k
11 votes

Community Peer-Review in Mathoverflow

Very interesting suggestion. While I definitely think that, if doable, this should be a separate activity not related to MO in any way, something related came to my mind. I've seen several great ...
მამუკა ჯიბლაძე's user avatar
11 votes

Why is it not possible to offer a bounty for longer than 7 days?

I consider the 7 day bounty period to be quite reasonable and effective for several reasons. While bounties cost a minimum of 50 pts, in reality the cost for a bounty for one's own question is much ...
Joseph Van Name's user avatar
11 votes
Accepted

Tags "riemann-zeta-function" and "zeta-functions" are almost identical

There are many interesting zeta functions, and the Riemann zeta function is the most notable of them. It is natural to expect that people who ask questions about other zeta functions would want a ...
S. Carnahan's user avatar
  • 45k
11 votes

Should there be a banner with some basic info about MO in the right sidebar?

Here is one possible suggestion what the text in the banner could look like - it is based on the first bullet point from the text displayed to the first-time askers. MathOverflow is a site for ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
10 votes

Forbid (or rewrite) proxy links in answers

It could be reasonable to collect some past examples of such proxies. This would help in assessing whether something like this is technically feasible. (And maybe also to which extent implementing ...
10 votes
Accepted

close/reopen wars on Mathoverflow

At various times in the past 9 years or so, we have tried several different social conventions to resolve the dissatisfaction that arises with the existing opening and closing rules. This may not be ...
S. Carnahan's user avatar
  • 45k
10 votes

What should the modal window for first-time askers say?

The new Custom Ask Advice that is shown to new users is now live. Here is what it looks like right now on the site:
Yaakov Ellis's user avatar
10 votes

All these invalid weblinks

I think that many people around here are aware of problems with dead links and they do their best to help. (And the same is true about many other sites on the Stack Exchange network.) One thing is ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
9 votes
Accepted

MathOverflow feature: facilitating collaborations (algebra & other sciences)

To my way of thinking, MathOverflow is already great for facilitating collaborations. Personally, I've had half a dozen fruitful collaborations grow directly out of MathOverflow questions and answers, ...
Joel David Hamkins's user avatar

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