70
votes
Anonymity Policy
There are two important reasons to allow anonymous users.
There are countries/regions where western education, or women's education in particular is a dangerous issue. There are many more that ...
- 93
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
32
votes
What to do when a post contains a "suspicious" link (possibly with copyrighted material)?
This is an answer as a private member of MO, without my moderator hat on.
I'll admit I've never understood the argument that there could be something wrong with linking; the internet is a big scary ...
- 7,399
30
votes
Catering to professional appearance a bit much?
I support Darij completely. I'll even go a bit further and say that any thread that stood open since 2009 until 2019 without any complaints or controversies is good enough to stand forever and I'd ...
- 56.2k
25
votes
Anonymity Policy
Adding to EJI's arguments in favor of anonymity (please upvote their post if you agree with my arguments):
[EDIT: These arguments are in favor of allowing anonymity by default; as far as I understand,...
- 31.8k
24
votes
What to do when a post contains a "suspicious" link (possibly with copyrighted material)?
The OCILLA (part of DMCA) already specifies a process (notice and takedown)
that takes care of these issues.
This process also removes from us the burden of determining
whether a particular link is ...
- 33k
24
votes
VIndictive downvoting--what can be done about such childishness, errh, lack of professionalism?
Tom: after checking tools available to moderators, I see no evidence of systematic downvoting from any particular user. So at the moment I don't see evidence of downvoting that looks 'vindictive'. I ...
Todd TrimbleMod
- 51.3k
21
votes
Accepted
What are our procedures if a user complains about harassment or abuse?
My apologies for being slow to respond, but I felt there should also be a response from the moderators here. MO is covered by Stack Exchange's Conduct Policy (https://meta.stackexchange.com/conduct) ...
Ben WebsterMod
- 42.7k
18
votes
Accepted
Rationale for moderator deletion of a non-spammy, off-topic question
There's no clear-cut controversy here: five users closed this as not suitable for this site, then the OP asked to have it deleted, and this was done via two votes (Stefan Kohl being the second).
The ...
Todd TrimbleMod
- 51.3k
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
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
What are our procedures if a user complains about harassment or abuse?
The obvious answer:
Questions and answers containing harassment can get downvoted. Posts with sufficiently many downvotes can be deleted.
Questions, answers and comments containing harassment can be ...
- 18.3k
13
votes
Anonymity Policy
I think whether or which changes should be made to the anonymity policy of MO
depends crucially on the nature of the recent "attacks" on MO, and without
more information on them being disclosed, a ...
Stefan KohlMod
- 18.6k
12
votes
What are our procedures if a user complains about harassment or abuse?
At least from the user side, there is a procedure that hasn't been listed yet: following the link to https://mathoverflow.net/contact and contacting support with "I want to report a Code of ...
- 4,726
11
votes
Catering to professional appearance a bit much?
Here are some comments on your suggestions and the topic in general:
Professional mathematical interest in a question or an answer might well be a good necessary condition for MO but it will not make ...
- 7,693
11
votes
Flagging Low Quality Questions
Speaking as a pretty active moderator: the amount of this type of flag raising that I see hasn't been a problem, not for me. In some ways I think it helps, to see how others are gauging the quality of ...
Todd TrimbleMod
- 51.3k
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 ...
- 163
9
votes
Accepted
Is there a way for moderators to contact MO users personally?
Yes, moderators can contact a user that has an account in the community they are moderating using private messages. When the moderator contacts a user, the user can also reply (once) to the moderator ...
- 101
8
votes
Is there a way for moderators to contact MO users personally?
In response to Praphulla's comment below the question: normally moderators are made aware of conflicts because someone has flagged them for attention. A common type of flag presents mods with the ...
Todd TrimbleMod
- 51.3k
8
votes
Mixed reviews - can I have a decision reversed?
The post was flagged as 'spam'. I did not think it rose to the level of spam as I understand that word, and so I declined the flag. (If a vendor creates a link to his or her site for a commercial ...
Todd TrimbleMod
- 51.3k
8
votes
Accepted
Rationale for migration to MSE of a well-received question on MO
The phrasing of the reason is unfortunate, IMO. It makes sense to migrate if a question is better suited to MSE; it doesn't necessarily make sense to migrate just because the question can be answered ...
- 70.8k
6
votes
Flagging Low Quality Questions
It seems that we are mostly talking here about close flags and very low quality flags - since these are the two types of flags which seem reasonable in the case of low quality questions (whichever ...
- 4,580
6
votes
Accepted
I lost my three questions
Since this question was posted, the situation has changed - now any user can find all their deleted posts. Simply go to your profile and in the question tab you can click on "deleted questions&...
- 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
Catering to professional appearance a bit much?
Thank you for making your proposal. I see that you have put a lot of thought into it. My counter-proposal (that I haven't specifically run by the other moderators) is that content on MathOverflow be ...
S. CarnahanMod
- 44.1k
5
votes
How to make it easier to moderate blatantly off-topic questions?
I think ---though I have no data on this --- that posters who ask questions like this are extremely unlikely to do the work of rewriting those questions in a form that would be acceptable either here ...
- 21.4k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible