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Often mathematics is also a matter of aesthetics and elegance. Sometimes there appear questions asking for a "more elegant" way to do this or that, or a "nice" proof of some fact. I'd like to know what the community would think of a "mathematical elegance" or "mathematical aesthetics" tag.

For an idea of the point: https://math.stackexchange.com/search?q=elegant

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    $\begingroup$ Certainly worth talking about, but prone to abuse, I think. (And also the reasons Milo brought up.) $\endgroup$
    – rschwieb
    Mar 30, 2016 at 14:36
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    $\begingroup$ I am actually happy of all the downvotes because it might reflect how obviously beautiful math is. $\endgroup$
    – marco trevi
    Mar 30, 2016 at 14:40

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Tags exist to help classify questions, both to help people searching for questions to find them and to help people intending to answer questions find the ones that they are interested in. An "elegant" tag would seem to serve neither purpose. For instance, a question asking for a more elegant proof of some topological fact is primarily a topology question, since it is of interest to topologists and requires familiarity with that field. The people looking for that question would have little interest in a question that was asking for an elegant proof of some number theoretic fact (and vice versa), yet the tag would put them together. Really, a question could have any mathematical content and still fit under this tag so long as it asks for something more elegant than the usual proof, which means that the tag would be doing very little to classify problems.

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  • $\begingroup$ what about the second-most voted question: math.stackexchange.com/questions/733754/… $\endgroup$
    – marco trevi
    Mar 30, 2016 at 14:21
  • $\begingroup$ I see your point, but there are many tags which could fit many mathematically different questions, for instance "proof-verification" or "soft-question". $\endgroup$
    – marco trevi
    Mar 30, 2016 at 14:30
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    $\begingroup$ @marcotrevi I would argue that both those tags do address some mathematical content; "proof-verification" questions tend to be asking about the structure of proof more than about the content in particular (and, also, some people really don't like such questions, so it's good for them to be able to ignore them). Similarly, “soft-question” tends to be separated from rigorous material, and often address mathematics as a whole or the process of learning mathematics. I also wouldn’t say that either of those is a model tag, but they’re well established and (in my opinion) not terrible. $\endgroup$
    – Milo Brandt
    Mar 31, 2016 at 1:52

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