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It seems that we are getting a lot of questions that are simply copied over from MO. In at least a few cases, the answers we are ending up with here are also just copied over from MO. Do we want such questions/answers? How do we want to handle such questions/answers?

(edit: I'm also not particularly fond of seeing around a dozen such questions asked within a 1-hour window by the same user.)

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I think some of them are acceptable here, but many of them are simply too vague and too general. Math.SE isn't supposed to be the place for the bad or discussion-y MO questions! Rather, it's supposed to be more open, but still for good questions. For instance, consider this one. I haven't (yet) felt like voting to close this particular one, since I think math.SE should be a bit more tolerant of soft questions, but the point remains that the front page is now full of CW questions rather than the specific, answerable questions that the website is intended for.

I hope the particular user in question switches to asking his or her own questions. I don't know how to contact him or her directly, so if the user is reading this, please consider it a request.

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    $\begingroup$ I agree. Contrary to that user's profile, I think he/she is making the site much sloppier. $\endgroup$
    – Eric O. Korman
    Commented Jul 28, 2010 at 19:02
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    $\begingroup$ Ok, Akhil, I would abide by your request. I will delete every question which someone has objected to. $\endgroup$
    – user218
    Commented Jul 28, 2010 at 20:35
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Maybe the "exact duplicate" vote-to-close reason should accept MO question URLs.

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  • $\begingroup$ yes, this is a good suggestion! $\endgroup$
    – BBischof
    Commented Jul 28, 2010 at 20:03
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If the question was considered too elementary and it got no love, I can see the value. But if the question was answered in detail numerous times, I don't understand why we should clone them.

Which is a big part of what is going on.

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  • $\begingroup$ When you say "Which is a big part of what is going on.", do you mean the cloning of questions that were answered in detail numerous times? $\endgroup$
    – Isaac
    Commented Jul 28, 2010 at 18:37
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    $\begingroup$ Yeah, that's what I meant $\endgroup$
    – Jonathan Fischoff
    Commented Jul 28, 2010 at 18:49
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I think that many of these questions were not appropriate for MO because they were too general or ill-posed. I also think that immediately classifies them as not appropriate here.

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    $\begingroup$ I completely agree-- I would hate to see this site become mathoverflow's trash can. $\endgroup$
    – Eric O. Korman
    Commented Jul 28, 2010 at 18:56
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    $\begingroup$ Not really. Each question should be considered on a question by question basis. $\endgroup$
    – Casebash
    Commented Jul 28, 2010 at 21:41
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Another thing is that the cloned questions ought to at least attribute the original authors... ;-)

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    $\begingroup$ In his defense, most of the time he did at least link to them. $\endgroup$
    – BBischof
    Commented Jul 28, 2010 at 19:38
  • $\begingroup$ Every time I did the linking, in fact. And most of the time the original author was attributed. $\endgroup$
    – user218
    Commented Jul 28, 2010 at 20:40
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Ok, things are getting out of hand. Many of these questions have very good an complete answers on MO. These questions should be closed, we don't need another MO, the one we have works just fine. Just like we don't need another wikipedia.

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I have deleted every question which someone objected to.

That is, except:

https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1023/newbie-are-fractals-and-feigenbaums-constants-connected-with-each-other-close

which is closed and I cannot delete it before two days, and

What is the difference between matrix theory and linear algebra?

which received too many good answer for deletion to be possible,

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