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### How can I ask a good question? [duplicate]

MathOverflow has an excellent guide on how to write a good question. Another great guide exists on meta.stackoverflow. We will probably want our own site-specific guide on how to ask good questions. ...
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All the questions and answers I've posted in the past have gotten down voted, including the one on this account. I have read the guides on how to use the site, but nothing I have tried has ever worked....
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First of all, whether you're a new user or a long-time contributor, welcome! Mathematics Stack Exchange welcomes learners and lovers of mathematics from all levels. You have been directed here ...
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This question was put on hold. That was a most unfortunate decision: the accepted answer makes the unnecessary assumption that the base field is algebraically closed and invokes the absurdly ...
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### What Do We Mean by “Context”? [duplicate]

It seems that we at M.SE have developed a rather large repertoire of definitions of the word "context". Looking at the questions in the close vote queue for "missing context", one will see many ...
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### My question was put on hold, need feedback. [duplicate]

this is a question I asked a few days ago: Lie Group has Euler characteristic zero. And it was put on hold. As I understand it, from looking at the profiles of those who put it on hold, I have (...
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### How to redeem my Math SE privileges [duplicate]

I used to enjoy using math SE to get help with questions I was struggling with. I'm no advanced mathematician and hence I can't really contribute lots of answers to the site. I must have added a few ...
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### Type of questions to be asked here? [duplicate]

I am a self learner. I took admission in a college for graduation (correspondence) in bsc after long time quitting school. I have several books on different topics of mathematics but I am unable to ...
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### MathJax basic tutorial and quick reference

(Deutsch: MathJax: LaTeX Basic Tutorial und Referenz) To see how any formula was written in any question or answer, including this one, right-click on the expression it and choose "Show Math As > TeX ...
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### Requests for Reopen & Undeletion Votes, etc. (volume 01/2015 - 07/2018 ) [duplicate]

The purpose of this thread is to help focus the attention of the community on posts that may require exceptional handling. This includes requests for reopen and undeletion votes. A request should be ...
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### Requests for Reopen & Undeletion Votes, etc. (volume 10/2012 - 12/2014) [duplicate]

The purpose of this thread is to help focus the attention of the community on posts that may require exceptional handling. This includes requests for reopen and undeletion votes. A request should be ...
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### Requests for Reopen & Undeletion Votes (volume 07/2018 - today)

The purpose of this thread is to help focus the attention of the community on posts that may require reopen and undeletion votes. A request should be posted as an answer below (one request per answer)....
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### List of comment templates

Inspired by this question on meta.cstheory.SE. The post at meta.Tex.SE is quite impressive. We often leave generic comments to OP and answer posters such as "if this is a homework, please add a tag," ...
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### (homework) tag should be deprecated (Voting's over! You won't believe what won!)

Note. After over one month of discussion, and more than one week of voting, I think the community has decided. Leave the tag alone: 43 upvotes (20.38%) Consider the tag deprecated, but do not remove ...
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### Can we please be more generous to elementary beginners?

This question: Given that $\arctan(1/5) + \arctan(1/8) = \arctan(1/p)$, how to find the value of $p$? (now deleted again) was originally closed as "off-topic". Here is the original title: ...
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### What do you think is the largest problem facing Math.SE today (July 2015)?

I think it can safely be said that Math.StackExchange (and MathOverflow and perhaps some of the sister sites on the SE network) are the best resources for (English-speaking) people with objective math ...
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### 2020 Moderator Election Q&A - Question Collection [closed]

The purpose of this thread was to collect questions for the questionnaire. The questionnaire is now live, and you may find it here. Mathematics Stack Exchange is scheduled to begin an election next ...
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### What is the site etiquette about (i) asking and (ii) answering questions in a language other than English?

We have a new user who has recently both asked and answered questions in French. I think we should discuss the appropriateness of this practice.
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### Revisiting the tour of the site

Every visitor to the site is invited to scroll through the tour page: The most concrete advice that it offers is in two boxes: This page is moderator-editable. I'm bringing this subject up to ...
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### 2020 Moderator Election Q&A - Questionnaire

In connection with the 2020 moderator election, we are holding a Q&A thread for the candidates. Questions collected from an earlier thread have been compiled into this one, which shall now serve ...
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### “What have you tried?”…

Sometimes this "What have you tried" thing seems silly. Take this question [edit: question deleted/link broken] for example. It's obvious that one should try to do it by induction, but it's not the ...
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### Is it a “rule” of Math Stack Exchange that when asking a question, it's **never** good just to state the question?

I recently asked the following question, and within 3 minutes it got 2 downvotes: Is there a set $A \subset [0,1]$ such that both $A$ and $[0,1] \setminus A$ intersect every positive-measure set? (...
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### 2018 Moderator Election Q&A - Questionnaire

In connection with the moderator elections, we are holding a Q&A thread for the candidates. Questions collected from an earlier thread have been compiled into this one, which shall now serve as ...
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### Can we please STOP closing and deleting old posts with answers?

This is a follow-up for a recent questions of mine: What are the merits, if there is any, of deleting (correctly) answered questions in the main site of MSE? I have noticed recently that quite a few ...
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### Is this website useful for high school students?

I'am a freshman student. I thought this site is for any grade and what is important is that questions should be about Maths. But when I ask a question I don't get a lot of answers and sometimes none ...
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### Fate of the (homework) tag: The community voted… now what?

Well, the results of the voting seem pretty conclusive: Leave homework alone: 43 upvotes (20.38%) Deprecate but don't delete homework: 12 upvotes (5.69%) Burninate and blacklist homework: ...
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### Why does the criterion for a good question change with reputation?

If a person asks a question on this site, they are supposed to provide their own attempt at solution, context, possibly even a reference to the problem source. We seem to remind newer people on this ...
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### Is simple mathematics for learners allowed here?

Are users encouraged to ask simple math questions in this forum as well? Most of the questions here seem advanced for a math learner.
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### Two announcements: new “FAQ” and new “closure rules”

I want to point everybody's attention to two changes that will impact your user-experience here on Math.SE The first you may have already noticed: the old FAQ page has been replaced by a "help center"...
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### Found the answer while elaborating the question. Is that usual?

It's the 5th time this happens to me. Tried to solve some simple problem for about 20 minutes (four of them were just help-asking on passages of proofs) and decide to ask for some help/hint on ...
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### How do we earn reputation more easily?

I've been doing lots of problems and if I get stuck, I always seem to solve it and I can't find a problem that I can ask on the mathematics community to earn more reputation. Sometimes, I see ...
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### Suggested Guideline for “I Don't Know Where to Begin” Questions

We've all seen them: posts that ask the community members for help regarding a homework problem, lacking in any previously attempted work. Sometimes you can't blame the asker for not knowing where to ...
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### A criterion for distinguishing between two kinds of questions

Abstract: In which cases must a poster exhibit efforts to answer a question and in which does the content of the question itself suffice to provide context? It is often suggested that a question ...
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### Guidelines for good use of $\rm\LaTeX$ in question titles

Motivation: Every once in a while, I find myself making edits like this one, where OP (likely due to inexperience in asking questions) has used display math mode (...
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### Is deleting a question while it is still on hold too quick?

This is a follow-up (not a duplicate) to an old question on Meta: Are we too trigger-happy about deleting (relatively) new posts? I have noticed recently that there are lots of on-hold questions ...
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### Can we stop the “Show your work craze”? [duplicate]

For some reason, it seems that more recently the users of this site have adopted the fashion of commenting things like "What have you tried?", "Show your work", etc. In almost every question for which ...
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### Ways of knowing that a person posting a question understands the question

A posted question says: Find the following integral: $\displaystyle \int\cdots\cdots\, dx.$ A big problem with this way of phrasing posted questions is that someone may have copied a homework ...
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### Are questions caused by typographical errors in a textbook on-topic?

Recently someone asked a question about an argument in a textbook which (s)he did not understand. Some people quickly noticed that the confusion was just caused by a typographical error in the book, ...
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### How can we, as a community, reduce some of the tension on the site?

It feels like there's a lot of tension on this site, broadly about closing/downvoting/deleting questions. I am quite prolific in closing/downvoting/deleting questions myself because well...there's a ...
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### Is it appropriate to close every question that doesn't show efforts and/or lacks of context?

Yesterday this question was asked: Finding solutions to $2^x+17=y^2$, then it was closed and finally it was reopened. My concern is about if every question showing no effort or lacking of context ...
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Yesterday, I answered this question (later deleted, see below for the text) and was a little surprised when the question was closed. A user in the comments stated, "This is not mathematics. It is ...
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### Is it a good idea to include source from where a question is taken?

My question is- Should we include the source from where we have obtained a question? Let, a question has been asked in a particular exam/paper/ or anywhere. Is it a good idea to include the details (...
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### Curiosity question - Why does “Hi!” get removed at the beginning of posts?

Out of habit I write "Hi!" at the beginning of my questions and I noticed it got automatically removed, and then when I edited to add it back in, it got automatically removed again. I'm just ...
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### Homework, reasonable to have no clue?

In this post OP was asked to derive the Catalan numbers. I am not sure how to react. As posted, there was no background. OP showed no effort. If I were asked the question and had no clue how to ...
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### Should we encourage upvotes on more advanced questions, that are seemingly well written, even if you don't understand it?

Something I notice is when there's an advanced/specialized question, it often receives very few upvotes. Even if it is seemingly well written. I try to upvote advanced questions that I might not even ...
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### List of commonly misspelled words

Judging by some of the posts on meta1 and comments posted there it seems that there are users who try to improve the posts by correcting spelling mistakes. Of course, there are other ways to improve ...
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### A feature requested for the purpose of avoiding unintentional newbie-biting

It is not unusual that a newbie posts a question that is obviously about mathematics and it is closed with a notice that says closed as off-topic and then down below that: "This question is ...
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### The “off-topic” close reason about homework questions

EDIT: There is now a new standard close reason that doesn't mention homework. (No TL;DR, please just read the question.) Background The new close reasons contain a designated option for homework ...