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Questions tagged [discussion]

This tag is used for questions that ask users to discuss an idea, concept, or problem in an abstract way. A discussion question may not necessarily have a clear-cut right or wrong answer and is often subjective. On Meta, you do not need to use community-wiki mode for subjective topics unless you are asking a "poll" question.

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Resigning from moderator duties

Sorry. At the moment I cannot handle the duties of a diamond bearer with the patience it requires. This job forces one to encounter all the worst the site has to offer. My approach to the job (and ...
Jyrki Lahtonen's user avatar
159 votes
0 answers
4k views

Announcement: I'm retiring

I've been thinking about this for some months now, and recently I've made up my mind to retire from moderator duty. It has been an awesome four years, and I see a lot of positive in how the community ...
Willie Wong's user avatar
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145 votes
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Trying to ask a question provides better results than normal search.

I have noticed this interesting behavior several times now. Many a time I scour Math SE looking for a particular query but fail to find anything even after several rounds of rephrasing and ...
Akay's user avatar
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118 votes
0 answers
5k views

Main Chatroom Guidelines

Welcome. Hello friends. My online handle is anon, and I will be your guide. Associated with the Mathematics StackExchange is the main chatroom. I am chatroom co-owner alongside current moderator ...
robjohn's user avatar
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104 votes
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Thanks! (Gratitude Post)

I just want to say how grateful I am for everyone on this forum. I don't get around to answering others questions nearly as often as I would like to. As I continue to pursue my study of Mathematics ...
Algebraic's user avatar
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94 votes
0 answers
853 views

An attempt to add real-time previewing for comments

Screenshot About When writing a comment with a lot of formatting, especially one containing formulas, I often found myself pasting it into the "new answer" editor at the bottom of the page to see if ...
Antonio Vargas's user avatar
88 votes
0 answers
3k views

2014 Election Results: Congratulations to the new moderators!

The 2014 elections are over. Analyzing the OpenSTV file (you may view an online summary report here as well) the results are as follows (with no particular order): At the same time, I'd like to thank ...
Asaf Karagila's user avatar
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82 votes
0 answers
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Proposal for promoting more interesting, deeper questions

There was recently a (now-locked) thread about the prevalence of "do my homework" questions on math.se. I want to set aside for now the question about what to do about people posting homework ...
user7530's user avatar
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78 votes
0 answers
801 views

Please don't flag posts containing re-purposed ImageShack image URLs as spam

It has recently been noticed that ImageShack does a horrible thing: they re-purpose old image URLs for advertising purposes. This can lead the impression that some older posts are actually spam, for ...
user642796's user avatar
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73 votes
0 answers
816 views

Concerns about MathJax in proposed new SE editor

Over on Physics.SE, Emilio Pisanty has pointed out that the proposed new StackExchange editor (currently in alpha testing) would present major difficulties for MathJax-heavy Stacks such as this one. ...
Michael Seifert's user avatar
72 votes
0 answers
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Polish Mathematical Olympiad 2020

Recently, a user has posted questions from the Polish Mathematical Olympiad $2020$, which is an ongoing contest. If one of these questions appears, please flag it for moderator attention, and request ...
Toby Mak's user avatar
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72 votes
0 answers
3k views

Cheating on USAMTS 2018-2019

As some may know, USAMTS round 1 problems have just been released. To read more about the USAMTS go here: http://www.usamts.org (From the above link) "Students may use any materials - books, ...
Shrey Joshi's user avatar
69 votes
0 answers
539 views

"Maybe answered questions" box on "Ask Question" page is much more useful than "Search Q&A"

I often find that "Search Q&A" is quite useless when I want to find a question or something related to it. But I've also noticed that when I'm about to ask a question, the "Questions that may ...
Ruslan's user avatar
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62 votes
0 answers
2k views

American Invitational Math Exam (AIME) questions

The second date of the American Invitational Math Exam is Thursday, March 18 between 1:30 pm ET and 5:30 pm ET. During the first date (which was last Wednesday), there were a number of questions from ...
Evan Chen's user avatar
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60 votes
0 answers
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Request to keep an eye out for PROMYS admissions problems

Many of you may be familiar with PROMYS, a camp based out of Boston University which teaches number theory to high school students each summer. Students applying to the program are asked to submit ...
David E Speyer's user avatar
60 votes
0 answers
1k views

USAMTS 2017-18 Round 2 Problems

The USA Mathematical Talent Search (USAMTS) is a free mathematics competition open to all United States middle and high school students. As opposed to most mathematics competitions, the USAMTS allows ...
Deven Ware's user avatar
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58 votes
0 answers
990 views

An interactive graph of Math.SE tags

Some time I created A Graph Map of Math.SE, which met with a warm response from this community. Encouraged by this, I created a new visualization, this time interactive and up-to-date (as long as the ...
Piotr Migdal's user avatar
54 votes
0 answers
4k views

Launching *Pearl Dive* - a chatroom where excellent questions/answers meet willing sponsors

Announcing the birth of the Pearl Dive – a chatroom dedicated to enhancing the quality of the material on the site, sieving out the pearls from the sand. Caveat: I'm new to creating chatrooms, ...
Jyrki Lahtonen's user avatar
53 votes
0 answers
3k views

A list of questions on Boyd & Vandenberghe

Work in progress. To be updated whenever the opportunity arises. I take the liberty of compiling a list of questions on Math SE pertaining to theorems, lemmas, examples and exercises from Boyd & ...
Rodrigo de Azevedo's user avatar
52 votes
0 answers
2k views

What is going on with these questions?

Today I stumbled upon two different (now deleted) questions. The format of the two questions was very similar: a question on measure theory (more specifically, on the exchangeability of a sum and a ...
user avatar
51 votes
0 answers
3k views

It's that time of year again: USAMTS 2016-17 Round 1 problem set is out!

The 2016-17 USAMTS Round 1 problem set is out, and some problems from it have been found on the site already. This is yet another request for all users to be on the lookout for these problems, and ...
user642796's user avatar
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47 votes
0 answers
1k views

User asking exercises from textbook without so identifying

A user is copying verbatim exercises from my textbook, e.g., Local Feature Size, Describe Conv(A U B), Flip graph of point set, Expected number on the convex hull, etc. Is the MSE convention that he ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
47 votes
0 answers
680 views

When closing question for lack of effort, leave a comment to OP explaining what to do

Recently there was an extensive discussion about closing the questions containing only the problem statement: http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/9201/proposal-discourage-questions-that-are-...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
46 votes
0 answers
1k views

Announcement: the MathStackExchange Blog is active, and Call for Content!

Announcement: We have a blog! And in case you didn't notice, the standard links in the dropdown menu have updated. So now clicking here takes you to the blog! This is an exciting time, as the blog ...
davidlowryduda's user avatar
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45 votes
0 answers
1k views

Why does the community seem to encourage technical cleverness over the actual answer to a question?

First post on meta, so here goes nothing. Earlier today, I answered the question linked below: Evaluating $\int_0^1 \frac{3x}{\sqrt{4-3x}} dx$ I believe it is a good question. The user had a ...
The Count's user avatar
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44 votes
0 answers
608 views

Edit session for wrong spelling of mathematicians and mathematical concepts

Wrong spelling of mathematician's names and mathematical concepts is perpetuated by their presence in highly indexed resources like stackexchange. I think that the internet would become a better ...
Phira's user avatar
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43 votes
0 answers
917 views

Quick beginner guide for asking a well-received question

Mean structure proposed I am writing this post for new users who don't have the time to read the full article of how to ask a good question. In this post, I will give my opinion of what structure ...
user avatar
43 votes
1 answer
2k views

Forum deleting questions and answers

It does feel to me that the moderators here go too far when it comes to deleting questions here. These are often questions that were quite interesting in their own right and received some good answers ...
Mike's user avatar
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42 votes
0 answers
2k views

The same question within hours, by three different users. Someone’s exam?

Today, at least three times essentially the same question about ideals in a polynomial ring $R[x]$ has been asked by three different users (first instance is the initial steps); same notation, even. ...
Arturo Magidin's user avatar
42 votes
0 answers
3k views

Strange new users with Chinese/Korean usernames

From here, we can see many 1-rep users with Chinese or Korean usernames. Their profile photos are their usernames themselves. I am a Chinese native speaker, I can see their usernames do not seem to be ...
Kemono Chen's user avatar
  • 8,421
40 votes
0 answers
725 views

Wolfram Releases the Wolfram Engine for Developers!!

This isn't technically a question, but I thought there would be enough interest in Mathematica here on M.SE.Meta to post it. Wolfram made what I would call a gigantic move: they released the Wolfram ...
Adrian Keister's user avatar
39 votes
0 answers
2k views

Cheating in the Time of Corona

I ask you to consider not answering olympiad-style problems by relatively new users within the first six hours. I know that you consider it the responsibility of the organizers of a competition to ...
Phira's user avatar
  • 20.7k
39 votes
0 answers
1k views

New changes to close reasons

Not long ago, we had to adapt to the circumstances at hand regarding the changes to how close reasons were displayed. You can read more about this here. We now have other changes. A good place to ...
Aloizio Macedo's user avatar
  • 33.3k
39 votes
0 answers
1k views

Nearly all frontpage questions downvoted

Of the 50 questions on the front page a few minutes ago, all but 4 have downvotes. (Many also have upvotes, of course, and many have more upvotes than downvotes.) This doesn't seem normal to me. Is ...
user avatar
39 votes
0 answers
1k views

Could those named "User XXXX" please consider changing their names to something more distinctive?

It might be completely unremarkable if there were only a couple of such names on this server, but lately there are many people now going by monikers such as user3432 and user5633, who've accumulated a ...
Uticensis's user avatar
  • 3,231
38 votes
0 answers
559 views

Encouraging duplicate hunters

There are more and more duplicates on this site, but sometimes it is time consuming to find an earlier source. Now, there is a variety of moderation badges for editing, voting, reviewing, raising ...
J.-E. Pin's user avatar
  • 38.2k
37 votes
0 answers
2k views

Polish Mathematical Olympiad 2016/17

After seeing this post about problems from USAMTS I thought it might be a good idea to post here about problems from Polish Mathematical Olympiad. The first stage of this olympiad is involves high-...
Wojowu's user avatar
  • 26.2k
37 votes
0 answers
579 views

Announcement: private contacts by moderators

I am writing this post to discuss a possible small upcoming change in moderator policy. I post this here on Meta (instead in the Mods only discussion room) because The topic is not sensitive. There ...
Willie Wong's user avatar
  • 71.2k
36 votes
0 answers
612 views

A super easy way to speedup MathJax loading with LocalCDN add-on

I found a very neat way to speed up MathJax execution times. Typically whenever I start my browser I have to load up all of these MathJax resources from the Cloudflare CDN when I first visit math....
user153330's user avatar
  • 1,696
35 votes
0 answers
1k views

German contest “Bundeswettbewerb Mathematik $2021$"

Recently I've seen two questions related to the German contest “Bundeswettbewerb Mathematik $2021$" - both voluntary removed by the author (both new users). Therefore I ask you to be aware of ...
TomTom314's user avatar
  • 1,777
34 votes
0 answers
794 views

Why would a question with an upvoted and accepted answer be deleted?

This is a question on MSE which I had answered a month or so ago. It was an interesting question and it took me some effort to write the answer. The answer got upvoted twice and accepted. Two weeks ...
Lorenzo Quarisa's user avatar
33 votes
0 answers
352 views

Improving the search system

When recognizing some questions as duplicates, sometimes it is difficult to find the original question one remembers. For instance, I recently saw a question asking to prove that $$\forall x\in(-1,1),\...
Jack D'Aurizio's user avatar
33 votes
0 answers
425 views

Bookmarklet plugin to speed up LaTeX macro typing

I've developed a little tool that assists in writing LaTeX macros. It works the same as the OSX press and hold accent picker. You press a key, and then there will appear a pop menu, with symbols ...
Kasper's user avatar
  • 13.1k
32 votes
0 answers
1k views

How to tell OP the answer to their question if my answers are getting deleted and I don't have enough rating to comment?

I have a question about my Mathematics Stack Exchange post: Coordinate-free definition of integration of differential forms? This question is answered in the book Global Calculus by Ramanan, Chapter ...
user1066309's user avatar
32 votes
0 answers
948 views

Switch to MathJax version 3?

It seems it has been a long time since the MathJax has been updated on this site (probably MathJax 2.7 beta by @m0sa). So I was wondering if there is a plan to switch to newer version 3? (http://docs....
Sil's user avatar
  • 15.3k
32 votes
0 answers
408 views

modularizing answers

Sometimes in answering a question I need to derive an intermediate result that might be of interest in its own right. It seems to me that in such a case it's best to post a separate question asking ...
joriki's user avatar
  • 228k
31 votes
0 answers
816 views

Imgur's "old, unused, and inactive content"

Imgur plans to change its Terms of Service on May 15, 2023. Part of this will be the removal of "old, unused, and inactive content". Many of the images on Stack Exchange have imgur links. ...
Ed Pegg's user avatar
  • 20.3k
31 votes
0 answers
532 views

Demotivating test reviews

Some of the posts I review as candidates for deletion are test items. After I duly pass or condemn such an item, I get the message Congratulations! This was only a test, designed to make sure you ...
John Bentin's user avatar
  • 17.1k
31 votes
0 answers
1k views

MathJax v2.7.2 beta

Update: v2.7.2 has been released, so we're switching over to the non-beta version today. MathJax v2.7.2 has entered the public beta phase. We're setting it up here to kick the tires and help out with ...
Adam Lear's user avatar
  • 100
31 votes
0 answers
411 views

Why restrict my ability to change my vote once I have editing priveleges?

Yesterday I intended to upvote an answer, but accidentally downvoted. I did not notice this and did not change it within the five-minute window for changing votes. Later that day I noticed a drop on 1 ...
2'5 9'2's user avatar
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