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.
875
questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
205
votes
0answers
3k views
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 ...
154
votes
0answers
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 ...
141
votes
0answers
2k views
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 ...
115
votes
0answers
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 ...
105
votes
0answers
1k views
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 ...
91
votes
0answers
823 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 ...
86
votes
0answers
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 ...
80
votes
0answers
1k views
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 ...
76
votes
0answers
771 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 ...
72
votes
0answers
800 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. ...
72
votes
0answers
1k views
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 ...
71
votes
0answers
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, ...
65
votes
0answers
513 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 ...
61
votes
0answers
1k 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 ...
60
votes
0answers
2k views
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 ...
58
votes
0answers
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 ...
57
votes
0answers
906 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 ...
52
votes
0answers
3k 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, ...
49
votes
0answers
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 ...
46
votes
0answers
668 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-...
45
votes
0answers
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 ...
45
votes
0answers
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 ...
44
votes
0answers
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 ...
43
votes
0answers
593 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 ...
41
votes
0answers
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 ...
39
votes
0answers
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 ...
39
votes
0answers
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.
...
39
votes
0answers
698 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 ...
38
votes
0answers
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 ...
38
votes
0answers
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 ...
37
votes
0answers
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 ...
36
votes
0answers
425 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....
36
votes
0answers
527 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 ...
36
votes
0answers
571 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 ...
35
votes
0answers
1k 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 & ...
35
votes
0answers
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 ...
35
votes
0answers
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-...
34
votes
0answers
783 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 ...
34
votes
0answers
349 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),\...
33
votes
0answers
413 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 ...
33
votes
1answer
1k views
Have the questions on Math.SE changed in quality?
Perhaps this is just subjective nonsense. But after browsing through the site today, I somehow feel as though the average of quality of questions has gone down since when I first started using this ...
32
votes
0answers
406 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 ...
30
votes
0answers
752 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....
30
votes
0answers
745 views
2018: a year in moderation
It's New Year's Day in Stack Exchange land...
A distinguishing characteristic of these sites is how they are moderated:
We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in ...
30
votes
0answers
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 ...
30
votes
0answers
698 views
Should a mathematical error in the context of a question be edited?
This is a scenario I have encountered a few times when going through the edit suggestion review queue.
An asker posts a question and as context they provide some information that they used when ...
30
votes
0answers
1k views
New Math Teaching Stackexchange is looking for 38 more people to register for a private beta
Edit: Thanks to the 162 people who have signed up so far! You've made this proposal one of the fastest-growing proposals of all time.
The math teaching SE proposal has reached the commitment phase, ...
30
votes
0answers
431 views
Quality blocks enabled for questions
Questions are the lifeblood of any Stack Exchange site. But asking good questions can be difficult, for some people entirely too difficult to bother with. When the Trilogy sites reached traffic levels ...
30
votes
0answers
401 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 ...
28
votes
0answers
571 views
2019: a year in moderation
It's New Year's Day in Stack Exchange land...
A distinguishing characteristic of these sites is how they are moderated:
We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, ...