Anyway, I think that the changes are good. I had already added the \url myself, so this saves me having to do it by hand.

Cheers, José

PS: and congratulations on completing your dissertation!

@MISC {MO1234,    
    TITLE = {The question title},    
    AUTHOR = {Soo Key Foo\phantom{x}(mathoverflow.net/users/234)},    
    HOWPUBLISHED = {MathOverflow},    
    NOTE = {\url{http://mathoverflow.net/questions/1234} (version: 2010-01-02)},    
    EPRINT = {http://mathoverflow.net/questions/1234},    
    URL = {http://mathoverflow.net/questions/1234},    
}

The main changes are (1) there was no \url before, so you didn't get a link in your pdf, and (2) there's now a strange \phantom{x} whose purpose is to prevent BibTeX from thinking that the person's last name is (mathoverflow.net/users/234) and therefore generate a stupid key like [(ma] instead of [Foo]. My reasoning is that even though this is crufty, it will produce the desired output more often (most papers I read use the alpha bibliography style). If I'm off base, somebody let me know and I'll change it back.

I have a slight preference for keeping the http:// for the question URL; I mind it less, and it's a clear marker that the string you're looking at is actually a URL.

Soo Key Foo (MO user 234), The question title, mathoverflow.net/questions/1234 (version 2010-01-02).

No, no, no!!! "Fake protocol" URLs like arXiv:0811.1234v and MathOverflow:1234 are evil, and should be avoided. Just because people are used to doing it for the arxiv doesn't mean we should make the problem worse. URLs should actually resolve when typed into a browser.

In a format where hyperlinking works, it's okay if the full URL is hidden from view. Even then, it would be better to not display a string with a colon in it, just so that people don't start pretending it's a proper identifier.

googling "MathOverflow:30567" gives the desired page as the first hit

That's very interesting. It looks like this is far from the rule for MO, but works correctly for any arXiv paper. This is probably because the arXiv page for a paper has the literal text "arXiv:xxxx.xxxx" on it. It seems infeasible to include the text "MathOverflow:xxxxx" for every post ID which shows up in a given thread.

We can mitigate the problem by putting something in the FAQ. I could also change the 404 page so that if you try to visit http://mathoverflow.net/1234 it suggests "were you looking for http://mathoverflow.net/questions/1234?"

 \bib{MO:1234}{misc}{ 
   ...

Soo Key Foo (mathoverflow.net/users/234), The question title, http://mathoverflow.net/questions/1234 (version: 2010-01-02)

it should be more like

Soo Key Foo (MO user 234), The question title, MathOverflow:1234 (v2010-01-02).

That sounds pretty good to me. Unless there's some objection in the near future, I'll change the citation BibTeX to

@MISC {MO:1234,    
    TITLE = {The question title},    
    AUTHOR = {Soo Key Foo (MO user 234)},    
    HOWPUBLISHED = {MathOverflow},    
    EPRINT = {MathOverflow:1234 (v2010-01-02)},    
    URL = {http://mathoverflow.net/questions/45748},    
}

and the amsrefs to

\bib{misc}{MO:1234}{    
    title={The question title},    
    author={Soo Key Foo (MO user 234)},    
    eprint={MathOverflow:1234 (v2010-01-02)},    
    url= {http://mathoverflow.net/questions/1234},    
    organization={MathOverflow},  
}

Note that this will remove the NOTE field since all that information is already in the EPRINT and URL fields.

You can generate samples on faketestsite.

@misc {MO32878,    
   TITLE = {Lifting units from modulus \(n\) to modulus \(mn\)},    
   AUTHOR = {Keith Conrad},
   HOWPUBLISHED = {MathOverflow},
   NOTE = {\url{http://mathoverflow.net/questions/32878} (2010-07-22)},    
   EPRINT = {http://mathoverflow.net/questions/32878},    
   URL = {\url{http://mathoverflow.net/questions/32878}},    
  }

which seems a little redundant in that NOTE, EPRINT and URL share most of the same information. But I suppose that different bibliography styles might ignore one or more of these fields. I use the utphys.bst, for instance, which is EPRINT-aware, but other bib styles don't seem to be.

I prefer the idea of including the date on which the last edit was made, as opposed to when the citation was generated

Certainly, but I think that this is what happens now. Yesterday I picked up two citations and the dates were those of the last edit.

I would like to weigh in on Mariano's side concerning "last changed"; although neither am I happy with "last accessed". In fact, it seems to me that nothing guarantees that either remains true. I think that Mariano's idea of something along the lines of "(version of ...)" seems to me to be a good compromise.

Again, many thanks for this!

To emphasize the first reading, maybe something like "(in the version of YYYY-MM-DD)" or something would be more explicit.

BTW, great work Anton! :)

Minor point: currently we have

note={URL (last changed 2010-08-01): http://mathoverflow.net/questions/34125}

Doesn't

note={URL: http://mathoverflow.net/questions/34125 (last changed 2010-08-01)}

end up looking slightly better grammatically?

Also: the 'last changed' date is slightly unuseful, in that it stops being correct exactly when the post is changed, while an 'accessed' date conveys exactly the same information (what is the version being cited) and never stops being correct.

• Weird usernames/titles caused trouble. Specifically, usernames with a ' in them, like A'nton. This should be resolved now, but there might be other similar bugs.
• If the author has been deleted (rare, but occasionally people request that their account be deleted), then there was trouble. It should now correctly fish out the name of the author, but it won't handle the user page link gracefully. There just shouldn't be any user page link, but right now it uses the uid "xx".
• Community wiki posts and posts with "multiple authors" are a likely source of bugs.
• There were some problems with deleted posts and answer that you have accepted. The reason is that I find the postId by looking at the nearest flag link since this is usually the only link I can be sure will be there. But you cannot flag deleted posts or answers that you've accepted (for some reason ... this has been changed on SO), which caused some trouble. This should be resolved now.

Please post bug reports and further suggestions on this thread.

@Mariano: does the cursor look right for you now that it's a textarea?

I don't know how 'auto' selects the pointer, but since the main purpose of that popup is to have some of its text selected and copied, it's a bit weird that it ends up using a pointer used all over the place for something else.

You could wrap the text (ie, all contents of the popup except the Close link) in a div, and set "cursor:text" on it.

(By the way, the pointer in the popup is coming out wrong for some reason)

I did change the cursor from "pointer" to "auto" because "pointer" communicated (to me) that something would happen if you click anywhere in the popup box.

@MISC {MO76,
    TITLE = {Animated Proofs},
    AUTHOR = {Jon Awbrey (mathoverflow.net/users/3)},
    HOWPUBLISHED = {MathOverflow},
    NOTE = {URL (accessed 2010-03-14): http://mathoverflow.net/questions/76},
    EPRINT = {http://mathoverflow.net/questions/76},
    URL = {http://mathoverflow.net/questions/76},
}

would become

\bib{misc}{MO76}{
  title={Animated proofs},
  author={Jon Awbrey (mathoverflow.net/users/3)},
  note={{URL (accessed 2010-03-14): \url{http://mathoverflow.net/questions/76}},
  eprint={\url{http://mathoverflow.net/questions/76},
}

I would add

  organization={MathOverflow},

(Notice the trailing comma in the third argument to \bib)

(By the way, the pointer in the popup is coming out wrong for some reason)

@Mariano: would the corresponding amsrefs entry be obtained by replacing "@MISC {MOnnn," by "\bib{MOnnn}{misc}{"?

But I want to note that for people who use reference management systems (JabRef, Zotero, Mandeley [I think I spelled this last one wrong]...) the URL/EPRINT fields has nice semantic uses: it allows the software to associate an entry to a resource on the web. Of course, I agree with the sentiment that copy and pasting is easy enough. I just want to point out that the fields can be useful beyond just BibTex's handling of them.

Some editing by hand is going to be essential for most people anyway, and if they have a system that makes BIBTEX usefully display the URL or EPRINT fields, more power to them, but they can do the copy and paste easily enough. For everyone else, who just relies on the NOTE field, these are just cruft.

Also --- great job!

@danseetea: Right now the last user-link to appear is the author. This normally means the original author rather than the person who last edited the post. In the case of CW, I think it will actually be the person who last edited the post. But I think the question of who to list as the author of a CW post is quite a bit trickier than the technical question of how to extract the right name from the page. In an ideal world, what should the author field say?

But I disagree that the link should be to the precise revision. Since the posts are expected to improve over time, I think we should follow LivingReview's model of linking to the most recent version, with the caveat that the author read a particular, possibly outdated version.

Author, Title, Howpublished, Month Year, Note

So perhaps the url should be also included in the Note, something like

HOWPUBLISHED = { MathOverflow (http://mathoverflow.net) },
NOTE = { URL (accessed on YYYY-MM-DD): http://mathoverflow.net/questions/1234 }

which is similar to how I deal with LivingReviews articles.

The Date data field is non-standard. The Month and Year fields are. But in regards to the crowd-editing nature of MO, we should also add a Note field that states "accessed on YYYY-MM-DD".

Also, as the URL and eprint fields are both non-standard, it'd be nice to have both present. (Also being a bit selfish here, since JabRef supports url, but not eprint.)

A fixed Howpublished field may be nice, but we should come up with a nice wording for it. Maybe something like

HOWPUBLISHED = { appeared on the website MathOverflow }

Though a bigger problem is how the information will be used by BibTex. In other words, if the included information doesn't make it into the .bbl file, it is all a bit moot.

Soo Key Foo (mathoverflow.net/users/234), The question title, http://mathoverflow.net/questions/1234

If you are willing to go non-standard, you can use "electronic". Only the bibtexkey is required, the optional fields are author, month, year, title, language, howpublished, organization, note, and url. (So in that sense it is not really that different from misc.)

I feel like the BibTeX entry should somehow include the user number since user names are not unique. Maybe this is unnecessary since you can get to the user page once you know the post ID. If we decide not to include the user number in the citation, I should remove that requirement from the attribution page.

Question: What is the appropriate entry type (I've used "misc")? What are the appropriate fields to fill out for that entry type?

Let me know if you also want to merge the other account. It would take approximately 5-10 minutes of my time.

Want to propose a sample BIBTEX entry? I or someone else can probably generate a little script that lives at say http://bibtex.mathoverflow.net/ that produces whatever is required.

Adding as a coauthor is a higher step than I would think that answering a question on mathoverflow should warrant. I'm curious as to what question was answered that could lead to such a generous offer!

Much more likely is simply acknowledging someone's help. Here I think that the best strategy is not to acknowledge the help of a particular person, but to acknowledge mathoverflow as a whole. So, for example, say:

Here we need to solve the identity Ax = b. The following is distilled from the answers on mathoverflow to \cite{question on mathoverflow}.

To do this, of course, someone should come up with a template for the bibliographic information. Looking at the basic BibTeX fields, I'd go for:

• Title: Question title
• Author: Mathoverflow
• Eprint: Direct link to question in Mathoverflow
• Date: Date asked (?)