tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (Reopening "Proofs without words")

Yemon Choi comments on "Reopening "Proofs without words"" (21585)

Yemon Choi — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 12:49:35 -0700

I would be more tolerant of having such questions open, if posting something that was already mentioned was automatically punished with a custard pie in the face.

Yemon "Does anybody actually read anything carefully before writing/speaking?" Choi

Andy Putman comments on "Reopening "Proofs without words"" (21579)

Andy Putman — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 11:12:10 -0700

Big list questions are often closed when they have large numbers of answers and have begun to attract large numbers of low-quality posts. I don't support re-opening this one; it doesn't seem important enough to deal with the ensuring flood of junk that will come in.

Ryan Budney comments on "Reopening "Proofs without words"" (21578)

Ryan Budney — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 11:11:45 -0700

I don't recall what happened with that thread but the trend is that the popular general-interest questions would sometimes overpopulate the front page, because of redundant additions and new posts that are so many pages down that nobody would ever read them (or even check to see if they duplicate previous posts).

So the idea is to close them. If there's sufficient good new ideas to contribute to such threads, a new thread could be created. Or someone could propose some good new ideas here and lobby to have the old thread reopened for a time.

Hans Stricker comments on "Reopening "Proofs without words"" (21577)

Hans Stricker — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 10:59:08 -0700

What has been the reason for closing this question? What does it mean that it is "no longer relevant"? (It sounds kind of absurd, considering the popularity of this question.)

Every now and then someone might come around with another sparkling example. (E.g. this one: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mchmutov/fgt/fgt.html ) If a majority believes there have been too many examples of this kind, so it's better to close the question: I will accept that. But I (personally) would prefer the opportunity to make such a convincing "proof without words" known to the MO-community.