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Is this question acceptable?: Popular but off-topic questions

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    • CommentAuthorRyan Budney
    • CommentTimeAug 16th 2011 edited
     

    I'm curious what people make of this question:

    http://mathoverflow.net/questions/73001/is-there-a-smooth-4-manifold-homeomorphic-but-not-diffemorphic-to-cp2

    As far as I can tell, this question is pretty clearly off-topic. It's a well-known open problem. The fact that it's a well-known open problem is written up in textbooks on 4-manifold theory, in recent survey papers, in many recent papers on exotic smooth structures on small 4-manifolds, on the most relevant Wikipedia pages, and so on.

    So it's not clear to me this kind of question should survive. But I feel like I've seen this pattern before. It's the kind of question people are curious about -- as opposed to the more technical kinds of questions the forum is designed for.

    So am I being too literal in voting to close?

    • CommentAuthorShevek
    • CommentTimeAug 16th 2011
     
    In my opinion you are being too literal in voting to close it. The question seems to be of interest to people, despite the fact that it is a "well-known" open problem. I know very little about 4-manifolds and learned something from the question, so I wouldn't consider it to be off-topic.
  3.  

    But to counter -- the quality of the answer and whether or not people will learn something from the answer, that's not really a criterion for keeping a question around. If that was so, it would be perfectly acceptable to post questions asking for someone to write-up a survey of topic X.

  4.  
    If someone asked whether all the (non-trivial) zeros of the Riemann zeta-function are on the line real-part-equals-one-half, I'd vote to close (after leaving a note saying this is a well-known open problem, and maybe giving a link or some search term). I don't know a 4-manifold from a donut, so I'm not voting on 73001, but you have my in-principle support, Ryan.
    • CommentAuthorShevek
    • CommentTimeAug 17th 2011
     
    @Ryan: I think we'll just have to agree to disagree. The quality of the answer and the likelihood that mathematicians of an "appropriate" level will gain from the question are certainly valid criteria in my book. There are others around here who probably have feelings closer to yours, but since you asked for our opinions, I'm just presenting mine. For the record, it is not a corollary to my position that asking someone to write up a survey is "perfectly acceptable". I simply don't agree that questions of interest (7 votes, 2 favourites is sufficient in my book) should be closed. If someone feels like writing an answer about this open question (and thereby enriching mathematics) then so be it!
  6.  

    I agree with Ryan and have voted accordingly. The questioner hints in a comment on the answer that they already knew that this was an open problem.

    If someone feels like writing a detail exposition about this problem, then there are much better places to put it than on MO. An excellent answer that isn't supported by an excellent question isn't an answer at all, but is an article of some sort and thus much better placed on a wiki or blog or in a journal.

    • CommentAuthorquid
    • CommentTimeAug 17th 2011
     

    For this question this is now 'after the fact', but since it is sort of a general policy question:

    What Gerry Myerson said.

  8.  

    What quid said.

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