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Feature requests: Is this question appropriate for MO?

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    I flagged this question as too discussionary and wanted to get other opinions. There are really two questions here:

    1) The stated question: Do you think these results are good?

    2) The implied question (or at least what the discussion turned into): debug my elementary proof of a hard NT theorem.

    The question: http://mathoverflow.net/questions/10377/a-result-on-prime-numbers

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    Regardless of whether this guy is a crank or not, I think we should not allow questions like this so we can keep away the cranks when they find out about this site.
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    That's fair, though I'm not sure exactly what sort of rule would keep out questions like this. "No asking for help debugging proofs"? "No asking for value judgements on work"?

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    Every question should be well-defined and once the answer is received the poster should accept the answer.

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    Ilya- It's fine to say that, but I think at this point there's a rough consensus that questions which are subjective and do not have a right answer are sometimes acceptable. It would be good if we could formulate a principle which matches the rough feeling in the community.

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    I agree that it would be best to have a clear-cut policy, but we shouldn't be afraid to apply intuition in the absence of something better.

    I would say that the policy this question violated was, "questions should have an answer." We sometimes have questions that have multiple answers or where the answers are pretty subjective, but this was beyond that. The original question was pretty wishy-washy to begin with (I probably would have closed it since I couldn't imagine it generating anything of value), but on top of that, it seemed like any answer was replied to by changing the question.

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    I agree with "no asking for value judgments on work." This reminds of this question:
    http://mathoverflow.net/questions/9011/approximating-with-translated-gaussians-and-low-frequency-trig-functions ,
    in that both are asking for feedback directly relevant to a preprint. But the one I linked to was a really good use of mathoverflow, because it asked questions with answers instead of asking for value judgments.
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    @Ben: what I meant is that questions that are subjective may be fine, but they are still supposed to be well-defined, in particular be answerable, and the poster should accept an answer rather than change the question.

    @Jonas, yes, I think you linked to a question very suitable for Math Overflow. I would be ok with the original post if the poster knew the MO rules and was able to accept that he had an error and was on a wrong track from the start.

    • CommentAuthorrpg16
    • CommentTimeJan 2nd 2010
     
    A few things i wanted to say...

    0. I had read the MO FAQs before asking the question...
    and all the while I thought I was going as per rules...
    1. I have accepted Leonid's reply... By clicking on the tick mark...
    2. If the question was not well defined, then I am responsible.
    But english isnt my first language... so, you can understand...!!!
    3. Delete the question... I am ok with it...
    4. Next time I ask a question please tell me if I go wrong somewhere...

    Thanks
    rpg16 (the poster of the question)

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