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I don't think making a philosophical comparison of Motizuki's work towards Vojta's conjecture with the Weil Conjectures is all that silly: Motizuki himself makes this comparison in "The Hodge-Arakelov Theory of Elliptic Curves", page 16, and again in "Inter-Universal Teichmueller Theory IV", page 31.
@Kevin Ventullo: Thank you for the information; however, I fail to see how this is directly relevant to the (meta) discussion at hand. Neither did OP say/do what you mention, nor did anybody deny it was reasonable.
@quid: I think Kevin might have been referring to some things said earlier (by Andy among others) such as
"I agree that the question is terribly written and historically/philosophically dubious. Why doesn't one of us edit it to remove the bs about the Weil conjectures? That would, I think, greatly improve it."
and
"@bsteinberg : I agree that the OP has an enormous number of pretty silly questions."
@Todd Trimble: Thank you. I was aware of this, though. But, I should likely be more detailed regarding my view:
OP did not make any comparison at all; for a comparison it would be necessary to know something on both sides and OP 'confessed' to total ingnorance of the one. By contrast, the story around the Weil conjectures (only, and at best) served to "define" the notion "vision". It is some pretext, detached from the actual question. The only link between 'Weil' and ABC that was invoked in the question is that two people each (it seems) worked for years towards a specific goal and since in the one case (supposedly) there was some "vision" it ought to be there in the other case as well.
Then, it is either nonsense to make a priori this firm assumption that an analogy of the situations ought to exists, or the notion of analogy is so vague that it is useless to elaborate on the other/historic side of the analogy or to even mention it. And if in addtion the elaboration on the historic side is even imprecise, then it really makes no sense to keep it around.
@davidac897: I think I gave several reasons already why I voted to close this question, one of them minutes after the question was asked. [I can understand that they or some of them, due to their brevity, could be misunderstood and thus dislmissed as some overly formalistic approach to this matter, but it is not formalism that is the point, thus please read on.] Let me repeat what I said in reply to Tom Leinster:
My first objection to this particular question is simply that in my opinion it is a terrible question, and for example fails numerous criteria laid out under "how to ask".
Assuming you read this already, I am given to understand that either you disagree that this particular question fails numerous criteria of 'how to ask', or you do not get why somebody would vote to close a question for this reason (or both). In any case, what you write seems more like an argument why a question of this type might be suitable for MO, than an argument why this particular question should not have been closed; and as elaborated at length this is, in my mind at least, a very different discussion.
So, why do I vote to close a question that fails (in my opinion) too strongly criteria of 'how to ask'. Abstractly, because this means it has certain deficits discussed their that cause problems in answering it (at least this is the case in this case, for details cf below).
Now, some might think that is not a good enough reason to close a question but then there seems to be a very widespread misunderstanding what it actually means to close a question on MO (or at least it is a persepective on it other than mine, but I believe that mine is the correct one, in the sense that this is how the mechanism was conceived, AFAIK). So here, what it means (to me):
If there are significant deficits in a question (for example, that make it impossible to answer properly), then it is closed. Then problems can be fixed and if/after that has happened the question gets reopened. (Only if problems are never fixed or they turn out to be unfixable does the question stay closed forever.)
If ever you disagree that this is the (theoretically) standard interpretation of how things (should) work, explain why editing, including the consequence of bumping, stays possible after closure just like when it is open, and why one can still comment on closed things.
And, to stay in the house-analogy of main. If there is significant construction to be done in a building, it can make sense to (temporarily) close it for the general public while the work is under way.
So, where does the question have problems. One example. This is how "how to ask" starts (basically).
Ask a focused question that has a specific goal.
What is the specific goal of the question? Isn't the goal obvious, you might reply. Or perhaps, who cares about the goal.
However, the lack of specifiying the actual goal has the consequence that it is not clear "what constitues an answer." To wit, cf David Speyer's first comments (he asks whether this info is relevant) and the reply of grp (on main) saying basically that's old stuff surely this not what is meant, but then OP clarified that of course it was relevant to him. [Edit: Deleted further imprecise and tangential elaboration.]
To sum up one reason:
The question was unclear, so it is closed at least until things are clarified.
If you still do not get why somebody thought to close the question, please point to a precise point in my explanation where you disagree. Else, I will assume it is clear now.
Oh dear; I foolishly hit the entire post with the wiki hammer, while meaning to only do the question. This is a bit of a screw-up, primarily because it now makes it quite hard to see who wrote what. I'm really sorry about this, but I'm also not sure what can be done to fix it.
Scott, you can wait until the transition to SE 2.0 and then cancel that... :-)
@Alexander Chervov: yes, it is quite nice. But, in case you should want to imply that this is similar to the situation at hand. This is really not the case. [(almost) sucessfully supressing the urge to write a climax of 'really's ]
@Alexander, it has long been an accepted policy of the site not to discuss the correctness of papers —at least this recent.
In all likelihood, this will continue if the question is not closed.
Aren't these arguments to delete Vesselin's answer rather than close the question? (Or perhaps there are more collegiate options than forcibly deleting it, e.g. politely asking him and the other commenters on his answer to halt their discussion.)
Yes, it would be very good for people to blog about this (and particularly for VD to do this, with a link to a blog post under his answer). But I share Benjamin's concerns about noise. So far those who have answered have done so about as well as could be expected, but the fact of the matter is that it's an open and unfocused question (and perhaps idle as well, since the OP has yet to engage with any of the respondents who put hard work into their answers), and the highest-rated answers start with frank admissions that the posters don't understand the recent work of Mochizuki.
I strongly back those like quid and Gerhard who counsel patience. No doubt seminars are being organized around the world to have top-flight people take a hard committed look at this work (and no doubt Mochizuki is already very busy answering questions). In six months or a year, I imagine some dust will have settled, and then people will be in a better position to give much more informed answers to questions. So why all the clamor? (I also wonder, maybe a little unkindly: how many celebrants of this question have attempted to thoroughly digest the answers which have been given so far? all appearances suggest they are not for the innocent!)
It would be great to have people write focused and engaged questions about this work. Meanwhile, I second (or third...) voloch's call to close this question (and have voted to do so).
Isn't it true, if you voted to close before, and then the question is re-opened, that you are not allowed to vote to close again? Or is that just on 2.0 sites...
No, that's true here as well.
As someone who upvoted the question originally, I agree that it should be closed now. Minhyong has written an essentially optimal answer given the time frame, and it seems to be degenerating now.
I like the idea of people writing their own blog posts and adding links to this page: http://michaelnielsen.org/polymath1/index.php?title=ABC_conjecture. Perhaps a link could be added to the original question before locking it.