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Community: why bother closing?

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    • CommentAuthormuad
    • CommentTimeMar 3rd 2010
     
    I guess I phrased it in kind of a stupid way and maybe I misunderstand this site or I am just to low to be here and should come back when I know how to take the laplace transform of an inverse cohomology sheaf or whatever but I was just hoping people would be into talking about this proof because I thought it was interesting http://mathoverflow.net/questions/16981/is-my-size-200-subset-sum-proof-good and it turned out to be related to something from Erdos which was a cool surprise but then it got closed and I'm a negative scored person which kind of sucks anyway sorry about that but why bother closing it incase someone else wanted to add to it?
  2.  
    No one thinks your phrasing is stupid, but MO has a pretty specific purpose, and that is to talk about questions that are interesting to most of the people on this website, who are mostly research mathematicians, graduate students, and a few advanced undergrads. Your knowledge in other areas doesn't really affect the nature of your current question. Indeed, the FAQ discusses this. In particular, you could try http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Forum/index.php, which is appropriate for your question. This distinction allows people who want focus on more advanced questions to come here, whereas people with more elementary questions can go to other sites like the ones mentioned.

    In particular, if you are having difficulties with a proof and you want help verifying it, then the members at the AOPS forum will be happy to help you. I'm certain there are people on here who have questions but don't post them here but rather just ask their colleagues or friends because they're too elementary. Certainly in the future you might have questions which are more appropriate for MO, and in that case please ask your questions!
    • CommentAuthormuad
    • CommentTimeMar 3rd 2010
     
    > who are mostly research mathematicians, graduate students, and a few advanced undergrads.
    ohh I see. yeah I am not any of those.

    > In particular, if you are having difficulties with a proof and you want help verifying it
    not really I think it valid but maybe not the best written or the best attack but that is fine.

    thank you!
  4.  

    It's not just a matter of how advanced a question is; MO is just not the right place for questions of the form "is this argument right?" whether you are a researcher or not. This is a subtle point, since I think questions like "I seem to be proving something false, where am I confused?" which seem similar are much more in the spirit of the site (though I'm not sure there's real consensus about those; I think there haven't been many).

    I just want to make sure you don't interpret one closed question as saying you shouldn't post on MathOverflow again. If you have questions which are right for the site, we want to hear them, no matter who you are.

  5.  
    Note also that more important than any "score" is that the poster found out about the Erdos-Ginzburg-Ziv theorem, of which he had heretofore been working on a particular case. It is part of the spirit of MO that when we "turn people away", we try our best to give them something to take with them on the road.
  6.  
    One problem with questions of the form "is this argument right?" is that the community gains nothing from an answer of "yes." A question of the form "where am I confused?" has the property that a good answer to it is illuminating and will potentially help many other people who come across it.

    In any case, don't let one closed question discourage you; read the list of questions more closely and you'll get a better idea of what is considered a good question and what isn't. There is also the "how to ask" page.
  7.  

    The other thing is that the "where am I confused?" questions come up a lot less often. I always want people to check my proofs (except when I find a mistake myself and want to fix it before anyone notices), but I only get really confused about how I'm proving something false a few times a year, and it's really annoying.

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