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Is this question acceptable?: Simultaneous identical questions on MO and MU

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    This question on MathOverflow.net was asked at roughly the same time as this identical question on math.stackexchange.com. I do not think this is a behavior we should encourage, but I am having trouble thinking of a coherent reason why I feel this way. The best I can say is that it seems a little spammy. I'd like to hear what others think.

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    I agree. There have been a couple of times that I've asked a question here and posted a link to it on the nForum, but that's because a lot of the people over there don't frequent MO. Having it appear on two stackexchange sites is gratuitous.

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    If the same question has been posted to both MO and math.SE, then it's probably not at the right level for one of the sites. This question, for example, is too elementary for MO, and should be closed.

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    I would not be against double posting per se so long as it was clearly marked as such and with a comment something along the lines of:

    I've posted this here and at meta.SE [link] because I'm not sure what level the question belongs to.

    Though I would say that my gut reaction to such a question would be: "If you're not sure, post it at meta.SE and see if you get a good answer. If not, try it here second.". But I also think that we should not close a question here just because it appears over there. If it has already been adequately answered over there then I would vote to close, but not just because it appears there.

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    I think the right thing to do is encourage people to guess which is more appropriate and then if they turn out to be wrong they can submit it to the other site. I don't think simultaneous dual submissions are a good thing.
    • CommentAuthorKevin Lin
    • CommentTimeAug 10th 2010
     

    In fact, this question was triple posted! It was also posted at SO.

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    I agree with Noah. At the very least, as Andrew suggested, a link to the other post(s) should be given in the beginning. But even then, the work that a potential answerer (or even an interested reader) must do to keep up with progress is increased, which seems discourteous when asking for help. (Surely there is no intention of discourtesy here, but that is how it may come across.)
    • CommentAuthorJonas Meyer
    • CommentTimeAug 10th 2010 edited
     
    • CommentAuthorVP
    • CommentTimeAug 10th 2010
     

    Old cowboys never die, they just recede into the sunset.

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    Akhil, Qiaochu, and I are all on math.SE fairly frequently, for the moment, and have, I think, a sense of what could work on MO. There have been a few questions that have gone unanswered for a while on math.SE that one of us has then commented would be appropriate for MO; I haven't followed up on them to see if they were actually asked here.

    I, too, dislike the idea of having duplicate questions on both sites, at least those that are genuine duplicates, asked at the same level and perhaps by the same user. I could easily see, for example, a question about geometric interpretations of the trace being asked at math.SE, but I would likely pitch my answer at a more basic level than the wonderful answers given here to that question (or perhaps, with less appeal to well-tuned mathematical intuition and more recourse to definitions and rigor, given that most on math.SE would not be looking for a sort of "post-rigorous" mathematician's view).

    Someone on math.SE answering what could potentially be a duplicate question from MO should also, I think, link to the relevant MO question as part of their response.

    There have been a few requests on meta.math[SE] to implement a feature where math.SE could close questions as duplicates with a link to an MO question. I like this idea and I'll be bringing it up with the SO team.

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