This user has been posting a series of increasingly sophisticated questions (judging purely by the number of upvotes!). My feeling is that they are not HW, since who would assign two open problems in a week ?

However, these do feel like some kind of honors thesis or even starting point of something bigger. For example, one part of his latest question turns out to be sandwiched between two well-known conjectures, and I have not seen it raised elsewhere. It is possible but unlikely that idle curiosity leads to these group of questions.

Normally I would not think too much about this. After all, sunshine is good (or something like that, sorry English is not my native tongue). But in light of recent events I think I would post this here to see if the moderators and the community have some opinions on this matters. In particular, do we answer such questions? If so, how much should we give? What if a bigger stream of questions arrives?

As I said above, I have nothing against the OP posting these questions. They are nice, I like them and I would probably give similar answers if some graduate students emailed me those questions. What I would like to know is what the community thinks, and whether some consensus has formed over this (somewhat delicate) issue, especially since the OP is anonymous.

I would appreciate your thoughts and comments.

Personally, I have stopped answering questions from anonymous users, except for basic reference requests or common knowledge. These kinds of situations are my main reason for it, especially after somebody here not so long ago tried to delete all his questions after they were answered. I also really wish people woudn't jump to answer a question if somebody asks in a comment what the motivation is and a satisfactory answer is not provided. I sometimes even downvote such answers, even if they are mathematically ok (or should I say especially then).

I go along with Alex about the anonymous users. I had two series of contacts from a graduate student at a prestigious university in Scandinavia, looking for help with what eventually turned out to be a series of take-home tests. Eventually contact with computer staff there led to identification of the student. So I was quite annoyed when contact resumed some eight months later, this time with a female computer I.D. and waking me up by telephone early on a Sunday. Turned out to be the same person. Long story.

Eventually I decided that she was probably mentally on the edge, and that I did not have a deep need to hear that she was booted out. But the whole thing really, really pissed me off while it was going on. I don't like cheaters.

Hailong, right, this one is more subtle.

I think it would be reasonable in this case to insist (say, the moderators via private email) that this person changes their username to their real name. What do people think?

I guess my position is further left than most people here: I think sunshine is good. Attempting to rig MO so that it cannot be used to solve a thesis problem feels like attempting to rig words so that they cannot be used to lie or to rig a knife so that it cannot be used to cut oneself. Some precautions are a good idea, but it quickly becomes ridiculous. It's fine to suggest that this person change his username to his real name, but we have absolutely no way to enforce it. Supposing the username was "David Folbers" (a name I just made up) as opposed to "David" and the profile said he was a professor at the "University of East Turiland" (also just made up), would this thread never have been started?

If a question is poorly motivated, asked by an anonymous user, or the asker is not engaged, you're welcome to not answer it. But if it is coherent and interesting, it seems strange to insist that nobody answer it based on the speculation that it is an attempt to cheat in some way. If somebody is cheating, I think it's far better to make it clear that they won't get away with it than to try to prevent them from doing it in the first place. I can't think of any better deterrent than providing a completely public and searchable record who contributed what on MO. The reason to use your real name should not be because you are forced to, but because you want to lay claim to your contributions.

Not only is transparency probably the best solution, it also happens to be easy to implement and unobtrusive.

Dear everyone,

Thank you for your comments. I would like to emphasize that I did not want to make a spectacle out of this and especially did not want to create more tasks for the moderators. Following Anton's lead in the last thread, I will remove the link in the original post. After all, my reason for starting this thread was not about these particular questions but more academic: I was really curious to see if there are protocols on these matters. All your comments raised excellent points, and perhaps at this point the best solution is to use our common sense and let the sun does its job!

Yours,

Long

PS: if you are new to the thread and would like to see the actual link in my post, please feel free to email me.

@Will: they are called, well, goal lines, I believe. Funny I am watching the highlights too.

Can you take this to FootballOverflow?

Andres: me too. Bit of a fishing expedition, from the looks of it.