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Bug reports: Question "What is the knot associated to a prime" disappeared

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    The question that was here...

    http://mathoverflow.net/questions/50879/what-is-the-knot-associated-to-a-prime

    is no longer. AFAIK, it was not closed. It looks like some DB hiccup.
    Ideas as to what happened?
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    It was deleted by the question owner.

  3.  
    Ok.

    It might be nice if it left some trace not simply a 404 error. Something like:

    "This question was deleted by the owner."

    This way others might know what happened. In the current way of doing things there is no way for me to determine the difference between an owner deletion and a DB error.
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    I can't actually show you a different page based on whether the question never existed or was deleted, but I have modified the 404 page to point out the possibility that you might be looking for a question that was deleted.

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    Cool, thanks.
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    FYI, Lieven Lebruyn made a blog post attempting to answer the original question:

    http://www.neverendingbooks.org/index.php/what-is-the-knot-associated-to-a-prime.html
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    I emailed Jon Bannon (the question owner) with that link. I also asked him if he wouldn't mind me undeleting the question.

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    I've undeleted the question with Jon's approval.

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    Let me just say that this question had me frothing at the mouth, and I restrained myself as much as I could.
    • CommentAuthorjonbannon
    • CommentTimeJan 3rd 2011
     
    @FrictionlessJelly: Why the friction? It is clear that my *amazingly* naive question was asked with very limited sharpness...and obviously was not as targeted as I would have liked. I tried to delete it, particularly due to your remark...(which, by the way, was clear)...but now the question has been resurrected. I'd really be interested in knowing why this question irks you so much. If you'd like to vent about it, please e-mail me at jbannon@siena.edu.

    Perhaps the trouble is that my approach to learning a new subject is to *ask* the naive questions when they arise. I certainly can refrain from doing so if it is offensive to MO users...sharper questions are certainly easy to come by.
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    Perhaps the question should be reworded so that the questioner does not appear to presuppose the existence of a very speculative correspondence. I see no problem with asking naïve questions, but it helps when they are delivered with a soft touch. For example, you might ask something like, "Is the arithmetic topology analogy precise enough to yield an explicit correspondence between knots and primes?"

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    Thanks for the comment, Scott. I'll keep this in mind when asking future questions of this level.

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