Questions tagged [discussion]
The question you're asking is designed to solicit opinions or best-practices on a particular topic, with the goal of reaching community consensus.
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Questions about notation
There seems to be a disagreement about whether or when a question about mathematics notation is on-topic. For example, see the comments in \mathbb versus \mathbf one of which claims that this ...
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Event suggestion: A history of mathematics and future direction panel discussion?
So recently, I was pondering about historical connections of subjects, such as how concepts, ideas and experiments done in history change the course of humanity as they open new doors to exploration ...
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Tagging of names, revisited
About three years ago, in the early days of HSM, it was decided on meta that it was probably not useful to tag posts by the names of relevant scientists. The reason for this is that it would lead to a ...
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Feeds for suitable questions from other sites in chat?
Could perhaps adding feeds from hsm-related questions from other Stack Exchange sites into chat be useful? I could, for example, imagine ho.history-overview tag from MathOverflow, math-history tag ...
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Offering bounty when there is 1 closure vote
I would like to offer a bounty on this question. Recognizing that there is currently 1 closure vote, I consulted with moderator Danu and he recommended to pose this at meta. Would it be appropriate to ...
CommunityBot
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Why must edits have at least six characters?
I wanted to correct one letter in a name. This was impossible because there was only this one typo. So the typo persists. Shouldn't this rule be dropped?
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Writing history posts for the math.SE blog
The Mathematics stackexchange has a blog featuring short expository articles about interesting pieces of mathematics. The articles are user-written. Now, I think part of our mission as a community, ...
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Has hsm lost sight of what it's stack exchange is for?
Recently I had a question on HSM regarding mathematicians of Amish origin. But, I was heavily downvoted because the people there did not think my question mattered. They believed that the importance ...
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Is this question no longer 'too broad'
I have edited my question How did prisoners of war discover scientific breakthroughs while interned?, which currently has 3 close votes as being 'too broad'.
The question now focuses on how ...
CommunityBot
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Is the xkcd feed in the chat really necessary?
At this point, given the low activity of the chatroom, it actually posts more often than actual users: this year so far, it posted 16 links versus 1 single user discussing questions.
This makes ...
HDE 226868Mod
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A Tragic Loss of Documentation of Mathematics History
Recently this rich piece of the documentation of the history of The Modern Minds of Mathematics was discovered to be a casualty of a lack of up-keep by the IBM Corporation.
My question is what can we,...
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Do we want hats (2016 edition)?
The end of the year is rapidly approaching and, as last year, and the year before that, and all the years before that since before the beginning of time... The Winter Bash event is coming up! If you ...
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What exactly is History?
I have asked a question here, and was put on-hold.
In that question, I would like the clarification of what the living physicists said. but it seems to me that it "the living is no history" on this ...
CommunityBot
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We need a challenge or something
According to area 51 our asking rate is bad. Like under 2 a day bad. I thought about how we could fix this and I think I already remember seeing an ad for the site on another SE. The other solution I ...
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Are "was this known before"-type question on topic?
I just came across a question which seems off topic to me: see here.
Simplified, it is of the form Consider this formula: ... — is it known in the history of mathematics?
I doubt this is on topic, ...
CommunityBot
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Argument for keeping the "base 10" question open?
This question about past cultures using non-base-10 systems is quite popular. The meat of the question was:
Have any non decimal numbering systems been used frequently in the past? If so, what were ...
CommunityBot
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Do we want hats?
It's December, and once again, Winter Bash is almost upon us.
For anyone not familiar with it, Winter Bash is an end-of-the-year celebration on Stack Exchange, where users can earn "hats" to wear on ...
CommunityBot
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How quantitative is HSM SE?
There appears to be a perception that HSM hasn't proven to be very quantitative. This Physics SE question which was a historical question on Ptolemaic perigees of Mercury, I suggested that history of ...
CommunityBot
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How should we celebrate our birthday?
In three weeks, History of Science and Mathematics Stack Exchange will turn one year old. Congratulations on everyone who worked hard to make our first year in beta a success.
How should we mark the ...
HDE 226868Mod
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What should we do about cross-posting?
In two days, I've twice merged questions, because we've had two instances of cross postings (one involved three sites, and is still being dealt with). This has also happened before in many cases, many ...
HDE 226868Mod
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Does HSM also include the history of technology?
I want to ask why the V-2 rocket was made with ethanol and liquid oxygen, which had a specific impulse of 215 seconds at sea level, when a solid rocket using APCP gets 237 seconds. In addition, a ...
DanuMod
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Tag disambiguation - what should we do?
Should we reserve the use of discipline tags for question related to the history of the discipline?
The statistics tag has been widely (3/4 questions, detagged ...
CommunityBot
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On the history-of-science tag
I recently got rid of the history-of-science tag from How far can history of science be traced back?, and then another question which had just been posted. Typically, I wouldn't do something like this,...
CommunityBot
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How is our distribution of science and mathematics questions?
Congratulations (belatedly) to Alexandre Eremenko and Conifold on receiving the first tag badges (both in mathematics) on HSM! You guys have been at the forefront of our mathematics branch, and ...
CommunityBot
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Let's get critical: May 2015 Site Self-Evaluation
We all love History of Science and Mathematics Stack Exchange, but there is a whole world of people out there who need answers to their questions and don't even know that this site exists. When they ...
CommunityBot
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Make some community ads!
I discovered this site by happy accident while browsing Twitter and saw a question shared by the StackExchange account.
Perhaps you should reach out a bit more and get some people from other ...
CommunityBot
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Why is a question about understanding the atmosphere off topic?
This question is about the history of understanding the nature of the atmosphere. It asks:
When was the first time that scientists (or philosophers, etc) suggested that the air surrounding the ...
CommunityBot
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Discussion about "motivation of concept" kind of questions
Very often in mathematics and related sciences the motivation of a concept is helpful or even fundamental for its understanding. Obviously, this motivation has two origins: a historical one, and a ...
CommunityBot
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Do we want to have all new HSM-type questions from other SE-sites migrated here?
The title says it all, really. On some of the other Stack Exchange sites, e.g. MathOverflow or Physics, questions tend to pop up every now and then that may be better---or at least equally well---...
CommunityBot
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What to do about pseudoscientific answers
Recently I came about this answer which, in my opinion, is completely based on pseudoscientific books. This is not like math.se, or physics.se where good and bad answers can easily be discerned, so ...
CommunityBot
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Our totally unofficial official-and-rather-belated 100-day checkup
Two months ago, I wrote up this post:
Our totally unofficial 30-day checkup
In it, I gave our site stats (available here). We're at about the same levels, 70 days later. That might seem discouraging....
CommunityBot
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Our #1 target community: Those who teach, study, write or read about the history of science and math
If we want more participation, we're going to need to find those people who are interested and even enthusiastic in this subject. That's a very niche audience.
I suggest we/someone make an effort/...
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Who should our moderators be?
From The 7 Essential Questions of Every Beta:
Discussing the criteria of a great moderator is important and picking out potential candidates is a great way to introduce outstanding contributors to ...
CommunityBot
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What should our custom close reasons be (if any)?
Other SE sites have custom close reasons - specific options to be used when closing a question. For example, Worldbuilding has one for "Idea generation" questions. Astronomy has one for questions ...
HDE 226868Mod
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Let's make our own site promotion ad!
This is a spin-off of ManishEarth's earlier meta post,
Make some community ads!
What are Community Promotion Ads?
Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will
show ...
CommunityBot
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Should the current discussion on Zeno's Paradox be reopened?
About it one can cite wiki as to the significance. Zeno's paradox should be taught as history of mathematics - and solely as history - these days!
Wiki states only some historians of mathematics ...
CommunityBot
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Are questions about science-related linguistics on-topic?
Today, we had this question:
Is "de" in "de Morgan" supposed to be capitalized or not?
A couple days ago, we had this question:
History of the term innovation and its difference ...
CommunityBot
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Can we get a site name change implemented?
Ironic note: The question I'm referencing did not show up in the "Questions that may already have your answer" drop down menu while I was writing this.
I looked back on this question a couple of ...
CommunityBot
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Why do we have 'history' and 'history-of-terminology' tags?
As noted above, we have a history tag and a history-of-terminology tag. These seem a little redundant, given the name of the site. I just re-tagged a question from history to history-of-terminology, ...
CommunityBot
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Please welcome your moderators pro tempore
Throughout the beta, we need members from the site whose focus is to engage the community, both in community-building issues and site management. That's why we select a few members from each community ...
CommunityBot
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How do we handle the recent 'Ramanujan question'?
This recent question has gotten a surprising response. As it turns out, it is a cross-post from this question on Math.SE. There are currently two answers, one by Adhvaitha and one by Tito Piezas III.
...
CommunityBot
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What should we name our chatroom?
Currently, it is the generic name of the site.
What should we name our chatroom? Perhaps give your suggestions here and the popularity could be gauged by how many votes each suggestion gets.
DanuMod
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How many years to be considered as history?
User Amit Tyagi raised a good question in https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/504/why-was-pluto-demoted-from-the-list-of-planets#comment940_504
Coming to History, please explain what do we ...
CommunityBot
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Why were these questions migrated?
To my surprise, today we had two questions migrated here:
https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/571/when-did-scientists-first-postulate-that-earths-atmosphere-might-have-an-upper
https://hsm....
CommunityBot
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Our totally unofficial 30-day checkup
Today, the site turned 30 days old. Congratulations!
Okay, enough celebrating. 30 days means that the Area 51 stats for the site are visible, and the results are in (in the form of our number/good ...
CommunityBot
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Almost half of the questions so far are about math
I counted earlier and found that 23 of 48 questions were about either mathematics or mathematicians. While I am probably most interested in the history of mathematics, I am hoping this site will ...
CommunityBot
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Mass upvoting is as bad as mass downvoting
I got +55 in a space of 2 minutes, (4 answers and 3 questions) - this will more than likely be reversed.
Please do not mass upvote, there is nothing nice about flouting the rules.
HDE 226868Mod
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Very impressive
Just reading and re-reading our questions and answers (and even some of the more in-depth comment discussions) - there are some truly impressive and substantial contributions made by an array of ...
CommunityBot
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Should 'big list' type questions be put on hold?
The question Which scientists (mathematicians, philosophers) who voluntarily served Nazi had large contributions to human knowledge? seems like it is requiring a list of notable Nazi scientists (the ...
CommunityBot
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Apologies to the site
It has come to my attention that I may be rude and inconsiderate (likened to a notoriously and self-confessed rude user on Physics.SE) - I wish to assure people that it has and is never my intention ...
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