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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Where's the conspiracy?
On the Mathematics Meta question promoting HSM (actually on my "answer"), there were some comments made about the birth of this site. According to the accuser, it was conceived by "power-hungry users" ...
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Poll: why are you not accepting answers?
There seem to be quite a few questions with one or more answers, but none of them accepted. This is understandable. History is not mathematics, it's harder to recognize an answer as "correct". If you ...
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How should we handle overlap with History.SE?
This good question was asked a few days ago on history.stackexchange.com. It is totally on-topic both there and here. For that reason, I am not recommending any migration. Instead, I want to know how ...
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Books vs. Websites
This is related to my other recent question.
As I wrote there, it is hard to check book sources, especially if they are old and/or out-of-print. Occasionally, they can be found on Google Books, but ...
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References, references, references. .
I've already posted a few questions on meta regarding details about the references we should have on answers. I have some more ideas on the topic, but I don't think that simply posting more meta ...
HDE 226868Mod
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What should we do about "Who was first" or "When was [_____] first done/discovered/etc." questions?
There are a lot of questions on the site that have the format "Who first [____]?" or "When was [____] discovered/created?". Some examples:
Who created topology, and when, and what problems lead to ...
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Are questions about mathematicians and scientists' lives on topic?
Are questions about history behind a scientist or mathematicians life on topic? For example personal life, death etc.
This is motivated by my recent question Why was Évariste Galois killed?
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Are questions of the type "Did person X do action Y" on topic?
This question got me thinking, and I can't quite decide whether it should be off-topic or not, so I figure I should get some community input.
The problem I have with it is twofold. Firstly, I think ...
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Lessons for the future.
Today, we had this question posted. In its original form, it read
Why do we see things?
Yes. That seems unquestionably obvious. But, when i try to think about it in my way. I find it as a mystery. ...
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Should Math SE seed HSM with some history of mathematics questions?
As discussed here. SE is capable of migrating a large amount of questions from Math.StackExchange to History of Science and Math. The main culprit would be to go for questions under the tag math-...
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Quality of question on HSM
I think most important thing to moderate in any S.E. site is quality of question.
Any question ask should be clear by user and if not then it should be edited by other users.
I want to bring the ...
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Voting on the meta
This is an announcement/notice about the meaning of voting on the meta.
Up generally means I agree
Down generally means I disagree
This is a subtle difference with the main site. One should not be ...
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Tag Wiki's - Write them!
We currently have a good 5 pages or so of tags at this time. It would help if users were proactive in trying to edit tag Wikis so we can build up quality in our tags.
This serves out as a reminder ...
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How can we deal with answers without references?
This is related to this question, which addresses the site's policy regarding sources. I have something a little more specific.
There is a user (I won't say who) who repeatedly posts answers without ...
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Answers in Wikipedia
I understand that this site is new, and it is time to discuss some rules, formal or informal. As a long time participant of another similar site, Math Overflow (MO), I propose to discuss the following:...
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What should our 'Tour' and 'Help' documentation contain?
It may be a little early, but no harm in putting this out there now and open this up for discussion.
Specifically, what should our 'Ask about' and 'Do not ask about' on the Tour page contain? ...
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How can we get the example questions asked here?
I took a look back at the site when it was in the Definition phase, and noticed that there were a lot of good example questions. Unfortunately, many have not been asked here. I'm guessing that part of ...
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What if the answer is "that doesn't exist"?
Let's say you ask a question that asks about the existence of some type of object, like a result, a document or a historical event; such as:
What group theoretic results were known for several ...
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On questions that do not refer to a specific discipline
There has already been some discussion about how to tag questions that are (explicitly) not specific to some discipline (e.g. this one or this one). The author of the first example question I just ...
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Answers vs comments
There is a size limitation for comments. If I have a long comment, I sometimes enter it as an answer. Some people object this, I don't know why. I hope they state their objections in the answers to ...
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What fields of study are on topic here?
According to Wikipedia,
The history of science is the study of the historical development of science and scientific knowledge, including both the natural sciences and social sciences.
There have ...
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Options for the name of this site
There has been some discussion about the possibility of renaming the site.
Please give a suggestion as an answer to this message and people upvote/downvote what they see as the best options.
Note: I ...
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Is history of Computer science on topic?
Is the history of Computer science on topic? I can see that you could argue that it falls under mathematical logic and therefore is on topic. Questions with this focus would include questions about ...
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Unanswered questions - something to keep an eye on
As of writing this, we have 19 unanswered questions out of our 115 total questions. As % answered is one f the criteria we are judged on when we are a public beta - it is something one should keep an ...
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What to do with questions that are interesting but easily looked up?
Throughout the week I come up with a number of questions about the history of this or that. Most often Wikipedia authors on the subject some of the hard work for me, so it's not really necessary for ...
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Will we consider Wikipedia an acceptable source?
Some SE sites - Astronomy, Space Exploration, Physics, etc. will allow Wikipedia to be used a source in many cases, although multiple sources are always preferable, especially for really key points. ...
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Watch out for duplicates (public service announcement)
Hopefully, soon, we will go public - as such we will more than likely get many enthusiastic new members, which will be awesome!
One thing we need to do is keep an eye out for duplicates of what is ...
HDE 226868Mod
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Are some tags too specific or just fine as they are?
I've noticed that there are a couple of tags that recently popped up. There's the ancient-egypt tag and the nazi-germany tag. They only have a couple questions each, but more will come.
Are these ...
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Proposal: A tentative tagging scheme
One of the most important questions to be settled is: How are we supposed to tag questions on this site? I happen to have some opinions on this matter, and I will use this meta post to lay out my '...
HDE 226868Mod
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Reference for the answers wherever required
To make the answers acceptable I think there should be references to all the answers (atleast wherever required) provided to really believe in the history. Since our site is about the HISTORY of math ...
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Notifying "experts" on specific subjects
The site is fairly diverse, no matter what it may seem. This question on Physics inspired me to post a modified version here, because I think it could be relevant.
The gist of the principle is that ...
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Is Economics on Topic Here?
This question inspired by this question, which has several close votes.
Economics is a "social" science. But it is considered a "science" by the Nobel Prize Committee. Moreover, the question is about ...
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Is asking on philosophy on topic?
Science used to be considered as second philosophy. PhD, the highest title for a scientist, is a Doctor of Philosophy. However, some philosophers opine that philosophy is not science. So, is asking on ...
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Are history of engineering/invention questions on topic?
For example, a question about the invention of gliders/aircraft by George Cayley, or a question about the development of high pressure steam by Watt et al.
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Tagging of names
How should we tag names?
I've just gone for thomas-digges for the astronomer, but this got me thinking about how we should standardise it. digges might be acceptable in this context but what if there ...
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What is an acceptable way to improve answers?
In the post Why was Évariste Galois killed? @Danu correctly points out that my answer is worse than a bad summary of the wiki page on Galois. (A fair point)
Quickly looking around, I don't see ...
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