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12:40 PM
@Feeds I'm a little surprised that this question was so badly received, and I don't quite understand why. "What's wrong with this proof" questions are on topic, aren't they?
@SophieSwett Questions about Collatz are almost always poorly received. This is not the right venue to put forward proofs of famous open conjectures.
1:10 PM
@XanderHenderson Would it be accurate to say that "what's wrong with this proof" questions are usually on topic, but not if the statement supposedly proved is a famous open conjecture?
@SophieSwett No, I would not say that.
Most of the "what's wrong with my proof?" questions are not on-topic, as they don't focus on a single issue.
But "did I resolve a famous open problem?" questions are particularly bad.
 
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3:15 PM
A flood of proofs of open conjectures is the worst thing that can happen to a math-related sites.
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@SophieSwett If the "what's wrong with my proof" question can be refined to "here is how I was deducing this particular thing, but I have found this other particular source that contradicts it, so something must be wrong. How do I resolve this contradiction?" then the question stands a better chance. At any rate work needs to be put into specifying the question more narrowly than "what's wrong with my proof."
 
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4:32 PM
@SophieSwett Usually , such proofs of famous open conjectures are long , unclear and "not even wrong". This is not the job for volunteers as here , if at all , paid mathematicians should check such trials , in almost all cases the proofs are so invalid that it is even difficult to exactly point out the flaw. Often , there is no error in what is written down , but the conclusion that the problem is solved is totally unjustified.
So , checking such a post is almost always a waste of time noone has deserved , unless the ckecker lives from such checks.
5:01 PM
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Q: Collatz conjecture and prime numbers #2

MatteoI open a new thread because my previous one (link) was blocked due to lack of clarity and I am agree because I posted unclear ideas. Now I have not clearer ideas but at least I can illustrate some visual results. I continue to think that prime numbers play a decisive role in the Collatz problem a...

@SophieSwett see the wiki for the solution-verification tag
questions should pretty much always ask about something specific, that doesn't create unnecessary discussion, and so on
questions of the form "check this proof" should always have a specific point in the proof they want to address
 
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6:59 PM
weird question - please downvote/delete
 
2 hours later…
8:31 PM
I tried to find a meta question discussing whether a question is on-topic if it asks "what's wrong with this proof, if anything?" without asking about a particular dubious point in the proof. There doesn't seem to be much consensus.
In any case, thanks for the explanations, everyone.
@SophieSwett see wiki on the tag. It explains everything
there's even a link to appropriate meta post there
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A: Best way of asking "check my proof" questions

user642796The best way to ask check-my-proof questions is not to simply ask users to check your proof. In what follows I've been strongly influenced by Raphael's answer on meta.cs.SE, and somewhat echo Qiaochu Yuan's answer to a previous meta.math.SE question. Questions of the form I have to prove ...

this is not the same post, but I feel like it reflects the community's position on solution-verification questions
9:06 PM
@SophieSwett I'll be honest: if I had dictatorial control, I would simply ban "check my proof" style questions. Typically, the best way to understand the proof of a theorem is to, like, engage with an existing proof, and to see how your own attempt fails (or succeeds).
So the best case is for questions on SE to be theorem statements, and the answers to be different proofs. Any further questions about the theorem can refer back to the theorem/proof question (as duplicates) and can be deleted, since they aren't really adding anything to the site.
Otherwise, you end up with a lot of "Is my proof correct?" questions which, at the end of the day, are a user asking the community to check or proofread their homework for them. This isn't really helpful in building a repository.
However, the community believes that there can be value in these kinds of questions, so they are permitted so long as the user highlights a specific point of theory or computation or whatnot that is the hangup.
This is a compromise position between my preference for just banning such questions, and a more permissive group of users who would be happy to grade homework.
9:21 PM
@XanderHenderson A lot can be learned by checking details in proofs carefully and seeing where any subtleties or mistakes arise. Lord knows many authors are “guilty” of omitting very details, sometimes to the point of being incorrect, and a student can struggle to feel confident filling in those details for themselves or conducting their own proofs when their sources of authority are patchy. So of course there is value if the question is focused and made to be (somewhat) of general interest
how do you feel, instead, about questions which highlight a step in their proof which is intuitively plausible but they struggle to rigorously demonstrate?
Ie “can I do this?” Rather than “check my proof”
@Peter Is that a request to downvote or delete their answer? I’m not sure what your message is getting at
@Jakobian I do want to note that the question I originally asked about didn't have the [solution-verification] tag, so it wasn't obvious to me that I should look at that tag's wiki page to find information relevant to that question.
I am telling you that it is relevant.
9:47 PM
@FShrike Sure, but "has value" is completely orthogonal to "is a good fit for Math SE, which seeks to be a library".
I think that the problem that a lot of people have is that they assume that closure or deletion is a judgement about the quality of a question in an abstract sense---"the question is closed, therefore the community here thinks it is a bad question, period".
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The reality is that there are a lot of great questions which, nevertheless, are not a good fit for this particular format. This site simply cannot be all things to all people.
10:13 PM
When books have value, someone learns and is glad when they find them in a library. Unless SE runs out of storage some day and we have to extremely carefully consider every entry, I won’t be sure that I see these as “completely orthogonal” - but I agree they are not exactly the same.
@FShrike Libraries are useful because they curate their books.
They make choices about which books to buy, and which books not to buy.
10:31 PM
Curation is, of course, something I endorse
 
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11:38 PM
@Jakobian And I appreciate it. Thank you for letting me know about that!

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