this is a slightly awkward question but the most upvoted answer to mathoverflow.net/questions/168474/… seems to be wrong

this has been pointed out in the comments

in two days time it will get a bounty and in general, what should one do?

@vzn it is not very unusual that somebody does not attend a ceremony to receive a prize but is still awarded the prize.

hi @quid

hi @dorothy

@quid do you have any thoughts on my dilemma?

I could ask on meta I suppose but that seems even more public

@dorothy there is not that much you can do, even more so as it is not your bounty, but a bounty on your question. It is in theory possible for moderators to cancel a bounty. This is generally something that is rarely done.

@quid ok thanks. I can't bring myself to add a comment saying "this is wrong"

if it were my bounty, could I do anything?

No.

:)

But

I wonder why people upvoted it! I suspect they didn't actually read it first

Then you would have a better chance that moderators cancel it.

Oh I see

that's interesting

Yes people not reading carefully is an issue.

also all the interesting stuff is in the comments

which is somewhat the wrong way round

Yes sometimes the format is not optimal. :-)

I don't know if you got a chance to read the question, but I am surprised that it's complexity is so hard to ascertain

I am sorry I do not know much about this subject.

no problem at all

I don't think anyone does :)

so we are all equal

oh.. looking at your profile I see number theory is one of your strenghts

To come back to the original question what you could do: you could still flag the post or the answer for moderators attention. Using flag, "other" and explain the situation. This would be private.

Yes mainly I answer number theory here.

It is not clear what if anything moderators could or would do but there is not that much else to be done. This is a bit of a drawback of the bounty system but various aspects needed to be balanced.

I rather liked this question mathoverflow.net/questions/126848/…

but for some reason no one else di

d

do you think it is uninteresting?

The question seems alright; I did not look in detail though. Sorry I have to leave now. Actual work is calling. It was nice talking to you @dorothy Hope the bounty situation will get resolved. There are still two days, perhaps a better answer will emerge.

thanks and bye

nice talknig too

quid, feel you are making some assumption re grothendieck fields medal. agreed there are some differing accts in the media. have not yet found more clear details of his "acceptance" or "rejection" of the prize. he is known to have rejected another prize worth far more money. he is listed on the Fields medal prize page with a "cross" next to his name where nobody else has that cross. wonder what the cross means?

it is now a case that math awards are sometimes "given/ awarded" even if they are not "accepted". eg perelman iirc.

the rejection of the prize is noted in my blog because it strongly attests to grothendieck's... to put it lightly... "eccentricity".