Until a few years ago MathOverflow front page had a short section at the top describing what the site is for. I am not sure when it disappeared or why but I would like to see it restored. Currently new users have no idea what kind of questions are appropriate here. One has to dig through Help cen...
When I log on in private browsing, here's what I see (after I've accepted cookies):
Is the suggestion to try customizing the black banner at the top?
@TimCampion My guess would be that having a banner in the sidebar - similar as on Law or Medical Sciences, but with wording customized for MO - could be relatively close to Vitali Kapovitch's suggestion.
From your list of counter-arguments, I gather that the main motivation of the suggestion is to reduce the number of low-level questions by new users on the site. But actually, I'm thinking that doing something like this would probably be more useful for more experienced users -- as a sort of "review" kind of thing. This could be interesting. I'm not sure precisely which FAQs you have in mind. — Tim Campion ♦7 hours ago
@MartinSleziak Oh sure, I understood that much. But there are 20 questions tagged "faq" -- I suppose we could do each of them, one after another. If each one lasts 3 weeks that would take a little over a year. — Tim Campion ♦7 mins ago
To be honest, part of the reason why I posted this feature request was that Vitali Kapovitch's did not receive any reaction from the MO community. So if the suggestion at least helped the other post getting noticed, I would consider it useful.
If the mods would consider featuring occasionally some older post from meta - for example, some of the posts tagged faq - I'd say the choice would be up to them. (The main question is which FAQ-posts are not widely known - or maybe they are known, but the advice is ignored by MO users.)
But I posted the feature request (Might featuring some FAQ posts on meta be useful?) fully aware that it is unlikely to happen. (And I included several arguments against it myself - which shows that I am not really sure whether it would be a good idea.)
Maybe bumping it to the frontpage will get it noticed a bit. (And it is linked also from a post which is currently in the community-bulletin.)
Still, if you hope to get some feedback from the MO community on the answers which are currently posted there, I thought that maybe adding the featured tag could help getting more attention to that question.
When I log on in private browsing, here's what I see (after I've accepted cookies):
Is the suggestion to try customizing the black banner at the top?
