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20 answers
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Is "theoretical" computer science too narrow?

The CS Theory Stack Exchange is humming along nicely. It's a terrific, robust, and growing community that is clearly making an increasing contribution to the state of CS Theory research. Something we ...
Joel Spolsky's user avatar
35 votes
17 answers
2k views

Original proofs generated on the parent site

Not a question, but I thought it would be a useful indexing tool to have a meta big-list of proofs whose first appearance "in the literature" was on this site. Idea: each answer links to an answer on ...
Aaron Sterling's user avatar
32 votes
8 answers
954 views

On modifying our scope: A proposal

There's been a lot of chatter of late about our scope, the declining number of questions being asked per day, and whether we're being excessively strict about question scope. This question is ...
Suresh Venkat's user avatar
26 votes
2 answers
769 views

Why I am stepping down

I decided to write this because of the comments posted in the election chat room. Actually I agree with part what Dilworth has written. As I have told Suresh, Dave, and Shog9 I feel I use ...
Kaveh's user avatar
  • 21.5k
23 votes
21 answers
5k views

Official FAQ for Theoretical Computer Science

This is the official site FAQ for Theoretical Computer Science. This question will contain a list of questions, with each question linking to a single answer. If there is prior discussion on an answer,...
23 votes
1 answer
525 views

Is interesting activity on cstheory.stackexchange.com decreasing over the last year or so?

[2016]: I have the subjective impression that the rate at which interesting questions and answers are being posted on cstheory.stackexchange.com has decreased substantially over the last year or so. ...
Neal Young's user avatar
  • 9,595
22 votes
4 answers
692 views

Where to Ask Too Basic Questions?

While a person can become a pro in one topic, it is not possible to master all the fields; even if we narrow it to computer science. Interdisciplinary fields make the problem worse. For instance, ...
Sadeq Dousti's user avatar
  • 16.5k
22 votes
0 answers
310 views

2014 Community Moderator Election Results

Theoretical Computer Science's second moderator election has come to a close, the votes have been tallied, and the two new moderators are: They'll be joining the existing crew shortly — please ...
Shog9's user avatar
  • 101
21 votes
15 answers
2k views

How to ask a good question

The moderators spend considerable time on editing badly written questions. A possible way for reducing the number of badly written questions is writing down some guidelines (similar to the MO ...
21 votes
3 answers
1k views

Introducing Stack Exchange Research Support and Fellowship Program

The mission of Stack Exchange is to make the internet a better place to get expert answers to your questions. The Stack Exchange Fellowship Program aims to support students conducting research in ...
Seth Rogers's user avatar
21 votes
4 answers
499 views

Aggressive closing of questions?

I've recently noticed a troubling trend of "attacking" questions that seem to be too elementary. In some cases that is translated to closing a question, and in some cases the aggressive tone of the ...
Noam's user avatar
  • 9,369
21 votes
1 answer
667 views

Theoretical Computer Science Top User Swag

As a thank you for being awesome, if you are on page 1 or page 2 of … https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/users?tab=reputation&filter=all … we'll be sending you a little care ...
Adam Lear's user avatar
  • 101
20 votes
4 answers
2k views

Broadening the scope of questions

As a Theory B person, I feel the site really lacks Theory B questions. To make matters worse is he previously active Theory B people are now much less active. More generally, the questions here seem ...
Dave Clarke's user avatar
  • 16.7k
19 votes
28 answers
2k views

What should our site/domain name be? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: Write an Elevator Pitch / Tagline Note: We are closing this domain naming thread. It is asking the entirely wrong question. See this blog post for details: Domain Names: Wrong ...
19 votes
8 answers
587 views

Community blogging

The SE folks are providing the opportunity to create a community blog to showcase discussions on the site. They've outlined a number of steps that a community could take in order to get this going, ...
Suresh Venkat's user avatar
19 votes
5 answers
1k views

How will you cite a discussion on this site in your paper?

Should we just provide the link or write down the names of users whose responses were most useful?
Jagadish's user avatar
  • 1,945
19 votes
7 answers
980 views

A note in SIGACT news

Hi all, I chatted with Lance Fortnow at FOCS about the various ideas I brought up in my answer to "Beta period progress". This "question" is about the first, namely: Write a note ...
17 votes
10 answers
748 views

Beta period progress

We're currently two-thirds of the way through the beta period. As I understand it, the site will get shut down at the end of that period if it's not considered successful. This blog post says: We’...
Ian's user avatar
  • 2,717
17 votes
4 answers
435 views

On using actual names

Over at MO, it's been asserted that one of the success stories in getting the site to work well is strenuous effort by the moderators to get people to use their real names when posting. I'm ...
Suresh Venkat's user avatar
17 votes
4 answers
514 views

The modifiable part of our general FAQ

Should we put the phrase "research level" in our general FAQ? While in our official FAQ there is a statement about the scope of our site, that is, Ask and answer research-level questions in ...
Hsien-Chih Chang 張顯之's user avatar
16 votes
16 answers
807 views

Nominations for publicity poster at FOCS ?

Aaron Sterling had the nice suggestion (in comments here) for site promotion at FOCS: his idea was: a poster with a few "best questions" in large print on it: representatives of ...
Suresh Venkat's user avatar
16 votes
4 answers
422 views

SIGACT and cstheory

I'd like to report on some developments, and ask a question. Background: Back in October, I talked with Lance Fortnow (SIGACT chair) about the possibility of SIGACT taking over cstheory. The notion ...
16 votes
5 answers
372 views

References to cstheory in the literature

This is a placeholder question to collect instances where cstheory has been cited in papers. Hopefully as time goes in, this list will get longer. Please answer in the format: Question (and ...
Suresh Venkat's user avatar
16 votes
5 answers
261 views

How can we collaboratively investigate open problems?

This question builds on a comment of Shane's in a previous meta post on what can be achieved using a theory Q&A site. I've spent a good deal of time on Jeff Erickson's lovely problem about ...
Anand Kulkarni's user avatar
15 votes
7 answers
609 views

Flood of homework questions

Is it just me, or is there a major burst of homework questions popping up ? Fall semester automata theory, anyone ? Unfortunately, we still have people answering questions instead of voting to close. ...
Suresh Venkat's user avatar
15 votes
5 answers
570 views

About some criticisms against down-votes without explanations

I am worried about the attitude of some people who claim that down-voters must always explain the reason for down-voting or who criticize the users who vote down posts without explanations. (Here is ...
Tsuyoshi Ito's user avatar
  • 16.4k
15 votes
1 answer
620 views

A decade of CSTheory

I believe August 16, 2020 is the 10th anniversary of CSTheory, also known as TCS.se. What are some Questions and Answers (and Comments?) that you remember fondly, or want to bring attention back to, ...
Bjørn Kjos-Hanssen's user avatar
14 votes
3 answers
438 views

Why has the 'Automata-Enlightment' question received so many up-votes?

This question has got abnormally large number of votes in just two days. The question is favorited by many 'members' who have joined in the last few days. Many of the accounts look funny since they ...
Jagadish's user avatar
  • 1,945
14 votes
3 answers
378 views

Please don't migrate bad questions to CS.Stack Exchange

I have a request. It would be nice if the moderators here would avoid migrating low-quality questions to CS.SE. I noticed recently a few low-quality questions that were migrated to the Computer ...
D.W.'s user avatar
  • 11.7k
14 votes
2 answers
178 views

Vote early and often!

[Below is Scott Morrison's post from tex.se, reproduced here because it's good advice we need to see early.] I'm a moderator from MathOverflow, and this "question" is actually unsolicited advice, ...
ShreevatsaR's user avatar
13 votes
5 answers
369 views

First anniversary commemorative blog post: ideas ?

Kaveh reminds us all that Aug 16 is the first anniversary of the cstheory site. To celebrate, we're preparing a blog post. What are highlights/lowlights from the first year that you think are worth ...
Suresh Venkat's user avatar
13 votes
4 answers
485 views

Promoting TCS.SE at FCRC

The last time we did an IRL (in real life) promotional event for TCS.SE was at FOCS 2010. I don't unfortunately have any data on whether that event worked to draw more people in. We also had the ...
Suresh Venkat's user avatar
13 votes
2 answers
387 views

When should I use cstheory versus cs?

There are two stackexchange sites that seem to have a bit of overlap: CS and CSTheory. CS states that it is for: "programming language semantics, formal methods ... or any other topic in theoretical ...
Jonathan Gallagher's user avatar
13 votes
0 answers
272 views

2017 Moderator Election has been cancelled

We regret to inform that due to insufficient nominating candidates, we are currently terminating the ongoing election here on Theoretical Computer Science Stack Exchange. Thank you to Bjørn Kjos-...
Grace Note's user avatar
  • 101
12 votes
13 answers
1k views

What should our logo be?

Another one of the 7 essential meta questions- what should our logo look like? Edit: This was originally a discussion both about the logo and about the theme, but now the theme has a separate ...
Greg's user avatar
  • 171
12 votes
7 answers
4k views

Is it ok to ask about the correctness of preprints on crank-friendly topics?

See this question in which someone asked for an update on the status of an arxiv preprint on graph isomorphism. It was downvoted, with a comment "Are this kind of discussions on-topic here? I think ...
David Eppstein's user avatar
12 votes
6 answers
592 views

CSTheory Blog Announcement and Signup Sheet

July 21st: The first technical post is now up, Quantum query complexity, by Artem Kaznatcheev. July 16th: The first blog post is now up, here. This is not so much a question as an announcement and a ...
Suresh Venkat's user avatar
12 votes
2 answers
346 views

Why StackExchange?

MathOverflow works very well for mathematicians, in part because it is run by mathematicians, who understand how mathematicians interact. One clever thing they do to make the site useful for the ...
Radu GRIGore's user avatar
  • 4,796
12 votes
6 answers
443 views

Dealing with user issue

This is the first time we've had to deal with this, so I'd like to lay it out there (as well giving the user a chance to respond. User johne has posted three ...
Suresh Venkat's user avatar
12 votes
3 answers
697 views

A cstheory website for beginners

It seems that overzealous folks at Area 51 closed the proposal without giving it a fair chance. (Dave Clarke) -- mathoverflow.net is for mathematicians. ...
Pratik Deoghare's user avatar
12 votes
3 answers
358 views

What to do about general comments by non-experts which do not add any new information/knowedgle?

Some of the comments on Gil's recent question are flagged as not-constructive. They are not literally offensive or rude, they are not irrelevant to the question, but honestly they don't seem to ...
Kaveh's user avatar
  • 21.5k
12 votes
3 answers
422 views

What TCS-stackexchange is for and what is *your* aim in participation?

Q1: What is your view on the purpose, aims and benefits of TCS stackexchange? Q2: What are your specific aim, targets and benefits in participation at TCS stackexchange? Comment: I asked a similar ...
Gil Kalai's user avatar
  • 6,013
12 votes
1 answer
190 views

Cancel a comment upvote

This has been bothered my for a while. And a related discussion is in metaSE, while the post is tagged with [status-declined] and the community seems to disagree with it. Sometimes by accident I up-...
Hsien-Chih Chang 張顯之's user avatar
12 votes
4 answers
218 views

What do we do with rapidly evolving subjects?

Some topics and subjects in TCS are evolving and changing fairly rapidly. For example, I'm interested in SAT, particularly in the best upper bounds. Now, there are questions on this site concerning ...
Matt Groff's user avatar
  • 2,100
12 votes
2 answers
200 views

Interesting unanswered questions on CS.SE

Based on earlier feedback, I'm creating this thread to advertise questions on CS.SE that would be interesting to this community and haven't received an answer. Guidelines: Each answer should link ...
D.W.'s user avatar
  • 11.7k
12 votes
0 answers
133 views

2018 Community Moderator Election Results

Theoretical Computer Science's 3rd moderator election has come to a close, the votes have been tallied, and the new moderator is: He'll be joining the existing crew shortly — please thank him for ...
Shog9's user avatar
  • 101
12 votes
0 answers
315 views

SE Theoretical CS Pizza Ambassador Program: Sponsored discussion groups

Stack Exchange is looking for students and teachers interested in a new pizza ambassador program. Stack Exchange would like to sponsor university students (and external academic/study groups) who are ...
Seth Rogers's user avatar
11 votes
4 answers
354 views

Who benefits from this site?

I believe that the CSTheory site can potentially contribute to theoretical computer science and to our field's visibility in the larger community of scientists and mathematicians. The ongoing success ...
András Salamon's user avatar
11 votes
13 answers
586 views

The less-known features

Jukka has mentioned a feature (a page for more advanced searching) that I was not aware of. Are there other less-known features that you have found useful?
11 votes
10 answers
403 views

Useful UserScripts?

I am experimenting with some UserScripts to provide additional functionality that the StackExchange sites currently do not support. In particular, two have proved highly useful: https://math.meta....
András Salamon's user avatar

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