Frequently Asked Questions
What kind of questions can I ask here?
This site is for meta discussion about Mathematics Stack Exchange. Any question relevant to our community is welcome here. For example, things like:
- Are questions about _____ on or off topic?
- What should our FAQ contain?
- How should we tag questions about _____?
- What should our elevator pitch be?
- What should our site design look like?
- Who should the moderators be?
- How do we promote our site?
See The 7 Essential Meta Questions for more detail.
Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s also OK to ask and answer your own question.
What kind of questions should I not ask here?
Avoid asking questions that have nothing to do with Mathematics Stack Exchange. This is not a random discussion area, it's a place for improving our community and website together.
What does voting mean here?
Voting here works a bit differently from the main site. On Meta, voting is often used to express agreement or disagreement, not to point out a lack of quality or helpfulness. Please don't be concerned if you receive downvotes – members of the community may simply disagree with your bug, feature request, support issue, or the nature of the discussion.
Do I have to log in or create an account?
No. Your account exists only on the main website, so when you are logged in there, you are also logged in here.
What is reputation?
You must have at least 5 reputation on the main website to participate on Meta.
Reputation here is entirely derived from the main website; your reputation is the same here as it is there, synchronized hourly. Votes here do not affect your reputation in any way. However, you can earn unique badges here on the meta site.
(Please note that offensive penalties, if levied by the community through spam or offensive votes on your posts here, will affect your reputation on the main website.)
Amass enough reputation points on the main site and you'll be allowed to do more:
| 15 | Vote up |
| 15 | Flag for moderator attention |
| 50 | Leave comments† |
| 100 | Edit community wiki posts |
| 125 | Vote down |
| 200 | Reduced advertising |
| 250 | Vote to close, reopen, or migrate your questions |
| 300 | Create new tags |
| 500 | Retag questions |
| 1000 | Show total up and down vote counts |
| 2000 | Edit other people’s posts |
| 3000 | Vote to close, reopen, or migrate any questions |
| 10000 | Delete closed questions, access to moderation tools |
† you can always comment on your questions and answers, and any answers to questions you’ve asked, even with 1 rep.
At the high end of this reputation spectrum there is little difference between users with high reputation and ♦ moderators. That is very much intentional. We don’t run this site. The community does.
