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Tracking the World's Great Unsolved Math Mysteries
coondoggie writes "Some math problems are as old as the wind, experts say, and many remain truly unsolved. But a new open source-based site from the American Institute of Mathematics looks to help track work done and solve long-standing and difficult math problems. The Institute, along with the National Science Foundation, has opened the AIM Problem Lists site to offer an organized and annotated collection of unsolved problems, and previously unsolved problems, in a specialized area of mathematics research. The problem list provides a snapshot of the current state of research in a particular research area, letting experts track new developments, and newcomers gain a perspective on the subject."
The site you gave seems to be like a WikiAnswers for math problems. The site this article is talking about is more of a collaboration tool on unsolved problems that will allow any and all known progress be open to be expanded upon.
The issue I see with this is how do you dish out credit for something like this? If 20 different people solve varying amounts of a problem and then one last person pieces everything together, who solved the problem? Or will we move away from "Smith's Proof" into "Proof of May 2009" by a list of 90 people? I always thought that part of the fun of solving impossible math problems was to take the glory at the end of the day... but, then again, I'm not a mathematician.