tobeproven

tobeproven is a collaborative labeling system and project in mathematical knowledge management that identifies statements or claims that have not yet been proven. As a concept it functions both as a tag and as a workflow for documenting conjectures, partial results, counterexamples, and proposed proof strategies.

Origin and spread: The term is a portmanteau of "to be proven" and gained traction in online mathematical communities and wiki-style knowledge bases in the 2010s. It is used across disciplines such as mathematics, theoretical computer science, and logic.

Structure and practices: Entries labeled tobeproven typically include a statement, context, related results, selected references, and an explicit proof status. They may link to formal proofs in systems like Coq, Lean, or Isabelle, or to counterexamples, numerical evidence, or partial proofs. The system encourages community discussions and staged verification.

Impact and reception: Advocates argue that tobeproven improves transparency, reproducibility, and collaboration by clarifying what remains unsettled and by connecting informal reasoning to formal verification. Critics warn that it can be misused to stigmatize ideas or create perpetual uncertainty, and that the quality of provenance depends on community moderation.

Relation to related concepts: It intersects with the notions of conjecture, theorem, proof, and formal verification. It complements project management in research and educational contexts.