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Publicity Poster
I was browsing through the Meta questions and among other things, a publicity poster seemed to be appearing a lot.
This question seemed to have a lot of poster suggestions.
Eynakal had a sample poster as an answer to a Meta Question. The link to his poster is here.
I thought of putting forth my creation.

A few points:

I sorted questions by votes and simply chose the ones that (I felt) appealed to a greater audience.
I created this in 2 hours so it has many rough edges. The reason I am putting it up now is to get (constructive) criticism on it (or hints that it is too bad and drop it).
I don't care about copyrights and credits and I'll gladly give away the XCF (GIMP) file to whoever is interested. I'll put it up on github or something.
The reason I created this as a separate question rather than answering the one above is to allow for a dedicated question (maybe community wiki?) for all poster designs.

I think this poster is very dark and would be hard to print.

@ArtemKaznatcheev, I assumed that people have access only to BnW printers; Black text over White Background seems a little boring for my taste. But, you have a perfectly valid point. I'll try to fix the colors.

I agree with @Arteem; the white on black is very hard on printers. The layout is nice, though... I would suggest using a white/gray/bold black color scheme for simplicity.

What is the point of this "design?" Where do you plan on posting it? Print or online only? I am a professional designer that can give a lot of feedback if you give me more insight to what the goal and specs are. Right now it is pretty bad for a number of reasons.

@Ryan. I didn't have an intention of use per se. Just started off making it as it came to me. I'd love to hear your criticism.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

sort: votes


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"Patent" tag - Why we don't have it?
Why does this site doesn't has a "patent" tag? Is that completely unrelated to the site?
How come it is unrelated? There are many papers which presents ideas that can be patented.

As @eykanal commented here, there is a StackExchange site called Ask Patents.

If a tag doesn't exist, it doesn't mean it's not important or unrelated to the site. It's probably because nobody's asked a question about that topic yet.
In the present instance, we have the "intellectual property" tag, which would presumably cover patents as well.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


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What's the difference between down-vote, vote to close and flag ?
For some questions, I'm not sure whether I should down-vote it, vote to close or flag for moderator attention? Which one should I choose?

I've seen recently some moderator flags that weren't completely justified, so here is some general guidelines about when to use what.
From the general guidelines:

When should I flag?
If anything happens on our site that makes you feel uncomfortable -- that clearly does not belong here, in your opinion -- please flag it and bring it to our attention!
When should I vote down?
Use your downvotes whenever you encounter an egregiously sloppy, no-effort-expended post, or an answer that is clearly and perhaps dangerously incorrect.
When should I close a question?
Questions that are sufficiently off-topic, as outlined in the FAQ, should be closed by casting close votes. Questions that are sufficiently similar to older questions should be closed by casting close votes.
Note that once you gain the reputation to vote to close, you should no longer flag for moderator attention to have questions closed or migrated. It is your responsibility to vote now.

In general, the point is that in the long-term the community should moderate itself. In other words, vote as much as you can (in particular, down-votes on questions are free, you won't lose any reputation!), when you have enough rep, vote to close.

I just saw a spam question "Why are you so dumb". It's obviously a spam. I flagged it, down voted it and voted to close. Do I really need to vote to close and down vote it? Please clarify.

@scaaahu voting down does not necessarily alert the community or the moderators. But vote to close enables users of enough high reputation (and the mods) to have a look at it using review tool. If you have voted to close, you need not necessarily flag it. That's what @Charles is trying to convey.

@scaaahu: Noble is right, the point is whenever you flag, to also use the other mechanisms you have. In that particular example, you did right to flag, because this content was clearly to be removed and not just closed. Then, the point was to down-vote it, because below a certain score, the question does not appear, which is good. The vote-to-close was not bad, but not strictly speaking mandatory, since it was clearly spam. Anyway, thanks for the participation :)


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Scope Questions
Are the following questions within our scope:

Questions regarding a particular region or university
X vs Y questions with subjective answers. Like "Where do I get my PhD from USA or Europe"
List Questions like "Labs which do Machine Learning"
Software pertaining to Academia (Mendeley or otherwise)
Predicaments one gets caught into. Like "My advisor is leaving his job and I'm in 5th year of PhD"

Questions regarding a particular region or university

yes

X vs Y questions with subjective answers. Like "Where do I get my PhD from USA or Europe"

As is, it's too broad. With more specifics it may actually be interesting, and in my opinion should stay open.

List Questions like "Labs which do Machine Learning"

Too broad, but if more specific it definitely should stay open. If I want to find the academic expert in one sectorial topic, this SE is definitely the place to go.

Software pertaining to Academia (Mendeley or otherwise)

absolutely yes.

Predicaments one gets caught into. Like "My advisor is leaving his job and I'm in 5th year of PhD"

Absolutely yes. Such questions may involve legal and administrative issues requiring others' experience to navigate. This SE is about navigating through the jungle. These situations are the trees. If you stay in the savanna, the whole thing is a mere exercise in time-wasting.

Very well answered !

Ha, I like it: short, sweet, direct, no-nonsense. :D


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PreApproved Community Wiki for Reference Request?
I was wondering if we could have a community wiki (pre-approved) for questions pertaining to reference requests. Before that, let me define "reference requests". In Math.SE, SciComp.SE or SO or wherever, a frequently used tag is the "reference request" tag wherein the users ask for books or other reference material to learn a certain topic.
Within the scope of academia as well, there are many "topics" one may wish to learn about through reading.
In the same spirit as this, could we have a community wiki for topics like

Pre-Grad School
Grad School (Like This)
Grad School > Professorship (Like This or This)
As a professor (Like This)
Academic Writing (Like This)
Public Speaking (Like This)

This will serve 2 purposes:

It will check the number of "Can you suggest a place where I can improve my writing skills" type questions.
It will be a great resource at 1 place. (In true CW spirit?)

I apologize for all the "This" links but the titles of the books are rather off putting to be put here.

This might be a bad idea but I just wanted to try suggesting it.

Sorry for the downvote, but I just don't feel like the organization of the question/answer format these types of lists work very well. They don't age well, keep maintenance to make links up to date, need forum moderation to prevent trivial, late add on answers, the voting doesn't work very well, etc...
I do think they have value to the community though (although to make them excellent takes alot of work, and you have quite a list yourself you have made).
Other venues that people from this site can contribute lists in such a way;

Lists on meta for FAQ's. Examples are the meta.SO FAQ or the list of support for statistical software linked at the stats site. Such lists are useful when questions arise of off-topic (e.g. This is off-topic but look at this Question for help).
Tag wiki's. People can list suggested readings in tag-wiki's as far as I'm concerned (or other useful information).
Blog posts (if the community wants to start a blog in the future).

List type questions can be useful if done well (see Robert Cartaino's post on said topic). They are just IMO more work than they are worth on the main site.

Fair Enough. I agree with the fact that maintenance will be a major pain for such posts.


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Contacting/Referring to another member of SE outside of a comment thread
I've noticed that it's only possible to mention another SE user using the "@" symbol in a comment thread where the user appears, and I was wondering if it was a feature or a bug. In particular, I couldn't find any easy to refer to another member, or just to draw the attention of another member to a particular question. Similarly, on this question, eykanal mentioned my name in a comment, but I didn't receive any message, although I would have liked to.
I know that the point of SE is not to create a mail platform, and clearly there should be some kind of regulations, but I wouldn't mind indicating a list of users who can "refer" me (or say, put a default level of reputation), so that I don't miss out a potentially interesting question.
I don't know if such a mechanism already exists, but somehow it could be nice (with an opt-in mechanism, so that by default, nobody can refer to you).

I just posted something to SE Meta about this. Check it out.

@eykanal I just replied to it, and as I said, I think we can know about that with the auto-completion. But an explicit message could be better.

There are no plans right now to introduce any sort of notification feature along these lines. Stack Exchange is by design avoiding social networking features, including things like this.
Adding a feature that'd allow someone to ping a user from anywhere would go against the design philosophy we've adopted here. Comment notifications are a concession to the fact that the intended use of comments is for clarifications and they often involve some amount of back-and-forth communication.
In the example you give, eykanal should've posted that comment on your answer instead of on the question. It's unfortunate that you didn't get notified, but it's entirely by design.

Whether or not SE has an intent to do it, I find the ability not to flag specific people who likely are experts to be irksome, and the community is somewhat less for it. In a site for experts, it would be nice not to have to pray that GuyIKnowProbablyKnowsTheAnswer stumbles across a post.

@EpiGrad That might be nice for you, but not so nice for GuyIKnowProbablyKnowsTheAnswer who'd be spammed with unsolicited "please look at my question" notifications.

@AnnaLear That's why I'm suggesting to have an opt-in mechanism, and to be able to limit (either explicitly or by level of reputation) those who can contact you. I'd say that a great feature of communities is the interconnection between members. There are many ways one could emulate this feature (we could exchange emails, we could create specific tag, like charles-tag, we could have a specific comment thread where one could post an answer, we could use the chat), but somehow, it would be nice to have it integrated.

@AnnaLear Just out of curiosity, is there a special reason that SE wants to avoid social networking features? I mean, I can understand the risks you're mentioning, and clearly, the point is not to create a big IRC, but, at least in academia, I'd say that referring is pretty much a standard way: "I don't know, but I know someone who might know". But to be clear, I don't want to insist or anything, I'd just like to understand :)

@AnnaLear With all the clever programmers at Stack Exchange, I'd be astonished if you guys failed to come up with an unobtrusive way to implement it.

@CharlesMorisset In a nutshell, because this is a Q&A network, not a social network. There is more information in this answer on MSO. Plus there's no need to add the complexity of a private messaging system when we value communication out in the open and already give users the ability to comment on posts, participate in chat, and include contact information in their user profiles if they wish to be contacted privately (effectively creating an "opt-in" system).

@AnnaLear OK, thanks for the explanation :)

If you want to be available for contacting at any time, just hang out in the main chat room of the site. As long as you were recently in a chat room, you can be pinged there and the notification will land in your global inbox.

Yes, that's my point exactly, as I mention in my comment to Anna's answer, you can already emulate this feature, but it's more complex, and you can't restrict the list of users who can contact you. So, basically, I'm just saying: if we can emulate it, why can't we have directly integrated, in a better way?

Seems like a reasonable solution, if I put any @username in chat do they always get a notification in their inbox?

@AndyW As long as they were in that chat room recently, yes.

I think notifications are really beneficial. I think private messages are not generally useful and go against what I like about the SE network. There might be a few cases where a private conversation would be useful, but I think that they are few and far between.
Chat provides a means of alerting a user while keeping everything out in the open. I personally think it is much better than @user type notifications buried in comments.

We did try setting something like this up on Physics.
It's a question on meta, where people who want to be pingable, each give a single answer, in which they state the specialities on which they want to be pinged.
And then, in theory, if anyone wants to ping you about a question, they can just leave a comment on that meta answer, with a link pointing to the question.  Once you've answered the question, the comment can then be deleted.
Nice theory, huh?
Only thing is, it's almost never been used.
It's also worth quoting what David Z said in a related meta.physics question:

Sure, having a meta question where people can "register" their interest in being pinged sounds fine - at least, there's no rule against it. It wouldn't hurt to try it and see if it helps at all. It wouldn't be featured forever, but we could probably put faq on it if you word it the right way (e.g. "How can I ask someone specific to answer a question?").
However, I would encourage anyone who would be interested in participating in such a system to also do the following three things:

Include your areas of expertise (those in which you would like to be "pinged" if a pinging system were available) in your profile text blurb. If you have enough reputation to have a "user card" (the thing that pops up when the mouse hovers over your gravatar), then make sure your areas of expertise show up there.
Also include those areas in your chat profile.
Stay logged into our chat room as much as possible, and check it periodically to see if you've been "requested." Let's make that the central place to recruit people to help with specific questions.

I think this is the best way to use the existing system to accomplish the goal here - and at worst, it's not going to interfere with the meta post.

(I've amended the links to point to academia rather than physics)

This recent question:
Is it my responsibility to point out that a paper has been plagiarized from another researcher's blog?
seems like a good reason to provide moderators (at least) the ability to ping a particular user. For those who haven't read the thread, the OP has a question about alerting a blog owner about plagiarism against the blog owner, and it turns out that the blog owner is @Suresh, a member of this community.
Obviously, there are other methods (the OP can contact @Suresh through his blog, or more sneakily through a previous comment where "@Suresh" would send Suresh a message), but I think it would be a good idea to allow moderators the ability to email/ping a user (and maybe this is already the case).

Moderators have access to the email address used for registering to SE, so I guess that in this case, we could contact Suresh directly. But this example is so coincidental that I'm not sure we can generalize it :)

Fair enough -- this is a particularly coincidental one!


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When should an answer be deleted?
I was checking the answers that have been deleted, and I noticed that Do journals in general have any kind of policy regarding papers submitted by someone without a research affiliation? has been deleted by Anna Lear. Not that I complain particularly about deleting this answer, but I'm not sure to see the reason why. I mean, the answer should probably have been given as a comment to my answer, since it was a comment on something I wrote, but apart from this, it was correctly written, and it wasn't a spam. Was it flagged by someone?
Sorry to ask, but I'm a bit of a newbie on Stack Exchange, so I'd just like to understand the policy, and what we should expect from the moderators (should they delete each answer that does not really address the question?). In general, when should an answer be deleted as opposed as just downvoted?
Also, I'm not sure who can see the actual answer, so for the sake of this question, here it is:

Some journals implement a double-blind reviewing process, meaning that the reviewers are not aware that the authors are from academia or not

In theory this is true, in practice I think its different.
Most academic fields are quite closed off and small. The possible reviewers and people likely to be published is very small. For example, when I worked in academia we would know who reviewed our papers, and they would know it was us reviewing theirs.

If it was deleted by a moderator, the moderator should have listed a reason (as a comment on the deleted question).  I can't see the deleted answer, so I don't know what actually happened.

I imagine that answer was deleted because it was an "invalid answer"; it was a comment, and should have been posted as such. Hopefully Anna can stop by and confirm that for herself.

Yes, I was suspecting something like that, but I was curious about the process for this answer, like if it was flagged before.

OK, I just noticed that the answer was now actually a comment of my answer, so somehow, it has been moved from answer to comment. I'd still be curious to know what triggered it (i.e. if the poster moved it, and then flag his answer for deletion, or if Anna moved it herself).

@user102 It was probably flagged by a user for being a comment and not an answer, and subsequently moved by a moderator. This is one of the standard reasons you can choose when flagging.


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Which of these posts should be deleted?
There has been some discussion recently here about deletion. What I could suggest, in order to avoid having one question here for each content we might want to delete, is to post as an answer to this question any other questions, answer or comment one would like to delete.
If you have at least 2000 reputation, you can directly vote on posts for deletion: please do so as appropriate. You will also be able to see recent posts that have accrued some delete votes: click on the most votes and recent votes headings to see them all.
If you do not have at least 2000 reputation, then please vote on the proposed deletions below: An upvote on the answer means that the post should be deleted, a negative one means that the post shouldn't. All comments are welcome. By default, if after a few days, there has not been any comment against deletion, the post will be deleted.
What do you think of such a process? It can also allow to keep track of the deletion, and the reason pro/against. Furthermore, it would move some parts of the deletion discussion from the hidden mod room to a more open space.
As F'x pointed out, good candidates for deletion can be found here

Good suggestion. Good way to keep track of deletions.

One can visit this page of closed and downvoted questions. Quite a few of them are good candidates for deletion.

Okay, I've finally found the quote I was looking for that summarizes the SE policy on closed questions. See my edit there. In short: closed questions should be, after some time, either reopened or deleted. This is a temporary state, and they should not accumulate. Each site is free to adopt its own policies, but I believe the reasons that make the SE policy desirable on the other sites make it the right choice here.

Quoting Grace Note: “It is often spoken of that a closed off-topic question could be left on the site "as an example of what doesn't belong". This sounds great on paper, but in practice it doesn't work out.” (source)

@F'x (and @ everyone else as well) As per my edit on the original meta question discussing deletions, I think this question is fundamentally correct, but looking at it from the wrong angle. The question should be, "which of these posts can be salvaged?", with the implicit understanding that unsalvageable posts should be deleted.

eykanal: I maintain my personal deletion policy stated in the question you mention, i.e., I will keep using my mod privilege to directly delete offensive/spam. However, as I have not been elected, and since we've been talking about deletion, I felt it could be a good thing to bring the deletion discussion in a public place, rather than as simple flags "should be deleted". Hopefully, one day, we'll have elections, and some mods might be elected on their deletion policy. In the mean time, we can discuss openly about it.

@Charles - I respect that, and I think this discussion has been constructive so far. I know I've learned a few things about how SO works. Check out my revised answer here and see if you agree/disagree; I'm going to delete my answer here, as it's no longer relevant.

My main concern is the audience we drag from search engines. If you google "UEP-graph", Academia.SE is in the top links. I don't think we gain anything by that, on the contrary. Hence, I'd be in favor of deleting it.

I would also see this thread as a chance to explain why we don't want to delete a question. I don't really like the fact that you can't explain a user why you dismiss a flag.

@eykanal Good, I think the rewording would make things much friendly. But, I think let's keep the word 'deletion' in question in title itself, so that people get more cautious in framing their question and making the suggested edits. People would act fast, if a deletion note is put.

@eykanal: I agree with you, it might have been better to ask which one we could salvage, with the implicit idea that the others would be deleted. When I started this thread, I was still on the idea of deleting as little as possible. Now, for the sake of consistency (i.e., upvote on an answer means deletion), I'd rather keep "deleted" in the title, but we can also start over a new thread.

Actually, Charles, you can send an explanation. You have to click through "Declined," and then select "other." Then you can specify a short reason for dismissing it. (The notice is only about 200 characters long, so you have to be brief!)

@aeismail: yes, you're right, I noticed that afterwards. But I guess I prefer it in the open anyway :)

I wonder if this question has now served its purpose. I believe when the question was asked we really hadn't come up with a consensus of when to delete. I didn't even realize closed questions could/needed to be deleted. The number of undeleted closed questions is relatively small, and none are more than 3 weeks old. I personally have decided to let questions set in the closed state for at least a couple of weeks to see if they get edited.
By not using this question we would lose some of the discussion, but I would hope the discussion would happen at the close stage and not the delete stage.

I agree with you, the original purpose of this question was to avoid the scenario "someone flags for deletion, and one moderator does it because they aren't enough high-reps users." I believe there are now enough users taking care of deletion, so perhaps we don't need this question anymore. Anyway, any question can be brought to meta in case there is a need for deletion.

I was very active on this question, pushing toward deletion of quite a few questions. I think it has served its purpose, and it's time to retire it. Maybe one thing we could do instead is open a thread of “questions that could do with a good editing”?

https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/7722/2700

This question has been closed because it's not really answerable. Clearly, the level of difficulty for studies is something very subjective, and it wouldn't make sense to quantify it. Also, the point here is not to post (non constructive) opinions, and an answer such as "I found my master quite hard" is not suited for here

A rhetorical question What is IRDAM Journal?, where I am the only answerer.
Should the community keep it? IMO, the question could have been edited, but eventually closed.

I'm not sure this question should be deleted. I'm not even sure it should have been closed in the first place. It’s OK to Ask and Answer Your Own Questions. In other words, I don't believe it's a rhetorical question (i.e., asked in order to produce an effect or to make a statement rather than to elicit information), but simply a question where the OP knows the answer.

I guess I want people looking for the acronym IRDAM to eventually arrive on Academia.SE, and to find the question and the answer. Noble, I guess your edit suggestion is good, I guess you can go ahead with it, it would be a pity to delete your answer too.

I tried to improve question as requested. Feel free to edit if you think it can be improved.

@AtillaOzgur: I think the improvement is enough, I'm going to reopen your question.

@AtillaOzgur The edit is good. I have voted to reopen the question. Please vote down this post so that it is not deleted. Charles, Thank you for your feedback.

And now, we have a good question, but the only existing (upvoted and accepted) answer doesn’t match the question any more :(

accepted??.....

I think this answer can be deleted now since the question has been reopened.


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Abusive content
Maybe some of you have notice that we've had some abusive content lately, which was caused a particular user. I have destroyed all of the corresponding accounts, including some content that might not have seemed abusive in the first place. However, I have reason to suspect that this user puts non abusive content to somehow game some automatic detection mechanisms, and therefore is probably irrelevant.
Please do not hesitate to flag for moderator attention if you see something suspicious!

As a side note: when users flag content as abusive (which is a different checkbox than “needs moderator attention”), it can be destroyed without moderator action (enough “abusive” flags will simply delete the post). So, if the content is clearly abusive, we can flag as such (and avoid some work for the mods)!


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The more comments, the better!
There has been a few questions recently which have been closed and then reopened (How to physically handle hundreds and hundreds of papers, How to deal with the frustration of doing PhD at a low-ranked university). As a moderator, it was particularly difficult to deal with these questions because there were not enough comments explaining the motivations of each "side".
Of course, it's ok to vote to close a question, but if you believe this question can be improved, leave a comment explaining why it should be closed and how it could be improved, or upvote a comment left by a previous user. If nobody edits the question, then it's ok to delete  it.
Similarly, it's ok to vote to reopen a question, but if the nobody edited the question, please do so, or leave a comment explaining how you believe it could be improved.
Also, feel free to use up/down-votes! The more information you provide (in addition to your votes), the better.

"If nobody edits the question, then it's ok to delete it." - I am sure if I agree with it (unless with additional remark "with no [good] answers.").

@PiotrMigdal: F'x pointed once to this answer from Grace Note. Basically, closed questions should be deleted or reopened. If there is a good answer, then the question should be edited to fit with that good answer.

Editing a question to fit an answer really seems like a solution hunting for a problem.

To add to this: if a discussion is getting long, don't hesitate to bring it here - a meta thread can give folks a lot more room to discuss a closed question, and make it much easier to find past discussions if a similar issue arises in the future.
Just don't forget to provide a link to the discussion in a comment on the question being discussed.


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Duplicate question deleted by Community
It was recently brought to our attention that this question has been automatically deleted by the Community user, which also deleted some comment on this question. To the best of my knowledge, the Community user is not controlled by the moderators of this site, and I would guess it's either automated or controlled by a global moderator. I was aware that Community could delete comments of destroyed users, or automatically flag some content, but I didn't know that it could delete such content.
Since the normal rule is to say that we do not delete duplicate questions, I'm not sure why this question has been deleted, could a global moderator (or someone who knows what happened) provide some explanation?

We just had a long discussion about this in mod chat (mod-only, sorry), which led to me posting this request on Meta.SO.
Long story short, it was closed because Community deletes closed, downvoted questions.

Thanks, I found the mod-chat so hard to read through that I practically never go there.

@CharlesMorisset  Heh, you mean you find seven simultaneous conversations to be confusing? No way! :)

yeah ... it's a shame, if only there was system where mods could ask questions to each other and answer them, and where the mods could up vote/downvote them ... if only such a system would exist ... :)

The question has now been undeleted. I just gave it an up vote so it shouldn't get auto deleted again. I guess as individuals we need to think about up/down voting duplicates.


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How do you use tags?
There has been several questions recently about tags, and topic related tags in particular. I was wondering: how do you use tags? Why do we care about them?
Personally,  I don't use them at all, I only search for questions through the search bar. It would therefore be helpful to see what kind of usages the community has for tags.

I think the usefulness of tags varies across different SE sites. Besides StackOverflow and Academia, I am active in Sports.SE, and occasionally drop by English.SE, Fitness.SE and Arqade.
Based on my experience, tags are very handy in Sports.SE where you can easily filter the questions based on your interest and knowledge of the discipline in question. I have tags that I have identified as favorites, and tags I ignore. Makes things much easier...
Arqade is just as self-explanatory as SO, since pretty much every game has its own tag. One simply needs to search for questions tagged with a game of interest, and BAM! you got everything you asked for...
With Academia.SE I think most of the tags are pretty useless, IMHO, since an overwhelming number of questions can be assigned to one of the following:

research
admissions
phd/masters
publishing/publications

There is a whole lot of (at least partially-) redundant tags (e.g. publishing/publications/writing)
Pretty much everytime I ask a question I am bothered to find the "right" tag(s), so I feel a clean-up of the existing tags would be beneficial for the site (at least from my perspective)

I see the main purpose of tags as two-fold:

Allow users who are interested in specific topics to quickly identify/have emailed to them questions on those topics
Allow for topic-specific searching

It's not as useful for the first purpose, as all of Academia is basically one large topic, but I've found them very useful for the second purpose.

Do you have an example of information you would find by tag search but not by a regular search? Most of the time, the tag name is contained in the question/answer.

Not off the top of my head. I've used it in the past to find questions about papers, and I remember using it to find one about bibliographies. Maybe I'm the only one using it like that :)

I often find tag searches much more helpful than regular searches. To follow on to a comment made by Charles to Eykanal, I rarely find anything with a tag search that I do not find with a regular search. The key difference is I find a lot less (not so much on our site yet, but definitely the bigger sites). A tag tells me the question is really about the topic. Just because a word is used tells me very little.


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Would I be allowed to link to my own published papers, if relevant to the question?
If strictly to do with the topic, could I give a link to one of my own published papers as an example?

Wouldn't this be so exceptional that the question would be closed as "too localized" anyway?

perhaps, it is unlikely that it would be needed to be done.

Yes.

So long as the paper and the link coherently fit into your answer, as well as the topic of the question, I don't see a problem with this. You can make a disclaimer if you want, and I think that would satisfy any concerns.

Good idea about the disclaimer - I would imagine that this would be a very occasional occurrence.

+1 for disclaimer. I think thats an important step.


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What is wrong with my question
A question, if I may, about my question about data backups and security here, (which has now 5 upvotes, 1 downvote = 23 rep; 2 very full replies- also upvoted) based on my understanding that asking questions relating to academic tools were okay.
It seems to have attracted a comment discussion about where to move it to - why is not alright here?
But if you decide to move it to ux.SE or wherever (another suggestion in the comments was superuser.SE), a practical question if I may - does it mean that the 23 rep that I have earned would be lost, especially as I am not a member of either of these sites? (seriously not sure how that works).

Well, that is now 2 downvotes for the question - so please, if you are going to migrate/delete/close the question, just do what you want to do. (I'll just stick to answering questions)

Downvotes are not the same as close votes.
The issue is that you haven't done anything to make the question specific to this board. The situation you describe, as you've described it, could apply to anyone.
Asking, however, if universities offer tools to help with this, however, would make the question more relevant to this board.

so, it is going to be migrated, deleted or closed?
I have added in specific references to PhD and journal-research.

I can't guarantee anything—this is a community board, after all—but the fact that you already have several answers makes it an unlikely candidate for any of those fates.

I've also added a bit asking if universities offer the services you're looking for. (For instance, in grad school, my school's IT service allowed us to back up our on-campus machines, and it turned out to be a lifesaver!)

fair enough.  A bit of background - the reference to my MSc submission was about when I was due to submit my thesis, I was right in the middle of the Queensland floods of 2011, and was in one of the worst hit areas - almost lost everything (including my own life).

I think this question does have academia-specific sides to it and thus is relevant for this site. For example, see my comment there on how publishing your work is, in a way, the "ultimate" backup.


text:
Reopening of a question closed without comments
Recently, the question How often should one evaluate a plan for an academic career? has been closed without a single comment explaining why it should be closed, while there was already an upvoted answer.
I decided to reopen the question, because the next logical step is to delete the question, and I have no idea why it should be the case, and it's likely we're stuck with an "on hold/closed" question. As I already stated here, comments are very helpful to maintain the site, especially that we are still on beta, and that we don't exactly have hundreds of questions each day. Helping a new user understanding why his/her question is too broad or off-topic is important to help the community grow.
To be clear: I'm not saying that this question should necessarily be kept open or should be closed, but if you know why you're closing the question, then leaving a comment should not be that difficult, and if you don't know why you're closing the question, then perhaps you should not be voting to close in the first place.

Expecting users to offer justification for why they're closing questions is part of the spirit, if not the letter, of the new "on hold" policy. I think questions need to have some constructive comments for improvement. Otherwise things can get out of hand.

Fair enough, sounds like a good plan.

The close reasons provide explanation of why a voter is voting to close.
Nowhere on Stack Exchange do up-votes, down-votes, close-votes, re-open votes or delete votes require comments from non-mod voters.
And there's no reason why Academia.SE should be an exception.
The re-opening was an unfortunate mis-judgement: one that's reversible. The question still asks "How do you plan your career?" which is ludicrously broad for a Q&A site, as evidenced by the answers so far: do any of those look like an identifiably correct answer? No, they don't. A whole book might (but probably wouldn't) provide an identifiably correct answer.

I do not agree with your assessment, just because something is not required of you doesn't mean that there's no reason to skip it. I mean there's no law that requires you to say "sorry" if you bump into someone on the street, but you still do (I hope). It's good manners, and in this particular case, it helps a new user get acclimated with the site.

Personally, I think it is not only polite, but also potentially helpful for the member.
Sure, it does not have to be done, but look at it this way - put a question on hold, the member may not know the reason exactly why, even with the close reason dialogue, it does not hurt to comment some suggestions so that the member may edit and improve their question and things can get back on track.
The same especially applies to downvotes - a downvote without a comment explains nothing.
Just because the established members know the nuts-and-bolts of writing a question, does not mean a new member will automatically know these.
In any case, this is what I am going to be doing from now on.


text:
Undergrad question but with postgrad implications
I am referring to this question about the application process - it is something that often happens for postgraduate, as well as undergraduate applications, so it could be useful for anyone reading it.

The specified question is on-topic for German graduate students as well. I've posted a note to that effect on the question, and would therefore "overrule" a motion to close. (Granted it helps that I know the German system well enough, and someone else might not. However, the important thing is that it is relevant for the board.)

it has also been upvoted - so, is useful.

It appears that the question is now 'on hold', I have submitted to reopen.


text:
Why was my upvoted answer deleted?
This is quite discouraging.  Why was my answer to this thread deleted?
It says converted to comment, but I do not see it anywhere.  This is the 2nd time (according to my reputation record) that an answer of mine has been removed in a week (and I am using the term in the aforementioned record 'removed').
I like to think that I am making some contribution to this site, but clearly this seems not to be the case.

Just to echo Charles's point about rankings, your contributions are clearly very highly valued; both your questions and answers are highly upvoted. Looks pretty useful to me! I strongly encourage you to reconsider your standing in the community; one deleted answer does not a bad contributor make.

To answer the other part of your question, your other answer was deleted because the question as a whole has been deleted. This question was downvoted twice, closed by 5 users, and deleted by 3 different users (I personally cast the final deletion vote). The side-effect of deleting a question is to also delete all answers. So no need for paranoia here.
As for your contribution, if you care about reputation, then you could see that you were the 3rd in the league rank for june, and you're still third for July: http://stackexchange.com/leagues/191/month/academia
That means that the community values your contribution. You can of course decide to "stick to reviewing", it's entirely up to you.

please do not label me as being paranoid.  As I said in my last comment to your previous answer "Got the message"... which means, I got your message.  I assure you, that I am not obsessed with rep - but it is not difficult to notice when 2 lots of 'removed' reps occurring in the past week.  But, as I said, I got your point before, accepted your point, with the my last comment to your previous answer.

@Damien: Well, you come and claim that we "remove" your contribution. That's not the case. The first time was because the entire question was removed, the second time it was transformed into a comment (and, apparently, a bug then deleted your comment). Since you seem to have a very defensive attitude, I just want to point out there is no need to be paranoid. In the future, don't automatically assume that it's against you.

when the only information I had on hand was in the rep table stating "removed", hence why I used the word. Please, I take offense at being labelled 'paranoid'.

I transformed your answer to a comment, because it didn't any new comment w.r.t. the other answers. Your answer was basically "It happened to me. The other answers are good. I dislike plagiarism.", which is fine, but is more a comment than an actual answer.
I do not know why your comment was deleted, the way it appears to me is that you deleted the comment yourself:

EDIT: original answer:

I have experienced this first hand as well - not a very nice feeling at all. I can only share what I did in response and it largely echoes the great advice given in the replies here. Contact the institution's dean and present the evidence, which isn't hard to do as your work is published. Plagiarism is probably the biggest peeve of mine, I find that it is a deliberate and wilful act of intellectual theft - laziness and even ignorance are not valid excuses. Any incidence needs to be tackled head on and through the right channels.

I assure you, I did not delete the comment. computer went a bit haywire (cursor froze). But it may as well stay deleted as it does not add to the question.  I'll just stick to reviewing.

@Damien: Well, I do not know what happened. I'm tagging it as a bug so that the SE mods can have a look at it. In the mean time, I'm copying your original answer here, so that you can put it as a comment yourself.

That's fine, as I said, it clearly does not add to the thread.  I will stick to reviewing.

@Damien: Please avoid passive-aggressive statements such as "I'll just stick to reviewing" (you already used a similar formulation here. If you cannot stand any form of correction on your questions/answers, perhaps you should not consider being involved in a community-based site in the first place. You have highly voted questions and answers, so it's not like everything you say is rejected.

okay, no problems. Got the message.

I would say that the answer is not a particularly good answer. Had it been the first answer it would have added something new, but as the 3rd answer it doesn't add much. That said, I think that it being deleted without a comment or chance to edit is a bit "harsh" and not a good behaviour shaping experience. I personally would like to see you expand the answer with your personal insights into the process as you experienced it. My guess is that a modest improvement would lead to it being un-deleted.
@Charles I appreciate the work you and the other diamond mods do. I am struggling with not making this comment sound super negative, so please read it with a grain of salt and realize I am not complaining much. In general, I think the diamond mods are pretty careful. For example, you only tend to cast close and delete votes when only one more "regular" vote is needed or the question/answer is clearly spam. In this case I would have liked for the community to have been given some more time to comment/flag the answer. Maybe even highlighting the answer in meta/chat to help get non-diamond mods into the act of managing the site. Again, I appreciate your work.

That's a fair point. I didn't think about it much, because the point was not to delete the answer, but simply to move it as a comment of the question (I don't believe to be responsible of the subsequent deletion of the comment, it might be a bug), which is something done on a regular basis. But you're right, I should have left a comment on the question, explaining the move.

If I was asked to improve the answer with more detail, I would have been more than happy to.

I appreciate people's concern and the discussion this has generated.
As I said in my final comment to the first answer:

okay, no problems. Got the message

I assure you, I got it, I understand, hence why I said 'I got it'.
I offered my final comment to the 2nd answer as explanation (emphasis added):

when the only information I had on hand was in the rep table stating "removed", hence why I used the word. Please, I take offense at being labelled 'paranoid'

Reputation table is reference to this (do not know what else to call it), where the word "removed" is used (without explanation), hence why I used it in my question (as I explained).
I would have liked an opportunity to fix the answer (especially in light of a new incidence that occurred a couple of hours after posting the answer), but that point is moot now.

Your answer has been undeleted so that you can improve it :)

@CharlesMorisset I have modified the answer.


text:
Other than flagging them, what can we do about blatant advertisers
There is a lot of spam in the replies here, the reply from Ian Pack is a blatant one as a quick search shows he works for the company that he is "recommending", I would not be surprised if more are spamming.
Another one in the thread, David Foster, is the Training Manager of the company he is touting.
I don't want to link to these spammers' websites.
I did a search of the name, product and company and both cases are employees spamming their products.

also, both have no accounts other than here and 1 rep point... that is hat got me suspicious in the first place.

If you see one, flag it. If you see more than one of them by the same author/company (it has happened on Chemistry, for example), flag it and alert the moderators in case they didn't notice that it was the same author/company (by a meta post or custom flag with explanatory text).

I think it is fair to report this andso adding a comment like "This seems like advertisement" in some form should be enough to alert others. The OP can then object if they need to with some facts to the contrary.

I'm not sure it is our responsibility to "report them to their company bosses".
What you did was I guess the right move: flag them, and bring them to meta. One of the answer you mention has been deleted by the community, and the other one is down-voted. The answers were technically on topic, and although it would be better for the users to state their affiliation, it's not necessarily spam.

don't worry, I have not gone on a corporate-warpath (I have edited out that part). I vehemently hate with every fibre of my being, advertising in general, let alone these false 'recommendations'.

Every question asking for some recommendation is bound to have some kind of advertising, which is why there are not always welcome here.

I agree wholeheartedly on that, the last thing any SE site needs is a spam-storm...erm... I mean 'recommendations'.

The question at hand happens to be a good target for spammers, due to the nature of the question. I've protected the question, which should make it marginally more difficult; if the problem continues, we can lock the question as well.
If other questions like similar to this one (i.e., where answers will contain product recommendations) experience similar issues, flag it and we'll protect/lock as necessary.

The FAQ addresses this

Avoid overt self-promotion.
The community tends to vote down overt self-promotion and flag it as
  spam. Post good, relevant answers, and if some (but not all) happen to
  be about your product or website, that’s okay. However, you must
  disclose your affiliation in your answers.
If a large percentage of your posts include a mention of your product
  or website, you're probably here for the wrong reasons. Our
  advertising rates are quite reasonable; contact our ad sales team for
  details. We also offer free community promotion ads for open source
  projects and non-profit organizations.

I think the SAMS answer actually answers the question and is not spam despite the obvious advertising aspect of the answer. I think a down vote and a comment are the right way to go. I am not sure flagging is particularly helpful because I don't think the diamond mods should be deleting answers which answer the question. The AccusAQL answer does not answer the question, so down voting and flagging is the way to go.

Actually, the answer on AccuSQL seemed to be way too generic (it's not really for attendance monitoring only, it seems to be a solution for managing an entire academic server), which is why I deleted it. I believe the other answer (SAMS) was actually quite relevant, but three other users deleted the answer.

@CharlesMorisset fair enough looking more closely at AccuSQL I can see how it is spam.

I can't see the deleted answers. However, I'll add my 2 cents from elsewhere:
If a new user with no previous activity blatantly advertises a product/website/..., treat it as spam. Don't forget, besides flagging, to downvote the answer: sufficient number of downvotes with no upvotes deletes the post at one moment.
If it's clearly spam, edit the answer, remove the contents and add spam content deleted. (However, that applies only when it's very clearly a spam with no discussion about it.)

I don't recommend editing the spam answers.  Just leave them as they are, and let the existing spam system work to cause them to be deleted.


text:
Text in comment box
When I want to type a new comment, there is some text already present in the text box, which disappears when I start typing my comment. However, this text is not complete, and only shows: "Use comments to ask for more information or suggest improvements. Avoid comments like":

Am I the only one with this bug? For info, it shows both on Safari and Firefox, on Mac OS.

I don't have the issue exactly as you describe it, but I do see the problem in the alt text on the "add comment" link:

I'll report this to the SE admins and they can take a look. Thanks!

EDIT: It appears they already know about this issue and it's already been fixed. The fix may take some time to propogate to all sites, so you may not see the changes for a few hours.

Yep.  No need to post an additional "official" answer because it would be exactly what this one says.


text:
Are realistic hypothetical situation based questions permitted?
The question would have to be very specific and answerable, but would hypothetical (and realistic) questions be permitted?
What I mean by this is, would situations that do not necessarily happen to the person asking the question, but could happen (and may have happened) be permitted?

As long as you're able to provide any specific details if requested, I don't see any problem.

@CharlesMorisset thank you, I would base any hypotheticals on events that I have heard of occurring in passing (i.e. not privy to the exact details) and would be possible to occur again.

I don't see any reason why they should not be permitted, and judged by the same measure as all questions. If they are a good fit for the site (which probably requires that they be realistic), they add value and should be allowed!

Moreover, I don't think you can prevent them efficiently. There's no way you can tell, when I ask a question, whether it's really happened to me. Sometimes, I ask what I think are good questions from my past experiences (in that particular case, I added a PS, but I don't always). Sometimes, I make up questions… (based on real-life circumstances that have happened, or could have happened to others)
For example, if you look at my questions, you may realize that I am:

an undergrad student
a post-doc
a research group leader
editor of a journal
a senior researcher who chairs session in prestigious conferences
and my name is John Smith

I can tell you (in confidence): not all of these are true!

You're not John Smith?  But thank you for your point there, that a hypothetical should not be obviously a hypothetical.

No, they are really not a good fit to the site at all.
The reason is, that however good your imagination is, there may be crucial details that would relate to a real-life situation, that you just haven't anticipated.
That makes the answers much less useful to anyone with a real-world problem that looks broadly like what you made up.
The Help Cente  explicitly states that you must Try to extract the fundamental question from the specific problem at hand.
If you don't have that specific problem, don't ask about it. Fake questions are as bad as fake answers, and the site is better off without them.
The tour, that all new users of the site are directed to, is very explicit about this, and it's a principle that applies across all Stack Exchange sites:

Focus on questions about an actual problem you have faced. Include details about what you have tried and exactly what you are trying to do.

(emphasis as in the original)

I'm not sure what you refer to as “fake answers”, but using the Q&A format, within its limit, to share knowledge (e.g. by self-answering) is, and has long been, allowed and even encouraged on Stack Exchange.

Regarding the main point of your answer, @UV-D specifically stated “realistic” and “very specific and answerable” questions, i.e. they concern a real-world problem, even though it may not have occurred to you (or occurred yet, or occurred in this particular alternative universe :)


text:
What is the policy on keeping bad questions with useful answers?
Say, a question that is not a perfect fit for the site was posted - mostly some consider it to have some merit, some do not.
What if said question generates some very useful answers (not just upvoted, but generate comments that indicate the usefulness).  Will the question (hence, useful answers) still be deleted eventually (if not improved)?

Comparing a bad question with no answers (or bad answers), and a bad question with good answers, my view is that in the case of the good answers, it gives us (the community) more motivation to actually edit the question into a better shape, even if the OP doesn't do it.
After all, if a question gets a good answer, it means that there is a diamond somewhere in the rough of that question (maybe not always a diamond, but at least a decent enough gemstone).

topaz? sapphire? citrine?

@UV-D or chrysoprase, clinohumite, kornerupine, dumortierite… (“look honey, you said you wanted a jewel, I've got you a dumortierite necklace”)

Ignoring duplicate questions, I believe the SE philosophy was that there are two fates for closed questions (editing and deletion). I think the On Hold terminology was designed to highlight that the "closed" state is temporary. A question needs to be closed before it can be deleted. Closed questions that have a negative vote total are deleted by the community user (Duplicate question deleted by Community). A number of us look at closed questions regularly and either edit or vote to delete (e.g., Which of these posts should be deleted?).

So, an option would be to reword the useful answer(s) perhaps as a self answered question?

This is the most correct answer, I believe. Think of it this way: if this site contained nothing other than great answers to off-topic and otherwise inappropriate questions, it wouldn't be very useful as an Academic knowledge repository, would it? If the question can be edited to be more relevant, please do so, but otherwise it's exactly what it is: a great answer to a wrong question.

@eykanal thank you for that, just clarifying.


text:
consistency in voting to close
I'm not sure if this is the appropriate place to raise this issue, but:
The stated purpose of the forum seems to be that the questions should benefit both undegraduates, graduate students and academicians.
A question about writing a cv for an internship was put on hold on vote because it was deemed off-topic and unhelpful to the rest of the community Preparing a curriculum vitae for an undergraduate internship
Fair enough. However similar questions about obtaining research jobs What options does college dropout with great grades, research projects and CV have to return to university (or thinktanks)? or getting into grad school without an undergrad Is it possible to be admitted to a Master's program after not completing Bachelor's degree due to academic dishonesty? seem to be accepted without question, or relevance to the stated purpose of the forum.
So my question is, what is the policy (if any) to ensure consistent moderation? It's not fair for some questions to get put on hold/deleted for being irrelevant when other equally irrelevant questions are allowed to stay up.

I would like to welcome you to AC.SE. I am sorry your initial contact has been so unpleasant. This is the right place to ask these type of meta questions about AC.SE. You could also use chat, although it is generally pretty quiet. Ideally when questions get put on hold, the voters will provide a little more information about why they are closing it.
Some people here feel anything undergrad related is off topic. I am not one of those. I think your question could have just as easily come from a grad student and hence be on topic. I haven't voted to reopen your question because I think it currently is too localized and the answers will only help you. There are also a lot of different questions that you are asking. A better, in my opinion, question, would ask about the theory of the different sections of the CV and not one so focused on your specifics skill set which no one else will have.
If you edit it to be more general, I will be happy to vote to reopen it. In the absence of an edit, I will think about it.

@rocinante I think this answer is great and I have nothing to add other than this is a young site and from what I've read of your answers and comments you do have valuable insights and I, for one, hope you continue to contribute (despite recent disagreements). I would also vote to re-open the question you mentioned, if it were made more generic and thus more applicable to others.

the voters are really biased, they like what they like to hear.

I changed the title of the question because the issue is not one of "moderation."
Stack Exchange sites are community-driven. Therefore, as much as possible, the moderators try to leave decisions to the general community. We will act unilaterally in clear-cut cases (abusive or spam posts, duplicates, completely off-topic questions such as programming questions, and so on). Otherwise, we prefer to wait until there's a consensus.
In this particular instance, the close votes were entirely from regular users; the moderators played no role in closing the question. Personally, I agree that the question you've cited should be reopened, and would support a reopening "campaign"; I've indicated this in the comments section. However, as I also pointed out above, the moderators here prefer to work from a consensus standpoint, so I'd rather if several users voted to reopen instead of acting unilaterally.

I appreciate the way the moderators behave. I think it is hard because a are still small and getting a consensus can take a while.

I agree with the previous answers, and there are just a couple of points I'd like to add.
If you look at the FAQ, the topic is for academics of all levels—from aspiring graduate and professional students to senior researchers—as well as anyone in or interested in research-related or research-adjacent fields, and as such, undergraduates questions are deemed relevant only when they are related to entering graduate studies or could be easily applied to questions related to graduate life. Hence, a question that benefits only undergraduates is not necessarily on-topic.
Secondly, I think any argument like "this question should be open/closed because this other question is open/closed" is not particularly constructive, since it's quite hard to compare questions and the reasons why they are closed or not. I've asked in the past for people to put comments when they vote to close, but unfortunately not everybody does (and in the case you point out, none of the closers left a comment to explain why they voted to close). It is possible that multiple reasons led this question to be closed, for instance, it's very specific (the OP listing his/her own skills), and looks like "help me do my CV" (which is off-topic) rather than "what is a good CV" (which could be on-topic, as aeismail pointed out). But I would be very careful in calling two questions "equally irrelevant".
Finally, this is a community site, so feel free to edit any on-hold question, that's why they are on-hold and not deleted yet. If you think a question should be open, then you have every right to launch a campaign to reopen it, even if it's not yours.

I'm saying you shouldn't compare questions between them. Any question should be analysed with respect to its own merits. I have never said that the question was not welcome, and as a matter of fact, I didn't vote on it. There is no higher power here, just a bunch of users voting on what they like and what they don't. Complain if there is some abuse, otherwise just make the changes you want to see.


text:
mass up-voting yourself with a second account
How to prevent that from happening? For example, I definitely do not believe that this surge of reputation actually happened:
https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6393/espanta?tab=reputation

Don't worry too much about it, our Cybord Overlords are taking good care of it :)

There is a series of scripts which Stack Exchange runs to try to find suspicious voting patterns. If they are in fact the same user, then this will be detected over time. For now, though, I would suspect that the two users at least definitely know each other, although from what I can tell this doesn't appear to be a sockpuppet situation.


text:
Where do I ask questions about specific graduate schools and chances of admission?
I am currently a sophomore, but just looking for some statistics on graduate school admissions, and if possible chances tailored to my own statistics.

You can flag the moderators to migrate your question to meta. I just did it for you.

There are dozens of forums on grad school in general and for schools in specific fields in particular, where you can ask such questions. Try searching Google for "What are my chances of getting into university [X]" and you will find plenty of them.
Whether you will find this exercise useful or not is another question entirely. See: http://forum.thegradcafe.com/topic/23061-before-you-ask-what-are-my-chances/

The reason I'm asking is that the particular program I am most interested in is a small program that does not post statistics online, but is at a very well-known university nonetheless. So, there isn't really much data to go from - I really don't know anything about my chances, or even if I have a chance.

Actually, this isn't true. In many academic fields it is extremely hard to find information about PhD program admissions. TheGradCafe is a little sparse.

It seems like this could be a good question for the main site. I am not sure why it was migrated to meta. It would take a little bit of work to make it clear that your are not asking on AC.SE for your chances for acceptance, but rather how to evaluate your chance for admission. My other concern would be that the question would become a poll type question asking for recommendations of other forums.


text:
Recent spam for sport blog
Recently, there has been a surge of spam posts for a sport blog, broadcasting illegal streaming. Although such posts have always been correctly flagged as spam and the corresponding accounts destroyed by the moderators, an extra action to help prevent this kind of posts is to report the blog to blogspot.
I've done it, but I guess the more people reporting it, the more likely it is that google takes action. I won't put the link of the blog here, but next time a similar post arises, please keep it in mind!

As a quick update: the blog in question has now been removed from blogspot, so it works!

Here's a direct link to the Blogspot reporting page.

Thanks for the link to my post :-)


text:
Who decides when an answer is correct?
There are some questions here on 'being nice when down voting' or 'when closing'. Here's my experience.
I just want to say that I feel I have been unnecessarily downvoted for a simple opinion on a simple question.
SE says

Use your downvotes whenever you encounter an egregiously sloppy, no-effort-expended post, or an answer that is clearly and perhaps dangerously incorrect.

I have come to conclude that this site is not so much focused on hard and fast answers, but that it is more like a meta site in the network. Trusted users and modes should take this post a lot more seriously.
There is just much appreciated exception: https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14410/okiharaherbst You make my day! Even though you don't agree, you at least try to understand.
No offense, but here is my experience. I think certain community members (including the downvoters) have done an awful job in welcoming me here.
You will only see the back of me.

When to downvote is something that individual users and the site culture as a whole has to determine for itself.  I will note that the excerpted passage is listing sufficient conditions for downvoting, not necessary conditions, and I think that -- provided you believe in downvoting at all, which not everyone does -- they are clearly good reasons to downvote.  I will disclose that I downvoted your answer for reasons that are within the spirit of the quoted passage: I thought it was sloppy and has the possibility of being not only incorrect but dangerously incorrect.

When people ask "What should I do in this situation?" type of questions, downvotes serve a very useful answer: they indicate that community members feel strongly that you should not follow the advice given in that answer.  In this case, though I am sorry that it is your first answer here and that it has given you a bad impression of the site, I'm glad that your answer has so many downvotes: that's a big hint to the OP that many people think s/he should not follow the advice.

If you like, I would be happy to leave as an answer here more detailed reasons for why I downvoted your answer.

+1 for a beautiful question. My friend, please do not take it personally. People do not always agree with our advice. That is not offensive to you as a person. I do not know you (and I never will). So, regardless of the downvotes on this one question, I would love to hear your opinion on anything and you know what? You can downvote as well!!!

For reference: http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/19653/64

I will say that I neither upvoted nor downvoted your answer, even though I disagreed with it.
However, the basic rules that apply to more traditional Stack Exchange sites really can't apply here: a lot of the questions on this site tend to be experience-based, rather than having strictly factual answers. The consequence of this is that it's hard to say that an answer is "clearly" incorrect. However, if the reader believes that the answer is wrong, and following that advice could cause more problems than it solves, that is a logical reason to downvote, per the quote given above.

Indeed, you have confirmed my suspicion. This is a forum: "the basic rules that apply to more traditional Stack Exchange sites really can't apply here." Hence the academia site is ironically maybe one of the most biased ones in the network. Not my cup of tea.

I am sorry you feel that way. However, interactions between people—which is fundamentally what the practice of academia is—don't have definitive answers. There's a lot of gray area, and a lot of questions don't have binary right-wrong answers. Some things are clear-cut, and many things aren't. Holding questions and answers here to the same standard as a programming site (such as Ask Ubuntu) isn't practical.


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Moderator election
I was under the impression that with graduation came the election of moderators, since the current moderating team has been nominated by SE. Does anybody know the exact process?

They usually wait a week or two after graduation, I'd just ask someone from the comm team in TL if you want to know more.

About a month after graduation, elections take place. They'll initally start with three positions. All current (pro-tempore) mods will need to run for re-election at that point.
(Source: this discussion in TL, only accessible to moderators)

Well, current mods will need to run for reelection only if they want to keep their positions. ;-)


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Increased urgent privileges when moderators are unavailable
In these times of elections, the question was raised by @scaaahu of what happens when no moderator is available, typically at certain time intervals: if all moderators live in the same timezone, then they might share the same unavailability. In addition, academics might need to travel often, and it could be the case that for a few days, 1 or 2 moderators only are available.
Many moderating operations are not particularly urgent, but some are, in particular deleting spam or intervening against vandalism. Could it be possible, if mods can declare their unavailability, to increase the privileges of high rep users if needs be? For instance, if I know I won't have time during one week, I could easily set it up on the site, so that it is certain that I won't be able to act as a moderator during that time. In the worst case scenario, if all mods are unavailable, then users with high-rep should be able to act as moderators (suspending spammers and vandals, removing/hiding offensive content, etc).

Not sure if this should go here or to the Stack Exchange meta site...

@eykanal: Not sure either, but I think the SE overlords watch the "feature-request" tag, and since we are running the elections now, I thought it was quite relevant to have it here. But I'm happy to move it.

Do we have actual evidence of significant non-overlap in moderator coverage, or a particular problem with spam in the time window folks seem to be worried about?

@Fomite: I don't have concrete evidence, although when we were only 3 moderators, I remember times where flags could linger on for a few days, because no moderator was available to take care of them. I don't think it was critical, but at the same time, the feature I'm suggesting is rather cheap to implement, on a voluntarily basis, and can only help.

I think the answer to this in the long run is probably to increase the number of moderators.

It has been pointed out by F'x on the chat that:

3 spam flags hide a question, and 6 spam flags = instant delete, whether it's Q or A (source)
  so, if spam posts survive, it just means that we just have very few users in this timezone, whether they're mod or not
  which, I think, means it's not so much of a problem right now (and it will disappear as the site grows)
  In short: mods are not the first line of defense, other users have powerful tools for clear-cut cases (spam, offensive speech, etc.)

In addition, eykanal mentioned that:

people who flag often, and have their flags ranked as "helpful", have their flags weighted higher

So it seems there is enough built-in mechanisms to deal with spams, even if no moderator is available. I would therefore suggest to first document cases where spam was effectively visible by new users for an extended period of time, and then to request a feature only if it is shown to be a consistent problem.


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Why are there so many "Is it appropriate to..." questions on Academia.SE?
I am not an academic, I am however a regular SE user. I see several Academia.SE questions in the "hot questions" sidebar. It seems that many of these questions go something like:

"Is it appropriate to... ?"
"Is it polite to... ?"
"Is it normal to... ?"

Why are there so many etiquette and protocol type questions at Academia.SE?
Is this unique to Academia.SE or are there radically different standards for civility in real life academia?
Some numbers from the SE API. There are 4614 total questions, a search for "appropriate" returns 665 results. Roughly 14%.

Because subjective questions are both easy to ask and easy to answer.

Your 14% figure is quite misleading—it includes all questions and answers containing a variant of the term "appropriate," regardless of the topic of the question. Actually, the number of questions with "appropriate" in the title is less than 1% of the total, which I think is entirely reasonable.
As I've stated elsewhere, though, academia is about interpersonal interactions—what you might think is reasonable (and what might pass for so in everyday life) might not be so well received in the academic world (for "diplomatic" as well as legal reasons). Asking about etiquette situations is therefore an appropriate use of this board.

I think that answers my question. I'm getting a skewed picture from what I see in "Hot Questions" and the rules in academia are different from the private sector.

Yeah, there's been a bit of a run on "appropriate" questions in the last few days.

Compared to the world of business, academia has a much less well defined hierarchy.
For example, I am line managed by one person, academically managed by another but the actual money for my paycheck comes from a third, fourth and fifth.  At any one time I can be collaborating with a bunch of other people answerable to completely different (but equally complex) management structures.  And I don't even have many teaching responsibilities to factor in at the moment!  But the question of who takes credit/blame for outcomes (publications/funding) will have a major impact on my career.
This is no bad thing, indeed it's part of why academics are regarded as independent thinkers (hopefully).
Bearing all this in mind, though, sometimes you have to know the boundaries of what is considered acceptable behaviour.  It's a bit different to business where you just do what your boss says.
(Admittedly that's a slightly simplistic portrayal of the business world but I have worked there as well and the difference is certainly tangible to me).

Colleges used to be havens for freethinkers. Today, they've become havens for totalitarianism. This probably explains why so many people seem to be so afraid of offending people with inappropriate words or behavior.

Whether or not that's true, it's a different issue: your link is about what academics can say to students and the public, while my answer is about hierarchy and relations between faculty.


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Asking about ettiquette for confusing exam questions?
This question on the Computer Science SE involves an example exam question which is very unclear. I was wondering if it would be on-topic (including not "bad subjective") here to ask what a student should do when faced with such questions in an exam (or homework).
(A related question might be how to grade such questions. Knowing how an answer to a seemingly unclear question will be graded may give hints at how such should be answered.)
If it is on-topic, what tags should be used. (I am guessing etiquette and exams would be appropriate.)

The poster of the question on CS.SE is in an awful position: the professor 'is known for [possessive pronoun extracted] "unclear" questions'.

I think both

what a student should do when faced with such questions in an exam (or homework)

and

how to grade such questions

are reasonable questions. The latter would obviously relate to learning that the question was ambiguous after giving the exam.
You will probably need some type of example to narrow down the issue since there is a difference between a question without all the information needed to answer and a question that has multiple correct answers. You can use the link question, but you will want to explain the issues so no CS people can understand.
As for tags exams and etiquette seem reasonable for the first question and exams and grading for the second question.


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Bug in number of review tasks displayed
Since graduation, I've observed that quite often, the number of tasks in the review list is not consistent. For instance, in the attached screenshot, the top-menu bar displays 3 tasks to review, while I can't see any to actually review.
I've tried to open the site in a new browser, to avoid any cache issue, the problem remains the same.
Note that this behaviour does not last, and after a while, the number disappears. Intuitively, it would seem like a refresh problem.

This is by-design. From the SE meta:

The review indicator in the top-bar is not calculated on a per-user basis, but on a per-site basis. The counts in the review queue itself are calculated on a per-user basis.

So, when there are reviews that you've already acted on but still need action from more users, they'll still show in the indicator bar.

I'm not a design expert, but that seems quite bad ... I'll comment on the thread you linked, thanks!

I found the following answer posted by @Shog9:

In other words, you're being given a birds-eye view of the actual state of review. It's one thing for the majority of reviewers to plow through their own tasks and move on, but someone needs to keep an eye on things to make sure stuff is actually getting done.
If that number is high or growing, then there's a problem. I've heard this lament from many different sites over the past year: "I do all I can, but there aren't enough of us and it just doesn't seem to have any effect!"
If this is happening on your site, if that number is getting bigger in spite of everything you do... Then it's time to raise a call for action. Don't wait for the cruft to clog the streets before getting folks organized to clean it up.
On the other hand, if it's staying steady at a reasonably-small number (and chances are, you know what "reasonably small" means for your site better than I do), then there's nothing to worry about. In fact, you can probably skip clicking on it entirely unless or until it changes, and get along just fine.

For info, I posted the following comment:

I find this indicator quite confusing. All other notifications follow the same graphical pattern: number in red square for inbox, number in green square for rep, number in blue square for mod actions. All these notifications are actionable, so clicking on them allow me to do something to remove them. Not only the review notification does not show me what I can do (which could be useful), but show me stuff I can't do anything about. This is not consistent, and should be moved away from the main page (perhaps in the tool sections)


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What is a "rant" as far as Academia.SE?
I have used other stack-exchange websites successfully (there are about 100 of them) to get answers to my questions.
Here on Academia.SE the word rant is being used in a way that I have not seen on other websites and I would like some clarification.
There are some guidelines in the help section of Academia.SE and even a small section on what not to ask.  I still confused and find the use on here very subjective.
Example Possible "not a question" post

Recently, someone posted the question "Fee surcharge for international students", which was an undisguised rant.

Let me look up this word to see what it could mean:

rant to talk loudly and in a way that shows anger : to complain in a way that is unreasonable

This definition characterizes most online behavior, unfortunately.
That anger is also very real - what should unsuccessful posters do with it?

Specifically, I am concerned that "rant" is just a trope used by high-ranking users on this site to close/delete questions they don't like.

Presumably you have not seen the text of the question in question.

I think this is a perfect example. The way this question is worded, it doesn't seem like a rant, but if it started off with "my question was closed as a rant because the high rep users hate me" it could easily be perceived that way.

BTW there exists a tag called (rant) on mathematics meta and christianity meta. So on some metas rants in the sense "posts complaining about something and urging users to behave differently in connection with some issue" are tolerated. You can have a look a this tag-wiki, which discusses how a rant on meta-site can be constructive.

I think the help center definition pretty much gets it right: your question is just a rant in disguise: “______ sucks, am I right?”

What is a “rant” as far as Academia.SE?

It's a rhetorical question, where the OP has little interest in the actual answer (if there is any); Often asks to explain a rather subjective situation, e.g., "Why is my advisor so bad? Why the reviews from this journal are unfair? Why is the cost of that abusive?".
In particular, the question does not aim at understanding whether the qualification of the subjective situation is correct or not, but states it as fact.

That anger is also very real - what should unsuccessful posters do with it?

There are plenty of places on the Internet where people can share good/bad experiences and discuss about them, for instance forums, sharing sites (e.g., Reddit).

Yes, I'd second the point that a "question" is merely a rant if the questioner is not interested in an answer.

In many circumstances, the chat rooms of this site can be a good place to discuss such matters - as long as the tone is civilized and respectful, of course.

In the help center, you will find the following text:

If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about __”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is “I would like others to explain __ to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)

A "rant" is a special case of a question whose motivation is "I would like to participate in a discussion about __", where the motivation of the asker seems to be "I would like to complain and/or share my ideas about __".
If a question

has a strong negative tone or a strong ideological tone, and
does not have an objective answer, or the answer would not be helpful to anybody

it is likely to be characterized as a "rant".
What are some indications that my question might be a "rant"?
If your question is any of the following:

Is there any point to X?
Why are academics so X?
Why did/didn't X do Y in this situation?

this may be an indication that it is a rant.
If your post is seen by others as a "rant," what should you do?
Try editing to make the text of the question less subjective and/or more neutral, and to clarify how the answer will be helpful to you.

How about this:  You should allow questions to contain rants, but not answers, that would prevent discussion logorrhea, and prevent annihilation of potentially important issues that have no other way to be voiced.

@MarkJ this isn't a site for voicing issues (no matter how important they may be), it's a site for asking and answering questions. Questions that are rants tend to not lend themselves to the question and answer format, so they are better voiced at a site that isn't dedicated to Q&A.

What is a “rant” as far as Academia.SE?

I think the definition of "rant" in Academia.SE is pretty much the same as everywhere else (you even cite a pretty good definition). The only difference I see is that around here any sort of complaining (warranted or unwarranted, blindingly obvious or more subtle and backhanded) often gets called a rant - simply because Academia.SE usually does not want to get into discussions about various ethical concerns regarding highly ideological issues (sometimes we can't help ourselves, of course).

Specifically, I am concerned that "rant" is just a trope used by high-ranking users on this site to close/delete questions they don't like.

I don't think that it is a trope thrown around by high reputation users to willy-nilly kill questions - it is just a valid reason to quickly explain why something that may sound like a good question for Academia.SE to the OP is in fact not, similar to (for instance) the "boat programming" trope on the original Stack Exchange. The Academia.SE community has simply decided that questions that are perceived mainly as a place to vent or complain are out of scope.

Here on Academia.SE the word rant is being used in a way that I have not seen on other websites

The word has not been invented here, but is quite common slang in many online communities. Other SE sites probably don't have use the term as much because, well, most sites don't get as many rant-y questions as we do here. However, from cursory observation, I have the impression that other more soft-question oriented SE sites have exactly the same issue (and term!).

Since the original question that spawned the original meta question has been deleted, I am reposting it:

I am an international student in the United States and have been here
  in a PhD program for roughly 5+ years. Last week, my university's
  board of control proposed charging international students a surcharge
  of $250 per semester based on the fact the my public university hasn't
  been getting enough funds from my state (Michigan).
Most of the international students find this rather discriminatory. I
  am unable to find the federal or state rule or letter of the law that
  is being "exploited" in this case, to impose this surcharge. This
  surcharge, apparently, cannot be paid off with a GTA/GRA appointment.
The rationale given is that the "cost of education has been
  increasing".
Any help in this regard would be useful. I bring this to academia.SE
  since this has an amalgamation of academic voices from all over the
  world which might provide better perspective to the (un)fairness of
  this "surcharge" situation.
What is the legal precedent for such surcharges without enough notice?

I am not sure how this could be described as anything but a rant in the traditional definition. The fact that other SE networks have less of an issue with rants is probably related to the fact that the questions are more "factual" in nature and we tend to have softer questions.

I see how this could be too narrow (country = US, state = Michigan, university = whatever). But I think the OP expressed this in a tone is between neutral and disappointed, rather than spitting hatred. The OP may not have understood how the university funding works (nobody does, though, hence the calls for "greater transparency" in US higher education), and a reasonable answer would have explained the in-state and out-of-state tuition levels as an example of how university "discriminates" between different groups of students.

The futility of the OP's attempts to do something with situation, though, are to some extent typical to the weird constraints academia has to operate within. I am sure the university lawyers have looked into the "federal or sate rule or letter of the law", and these are better lawyers than what international student body can produce. So they would have zero chance in producing any sort of a meaningful protest against the proposed fee.


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Closing a question with an open-bounty?
This question popped up recently: IRB guidelines for secure online data storage, backup, and syncing?, which I personally believe is off-topic either because:

This particular IRB has an official policy about data storage, in which case the question is very localised
This particular IRB has no official policy about data storage, in which case the question is interesting, but becomes a secure data storage question, perhaps more adequate on security.SE.

Regardless of whether this question should be closed or not, I could not cast a vote, because there is an open-bounty on it. Is that a bug or a feature? I find it a bit weird that a question is "protected against closure" simply by adding a 50 rep bounty on it.

The SE-recommended way to deal with a question with an open bounty that needs closure is to flag for a moderator.
You might leave a comment on the question to indicate you've done so, and that others who want to "cast close votes" should flag instead. If there are enough flags (indicating that the community wants to close the question), a moderator could refund the bounty and close the question.

Agree, but this still does not really explains why a simple 50 rep bounty protects a question against closing. Personally, I have no idea.


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Which font does 'Academia Stack Exchange' use?
Does anyone know the font name?

Reference link: Why aren't all research articles on PubMed?

In addition to the info from celeritas, you can use http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/ to use images to find fonts in the future. Here is an example from this font.

This is the font-family defined in the main stylesheet on the Academic Stack Exchange website:
font-family:Consolas,Menlo,Monaco,Lucida Console,Liberation Mono,DejaVu Sans Mono,Bitstream Vera Sans Mono,Courier New,monospace,serif;

The font-family css property lists specific fonts and font styles in order of descending priority; e.g., if a certain browser can't display the first-choice font, it will try the second font in the list, etc.

do you also know the title's font size? I tested 12px 14px 16px, however the font size is a little bit different, I have Consolas installed in my PC, any idea?

Hard to give an exact answer because the font size is not set in pixels on that stylesheet; the size in pixels will depend on the resolution of your screen.

hmmm... I think that enough already to know the name, thanks

Note that this is only the monospace font; most text is obviously not monospaced.


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What should be done about "advice" answers?
Do mathematics researchers regularly solve problems like the ones from Project Euler? asks a very objective answer: is it possible to be a professional researcher working on topics similar to contest maths. There has been some good answers, stating that (to sum up very briefly), it could be possible, but hard (since it's quite hard to be a professional mathematician in general). In that regard, I believe it's a good question, that attracted good answers.
Now, this answer is more like a piece of advice, stating (again, summing up briefly) that one should keep an open mind, and that there are plenty of jobs where you can use critical thinking, citing a specific example of a programmer (even though the OP stated that he didn't fancy becoming a professional programmer). To be honest, I think it's a good piece of advice (but at the same time, it's very general, I don't see someone giving the advice of keeping a close mind ...), and would be a good comment, but it's too long to be a comment. This answer has been up voted several times (which is not surprising, it's a good piece of advice).
My question is the following one: what should we do with answers that do not answer directly the question but can still be seen as interesting?
If we allow them, then we take the risk to become a discussion board, where everybody comes to share their own experience, and discuss the question instead of answering. If we forbid them, then we could lose some useful content.
EDIT For that particular example, it's worth mentioning that the advice applies well to the particular situation of the OP (who is in high school), but wouldn't apply well (at least, in my opinion) to a 40 years old programmer who is tired of his job, and would like to know whether there is a possibility to live from something he enjoys doing (and the question, as it is now, would be a perfect fit for that situation too).

what should we do with answers that do not answer directly the question but can still be seen as interesting?

I think due to the nature of our site (questions being mostly rather "soft", and advice-related more than asking for specific facts), we literally cannot strictly "forbid" what you call advice answers. Relatively often, we get questions that ask how to best do a specific X, where it is clear that X is something that the OP should really better not do. In these cases, strictly answering the question, without explaining that one should not do X but rather alternative Y, is a dis-service to the OP.
So, what I generally do when reading answers that don't really answer the question, is roughly the following:

If the answer is still really good, I upvote it anyway.
If the answer is still good, but more or less ignores the question, I don't vote up or down. Maybe I'll leave a comment.
If the question asks for a very specific advice, which the poster ignores and berates him instead, of if the post seems like bad advice otherwise, I downvote and leave a comment.
If the advice is just really bad and entirely misses the point, I downvote and flag as "Not an answer".

Agree with this answer 100% -- well that would be 'hard' not 'soft' -- but you get the idea!

I think this is something that hasn't been a big problem so far. For now, I'm content to let users flag answers they think aren't helpful or on-topic.
If we start getting a rash of unhelpful answers, we can revisit things. But for now, I don't see how a blanket policy—either restrictive or permissive—solves the problem.

I don't think it's a problem either (although I think I remember we discussed in the past about answers questions the question rather than addressing, but I can't really remember when), and I didn't flag this answer. I just wanted to know what the community was thinking rather than establishing a blanket policy :)


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What happened to the new custom close reason?
Recently, we added a New custom close reason. However, I cannot see this reason anymore:

Was it removed?

It should be available now. Let me know if it is not.

It's available now.

It was edited in response to your suggestion and is awaiting approval from another moderator before it can be reactivated. I don't think it shows up in any of the review queues so I will ping the other moderators.

Oh OK, I didn't know the reason was removed while being edited. Thanks for implementing the suggestion!

@CharlesMorisset It seems strange to me also. I may have clicked something I wasn't supposed to in the process, but I don't think so.