text:
2024 Community Moderator Election
The 2024 Community Moderator Election is now underway!
Community moderator elections have three phases:

Nomination phase
Primary phase
Election phase

Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends on how many candidates there are.
Please visit the official election page at
https://bioacoustics.stackexchange.com/election
for more detail, and to participate!
If you have general questions about the election process, or questions for moderator candidates, feel free to ask them here on meta -- just make sure your questions are tagged election.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

sort: votes


text:
Announcing a Pro Tempore election for 2024
Update on August 12, 2024:
This election has been canceled for now due to a lack of nominations (even after extending the nomination phase by one week). It is still a priority to bring on new mods to this team, to allow the site to continue to be a functional space for this community.
Staff and the current mods will work together to reach out to community members who we would like to encourage to nominate themselves, and will then reschedule the election in the coming months. Alternatively, if you have any interest in potentially taking on a mod role, please comment on this post and we can follow up to answer any questions.
Stack Exchange sites can only continue on as long as there are users willing to step up and moderate, so please consider it!

Summary: Bioacoustics Stack Exchange will begin the nomination stage for a special election on July 30, 2024 to bring in 2 more moderators.
For full details of the process, see the announcement on Meta Stack Exchange. The timeline:

Starting on July 30, users can nominate themselves. Users can also ask questions on Meta for potential moderators to answer. (Use the discussion and election tags.)

On August 6, if there are 3 or more candidates, the election will move into the voting phase. If not, we'll extend the nomination period for a week. If, at the end of that extension period, there are still fewer than 3 candidates, we'll simply appoint the candidates. (There's a small chance we'll need to remove a nomination.)

If the election moves into the voting phase, we'll announce the results on Meta on August 14 (or August 21, if we need to extend the nomination period).

If you have any questions about the process, please post them in an answer here.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Community a member for 4+ years
On the community bot profile it says that it was created 4 years and 4 months ago even though this site is only about an hour old.

Related post on meta.SE: Why is the Community user listed on two brand-new sites as having been a member for 3 years and 11 months?

@HenryWHHackv3.0 thanks for pointing that out. No solution thought.


text:
Can we [fitler] this tag out?
I think we should burnate the fitler tag since it is just a typo and filter was made. It was used in this question but an edit fixed the typo with the tag.

Hi @ethan I made that edit and agree!

Unused tags are automatically deleted after a while.  If you simply stop making the typo, the tag will vanish.


text:
Stay strong, and have some faith in SE!
To everyone here that's questioning whether or not SE is the right platform for the bioacoustics community's Q/A site, and all the frustrated (rightfully so!) users who are basically in SE prison for 7 days, I want to say that SE is still a great platform and I have hope that it will last.
I've seen worse, and I've been through worse, so trust me that there's still hope left. Although, suspending 100s of accounts in a new and budding site, without giving those users any warning or notification that they were potentially violating a policy (which didn't actually "exist" anywhere, at least visibly), certainly goes down as one of the worst things I've seen SE do to a community.
Stay strong everyone. 7 days seems like forever, but it will fly by in no time. I have much more to say but don't have much time today, especially after spending a lot of time on this.

my username is Mari-Lou and I am an outsider. I recently joined Bioacoustics SE and hope to gain insight to what seems a fascinating topic but which I confess I am totally ignorant about. I am writing on meta because  I am no stranger to staff and Community Managers who intervene late in moderator elections. Chaos is confusing and hurtful but it is the build up of resentment, and distrust which is far more damaging. Do not let recent events dictate what is the future of your site. HOWEVER…
The OP seriously underestimates the far-reaching consequences of this mass suspension.

As a result of a preliminary investigation, the Community Management Team has decided that the best course of action is to cancel the ongoing election, undertake a deeper investigation of the extent of these irregularities, and schedule a new election once we’ve assessed the impact of those irregular activities and taken the appropriate corrective measures.   […]
We plan to schedule a new election to take place in the coming weeks, but we will keep the community updated and let you know as soon as we have a new date for nominations to open.
@JNat Aug 15 2022

When a user is suspended on any Stack Exchange site, be it for as little as 24 hours or as long as a year they are exempt from participating in an election on any site where they have earned the necessary requisites for the following twelve months.
Four of the five nominees, users who stepped up to the plate and said they were willing to moderate a site, can no longer run for moderator in Bioacoustics Stack Exchange nor in any SE election for the next twelve months. The original election had to be cancelled because four of the five nominees were suspended which led to the organisation of a new election on August 24, 2022. If only one of the five nominees had been directly affected, in all probability the original election would have continued.
The new election is ongoing but it comes accompanied with a stern warning:
[emphasis not mine]

Without a successful first election that results in 3 users being appointed as moderators, the site will not be able to progress, and will instead be shut down.

Does anyone among the Stack Exchange staff have any common sense? First, the mass suspension, which  came out of the blue, now an election with the threat the site will be closed if users eligible for nomination do not participate.
I wonder if the kind of enthusiastic and keen environment that is essential for any site, old or new, could overcome such a similar shock in the space of ten days. Why weren't the offenders/users issued with a warning much earlier? Was this masterminded by a single individual or a core group? It seems highly unlikely seeing as deleted comments are visible to moderators and community managers. Isn't standard policy to FIRST issue warnings to offenders and only after a repeated violation, punish the bad behaviour with a suspension?
Thanks to the tardiness of the investigation (where have I seen that happening?) and the unravelling of events, Bioacoustic users might not share the same enthusiasm as they did 10 days ago. I believe a more sensible measure would have been to wait at least a month, regain the trust of the community and in the meantime carefully evaluate the situation of every person affected by the suspension, and above all allow users the possibility to defend themselves.
It may be too late for users to clear their names in time for the election but it is not too late to work together on healing. I  wish Acoustics.SE the very best of elections. Please don't forget to nominate yourselves for the election, show the community that the site still thrives and has enough promise to become stronger and healthier. Good luck!


text:
New SE site for Programming Language Design
As Bioacoustics is one of the newest SE sites, many of you might remember the process that's in place for getting a new site approved, and many of you might remember how exciting it is to be one of the first users of a brand new SE site.
After Bioacoustics went live almost a year ago, the only site that has gone live was Solana, which I didn't think overlapped enough with Bioacoustics to notify the community here.
However the Programming Language Design proposal, which has begun with a very healthy start is one that I think a lot of people here might find interesting.
If you are excited about the launch of a new site, or curious to experience contributing to a brand new site, or otherwise have interest in participating in a new site about programming language design, I encourage you to visit the proposal for Programming Language Design SE and to click on "commit"!  If you haven't ever done this before, make sure to click on "sign up" instead of "log in", but you won't have to do much more because Area51 will sign you up based on your existing SE credentials.

Honestly, after reading through Qs and comments (e.g. "Why did language 'x' choose to have feature 'y'"), this is a sort of SE that I like to avoid for finding useful information. It seems that anything that addresses "design and implementation" is prone to fights on interpretation, opinions, and even semantics or "religious" believes. OK, it fun to read and useful for distraction, but otherwise... Also, a lot of "Should" questions, the usefulness is questioned, will very likely results is fundamentalistic discussion.

The site is live now. You can check it out in action to see if you have any second opinions. Link: https://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/127456/programming-language-design-and-implementation/visit


text:
Identifing experts in related/overlapping disciplines
((Apologies for typos, I'm on my phone))
As our beta site continues to grow, we are attracting folks outside of our original circle, which is great! This is how we wanted the site to develop :).
I've noticed on a few questions that address fields related to bioacoustics that experts in those fields are chimming in, but their answer isn't always the top answer. Or even the second. I think this because of a few reasons:

when a question is posted, those of us that are active on the site are eager to answer it.
when we answer, it may be because we have a familiarity with the subject, even if we aren't actively in the field.
users with high reputation and a solid answer, that answered the question early, will often become the accepted answer as we have moved on to keep the site active.

This can turn related experts off, if they come to the site, find a question they can answer better than the top answer, and that answer doesn't do well. Why should they trust the system? I think this is something we should activly avoid, however, with asking every expert to join the slack and introduce themselves (Which is just asking them for another commitment) so we can be aware of them, I'm not sure how to approach this issue. I know moderators can review new answers to old questions, but can they boost them?

Great that @etgriffiths brings this up (I've definitely let enthusiasm overtake actual specialised knowledge).  Echoing @Noil, perhaps at this stage we can afford to be a little stingy with our votes on answers+ questions.
However, I'm not sure why changing answers is a problem. If the new answer is context appropriate and answers the posed question better than others - why not change it? Some fluidity in which answers are acknowledged is nice as it will encourage a wider participation.
Explicitly encouraging a change in accepted answer also allows us to welcome new members' (with field-specific knowledge) contributions?

That's a good point! Now that the site is launched, maybe we should be stricter with our votes indeed, maybe we could:

use the upvotes with more caution, ie only when the answer is very good and we are sure about it
use more the downvotes when the answer does not fit well with the question (possibly with a comment to explain why, especially for new folks).
don't hesitate to kindly critic answers on comments, that would help other people in their choice of upvote/downvote
use the "Follow" button just below the question/answer, to keep an eye on specific posts; this is also useful for instance when we don't want to upvote/downvote a post right now because we are waiting for more information from the author etc.

I guess that would make the site healthier.

I'm not sure how I feel about down votes, especially if the original answer has good info in it!

Adding the follow is a great idea for those of us with access to moderator tools.

if there are good info in it, of course we shouldnt downvote, but maybe just not upvote automatically in this case (if we want to have the best responses located on the top of the thread)?

Not sure if I understand correctly:
case 1: there is a general question that is answered by, say an underwater guy giving the answer with an underwater spin but that is general enough to be accepted. Later some expert from the bird community comes in and gives a better answer. Is the question now, should moderators/question owner un-accept the old answer and accept (boost) the new one? Not sure that this is wise as it can easily results in an acceptance war. Better would be to acknowledge in the accepted answer a new entry (even by the moderator).
case 2: someone new (with say no reputation) makes a convincing or better answer to the question much later on, then it should be treated as it where from an expert.
case 3: someone new posts a question that addresses an aspect that had not been discussed so far, then yes someone has to decide if this question is really on topic, but this would be independent if the poster is an expert in the field or a newcomer. In most cases, one would ask the poster to clarify the question and background of the question.
Concerning self introduction, honestly, I prefer the way as it is. Most of us can be googled.

I think the example you outline in case one is the one I am more thinking of. But yeah, it is a slippery slope. Perhaps we can recommend un-accepting an answer?


text:
How to access the Bioacoustics Chat Room
How can I easily navigate to the chat room, for more real-time discussion of the site?

Click on the three-level "bubble" at the top right, and select "chat"


text:
Reputation on Meta site
I can see that Meta reputation for each user is separate from Beta.
Many users on Meta only have 101 reputation points even though they are actively commenting and answering questions (and so I assume voting) on the Meta questions. This was the case for me, even though I had answers on Meta that were upvoted and even accepted.
EDIT:
However, once I ASKED a question on Meta, then my reputation jumped substantially. Is that normal behavior on Meta (asking a question is required to start reputation activity), or is that a bug?

Well...as soon as I asked a question mine went up...so I will edit my question!

Most of your questions should be covered by this help center article.

Yes that helps with knowing votes etc don’t matter on meta, but it says the rep points should be syncing every hour and that is definitely not the case

Meta does not affect your reputation on any site except MSE. So if you post and get a post score of -9999 you will lose 0 rep.
Your rep on meta is the same on the main site but it only refreshes every hour (I think).

Thanks, Ethan, that makes sense. It seems like it does not refresh to mirror your reputation on the main site until you've actually asked a question on Meta.

It's not refreshing every hour.


text:
Tag for "hearing" or "audiometry"?
What would be a fitting tag to use for questions about the "receiver" end of animal communication? Hearing seems straightforward, audiometry may be more descriptive but its more about the methodology, what do people think would be good?
Perhaps even just "receiver" would be useful.

I think 'receiver' is confusing-- a receiver can also be a hydrophone. I think there is room for both hearing AND audiometry (in my ignorant opinion), as audiometry is (I think) a subtopic of hearing related to measurement of hearing (?is it?)


text:
What to do when a answer should actually be an edit to an existing answer?
To keep the discussion about how to deal with specific question/answer/comment issues that arise, here is one I noticed:
In this question How, if at all, are you compressing your recordings? there is a nice answer by @Jamie describing X3 compression. Down a bit is another answer that provides the references for that compression by @Aarhus, but it's a separate answer and it doesn't have any votes so they don't appear together.
To me, it would make the most sense to have that paper citation within @Jamie's answer. Interestingly the link provided to X3 on GitHub has a readme file, and that readme links to the Johnson et al 2013 paper, but those links are broken. Obviously I could search for the paper by the citation info listed there, but since @Aarhus already shared it in the same question/answer thread, to me it seems very streamlined to have them together.
What do other people think? Is it too late to add that citation and link in as an EDIT to @Jamie's answer? Is that too much meddling? Curious to hear everyone's thoughts.

My preference is to encourage community members (in this example, @Aarhus) to embrace moderator type roles as a first line of action.
In this case, I might comment on @Aarhus to encourage them to (1) comment on the original post, asking them to add the reference, or (2) edit the post themselves to include the link (reminding them that this is a community run platform).
Ultimately, it would be nice to ‘Tidy’ up any given Q&A, but hopefully if we can encourage users to take a more pro-active role in this, we won’t need as much house-cleaning.

I like that approach. Will give that a go on this specific scenario and see how it goes :)


text:
Do current moderators have to nominate themselves to continue to be moderators?
I see that we are up for another moderator election. Do the current moderators have to nominate themselves, or can they be nominated by others, or will the automatically be included in the election?

Per the announcement post (emphasis mine):

Bioacoustics Stack Exchange will begin the nomination stage for a special election on July 30, 2024 to bring in 2 more moderators

Additionally, Stack Exchange sites will virtually never have less than 3 moderators on the site; consequently if you see an election with 2 spots it's because mods are being added :D
Meaning that they do not need to run; they will continue serving in their current capacity.

Ah ok thank you...I missed that 'more'!


text:
How do we know if our Bioacoustics Stack Exchange is having an impact on our community/science?
Just about 2 years into this, we have had (to my knowledge), our first acknowledgement in a publication. A question asked here resulted in several helpful answers and even a paper implementing one of the suggested methods.
Many thanks to Francesca (@fterranova) for bringing their recent publication to our attention.
Terranova et al. 2024. Science of the Total Environment. Windy Events detection in big bioacoustics datasets using a pre-trained Convolutional Neural Network. 949: 174868 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969724050174?via%3Dihub#ac0005
https://bioacoustics.stackexchange.com/a/1701/42

This is amazing!!! And it makes me wonder---How do we know we are making an impact, and how do we expand that impact?


text:
Are all the WinterBash hats available on our beta site?
I have been poking around here and Stack Overflow as I do normally during the work week and have been awarded some "hats" as part of Winter Bash
I have noticed that I earned a few different hats on Stack Overflow and Cross Validated, but only one hat on Bioacoustics even though that is my most active site.
This question is perhaps for mods/staff, but are all the Winter Bash hats available on beta sites, or just some?

Hats are fully available and alls sites! Its just most hats are harder to get on smaller sites like this one. For example, most active people cant suggest edits and take the tour and earn the informed badge. And Darkmode is only available on the SO sites. But you can still get some like Mmm, Cookies!, Behind the Curtain, and a bunch of others easily even on a small site.
Also, you can look here for the leaderboard specific to Bioacoustics SE.


text:
Is appropriate to ask Github Issues as questions on Bioacoustics SE?
I use the program Triton a lot, and so I "watch" the Github page. This means I get updates about any bugs or issues people might be having. Recently, one was asked, and answered, within the Github issues framework. I think this issue may be helpful to others, and would be similar to what would make a good question on the Bioacoustics SE.
Is it appropriate to turn that issue into a question on here? Or is that just duplicating information that already exists on the internet?
I think that yes it would be appropriate, and it would not be wastefully duplicating (because I don't get the impression that so many people monitor the issues on Github like I do...but maybe I'm wrong!). But, before I ask/answer, I'd like to know what others think.

See this relevant Help Center page (as well as the blog post it links to): Can I answer my own question?

My view would be to go for it as a "question and own answer" but only if you judge that this question is particularly interesting and you explain why, and add some extra context for people not using this software. And probably it would be more transparent to add a link to this github discussion in your own response.

I agree on adding a link to the GitHub discussion. I have not posted the question because I decided it perhaps would not be relevant to the larger community. It’s a software specific error - just have to make sure the right modules are installed - so more like a bug almost and maybe not appropriate here.

Did I understand your question correctly: you are asking about whether it's appropriate to preemptively turn an existing (and already solved) issue on Github into a question here, so people could find find it more easily - even though no one has actually asked this question here yet?
Assuming I did understand it: I'd assume someone having the same issue with Triton should be able to find this solution on Github by themselves using Google, so I don't see much point in "repeating" it here for the sake of repeating. What would be the advantage in doing that vs. just waiting for someone to actually ask this exact question, and then replying with a link to the existing Github issue? Taking it to a (ridiculous) extreme, we could end up with multiple questions created and immediately answered here just in case someone else has this problem at some point in the future...
I'm not necessarily against you doing what you suggested, I don't think there's any real harm in it (despite my last comment) - but I confess I don't think there's much to be gained either. I might be missing something though, so I'd be happy to hear what you and others have to say about it!

Yes, you understood exactly :) And appreciate your thoughts on it. Like you said I don't want to necessarily add questions just in case, but at this early stage I see some value in having it as an example question (of what kind of questions are good to ask here) since we are still sort of getting going. But I don't want to just take up space if it isn't actually useful!!

In particular, in addition to making sure that the question is actually on-topic/allowed here and a good fit for the Stack Exchange format – I think it's important to ensure that it'd actually be a "real question" that's relevant to the userbase here (e.g. a frequently asked question, or something that's likely to come up regardless). Basically, ensure that it'd be a good question and answer even if you weren't posting an already-answered question from elsewhere. (And don't plagiarize others' writing, of course.)


text:
Self referencing
Is is acceptable to refer to own publication?
Usually, answers are based on own knowledge, that is very often documented in own publication.
I personally like to present what I know, but not quote myself.

Stack Exchange policy is that if you are linking, referencing, etc. something with which you are affiliated, including that you are the author of the paper/book, then you must disclose that affiliation in the post where you put the link and/or reference. If you don't disclose your affiliation, then it is spam, by definition, as used on SE, which is even stated and linked in the flag dialog. That doesn't mean that situations shouldn't be handled with more nuance than red-flag nuking good content, but it does mean there must be disclosure (which can just be "my").

Yes, absolutely acceptable IMO, and pointing to the publications (peer-reviewed articles or books) is highly encouraged across all Stack Exchange sites. That way, folks can go get more info if needed.

Second the acceptability. I'd even add preprints, posters and online talks into the list of acceptable references. Irrespective of whether the reference is peer-reviewed or not (we know how variable the quality can be!), ultimately it is upto the person who raised the question to go into the relevance, suitability and correctness of each answer and reference for their particular situation.

It is 100% ok to refer to publicions that are not you own as long as you add context behind the link.
For sites that are your own and/or you get something back its a fine line between spam and it being ok.

Don't talk about your product / website / book / job too much. Folks will read your answers for their ability to solve a specific problem; if you're good at doing that, then they'll find themselves more interested in who you are and what you're working on. If you respond only to questions where the answer can be something you're selling, they'll assume you're just here to sell.
Don't tell – show! The best way to avoid being seen as a snake-oil salesman is to demonstrate a solution, rather than simply asserting that the problem can be solved.
Don't include links except to support what you've written. Links are not a substitute for including information in your answer itself, and the links you include should always be directly relevant to a part of your answer. See also this FAQ on Meta Stack Exchange: Your answer is in another castle: when is an answer not an answer?

From: https://bioacoustics.stackexchange.com/help/promotion

A lot of the quoted text is for StackOverflow.

@NikeDattani I do not see how it is since it doesn’t mention programming or anything related

Even if it is for SO, there are strong parallels for us as biacousticians to get inspiration from. For the basic scientists among us, replace 'book' for 'poster/preprint/paper' and voila. For those from/with companies/NGOs the terms are much more directly connected.


text:
Is it be OK to ask for a specific publication?
As the question says would it be OK to ask this SE for a specific publication and if yes, what would be the criteria for permissibility?
Reasons for asking support:

it is too old (pre-electronic) and only image copies are available
Scholar and other search engines give the wrong citation
only paid public access

Reasons for limiting questions

invites for ask first, search later
proliferation of paper requests
risk of too many negative answers ('has been asked before', ' you can find it on Google', 'ask your library', etc)
needs explicit e-mail exchange

Any thoughts?

A question/answer could be added such as "What should I do when I don't find a paper" and people could be redirected to this question/answer (via a comment below their question). The issue is that even if they already ticked the "check list",  we wont be allowed to share it  as a response most of the time for copyright reasons as Jamie pointed out.
What about using the chat room to ask for papers (https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/137244/bioacoustics)? People would ask there, leave their email, and others can send them  a copy by email, then the asker writes to say he found it. However, this requires that people checks the chat room regularly, or configure a notification (by clicking on "enable desktop notification" on the right-hand side)

The chat room is an interesting idea! I was checking it regularly at the start but it hasn't been used in days. Perhaps if we did set up a "how do I find a paper" question, then that answer could suggest the chat room? I've got the alerts on and don't mind for now because its quiet :)


text:
2023: a year in moderation

It’s that time of the year again! As we wave goodbye to last year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.
As most of you here might be aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network are moderated somewhat differently to other sites on the web:

We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in that we amortize the overall moderation cost of the system across thousands of teeny-tiny slices of effort contributed by regular, everyday users.
-- A Theory of Moderation

That doesn't eliminate the need for having moderators altogether, but it does mean that the bulk of moderation work is carried out by regular folks — folks like you. Every bit of time and effort y'all contribute to the site gives you access to more privileges you can use to help in this effort, all of which produce a cumulative effect that makes a big difference in ensuring Stack Exchange sites remain a valuable source of high-quality content on the web.
So as we say goodbye to 2023 (and January 2024… ahem) and move into 2024, let us look back at what we accomplished as a community... by looking at some exciting stats. Below is a breakdown of moderation actions performed on Bioacoustics over the past 12 months:

Action
Moderators
Community User¹
Community²

All comments on a post moved to chat
0
0
0

Answer flags handled
5
5
1

Answers flagged
0
2
9

Bounties canceled
0
0
0

Comment flags handled
2
0
0

Comments deleted⁸
2
0
10

Comments flagged
0
0
2

Comments undeleted
0
0
0

Escalations to the Community Manager team
0
0
0

Posts bumped
0
13
0

Posts deleted⁷
2
1
9

Posts locked
0
1
0

Posts undeleted
0
0
1

Posts unlocked
0
0
0

Question flags handled⁶
6
0
3

Questions closed
1
0
0

Questions flagged⁶
0
0
5

Questions merged
0
0
0

Questions migrated
0
0
0

Questions protected
0
0
0

Questions reopened
0
0
0

Questions unprotected
0
0
0

Revisions redacted
0
0
0

Tag highlight language set
0
0
0

Tag synonyms created
0
0
0

Tag synonyms proposed
0
0
0

Tags merged
0
0
0

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Close votes" queue
0
0
2

Tasks reviewed⁵: "First answers" queue
0
0
24

Tasks reviewed⁵: "First questions" queue
0
0
41

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Late answers" queue
0
0
12

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Low quality posts" queue
0
0
6

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Reopen votes" queue
0
0
0

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Suggested edits" queue
1
1
27

Tasks reviewed⁵: "Triage" queue
0
0
0

User banned from review
0
0
0

User review-bans lifted early
0
0
0

User suspensions lifted early
0
0
0

Users contacted
0
0
0

Users deleted
0
0
0

Users destroyed⁴
0
0
0

Users suspended³
0
3
0

Footnotes
¹ This refers to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.
² This refers to the membership of Bioacoustics without diamonds next to their names.
³ The system will suspend users under three circumstances: when a user is recreated after being previously suspended, when a user is recreated after being destroyed for spam or abuse, and when a network-wide suspension is in effect on an account.
⁴ A "destroyed" user is deleted along with all that they had posted: questions, answers, comments. Generally used as an expedient way of getting rid of spam.
⁵ This counts every review that was submitted (not skipped) - so the 2 suggested edits reviews needed to approve an edit would count as 2, the goal being to indicate the frequency of moderation actions. This also applies to flags, etc.
⁶ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes). The community² can handle these flags by at least one person voting to close a question that has a close flag.
⁷ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.
⁸ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).
Further reading:

Wanna see how these numbers have changed over time? We posted a similar report here last year: 2022: a year in moderation

You can also check out this report on other sites

Or peruse detailed information on the number of questions closed and reopened across all sites

Wishing everyone a happy 2024! ^_^


text:
2022 Community Moderator Election Results
Moderator election #3 (well, technically #3, but really your first election) on Bioacoustics has come to a close, the votes have been tallied, and the new moderators are:

They will be forming the site' initial crew shortly — please thank them for volunteering and share your assistance and advice with them as they learn the ropes!
For details on how the voting played out, you can download the election results here or view a summary report online.

Congratulations everyone. Including Taiki, you did well as well!

youuuhouuuuuuu!

Thank you all for your willingness to help our community!

Calling this "election #3" is confusing and will only get more and more confusing over time (e.g. users that join 5 years from now could wonder why the third election is called "election #5"). Is it necessary to number them that way? If so I'll write here that election 1 was cancelled and election 2 was "deferred" so that anyone else that's as confused as I was, doesn't have to do any detective work.

Yay! Thank you all for your volunteered services and for all you already do, and will do, for the site!


text:
Explicitely enlarge our SE community to all bioacoustics/biotremology/ecoacoustics/ecotremology fields?
This slide is from a video of Rok Šturm, which classifies the study of sound communication into bioacousticians (water-borne and air-borne waves) and biotremologists (solid-surface-borne waves). Strictly speaking, both are bioacousticians in the meaning of studying communication via acoustic waves which propagate into any physical medium, but for some reasons biotremologists does not define themselves as bioacousticians.

No current questions are about solid-surface-borne bioacoustics in our SE site, so the biotremology community is not included now. Should we remain like this or expand the site area to enlarge the methodologies and to increase our chance to make this site viable in the long-term (we need many people involved)?

Traditionally regarded part of bioacoustics, the discipline [biotremology] has recently begun to actively diverge on its own, because of the many peculiarities of the studied modality compared with sound. Vibrational communication has been recognized as evolutionarily older than sound and much more prevalent, at least among arthropods,[6][7] although the two modalities are closely related and sometimes overlap.[8] While many experimental approaches are shared between the two disciplines, scientists in the field of biotremology often use special equipment, such as laser vibrometers, for detecting faint vibrational emissions by animals and electromagnetic transducers in contact with the substrate for artificial playback experiments. (from Wikipedia biotremology webpage)

Same question arises for people defining themselves as ecoacousticians / ecotrologists / soundscape ecologists

Soundscape ecology seeks a broader perspective [than bioacoustics] by considering soundscape effects on communities of living organisms, human and other, and the potential interactions between sounds in the environment. Compared to soundscape ecology, the discipline of bioacoustics tends to have a narrower interest in individual species’ physiological and behavioral mechanisms of auditory communication.  (from Wikipedia ecoacoustics / soundscape ecology webpage)

I think we should define what we call "bioacoustics" in order to explicitly include (or exclude) these other fields. If we agree to include them, we should advertise the site in their communities by saying we need them because now there are too few  here.
What do you think?

This is really interesting (and something I knew nothing about!) so thanks for bringing it up. IMO, I'd love to see the biotremology folks on here, but I'm not sure I have a good solution to make that happen.
Is there a place on the Bioacoustics SE that defines the site scope in a few sentences? I can't find that anywhere...but maybe I'm not looking in the right spot. If there is, I think adding some language to clarify that those folks would be welcome here would be great.
Maybe alternatively we could create some tags that are more specific to those fields and define them clearly with tag wikis.
It seems like having someone (or multiple someones) from that community chime in would be most helpful but I don't have any contacts in that research community.

I created a site scope for our proposal--- and this is something we need to work on for the Public Beta. I will post a separate Q here for the group to revise.

and I agree on your answer!

@Shannon Sounds good!

There are at least a couple of people here who publishes ecoacoustics studies (I will tag their name in he Shannon's Q to get some help). But I don't know for biotremology; I could advertize the SE site in the biotremology google group.

I can share within the biotremology network too, but the google group is the best place as @Noil suggests

We can refine our 'elevator pitch' to be inclusive of these fields and then let those communities decide if they want to participate? This might need time to cultivate this relationship, but by keeping the definition of our site inclusive, we can lay the foundation for working more closely with researchers in the biotremology & soundscape fields.
I encourage people to actively participate in the discussion of our 'elevator pitch' (see here).

So if some researchers feel that bioacoustics does not describe their field and need an own research direction, that is fine. All these fields in the question can easily be interpreted as relevant aspects of bioacoustics. So there should be no issue that someone who defines itself as biotremologist to participate as long we accept the Wikipedia description of acoustics

Acoustics is a branch of physics that deals with the study of
mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids including topics such
as vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound.

and the biological spin to it, which in IMHO can culminate in an improved understanding of the ecosystem.

I defined the differences between bioacoustics and biotremology in my answer here, which could help: https://bioacoustics.stackexchange.com/a/885/73
The key difference is that biotremologists do not deal with acoustic waves.
Biotremologists deal with non-compressional (non-sound) waves travelling in boundaries between media. Many animals do not detect pressure at all, but other mechanical waves which we collectively call "substrate-borne vibration".
Biotremologists are not under the bioacoustics umbrella because of this. It is  a separate discipline studying different mechanical waves, measured with sensors that detect particle acceleration, displacement or velocity (not pressure).
Both bioacoustics and biotremology fall under the broader term of bio-oscillology = the study of communication via mechanical waves. That term is little used and lesser known perhaps.
That said, some animals communicate multi-modally, using sound AND substrate-borne waves (and it's clearly difficult to separate these out in some cases)- this means that most biotremologists are also bioacousticians, and dabble between the two disciplines regularly since it's kind of a necessity. So, this stack exchange will still attract biotrem people, even if it's called "Bioacoustics"


text:
Can I ask more than one question per post?
I have two related questions (about the same topic, with the same tags, but they are different questions), should I ask them in one more complicated post? Or should I separate the questions into two different posts?

One question per post.
As explained in this answer on meta.stackexchange.com,

Effectively, you are just marking it harder for the community to
handle your post effectively. Each question should be able to stand on
its own and be judged for its own merits. Similarly, it is better for
you as you know that answers will directly address your one question
and not parts of your question.

Why?

What if they only have an answer to one question, but not the other?
Should they answer it and not address both, or should they not answer
because they can't answer both? That would deprive the community of a
good response to a good question.
What if both questions are duplicates of other questions? Which one should be used as the duplicate target? No matter which one is picked people looking at the question will only be confused as the duplicate doesn't address the "other" question.
What if one question should be closed for any reason and the other
shouldn't? Should we close it or leave it open?
What if I think one question is good and want to upvote it and the other is bad and want
to downvote it?
What if someone finds your post via Google and thinks
it will solve their problem, only to find all of the answers are about
your other question?

If you are looking for several specific details in an answer, but you fundamentally have one question, then be clear on that.
If you would like to link your two questions, you can refer to it and provide a link as part of the background on your question.
Note: There is a time limit on questions and you may need to wait before you ask your second question.
Further, if someone has more than one question in a post, please consider commenting on that post and request that they edit it. You can refer them to this question for more information. Here is an example comment:

Thank you for your question! Your post has more than one question and
we ask you to separate your questions into different posts. For more
information, see: Can I ask more than one question per post?.


text:
What about unknown sounds?
In an earlier phase of this proposal (here), there was a discussion about presenting/identifying unknown sounds and the general agreement was on inclusivity. I wanted to open this up (again) for discussion and ask:
DO we want to allow questions such as "what make this sound?"  ???
If so, will what tag should we use?

I should add that I lean towards inclusivity...Plus, we are bioacousticians afterall, aren't we?

I would also suggest we use the tag 'ID'.... which is a shorter version of "Sound-ID" suggested earlier-- but given the nature of the site, I feel that 'sound' is redundant.

I agree it would be a good thing to have, as per your question on Beta, there isn't anywhere that answers these sorts of questions. Maybe this could be the go-to site for that? How would people asking upload their sounds? Would there be an accepted platform / set of platforms people could link to?

SE makes it really easy to add photos using Imgur. I don’t know if a similar platform for sounds but can do some digging…maybe that is a feature that could be added specific for this site (perhaps should be a new question on Meta).

I support this as a type of question. I was reading up on this a litte b/c I have a few unknowns I'd like to ask for the group's help with. I believe Soundcloud or YouTube are accepted if you want to upload a sound clip.

@angie_zorka can you make an example post? There is one already I think but now I want to know what your mystery sound is :)

@selene Will do! Be warned, I have a folder of mystery sounds -- pandora's box hahaha

Do we need to get SoundCloud embedding turned on for our site? Video Production Meta's site if you paste the link, it will be rendered with an embedded player. Maybe I am still doing it wrong.

@angie_zorka, I think your Q re Embedding SoundCloud would serve as its' own question in Meta (can we do it, how to do it?)

I would like to see sound identification considered on topic for this site.
I think ‘ID’ or ‘identification’ would be appropriate tags.
I recorded some birds last night that I wanted help with but I can’t figure out how to offload the files yet…I’ll try again to be able to ask that question.

I agree that ‘identification’ might be a better tag (more easily translated & therefore more inclusive)

In the gardening SE site, the tag is "identification" https://gardening.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/identification, while in the biology SE site, it is "species-identification" https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/species-identification

Most sites, at some point, discuss whether or not to allow "identify this" questions. For some, allowing these works (with a lot of requirements to make them on-topic)... for others it becomes a pain point. Since I've seen this happen several times, thought it might be worth pointing that out.
At some point in the past, I ran some numbers on the Anime & Manga site, and came to the conclusion that most ID request question were asked by new users, as their sole question. That meant most users were "hit-and-run" users, popping by just to have their anime/manga identified, and then almost never showed up again to contribute to the health of the community. Furthermore, the quality of these questions tended to be low, and many ended up getting closed because they didn't conform to stringent requirements. These numbers later served as one of the drivers for that community to decide to disallow these questions, making them off-topic. I've never ran similar numbers on other sites, but other sites have banned these questions too, for similar reasons.
That being said, other sites do allow them, even if they have very stringent requirements for what needs to be included in such questions. One such site is the Sci-fi and Fantasy site, which links users to a guide on how to ask good "identify this" questions in the "draft your question" sidebar when asking a question. On the Literature site, the [identification-request] tag has extensive guidance, too.
So, yeah... it's ultimately up to you to decide whether these should be allowed or not, and under what circumstances. Hope the context helps, and that y'all can take the lessons learned by other communities to inform how to approach this issue.

Thank you for this very informative answer! I suspect that we (like the Biology site) will want to keep this option, but I really like the idea of linking users to a good how-to on how to ask good 'identify this' questions. Helpful!!!

Thank you! Those examples with extensive guidance on how to ask such questions will be really useful for us, I think.

One temporary (??) complication: these posts will necessarily have few/no answers in the short term and are more important as a long term strategy for a bioacoustics stack exchange site.
In the Beta stage, they will likely bring down our metrics for both % Questions Answered and #Answers Per Question.
There is a tricky balance between the need to show how to present these types of Questions early on (and getting community feedback on them), and making sure these types of questions (that are very important to our community) do not actually REDUCE our chances of success.
Thoughts?

One idea: do not post these types of questions until later in the Beta process, where we feel the balance leans more towards improving our success rather than reducing our chances

What about an example of an interesting sound that we do know the answer too and so someone can answer and show how that sort of question might be approached?

Great idea , and especially if it is a recent one

I don't think that we should be trying to "game the system" by avoiding questions in this way. If people are using the Beta site often enough for it to be deemed successful enough for public Beta then a small handful of questions aren't going to tilt the balance one way or the other. Also my interpretation of those metrics is that they are more of rough guidelines to aim for and not as much of a strict # requirement compared to the commitment phase. I think we should just use the site in the same way we would if it was live

@TaikiSakai I agree I don't think we need to restrict these types of questions at this point, but if we do a good example then maybe it will set the tone for what useful info is needed for folks to help with this type of question. I tried to suggest that for the current identification question and I think it looks ok. What do others think?

@TaikiSakai They were used as hard metrics, once, but that's not the way the company's doing things at the moment, I don't think. (Look at all the sites that graduated without meeting those criteria!)


text:
Many questions without accepted answer - what to do?
I just noted something I find a bit curious: someone posts a question, gets a few answers, and some nice and informative answers get upvoted and show up at the top. However, it seems most OPs do not ever mark one of the answers as "accepted".
As an example: from a quick count of my "Top Questions" page today, only 4 out of 20 questions have an accepted answer. Granted, some are fairly recent questions that might get an accepted answer later on, but this behaviour doesn't seem to change when I look at older questions.
I find this a bit of a shame, as many users put quite a bit of time and effort writing well-explained and detailed answers, and this effort could easily be further incentivised with an "accepted answer" tag and a few sweet, sweet extra points :)
I'm not sure how big of a "problem" this is (if at all), so I'd like to check what other members think about whether this needs addressing, and/or how to best address it.
[Something similar has been discussed on this other Bioacoustics Meta post.]

Good question for discussion. I have noticed this and thought about it as well, and I have two theories
(1) Someone comes and asks a question and then gets lots of great answers, moves on with their life, and doesn't think about coming back to accept the answer.
A possible solution if this is the case is to comment on the original question, tagging the OP, and encourage them to accept an answer if they felt one was the best answer to their question. I think if it is a type of question that has a very clear answer and one answer appears to be a very strong front runner, than it would justify making such a comment (but would love to hear other opinions!)
(2) Many of the early questions on the private beta were more broad/had many possible answers so those questions aren't as easy to accept a single answer for. For example, I asked about recorders for my iPhone. A particular solution that exactly provides what I'm looking for has not yet been shared in the answers, so I haven't yet accepted an answer because I'm hoping more possible solutions will be provided!
In this case, I don't think it makes sense to accept an answer just for the sake of accepting.
Happy to hear others thoughts!

Periodically if I see a question that has a good answer (in some cases the OP even comments on that answer that it was great), I put a comment on the original question so that it will show in their 'inbox' and hopefully they will accept the answer.


text:
How doest the site counts the visits per day?
As pointed out by others, we have some "criteria" in the AREA 51. But they seem to not be the only thing that will count. Although, I think they have some importance for the decision if the site is healthy, and it is worth it to take it to the public beta. I would say we are doing good for most of those criteria, but we lack a lot with the "visits per day". Do we know how this is considered? I mean, there is a certain time between a "visit" and another to be counted as two different ones? I'm trying to be on the site as many times as I can during the day, but I'm not sure if only "refreshing the page" counts or not. Also, they state that a healthy site has 90% of the traffic from search engines, but now we can't have this traffic. So, it's just a consideration for the next phase?

The stats shown on Area51 include 'visits per day' (bottom of dashboard, below). This suggests that a good site should have >1500 visits per day, but any site should have >500 visits per day. The Bioacoustics Site has hovered around 140-170 visits per day.

Apparently the 'visits per day' is calculated from google analytics (see here). I doubt that multiple visits per day (from the same IP address) will count as this would not be a good indicator of success. I greatly appreciate your enthusiasm, and welcome all participation, but encouraging other acousticians to create a daily habit of checking in will lead to more success.
According to this question on Area51 Meta site, these metrics were created early on with little research to determine their importance. This answer goes on to state that the moderators who decide if a private beta advances to public beta does not rely on these stats. They suggest that # questions asked & # questions answered are helpful indicators of success. This, of course, begs the question of how 'success' is identified....

interesting to see that ~90% of existing non-beta sites have less than 10questions per day https://stackexchange.com/sites?view=list#questionsperday


text:
How to ask a multidisciplinary question on Bioacoustics Stack Exchange?
Bioacoustics, at its core, is a highly multidisciplinary field and many questions relevant to researchers in our field could readily be asked on any number of other SE sites, including (but not limited to) Biology, Signal Processing, Electrical Engineering, Hardware, Open Science, Physics, Cross Validated, etc.  While there has been interest & discussion in creating a way to cross-post (see post), Cross-posting is not acceptable behavior (see post).
Cross-discipline questions that are related to (or applied to) the field of Bioacoustics have been found to be ‘important’ to our community, as expressed by question upvotes (as of this writing, this Q is the 4th highest upvotes, showing importance to our community, but could arguably be asked on other sites). Other similar types of questions have been closed (or are in discussion of being closed) for not being directly related to Bioacoustics. Our community needs to identify guidelines so that we can ask cross-discipline questions that are relevant to the bioacoustics community while ensuring that this site is expressly useful for questions related to bioacoustics.
How should I (we) ask multidisciplinary questions here on Bioacoustics Stack Exchange so that they can be considered ‘on topic’??

Cross-discipline questions can be welcome on the Bioacoustics Stack Exchange as long as they are ‘on-topic’ and of value to the Bioacoustics Community. While these types of questions could be asked on Bioacoustics Stack Exchange OR another site, cross-posting of questions is not acceptable.
The following guidelines are provided to ensure a cross-discipline question is appropriate and on-topic for the Bioacoustics Stack Exchange site. Questions that fail to adequately apply these guidelines may result in closure of their question (see this post on how the community will respond).
Context
How does this question related to Bioacoustics? Provide background to your question including how it specifically relates to Bioacoustics. Why is it important and how does it relate to Bioacoustics? This is your opportunity to justify why this question should be asked here, and not on another site. As part of your due diligence to show your research, we recommend that you search other sites for answers.
Define Question
What exactly is your question as it relates to Bioacoustics? Make sure your question has reasonable scope and is identifiable as related to the field of Bioacoustics.
Refine Question
If there is any question about the appropriateness of your question for the Bioacoustics Stack Exchange site, then community members/moderators may comment on your post & request that you improve your question. You are expected to consider these requests either by addressing them directly (editing your post!) or by explaining in comments why you do not think those requests will improve your post. Please try to not take these requests personally—we are trying to keep our site useful and healthy! If you do not refine/improve your post, it may ultimately be closed.
If all else fails, ask on another Stack Exchange Site!
If there is enough community agreement that a post is not appropriate for the Bioacoustics Stack Exchange, it may be closed. You can then take your site to one of the other Stack Exchange sites, taking care that your question is written such that it is on-topic for that site.
[Notes, this approach is currently a drafty draft, and I encourage suggestions to improve, or alternative approaches]


text:
How to Respond a Multi-disciplinary question to make it relevant to Bioacoustics?
Bioacoustics is fundamentally multi-disciplinary and many questions relevant to this field can also be appropriate for other Stack Exchange sites. Our community (will) identify guidelines for asking good cross-discipline questions (see this post). Separate from how to write a good question is how to respond to questions that need help (do not meet these guidelines).
What steps should our community/moderators take when someone asks a multi-disciplinary question that does not adequately fit the guidelines we develop?

There are many ways that community members can respond to multi-disciplinary questions to ensure that they are appropriate for the Bioacoustics Stack Exchange, and that they adequately fit the guidelines we have developed (see this post for guidelines). As always, we should expect responses to follow the SE ‘be kind’ policy outlined in their Code of Conduct.
USE YOUR VOTES
Votes are a way to express value and agreement/disagreement.

Vote up: You think this is a good question and is useful to the site

Vote Down: You think the question is off-topic, inappropriate, or needs help. Please consider adding a comment if you think the post
can be improved.

REQUEST IMPROVEMENTS
Community members can provide a general comment on posts to request that they read the guidelines (here) and improve their post so that it meets those guidelines.  For example:

Thank you for your question! This multi-disciplinary question can also
apply to other SE sites. Please use these guidelines to edit your
question to fit our expectations for the Bioacoustics site
(How to ask a multidisciplinary question on Bioacoustics Stack Exchange?)

Community members can also provide comments requesting specific edits or refinements to improve a question/title to better fit our expectations for a relevant cross-disciplinary question.
If there is strong community interest in the question but the Original Poster does not improve the question within a few days/week, the question may be edited by one of an interested community member so that it meets community expectations.
CLOSE VOTE
If there is insufficient community interest and the Original Poster does not improve the question so that it meets the expectations outlined in the guidelines, members can vote to close the question. Questions can be re-opened if there is sufficient community interest or the question or the question
[Note, this is a drafty draft and I encourage suggestions to improve! Alternative approaches may be posted as separate answers]


text:
What is the 'elevator pitch' for our Bioacoustics Stack Exchange?
Who are We? Why are we here? What is our purpose in life?
Now that we are moving onto Public Beta (Yay! Team!), we need to define who we are and what our purpose is.
From the 'Real Essential Questions of Every Beta':

Imagine you’ve just gotten on an elevator with a friendly stranger. You have precisely one floor to describe your community to them. What would you say? The elevator pitch is a brief sentence that describes what your site is about.

This helps in visualising what your community is about and what it is going to be. If you have trouble describing your community in one-line, then its a sign that the community needs to take a relook at its scope and purpose.

Here is the initial summary I developed for the Area51 Proposal:

Bioacoustics Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for people interested in the studies of non-human animal sounds and the impacts of sounds on animals.

We need the community to consider how to re-examine this 'elevator pitch'.
Please provide an alternative as an ANSWER
Please provide discussion points on any answer as a COMMENT
Please use VOTES to show your approval (downvotes for STRONG disapproval).
(I will put the initial elevator pitch as one option, but very much welcome comment on it!!)

BTW, you are talking about "non-human animal sounds", so what are "human animal sounds"?

Question: I understand 'non-human' allows us to keep out medically related human hearing+sound production questions, and the current core of the site is non-human (topic wise!) researchers.  What does the community think of allowing/including non-medical related human based questions? There may be a lot to gain by inviting knowledge sharing from human audiology, noise and voice production research? (Should this be a separate question??)

I think human-related topics sit well with Biology SE, but those who study human hearing/sound are welcome to put in their advice on this site. I think we have a lot to learn from those folks, but I also think we want to keep our niche related to animals & the environment?

There is also the neuroscience SE which covers hearing (mostly human): 76 questions on "the sensation and perception of sound information by the brain in humans and animals"

But I don't know how much significant 76 questions is :-D. Choosing the boundaries is not easy...  The best may be to have an relatively broad pitch to let the community's questions build the boundaries themselves. A vague-enough pitch but not too much haha. "Non-human animal sounds" strictly excludes humans so may not be the best, but "animal sounds" ranges in-between I think, as whether human is included or not is ambiguous.

Bioacoustics Stack Exchange is a question and answer site about animal sounds,  the impacts of sounds on animals, and how to research/analyse these topics research related to these topics.
(I removed "non-human" because it's distracting - most ordinary people understand "animal" to mean "non-human animal")

I really like this-- but I would like to see something about the ecological role of sounds (or role of sounds in the ecosystem).   Does research/analyse both need to be there? Or perhaps 'research related to these topics'?

@Shannon On the one hand, I want to say "research" because I really do want the site to focus on scientific questions. On the other hand, I don't want to say "research" because I don't want non-scientists to think they can't join in! ... But I do like your suggested "...research related to these topics", I think that's a good balance

Would it be appropriate to add ecosystems this way: "the impacts of sounds on animals and ecosystems"? It's not precise, but maybe it suffices

I like the sound of both of those suggestions. I wonder if this should be a new answer or different? Either way is fine.... I did realize that my earlier answer was 'locked' and I had to minor edit an answer so that I could 'unlock' my vote (and then edit it back to the original).

In the context of this SE I'm only interested in sound/vibration of NON-human species (and the effect of it) and I hope that discussion does NOT go to generic organism (which includes humans). Why? including humans opens another pandora's box.

@WMXZ I agree we should "keep humans out of it" (mostly) but I think we do that by our moderation, not by this short text

My suggestion is to stick with Dan's answer (Jul 25 at 9:03)

Adding emphasis about the role of sound in ecosystems:
Bioacoustics Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for people interested in the studies of all non-human animal sounds, and the role of sound in ecosystems.

Bioacoustics Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for people interested in the studies of non-human animal sounds and the impacts of sounds on animals.

To be more inclusive of biotremology & soundscape, we could add references to ecological sound? If someone wants to rewrite this as a different answer that includes ecological sound-- go for it!

"Sound"  can sometimes be understood as not including vibration (solid acoustic), so maybe we should precise "sound (in any medium)", or use "acoustic wave" or even "mechanical wave"

@Cam Desjonqu, maybe you could help to find the best words to add ecoacoustics in the SE bioacoustics pitch?

@Dan Stowell, maybe you could help to find the best words to add ecoacoustics in the SE bioacoustics pitch?

suggest that if you want to include biotremology, you need to add substrate-borne vibration, or vibrational waves- because biotremology deals with non-compressional waves (e.g. not sound)\

The Bioacoustics SE is the place you go to find answers and ask questions for all things related to biological sounds and vibrations. How organisms produce, hear, and are impacted by them.
'biological sounds' because bioacoustics is not only about animal sounds, it could also be about plant/insect/microbe sounds and their intersection with other phenomena. Also the common connotation of biological is non-human?

I like the idea of  "organisms" instead of "animals"

There is less ambiguity with "organism" than with "animal". For instance, common usage and e.g. UK legal usage of "animal" does not include arthropods.

And indeed, "organism" also includes plants (e.g. some of which detect pollinator vibrations to release nectar etc..).

yes plants should be included, right? plant bioacoustics is a hot topic right now

Bioacoustics Stack Exchange is a question and answer site about any sounds/vibrations detected or produced by non-human organisms or by the whole ecosystem, and the impact of anthropological sounds/vibrations on them (see the IBAC list of Bioacoustics topics)
I tried to mix the responses, by including:

vertebrates, invertebrates, plants  --> "organisms"
biotremology  -->  "vibration"
ecoacoustics, ecotremology --> "sound/vibration from the whole ecosystem"
anthropological noise but no human sound communication
no scientific terms difficult for general audience such as "mechanical wave" or "acoustical wave"

The IBAC list of bioacoustics is quite comprehensive and we could refer to it (https://www.ibac.info/)


text:
Question vs Comment for questions seeking Advice or Opinions
For a recent question seeking advice on nomenclature (see here), I gave my thoughts in a comment, but upon reflection perhaps I should have made this an answer so that people can vote it up or down (to essentially agree or disagree with this opinion). A comment only allows for up-votes (and so others can only comment if they disagree.
Is is appropriate to change my comment to an answer in this case?
Thoughts on this?

Great question (and should my response here be a question or comment?!)

Thanks for your question! Many of us just joined the Stack world and, although there is a guideline for that, it might help new users to clarify how to use this system.

This question is not up for debate as the questioner (ahem, me!) initially thought.
Initially I read the meta Q about etiquette for 'answer vs question' discussed here, which was highlighted on the FAQ. Besides some of the salty comments (which are not answers, but comments!), there seemed to still be some disagreement (and not very thoroughly cited or discussed answers).
There was a very useful explanation about why even modest answers should not be put in the comments (posted here in the Role Playing Games Meta):

You should not answer in comments. Not partial answers, not full answers. Not "leads on" an answer. Not "I would answer but I'm tired/just woke up/am drunk so I'll just say this..." Not answers that you think aren’t good enough to post as answers. Not little helpful tips, not helpful suggestions, not useful anecdotes. These will be deleted. Answer in answers.
And if your answer isn’t even good enough for you to want to put it in
an answer post, just don’t post it at all then.
Answering in comments does the following things.
It bypasses question closes. They're closed for a reason. It provides
an answer that can't be marked as an answer for future people's
knowledge. It contributes to long comment debates as you can comment
on an answer, but it's unclear what you're commenting on in a comment
thread. It is "cheating" by locking your answer to the top. Answers
with higher votes/accepted answers should go to the top to indicate
their quality. Bypassing that by sticking your answer in a comment on
the question is unacceptable. It bypasses all our quality control
mechanisms: we can't downvote your "answer", edit it, or comment on it
to request clarification or improvements. Answers also bump a question
to the top so that people will scrutinize the answer; comments don't
do this. It gets in the way of people who are busy using comments
correctly to improve the question. The long and short of it is, every
part of how the site functions, all of which have lengthy
justification as being part of the process of SE - rep, answers,
accepts, edits, votes, etc. - is obviated by using comments for
answers. So every good goal of all that functionality is nullified by
this practice.
Now, "but the hapless questioner could use that info!" In nearly all
cases someone posts the same information in a (much more
comprehensive) answer. Or take the time yourself to write a real
answer. We don't like crappy questions or crappy answers, and we'd
rather not have the Q or A than to have one that doesn't meet site
quality (hence closes/deletes, part of the standard SE functionality).
If you don't care enough to write a real answer: don't. The likelihood
that you're the only person in the world/on the site that knows that
bit of info is very small.
While users are welcome to steal the info in the comments to generate
answers of their own, that will not slow the pace of dealing with the
answers-in-comments via flagging and deletion.

Now, there was a very healthy debate in the comments to that answer, but generally I get their point.
While we want to encourage fully fleshed out answers with references and links, we also want to be sure we understand that partial answers are still useful information. We want this 'useful information' to follow the rules of SE so that answers are archivable and the community can 'vote' and comment on those answers.
Does this mean that I should refrain from the quick & dirty answer while I am checking in during my 2 minute break between meetings? Perhaps that is the difference between questions seeking hard answers vs advice/opinions?

I think so, yes! As far as I understood, the comments are supposed to add information on that specific answer/question within the same way of thinking. Such as adding a line of code to that answer, or refuting/corroborating the idea. I would open a new answer if I have a different approach to that question that was not mentioned before.


text:
Capitalization issue in "got a question about the site itself?" banner
There's a capitalization issue in the "got a question about the site itself?" banner that appears on the main site:

The "g" in "got" should be capitalized.


text:
Programming questions related bioacoustics? In/out
There was recently a question on renaming files from bioacoustic recorders on the Beta. IMO this is a programming question and all such future questions too are better suited on another SE (e.g. on Stack Overflow). What are your thoughts on this matter?

At this point, I wouldn't want to discourage those questions because some folks coming to the Bioacoustics site might not be familiar with SO (or might be intimidated by it as we found out in our outreach efforts) so this might be a more approachable place to ask, then if moderators do know of an identical question elsewhere, they can link to it, but maybe it can get answered here as well. Or is that totally not the right approach?

Waterproofing tick B), now I'm wondering if you have an idea what kind of effect such a covering will have on the mic characteristics (sensitivity and directionality). Sounds like worth a try nonetheless!

The Sound Design site also overlaps sometimes with our "audio-signal-oriented" questions: https://sound.stackexchange.com/questions.
Maybe before asking a question that may overlaps with one of these other sites (Physics, Sound Design, Signal Processing, etc, depending on the question), we should check if it has not been already asked on one of these sites. If it is really bioacoustics-oriented, I think it should stays on our site even if has already been asked because we may answer it differently, however, if it is borderline, we should not include it (or downvote the question) or we should add at least a comment below the question "Related: https://blabalbla" with the link of the question that was asked in an other group.

I agree with a lot of what has been said so far. Some additional things to consider.
On-topic elsewhere vs off-topic here
Simply being on-topic on another site alone does not make a question off-topic on this one. I think that's true even if it has been asked elsewhere. It's a hard enough task to keep track of which questions have already been asked on this site. It'd be almost impossible to keep track of which questions have already been asked network-wide.
So, while I agree that general programming questions that are not (clearly) related to bioacoustics should not be on-topic here, I don't believe that questions answered elsewhere or borderline should be excluded on this basis. (There are other closure reasons like "Needs Details or Clarity" and comments to explain that the question is not clearly about bioacoustics)
What kind of expertise is needed?
In general, when asking a questions, what is most important is:

the type of expert are you looking for,
the knowledge that expert needs to be able to answer the question, and
if that expert will be able to find your question where you've asked it.

For example, if a programming question does not require domain specific knowledge, you are more likely to be able to receive an answer on Stack Overflow just due to the higher number of both programmers and users in general.
However, implementation questions specific to some bioacoustics problem may require an expert in this area, and that's where asking on Bioacoustics.SE makes more sense.
Beyond this, domain specific applications of known solutions can also have significant value for this community. Outlining how to use a known/generic programming solution (which may be a duplicate on another site) to solve a specific bioacoustics problem provides value to those searching for "how to solve X bioacoustics problem" instead of "how to write a program that does X".
Community Specific Closure Reason
After the beta phase, and after moderators are elected, two moderators can create (and activate) a new community specific reason. If general programming questions become an issue you may consider creating a reason that explains this.
Some similar existing closure reasons across the network are:
WordPress.SE's:

Your question should be specific to WordPress. Generic PHP/JS/SQL/HTML/CSS questions might be better asked at [so] or another appropriate Stack Exchange network site. Third party plugins and themes are off topic, they are better asked about at their developers' support routes.

SharePoint.SE:

Programming questions not specific to SharePoint are off-topic here, but can be asked on Stack Overflow.

Drupal.SE:

Questions on programming, PHP, SQL, etc. that do not relate directly to Drupal are off-topic here, but can be asked on Stack Overflow.

Exact wording for this community and the other fields of the closure dialogue would need to be worked out, but this may be a good way to formalise the community standard once a consensus is reached.

Thanks for this @Henry Ecker. Is it good to have some of those "borderline" questions in at this stage to provide discussion points for the community?

A big part of beta is defining what is on-topic for this site (defining scope). Personally, I think questions that are borderline (which I am defining as: questions that are clear enough to be answerable but do not appear to be directly related to bioacoustics) should be closed (and improved and reopened where possible). I was just trying to say that these questions should be closed because they do not establish their relationship to bioacoustics (missing some key details) rather than be closed simply by virtue of having been asked/answered elsewhere on the network.

There is a fine line to navigate between having a healthy meaningful site and not discouraging users...  Before closing, would it be worth commenting & requesting they edit their question to show that they LOOKED on those other sites? Perhaps to help 'train' our users, we could have a canned comment we use that states that the question must relate directly to Bioacoustics & that they need to show they have not found a suitable answer on sites x, y, or z. If they do not edit, then close. If they do-- then they help all the others learn as well??? Then we can be more strict in the future?

How wide to cast the net? One could argue that bioacoustics is anyway very interdisciplinary, and in some sense the physics, psychoacoustics etc could all somehow go on other platforms.
However, it also seems like there is very little to be gained from language/package -specific answers with no bioac. content. Also another thing that speaks against having programming questions is the duplicated effort of Stack Overflow's focus area. I don't see a problem with code/answers having language/package specific content, but it should have something that the bioac community can gain from as a whole conceptually and scientifically too.


text:
'expanded' literature search questions
I'm wondering what the community thinks of questions that look to fill gaps/expand literature on a particular topic.
The stimulus for this post is a question seeking in-depth literature on a particular (well-defined) topic.
The fact that the scope of the topic is defined is positive. However, what about the 'listiness' of the question?
Also see related question here by @selene.

I agree these questions might be a bit problematic, also because the "best" answer will likely change over time (if a complete answer is possible at all). Will it always have the most recent literature? Will it be updated regularly?
I think a community wiki might be a good approach!

The 'listiness' of the question is a bit bothering.
The slightly bothersome part is that a 'listy' question, esp. a literature related one is unlikely to be have a complete answer. Maybe we should consider making all literature search based answers to a 'listy' question into a community wiki?

Following up on the earlier discussion on using wikis (here), I think our community would benefit from waiting to convert questions to wiki until we reach the public beta phase.
Two goals of Private Beta are to (1) create a solid foundation of high quality Q&A prior to going public and (2) allow our users to participate, earn reputation points, and earn/use moderation tools.
Assuming we are able to graduate to Public Beta, perhaps one of our tasks at that point will be to identify questions appropriate for wiki (and perhaps clean them up a little!).