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1682 | Conflict on answering same question about mentioning MOOC courses
The answer of this question: mentioning MOOC's I took in my scholarship application
Yes! Why not? It shows that you go beyond what is required of you, and you have a genuine interest in learning. I always list certificates from MOOCs.
The answer of this question: Can I include the completion of Udacity and Coursera classes I have attended in an academic CV?
No. Specific coursework (whether formal or informal, online or in-person) does not belong in an academic CV.
Of course, the first one doesn't mention about CV, but it doesn't really matter.
There's no conflict. You can mention things in an essay or application that you would not put in an academic CV.
Essay? You mean SOP?
Not only statements of purpose, but any persuasive writing that might be associated with such processes.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.704070 | 2015-04-01T19:32:22 | {
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1867 | What does the image in the "404 error" page mean?
A link get to a 404 error page.
A sinuous wave coming from the pedal. The bicycle is lacking its first wheel, its last wheel has something in it. There is a green cloud at the end of the wave.
Why the bike, the wave and the cloud? What does the image mean? And how does it relate to the bottom image?
I am pretty sure the wave is a bike rack and the cloud is a bush.
Obviously, the wave is a modulated cycloid that generates the head of genetically modified alligator with no eyes.
@CapeCode i don't understand your joke (I do understand the alligator with no eyes, but still don't understand the whole)
The Stack Exchange Design Team refuses to implement 404 page images/layouts unless they convey the concept of "not found" in some way. Just sayin'...
I think it is a broken-down bicycle. In my interpretation, it was locked up to the bike rack (grey wave) by the bush (green cloud) in working order and then had its front wheel stolen, leaving it non-functional. This is an unfortunately common sight on college campuses.
I think it relates to the 404 because when you come to get your bike and see it like that, it's incredible frustrating, and you know you aren't going anywhere just now.
Thanks for your answer. In my country it's hard to find a bike in the campus like that. What do you mean by "it was locked up to the bike rack by the bush in working order"? Also, as the bottom image suggests, you can catch a bus if you can't ride the bike.
"in working order" means the bike was fine when the person arrived there and locked it to the bike rack to keep anybody from stealing it or messing with it. For the bus... I got nothin'
Locking to the bush? Why not a fence or something else? How can a bush keep the bike from stolen? And why is the lock a sinuous wave?
The sinuous wave is a metal bicycle rack. The lock is not shown.
@Ooker, The sinuous gray line is a simplified sketch of one of these metal bike racks.
@BillBarth aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh. Now I understand :P. Jakebeal, could you please add this picture to your answer? Thanks XD
@BillBarth but isn't the bike should be locked in perpendicular position of the rack?
@Ooker, probably, but it's an simplified diagram, and the concept of the missing wheel would be harder to show that way.
And, by the way, this is why nobody should ever lock their bike by locking just the front wheel to something. Person A locks their bike by just the front wheel; bike thief steals the whole bike except for that wheel; bike thief steals somebody else's front wheel, which most people don't bother to secure. I suspect that just about every case of a front wheel being stolen is a complement to a bike-minus-front-wheel being stolen.
This drawing is totally out of proportion, I don't see the lock either.
You will not go to space today.
I think it's a play on...
404: Route not found
That varies a little, in a technical sense, from the 404 error's resource not found meaning, but the humor certainly seems to come from a bike being the transportation (routing) method of a poor student... and this is roughly the age when you realize your tire needs to be locked up too.
Its a common 404 theme to supplement the Not Found with a connoted broken link. Wit the front wheel spirited away the bike is of no help in getting to the bus (at the bus stop)
Thus the meaning would be, We are unable to find you the information you requested or to get you to B where you wanted to go.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.704180 | 2015-08-02T11:58:41 | {
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1506 | Should my question (How can physicists help in biology...) be reopened?
Here is my original question: How can physicists help in theoretical biology, besides math and fresh perspectives?
As stated in jakebeal's answer in the meta question I ask:
Your question was then a bit borderline because it asked about classes of content interacting with this idea. I'm pretty liberal about how I think about scope on this site, though, and so tend to feel that if something is borderline but we can answer it well, that it is better to include than to close.
Since there is no other answer, is it safely to conclude that this is the official answer? If yes, should my question be reopened?
If not, do you have any suggestion for where should I ask? Quora?
Unfortunately, many of the answers are posted in comments rather than answers, which means we can't see who would have downvoted. However, it does appear that there is a sense that the question is off-topic due to it's being about a specific research topic rather than relating to academia itself. Personally, I agree with that assessment. In that vein, I think it's remaining closed is probably the best path on this site.
Regarding other venues, the main one that comes to mind is reddit. Hopefully other people can provide other good suggestions.
For me, it sounds more like a Quora-question. I mean, it's great, but a bit open-ended [I didn't cast a close-vote, thought].
Alternatively, you can try asking on http://biology.stackexchange.com. But even with that it can be too general - depending on discipline the answer may vary. (In short, it is usually applied mathematics, understanding of models, numerics and analogies from physical system.)
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1789 | Idea for ad about health in this site?
A long long time ago, when the Earth was still in darkness, and the human kind was not so bright, one brave alien had came to the Area and laid the first brick (or the first click) of an architechture. That creature didn't think its action had any impact. But one told ten, ten told eleven, and luckily they don't use adblock, together they came and laid their bricks (or clicks) onto the first one. Throughout many storms, amazingly the bunch of bricks (or clicks) became a glorious and beautiful castle. The citizen in that castle call themselves as academian, and name the castle as Academia.
.
Ok, forget the story. Health SE is a newborn site of the SE system, and just like Academia SE a long long time ago, it needs to attract new people. According to the stat, there is only two Okays and the rest are Need Works. But what bored me most is the answered question rate: 73% (it's 75% just a couple days ago). You know why: more people ask but the number of answerers doesn't increase. Not to mention the endemic of the field, the site itself strongly encourage to have source in the answer, since it's the only way to know how good the answer is.
But you don't need to be a doctor to answer. I don't know much how the healthcare system works, but I believe that doctors are not the only one who can answer questions about health. It just need to reach the right person. And I think in Academia, there are a lot of right ones can help.
.
My current ad ("Behind every PhD is always have a doctor there) is meant to be fun, but there is a downvote for it. This may mean that they may not want to see it here. But why? A typical grad student need to spend 60 hours per week to work, so being healthy is very important, why does that one not want to see it here? I conclude that because the ad itself, not the site, is bad. So I want to improve it.
I remember an old psychology technique that every teacher must know: tell something to them, they will easily forget it; but make them tell themselves, they will remember it, or feel attach to it. And since the ads are chosen by the community, why not let them create it for themselves? After all, it's their idea, how can they hate it?
So here, this is the question: Do you have any idea for an ad of Health SE?
Wouldn't it be better to ask this on the Healt.se meta?
I don't think so. The audiences of the ad is in here, Academia, so it's better to ask here. Plus, I want to see the reaction/feedback because I just come up this idea.
AArhg an entire site for consequence-free Internet doctors! On my way to downvote the add.
@CapeCode i see your downvote...
@CapeCode The purpose of the whole SE (which Health is a member) is providing knowledge. It can be in the form of advises, methods, or cures, but it must tell why it works. There is no clear cut what question is not potentially dangerous, but if it clearly requires a doctor, then it should be closed. In a good form answer, it will have a reference to back it up [...] (too long for a comment, so I post it as an answer in OMG… A site about Health?. There are a lot of good answers there.)
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.704649 | 2015-06-11T05:51:36 | {
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2008 | A question which closely related to a lot of other questions that is not closed as dupe?
For example: How to select a graduate school
IMO, this question is fully answered by the linked questions in the comments. However, it doesn't well answered. However (again), I'm interested in the question itself.
I think it is exactly a dupe of the related questions, linked by ff524. However she doesn't do that. I wonder why.
Since I has interest with the question itself, should I upvote it, then vote to close as a dupe?
Because a moderator vote is binding, I prefer not to cast a first or second close vote in many cases (specifically, in cases where I think it's more appropriate for the community to weigh in first.)
I think it is exactly a dupe of the related questions, linked by ff524.
Then you should vote to close.
should I upvote it too?
@Ooker if you find it useful, sure. See When should I vote up?
just a note, I don't think the FAQ give me enough information, to the level of satisfy me
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.704921 | 2015-10-20T08:04:15 | {
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2188 | How to find question about a specific kind of personal statement?
So the a tag for the specific kind of personal statement has been synonymized to the sop tag*. This is the decision of the community, and I have no objection. I just want to know if there is a way to quickly find the questions I need, or there is no way to filter them? To quote myself:
For those who fall into the situation like me, the feeling of having a distinction is very clear. It's also a big plus for future visitors who only want to read questions about this.
*Should statement-of-purpose tag be synonyms with personal-statement?
If the feeling of distinction is clear to you, can you please explain it? I do not see any clear distinction myself.
@jakebeal which part you don't see it's clear? You can comment on my answer there
Most personal statements that I've encountered are also about research, and how does this fit with teaching statements? I guess my feeling is that this is a confusing, nation- and institution-dependent definition with no clear standards or terminology, and I'm not sure you're going to be able to narrow things down any better than they are without also excluding things you'd want to read.
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1486 | Where is the line between "a question about doing research" and "a question about the content of research"?
My question (How can physicists help in theoretical biology, besides math and fresh perspectives?) is decided to be off topic because of this reason:
However, please do not ask questions about:
The content of your research, rather than the process of doing research
As I stated in this comment, at first I have doubted that the question I ask will be off topic, but after seeing the changing-fields tag, I think this question is on topic.
Searching for this reason, I only find out the proposal of changing the help center.
In the Is "What background do I need to do research in specific field X?" on-topic at Academia.SE? question, ff524 agrees that this kind of question is on topic.
I'm not quite sure how the line is being drawn myself - I thought it was a good question and answered it. :-)
Thanks for that. It's not that I don't satiate with that answer, in fact that's all I expect. I just want to make it open again. I am thinking about ask it on Quora :-s
I think this may not have gotten much attention because the title didn't really match the subject of the question. I edited the title, hopefully someone will answer it now.
Thank you @ff524, it indeed helps.
Here is how I tend to think about it:
The process of research is anything that is primarily about scientists and their interactions (including systems for supporting those interactions)
The content of research is anything that is primarily about the artifacts under examination and the mechanisms used for examining them.
From that perspective, I would consider a question about the relationship between fields to be about process because the definition of a field is a flexible notion emerging primarily from the sociopolitical interactions of scientists. Your question was then a bit borderline because it asked about classes of content interacting with this idea. I'm pretty liberal about how I think about scope on this site, though, and so tend to feel that if something is borderline but we can answer it well, that it is better to include than to close.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.705141 | 2015-01-03T06:24:24 | {
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1550 | Questions on writing: should I ask them in here or in writers.SE?
Recently, I find that in the writers.SE, there is a academic tag. Its description says:
Writing texts in a scientific or educational setting: peer-reviewed articles, theses, text books, and others.
I think that it is completely overlap with this academia.SE site. So if I have a question about writing, which site will I get the best answers if I ask in? Can I cross-duplicate my question to get the best from both worlds?
I think that Writers.SE is a better place to ask about general style and grammar, while Academia.SE is a better place to ask about substance and academic customs.
There's a big grey area where a question might legitimately be asked on either (e.g., these two questions on active vs. passive voice).
Do not however, post a question on both: that is considered a Bad Thing on SE sites. Pick the one you think will give you the best answer, and your question can be migrated to the other if necessary.
When it comes to academic writing, several SE sites other than Academia.SE might give you a good answer, at least in principle: Writers.SE or, even, for the usage of English, ELU.SE and ELL.SE.
I'm a bit hesitating, however, in suggesting to ask there questions about academic writing in technical fields (in case you are from a technical field) because I have the impression that there are not many academics who participate in the sites I've listed, especially from technical fields.
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972 | Reasking a question about automated assessment tools
Recently, this question on recommendations for automated assessment tools for programming assignments was migrated to this site and quickly closed (rightfully so, as it was a simple shopping list question). Since this is a topic I'm currently interested it and the original poster apparently did not follow the migration, I'm considering reasking it myself in a (hopefully) more suitable way. However, my main interest is in programming assignments posed as part of courses in applied mathematics, so I'm a bit torn about whether https://matheducators.stackexchange.com/ might not be a more suitable forum for it.
So I'd like to gauge the interest in the general topic for this community first. Do you think a generic question would be useful? If so, what would make for good bits of information to ask for? (I was planning on asking for -- positive or negative -- experiences in practice, but I'm worried that this would be too opinion-based.)
Actually, the linked question has not yet been closed—votes to close have been cast to close, but not enough to place it on hold. That said, it is a shopping question, and should be closed.
Questions about:
The pros and cons of using such systems
The features needed to use such systems properly
Handling the results of such systems (for instance: "What happens if a system breaks down?" "What happens if a student complains about having to use such a system?")
would be on-topic in my opinion.
Questions that would be off-topic would include:
Recommendations for which specific system to buy
Questions that ask about how to use a particular system
I was certainly going for the former. I've gone ahead and asked the question: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/20578/13852, if it's too specific to mathematics, feel free to migrate to MathEducators (if they want it).
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1759 | Is there a better way to cross-purpose technical academic questions?
Lately I've seen a few questions asked on Academia that are academic in scope but might benefit from a little help from other parts of SE because of their technical nature. Some examples:
Examples of research resources for which Wikipedia is known as being amongst top referrers?
What is the best way to design a paper questionnaire to support scanning and converting to raw data?
Pushing these questions over to, say, StackOverflow is (rightly) going to have the reviewers there closing them immediately due to being off topic, etc., but do we maybe lose the benefit of the entire community of StackExchange by not allowing for more cross-pollination? Because a lot of these questions go unanswered as a result of not being a great fit for either community, is there a better place to ask them? Chat, maybe? Something else? Is there a role for hybrid SE communities?
Just a thought...
Unfortunately, there is no systematic way to cross-promote questions. It would be nice if there were a tab on the home page that might show "related" questions from across the network, but that's a feature request above our pay grade.
... which a lot of people want.
You can always post a link to the question in the chatroom of a site that might be interested.
If you post the question URL on a line to itself in chat, with no other text on that line, then the chat system will create a onebox with a preview of the question, and a link to it.
Don't do it often in the same chatroom, because that will feel spammy. And do check the local customs of each chatroom beforehand.
And do add a sentence of explanation before or after the line with the URL on it, mentioning why you're bringing it to that particular chatroom's attention.
Yeah, I figured it might be something like that. I'm gonna try that...
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1687 | Should comments be removed when they hint to content that has been edited out for not making it public?
An example is personal identifying information in
My supervisor plagiarised my bachelor thesis: what can I do about it?
It is in this question comment:
@Neptune: I've removed the identifying content of your post. Although
I understand your situation, Ac.SE is not the place to accuse by name
your supervisor of plagiarizing. You should not expect us to decide
whether there has been plagiarism or not based on the actual content,
but only to provide you with the answers on how to deal with it. –
user102 Mar 2 '14 at 12:34
Hints like this can also be in the question or answer body, like in answer https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/17627/13560 :
As a last resort, you can contact the organisers of the conference, as
stated by just-learning, and give them the information that you also
gave us above (now deleted).
Another example is this question, as it now hints at the same deleted information indirectly.
If a comment no longer stands on its own, this sounds like an intended use of the "obsolete" flag. An answer, however, can simply be edited to reflect the current state of the question.
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983 | Are questions about campus facilities on-topic?
I have a question that is not a problem, but rather something that I'm curious about and could elicit a good answer. I would like to know the reasons for what I believe is a trend relating to the kinds of facilities offered by campuses.
It's not about academia per se, but I think it could fall under the allowed topic of
Life as a graduate student, postdoctoral researcher, university professor
and maybe even
Inner workings of research departments.
There's no high-level reason it would be off-topic that I can see. Give it a shot.
http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20669/why-do-campuses-have-glass-blowing-services
Questions on university facilities should be on-topic if they pertain directly (as you point out) to "life as a graduate student, postdoctoral researcher, university professor" etc.
Questions about facilities that aren't specific to academia or academic life (e.g., "What kind of lighting is best for an office environment?") would probably be off topic as "boat programming" questions.
We've had some questions related to facilities before:
What are some good ways to provide computer labs for the students?
Best practices for keeping a campus computer network from getting brought down by inappropriate use?
FWIW, [workplace.SE] probably covers many questions that may occur in the context of but are not specific to academia or campuses.
I would just add that I think this should be limited to a campus's academic facilities. For the question at hand, a glass shop directly supports a university's academic mission (by producing equipment for research) so it's fine to ask about here. The same can be said for computer labs and networks.
But campuses have lots of other facilities, and I wouldn't support a question about a university's dorms, cafeterias, swimming pools, squash courts, medical clinics, parking garages, boiler plants, or electrical substations. These may affect the lives of students and professors, but I don't think they should be on-topic here. I don't see this community as having the relevant expertise.
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3225 | Reducing "How do I ask an academic a question?" questions
Academia gets a lot of questions in this genre.
https://academia.stackexchange.com/search?q=how+to+ask
Many of the asker's problems could be solved if they reworded their post to be addressed to the academic in question, and then asked the question. I feel like these posts are just looking for affirmation. They contribute to the noise rather than the signal. Can we make a catch-all question or otherwise reduce these?
Questions about academics asking students questions seem more interesting to me.
Looking at the top ~ten questions on that list, it doesn't seem like there could be a (useful) common answer for all (or even many) of them.
Not all the questions linked are in the genre.
Perhaps you could provide a list of questions that you think this proposal would apply to, then.
If I understand your concern, I think that there are two genres of questions embedded within the "how to ask" that might be good for setting up community wiki answers for:
"How do I effectively ask a busy stranger for help with admission/funding/hiring/research?"
"When should I treat professors as authority figures and when like ordinary human beings?"
The rest I think are highly heterogeneous, but we get a lot that are basically students or junior researchers who are struggling with these two general issues, and a CW might be able to help consolidate them.
Right. These questions are not really about the stated situation. They are about the asker's self confidence.
@AnonymousPhysicist It's not just self-confidence, it's also about complying with social norms. If you ask a busy stranger for help in a problematic manner, you are guaranteed to not get help. Likewise, there are some times when you should treat a professor as an authority figure and not an ordinary fellow human being.
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1277 | Is "What background do I need to do research in specific field X?" on-topic at Academia.SE?
I recently posted this question, which was closed as off-topic for being too specific to my situation. I admit I'm a little bit confused, since it didn't seem particularly more situation-specific than this question. I'd like to improve the question by generalizing it so it can be reopened; since I clearly missed something when I was writing the question, I'd like some feedback on my proposed changes.
Here's a rough outline of how I would like to re-word the question:
What background is necessary to do research in computational linguistics?
I'm getting ready to enter graduate school, and I would like to do PhD-level research in computational linguistics and natural language processing. I know that these two fields are very interdisciplinary and draw on various subfields of linguistics, computer science, math, and statistics. I also know that research in comp ling and NLP is done in different departments at different schools, with some schools having it in the CS department, and some in the linguistics department.
Ideally, what background knowledge should someone have in order to do research in computational linguistics or natural language processing? Which areas of linguistics, computer science, math, and statistics are necessary or helpful in studying comp ling and NLP, and is there one field among those four which is overall more necessary than the others?
(Note: per this question from Linguistics.SE, the distinction between comp ling and NLP is pretty blurry, which is why I mention both in my question.)
I'd like to know if there's any more room for improvement, if this looks like a valid, on-topic question, or if there's no saving this question and I should delete it.
For the record, I think the question you linked definitely should have been closed. I wouldn't use it as a reference of a reasonable question :)
@ff524 Noted, it looked shaky to me too, but I don't spend much time on this site. If anything, I thought mine was less specific than that question since mine would at least would be relevant to all people who want to study computational linguistics.
Given the positive vote count of the answer and total lack of objection from anyone, I'd say go ahead; add a comment on the question with a link to this meta post in case anybody has something to say :)
@ff524 Will do, thanks for your support!
I'm not sure whether a question that asks
What background do I need to do research in specific field X?
is considered a general Academia question, or a domain-specific question about X (which would be off-topic here). I couldn't really find any questions like this on the site.
Perhaps we can find out now :) vote this answer up if you think this should be on-topic, and vote down if you think this should not be on-topic.
(Since I can't vote on my own post, here's my opinion: I think such a question should be on-topic.)
Thanks for your answer. My thought process was that the question touches on "Transitioning from undergraduate to graduate researcher". I checked Linguistics.SE to see whether a question like this would be more on-topic there, and it seemed like its case over there was even weaker.
Well, that latter point doesn't necessarily make it on-topic here :) but we'll see what others think about this.
@ff24 You're right, I worded that badly. If the question is totally off-topic here too, I'll delete it, but I thought it would be on-topic based on my reading of the guidelines.
Coincidentally, recently I had asked a question which I believe that it is closely related to yours. It was closed as off-topic, the main reason was indicated in this comment:
the question concerns the subject matter of persons within academia, not academia itself
I asked the reason why in the meta, and I can inferred that user jakebeal agreed that this kind of question is on-topic. However, when I ask if my question could be reopened, the answers were no. The answerers suggested me to ask on Reddit, Quora or in biology.SE.
The result? Biology.SE was the best to ask, I was saluted with the answer in there. You can also see the meta question in biology.SE I asked. The question on Quora attracted low quality answer. I didn't ask on Reddit, but I think if you are patient enough to read all the comment, you will find somethings useful thought.
So my advice to your question: stick to linguistic.SE. People in here will find a reason to close your question ;)
Sorry, I should have mentioned that I did repost this, here, and it wasn't closed, although it didn't exactly light the world on fire. TBH I was afraid of Linguistics.SE because I've seen the community do some pretty rotten things to new users, or get sidetracked into tangential arguments in comments. But glad to hear you had a good experience with Bio.SE, and I'll keep your points in mind in the future.
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1133 | Is it okay to accept your own answer?
I asked this question a few days ago and since there were no answers decided to research an answer myself (it's not like I have any of my own research or writing to be doing!). I wrote an answer which has received a number of up-votes.
Normally I always try to accept an answer for any question I ask so if I get no other answers on this question is it okay to accept my own answer?
Yes! Go ahead.
However, unlike accepting someone else's answer, you must wait 48 hours from when you asked the question, the accepted answer won't stick at the top (if there are multiple answers), and you won't earn reputation for accepting it. (Source)
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2118 | Does the MIT license affect anything in academia?
Sorry this is not the most eloquently worded question, and I admit is loaded, but I am hoping some useful meta answer could come from it.
I just noticed this hot meta topic The MIT License – Clarity on Using Code on Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange and thought it was useful to just bring it as a question on this site.
As a few questions have asked a persons role as a programmer in terms of contribution, as well as questions about help on mathematical problems. Maybe this has already been answered in an actual question, but I thought I would ask here. Would the change of licenses on SE make any difference in how the use of code in research would warrant contribution.
I guess I am looking at this in a 'meta' way, in which code is similar to me as a mathematical notation of a problem, a sequence of steps in an experiment, or a specification of a gear reduction. Maybe I am interpreting it wrong, but when I look at code in MIT license, it is about contribution to 'public domain', which I view in academic terms as 'public knowledge'.
I would not cite something that is common knowledge in my field. I realize there may be a difference between public and common, but I still think there is an interesting difference when something becomes intellectual contribution, especially if the use is not from an original poster. For example, person A asks a question, person B answers with the intent their answer is completely public domain and contribution to the general knowledge without any attribution.
If person C finds this information and uses it to solve their own problem, does the fact of where they found this information change based on persons B intent?
I’m voting to close this question as off-topic because it belongs on the main site, unless I am totally misunderstanding it (in which case it should be clarified).
@Wrzlprmft Sorry its not phrased well. I see it as a meta question because it has implications on how answers here are made in reference to other SE sites. There have been a few questions that ask about help from Math or SO SE sites.
If those other questions become obsolete, you can ask for updated answers or at least mark them to be before the license change. Also, “Does the MIT licence affect citing SE in academic writing?” sounds like a valid question for the main page.
Moving this to the Stack Overflow meta site. This meta is for the Academia site, and I don't think you'll get any useful answers here.
Based on the comments on the meta.SE site, I'm re-opening this here. I'm still not sure that we'll get any useful replies on this site, but they clearly feel that we won't get useful replies on that site either. Sorry for moving this one around so much!
I don't really understand this question. I think you may be mixing up two things: (1) copyright, which limits reuse of code, depending on the rights granted in the license, and (2) attribution in the academic sense: crediting work that isn't yours to its author. The former is no different in academia vs any other domain, and the latter does not depend on the license of the material (academic ethics require attribution even if the license doesn't.)
So I'm not sure what you're really asking. Can you [edit] this post to clarify?
@eykanal FYI it was still locked here. You need to clear migration history to reopen a migrated question.
@ff524 - Thanks, sorry for not doing that. Looked open to me...
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3614 | Should I incorporate someone else’s comment into my answer?
On my answer to the question When referring to races, should 'black' and 'white' be capitalized? (MLA), another user has posted an up-voted (5 at present) comment that contains new information. Another user has suggested that they should write it up as a separate answer but they have not done so to date (9 days later).
Should I incorporate the information from the comment into my answer, giving proper credit to it, or just leave it as it is?
Yes, you should incorporate information from comments into your answer if you think it will improve the quality of your answer!
Also see (on Meta SE):
Should I incorporate useful comments into my answer, or just upvote them?
Should I revise my answers based on comments? If so, how to properly attribute?
Comment subsumption etiquette
How to encourage people to edit answers instead of posting additional information in comments?
Sorry, I'm not good at convincing people there is a subtle racist subtext in a piece of writing. Maybe on some subconscious level you saw it too, though, because you came up with a great solution.
@aparente001 I'm not really prepared to discuss in comments, because that's not how site policy is made. As a general rule, if you have a position you don't think the community in general agrees with, and you're not prepared to bring up in a meta post if it becomes contentious, it probably isn't something you should be trying to force through on your own. This is a community site.
Can we focus on the positive? I think you found a great solution.
You can incorporate information from comments into your own answer, provided that you make it clear who wrote the comment. In fact, the footer of every page on a Stack Exchange site says:
USER CONTRIBUTIONS LICENSED UNDER CC BY-SA 3.0 WITH ATTRIBUTION REQUIRED
Since comments are user contributions, using them in your answers requires proper attribution according the the rules set out in the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 licence.
Note: I included the quote from the footer to point something out that many Stack Exchange users overlook. The intent is not to say this should be attached to every (partially) quoted comment. (Copied from a comment, since comments are ephemeral.)
@djechlin I included the quote from the footer to point something out that many Stack Exchange users overlook. The intent is not to say this should be attached to every (partially) quoted comment. Does that still seem agressive? If yes, can you explain which specific part of my answer you are referring to?
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1346 | Protected status won't let me answer question, even though I have enough rep through association
This question is now protected due to supposed "low-quality answers", and the banner says that I cannot answer it until I have "10 rep on this site".
I have 101 rep, 1 of which came from joining and 100 of which is association bonus. Surely this bonus ought to count? The entire point of it is that it was granted because I am "trusted elsewhere in the network".
Note the exact wording: you must have earned at least 10 reputation on this site. That is supposed to suggest that the association bonus does not count for this, since it was not earned on this site.
@Nate: Yes, I read that. I even quoted it in the question.
Right, but I wasn't sure if the on this site part was clear.
@Nate: Yeah it was I was basically proposing that it should be removed and thus the policy changed. But Cape Code's links convinced me otherwise.
@naughtyjojo: They are not worthless, they do count towards the required reputation to do other things. The reputation bonus lets you upvote and post comments immediately, for instance. Protected questions are an exception.
This a network-wide policy. It has been discussed (although not extensively) in some posts on the SE meta:
Can the protect feature be made to block "101" users as well?
Some explanations are available here:
Undocumented change to reputation threshold for answering protected questions?
The argument seems to be that at least one vote on the current site is required to be able to answer protected questions, presumably to prevent newcomers to pollute questions before having understood a bit about the specific community they just joined.
This is intentional, the association bonus is ignored for the check.
Users with 10 or more reputation can answer a protected question. However, the +100 account association bonus is ignored for this check, so you must have earned 10 or more reputation on that specific site to answer a protected question.
Yes, that's why I'm posting here (though [tag:bug] may not have been appropriate): why is this the case? I don't think it should be.
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3539 | Vote-to-close/Canonical questions for "Can't/won't attend conference/ visa issue"
People, it's time to start closing-as-(near-)duplicate, and identifying canonical questions and titles, among the following:
would my paper be published if I faild to attend the conference because of Visa related problems? UPDATE: turns out this is more like "Conference organizer is failing to send me invitation letter which I need for visa; how to proceed; will my paper not be published?"
"If a paper is accepted as a poster, must you attend the conference?"
What to do if I can't get a visa to attend a conference that accepted my paper? which in turn references...
Etiquette when unable to attend a conference
There is a nuance with #2,3,4 that:
a) OP may or may not have coauthor(s)/colleague/supervisor attending who can present (although they may not do a great job) or:
b) rarely confs allow Skype or (recorded-)video presentations, although those may not be great options.
Usually the main, explicit or implicit question is "Will my paper still be published?", but sometimes people are also asking "Can I get a refund on the fee?", and that depends on circumstances (e.g. does a visa refusal or other unforeseen emergency qualify?).
Occasionally people are asking along the lines of "I submitted the same paper to both a journal and a conf as a fallback, unexpectedly got accepted to the journal, now what do I do about the conf?", which is different.
If the questions are identical, definitely close. Saves everyone time.
If questions are similar but subtly different, definitely stay open. The nuance may affect the answer, or may be asking for an entirely different answer (as you point out above).
"Close as duplicate" is a tool for us, the answerers. Do keep in mind, though, that the first customer is the questioner. Unless their question is entirely answered by the earlier post, don't mark as duplicate... give them the answer they're looking for.
That's my take, anyways.
Which one(s) of those 4 is/are canonical?
@smci - Generally, it's either the first one or the one with the most comprehensive answer. Specifically for this case, either of the last two would work.
Turns out #1 is different, see its comments. As to #4 "Etiquette when unable to attend a conference" it's a crap title, it's utterly unclear what is being asked.
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1803 | Do we need a tag for 'replication-paper'?
I suggest we need a replication-paper tag.
This would be about replication papers, and not the narrow issue of irreproducibility. The replication paper issue in its own right is touched upon frequently, but doesn't seem to get acknowledged as such:
Are replication papers respected? as much as original research? What is their career value?
My research (some replication, some original ideas) produced negative results. Is this publishable (e.g. as a replication paper)?
How to go about trying to replicate someone else's work?
What are reasonable expectations of reproducibility?
Best practices to make my published work/results/code/data replicatable?
How to get access to data? Can I expect access to source code? with attached restrictions?
How to phrase correspondence with authors if I encounter problems with irreproducibility?
How to handle replication when the code/data are not open-source/ have restrictions attached?
Examples:
Have researchers any incentive to publish negative or confirmatory results?
Where do researchers get the money to replicate others' work?
How to deal with papers/authors that provide no details of implementation?
Can I request the code behind a research paper from the author?
Why do many talented scientists write horrible software?
(Answer) How can I get into computer science research as a high school student?
How accurate are published papers?
Should I cite all R packages I used?
What to do when research leads to poor results?
There are 106 hits for 'replication'.
The number of search hits for a keyword is not necessarily a good indication of how much it is needed as a tag.
If we limit the search to questions containing "replication," there are fewer results and many are not relevant (i.e. mention replication only tangentially).
I am of the opinion that reproducible-research suffices for the small number of questions about reproducing or replicating someone else's research. (I think it's OK to expand the scope of the tag slightly to accommodate replication.)
I already said it's not just about irreproducibility. I suggested we need a tag for replication-paper, which is separate and is something frequently touched upon. A replication paper is about much much more than the narrow issue of whether something is reproducible. Let me go add clarification to the question.
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874 | Reason for deletion?
I tried to write a response to I believe I have solved a famous open problem. How do I convince people in the field that I am not a crank? that mentioned an achievement of my own that I thought was much bigger than it was, and respectful empathy for referees instead of viewing them as obstacles. It was deleted, ironically enough. Did I do wrong by including a link to my website, or did I come off as a crank, or something else? There were no comments, positive or negative, and it had two upvotes before being deleted five hours after it was posted.
I'm not sure it's my best work but I tried to have a heart to heart comment to someone dealing with being outside of the climate of opinion whether he made a legitimate discovery or was a legitimate crank. Is this kind of heart to heart (or attempt) outside the purview of academia.stackexchange.com? Was it deleted because of execution or intent, or was part of it just too strange for the person reading it?
I made a distinction (which I invented or reinvented) in the theory of other minds as discussed in reference to the spectrum: I distinguished within theory of other minds issues between a theory of like minds (which can be described as "Other people have minds just like mine"), and a theory of alien minds (which means "Other people have minds as much as mine, but they're often different from mine."). Was the reference to "alien minds" construed as ufo stuff or the like?
Thanks,
I found the OP's answer to the linked question to be interesting. I didn't understand all of it, and I didn't agree with every part of it that I understood, but overall it was one of the more thoughtful and thought-provoking answers I've encountered on the site.
I am disappointed that your answer was deleted, especially on the grounds of being "not an answer". Of course it was an answer! Empathizing with the OP and giving extended advice about how other people may perceive his work and indeed his mental processes in a different way from his own is a very relevant and penetrating answer. To claim that this thoughtful post was "not an answer" is a bit insulting to Mr. Hayward. Maybe you don't agree with it; maybe you don't even think it will be helpful to the OP (though I think it could be); okay. But to think that it is not an answer is a distressingly bad faith position to take.
I also want to point out a nuance in Charles' answer. He wrote:
Your answer received multiple flags from the community indicating it as "not an answer", and was therefore deleted accordingly.
This seems ambiguous to me. An answer which gets flagged enough times by the community will be automatically deleted, and then it can be undeleted by community members as well. But this is not what happened here. Rather, the answer was deleted by a moderator, with the effect that no community member can vote to undelete the answer. Thus I find the description of this as a community reaction a bit disingenuous. I also don't understand or agree why moderators need to act in this way to delete content. In my opinion moderators should only delete posts which are really not answers, e.g. "Buy VIAGRA at this website".
I am also not sure that there has been complete honesty about why the answer was deleted. So many answers on this site primarily empathize with the OP and give bigger picture information rather than specific advice. If this is done well, such answers usually get upvoted, and in fact the vote count on this deleted answer is +2/-0. When I saw the answer deleted, my guess was that it had something to do with the Mr. Hayward's reference to something on a personal webpage. I didn't find this linking practice to be inappropriate myself but the idea that it might be seems more defensible than the actual reasons given for deletion. If that is the real reason, we should get it out in the open.
@Charles: Thank you for clarifying. Let me also say that the site mechanics set things up for the moderators to take more unilateral action than I would prefer, so one should understand my criticism as being primarily directed at that rather than personally at the moderators.
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3246 | Reopening a specific post and reducing the arbitrariness of open/close votes
Premise
I recently posed this question asking whether or not it is advised to get a pet during the PhD process. The major premise was if the time/energy-cost of raising a puppy, let's say, is too detrimental to research or if it can in fact increase productivity by providing companionship during a trying process.
This topic provoked some pretty vehement arguments as to whether or not it was considered on-topic or well-posed, as evidenced by the commentary and oddly balanced number of up/down votes. Even though the help center explicitly names questions about "life as a PhD student" as within the scope of the Academia site, and the "work-life-balance" tag exists to cluster these types of questions, many close votes followed after a high-profile user warned that the question veered into "boat programming" territory. The consequence of that post was a lot close votes in what really seems like a follow-the-leader effect.
While I understand the boat programming concern, and on stack overflow boat-programming-type questions are obviously too broad and vague, for "work-life-balance" questions on Academia, they actually seem relevant, if not appropriate. Furthermore, there is a strong precedent for these kinds of questions in Academia, primarily the ones inquiring about marriage and kids during a PhD; that is, other questions pertaining to the graduate student lifestyle. In my question I linked to these.
The point of this meta post is twofold:
For one, I would like to have my original pet post reopened. I have struggled with wasting time due to a sort of "isolation daze" during my PhD and I think having a canine companion could help me break out of that funk, but first I would like to hear from the community's experiences as to whether it may be ill-advised to do so.
Secondly, I would like to start a conversation about the whimsicality of close votes. On many occasions duplicates, hyper-specific questions, and other violations of the help center's policies stay open and are answered, while other times questions that seem that they should be valid are closed quickly. It often seems that the idea of "relying on the community" devolves into follow-the-leader: a high-reputation user votes to close and others follow suit. While in theory that should be fine, I believe there is an inherent arbitrariness to that method. For one, this process assumes that these leaders see every post. But more importantly, it also assumes that these users abide by the defined guidelines of the site. I would argue that often long-time users have developed their own opinions as to a questions validity, and, to be honest, I think it's one that is often biased by viewing a lot of crappy posts. As a result, the bar for entry ends up being inappropriately raised and shifted away from what is stated by the terms of the site.
Question
Is there any disagreement to these points? If to my first point, please articulate why my post was off-topic and justify it with a clear guideline. If to my second point, I am eager to understand how we can fix this, whether by appealing to change the stated site rules or by adjusting the voting system.
To me, you made your point - your question fits what I read into the help center description, and it's completely analogous to marriage and kids (self-chosen life actions impacting your life as an academic), as you point out. I voted to re-open, but this is probably not leading anywhere as people tend to be dogmatic (and arbitrary) about the mentioned meme. As to (2) - idea is good and well, but will not lead anywhere.
There's a lot going on in this meta post. Personally, I agree that there is not enough consistency in how the scope is applied, and this frustrates me. I disagree that you question was closed because of a "follow-the-leader" effect, though. I think the 10 users who voted to close that question thought about it carefully and decided that they consider it to be out of scope, not just piling on
I offer no opinion on whether the post is on or off topic, but I'll note that "follow the leader" close voting is intentional. When a post acquires a close vote, it goes into a queue where people interested in closing questions can look at it and cast their own votes.
From my experience, "follow the leader" works for both VTC and downvotes.
As the "high-profile user" mentioned in the question, I want to point out my thought process.
I worded my comment very carefully, saying that it was starting to veer into boat programming, rather than saying it was definitively boat programming. What I should have added to my comment was that I wasn't seeing the academic-specific nature of the question that would make the question on-topic here instead of one of the other SE sites, such as The Workplace. Getting married and having kids are not quite comparable, because these are "major life events" that also have very specific and unique ramifications in the academic world—extension of deadlines for "early career" applications, adjustments to teaching and research schedules, time to defense, and many others. The change between a grad student owning a pet and, say, a Wall Street financial analyst owning a pet is not as clear to me.
For the record I wasn't trying to call you out. No insinuation was meant. You were just the first comment of the type this time, but I've observed it happening with some regularity among many users with high-reputations
That's partly because of how the system works. My moderator status means that if I voted to close, the question would automatically close, with no further votes needed. I wanted to express my concern, though, so that's why there's a comment. However, noting that 20 people upvoted the comment suggests that there's some merit to the statement.
In regards to point 2, first I want to that historically SE communities do not like when users cherry pick example questions as justification as to why their question is on topic. Second, the apparent follow the leader effect is an artifact of the review queue. When a user votes to close a question or flags it, the question is added to a review queue that is available to high rep users. These users can then agree or disagree with the close vote/flag. The same thing happens when someone votes to reopen a question.
Finally, community moderation is not perfect. Sometimes (fairly often) the community misses questions that should be closed. This is one of the reasons we don't like when users cherry pick example questions. Sometimes (on our site fairly infrequently) a group of users close something the community thinks is on topic. Apart from duplicates, the system does not let regular users act unilaterally and it provides mechanisms to undue the effects. As you have done here, it is perfectly reasonable to ask in meta or chat what is going on with a question. You can even flag it for moderator attention.
In regards to your first point, I would suggest you edit your question to demonstrate why it pertains to life as a graduate student and not just to life in general. The questions about marriage and having children are not truly about those massive open ended topics, but rather the specifics of how marriage and having children affects being an academic.
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3561 | POLL: Should we participate in the 2016 “Winter Bash” Holiday hats promotion?
In 2016, Stack Exchange will continue its tradition of the "Winter Bash". Winter Bash is an annual event that can run on any Stack Exchange site that chooses to participate. Users earn “hats” for their gravatars by completing certain tasks (analogous to badges). Certain actions trigger the user receiving a hat, which their gravatar can “wear”. We track everyone’s progress earning hats in a leaderboard that looks something like this:
Stack Exchange sees Winter Bash as a a fun and lighthearted way to celebrate the amazing people who make the sites awesome, as the year draws to a close. Two things to note:
Any user can opt out (clicking an option in your profile means you won't see any hat at all - not on your own avatar and not on any other user's).
Apart from the wearing of hats by avatars, the site is otherwise unaffected (there is no “holiday” theme of the site's design, for example)
After the promotion ends, the hats disappear, as if they were never there.
This being said, we (as a community) also have to choice to opt out entirely and have the Winter Bash completely disabled on Academia Stack Exchange (no hats for anyone). In 2014 and 2015, we chose to participate.
To decide whether we will participate in the Winter Bash 2016 Edition, I've created a “poll” below this post, with two comments. Upvote one of the comments according to your preference. If you want to discuss further, leave an answer or comments to other answers.
The poll will close on Friday December 9.
Yes, Academia.SE should participate in Winter Bash 2016
No, Academia.SE should not participate in Winter Bash 2016
The "Ayes" have it, 58 to 9. We shall have hats!
YAY HATS!!
I'm voting yes because there don't seem to be any downsides and the hats are funny. But frankly it seems targeted mostly at the super-hard-core users. "Mere mortals" seem to get 2-3 hats and perhaps a slight sense of being less-than-adequate :-\
The downside is that even if as an individual you chose not to see hats, sometimes the requirements to earn a hat could result in poor questions, answers, and comments. We haven't had a problem in the past.
@StrongBad: Fair enough, but SE is built to handle QC of poor comments, answers and questions. At worst we'll have to pay some -1's to downvote things.
This hats thing is childish and utterly unprofessional. I'm voting yes.
I vote yes. Because well, Yes is positive and there is a whole lot of negative going on as of late. And maybe cos I am hoping maybe I could get a funny hat?
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1286 | Name for new tag for questions on dealing with emotions (discouragement, guilt, jealousy)?
Academia inspires a whole range of emotions in people. We get a lot of questions here of the form "How to deal with feeling X?", or "Is it common for people in my situation to feel X?", where X is:
Lack of motivation: How to stay motivated in a low-motivated group? and How to motivate myself to do more than the bare minimum that is required of me?
Discouraged: How should I deal with discouragement as a graduate student? and How should I deal with discouragement looking at others success?
Guilt: How to stop feeling guilty about the unfinished work?
Burnout: What can I do to recover from a short term burnout? and Strategies to overcome “academic-apathy” in the final stages of the PhD?
Intimidated: How do I stop feeling intimidated by my advisor?
Dread: Is it normal to feel dread before starting a faculty position?
Impatient: Is it normal to feel impatient in lectures when a lecturer explains material that could be obtained from textbooks?
Undeserving: “I've somehow convinced everyone that I'm actually good at this” - how to effectively deal with Imposter Syndrome
I think we need a tag to cover questions specifically about "dealing with the things I am feeling."
The scope of the tag would be something like:
On emotional issues such as guilt, discouragement, jealousy, or feelings of inadequacy affecting academics and researchers.
It's similar to tags like health-issues, religious-issues, and legal-issues in that scope.
But, I have no idea what such a tag should be called.
I think emotional-issues implies abnormal emotions, which is definitely not something I want this tag name to convey.
And I don't like just emotions, because then it's likely to also be used for questions about research/study related to emotions. (I know this because that's what happened to healthcare before I split it into medicine and health-issues, and there were similar issues with law until I created legal-issues.) This would make it a bad dual-purpose tag.
Any ideas?
Note: The tag should exclude questions on dealing with other people who have these emotions (or, who the OP thinks have these emotions) - these are better categorized as interpersonal-issues
The best possible alternative I can think of is emotional-responses.
If one were inclined to poetry, I would suggest the-gauntlet or leaky-pipeline, but I suspect those wouldn't be considered appropriate.
More seriously, perhaps emotional-challenges, implying that these are difficulties, but normal ones that can be overcome.
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1208 | "If your question is not about...": proposed change to help center text
Some time ago, Ben Norris proposed here on meta that we update the help center text to be explicit about what not to ask. That proposal currently appears to have the community's approval. Several other SE sites explicitly describe what not to ask in their help center text (e.g., Mathematics, Judaism, Physics).
This meta post is for gathering feedback on what, specifically, should be included in this "what not to ask" list.
Currently, the help center text states:
If you have a question about...
Life as a graduate student, postdoctoral researcher, university professor
Transitioning from undergraduate to graduate researcher
Inner workings of research departments
Requirements and expectations of academicians
University-level pedagogy
... then you're in the right place!
I propose to change that last part to
and your question is not
Academia-specific off-topic type 1
Academia-specific off-topic type 2
etc.
... then you're in the right place!
What Academia-specific items should go in that list of questions not to ask?
Update: the list of "what not to ask" has been incorporated into the help/on-topic page and the tour.
I think it would be better though to avoid an overly long sentence with two lists and instead append a sentence after “... then you're in the right place!” starting with something along the lines of “However, if your question is:”.
I propose to add the following text:
and your question is not ...
Undergraduate-specific, such that it could not apply to graduate or post-graduate academicians
Asking for a university, journal, or research topic recommendation (a "shopping question")
About preparation for a non-academic career ("What graduate degree will help me get a job as X?")
About the content of your research, rather than the process of doing research
... then you're in the right place!
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1252 | Is adding clickable links to widely known sites useful?
I am raising this question in response to a comment thread on this post. I'm not asking about that particular post, but about the practice in general.
The question is about editing posts that mention widely known sites by name, to make them "clickable" links. For example, changing
Twitter
to
Twitter
There are several things to consider:
Are these edits beneficial overall when they cause an old post to be bumped to the front page?
Are these edits beneficial overall when the question is already on the front page?
Are these edits beneficial overall when the user making them has less than 2k rep, so that the edit will be queued and consume reviewer resources?
Personally, I find these links to well-known sites distracting more than helpful.
They're in a different color, so they pull my focus
They make posts "feel" kind of spammy
I click on them accidentally more often than I do on purpose
They make the more useful, non-obvious links stand out less
(I also do not like edits linking to a user's Academia.SE page whenever they are mentioned by username in a question or answer, or linking mentions to other answers on the same page, for the same reasons.)
I brought up this issue on User Experience Stack Exchange.
As an answer there points out,
Do you think users have a need to visit Facebook while reading your site?
I do not think we generally want users to click on these links while reading Academia.SE posts (unlike, say, links to useful outside resources, which we do want users to click on), so they shouldn't be clickable.
Another answer advises,
I found little empirical data for UX hyperlinking best practices (couldn't link to it anyway), but find the practice of gratuitous links to everything, including well-known sites, to be annoying, distracting, confusing, and to serve little purpose.
Unless you're linking to specific, relevant information or citing a source from that well-known site, there's no need for a hyperlink. If you're using the internet and are over the age of 12 you know what Facebook is.
I also do not like edits linking to a user's Academia.SE page whenever [...] This part is completely irrelevant to this meta question and I think you should open separate question for this purpose.
So long as the link is to the "main page" of a particular web site, it essentially adds no value to the answer, and need not be included.
I agree on your main points but disagree about linking to other answers on the same page. If answer A refers to answer B, people are going to want to check what answer B really says or if the author of A has misinterpreted it and so on. The easiest way to do that is via a link, rather than scrolling around the page. (BTW, since you've already linked the question page on User Experience, there's no need to link the answers as well, right? ;-) )
@David yes, that does seem more useful than the others, at least. Are you still in favor of answer links if the edit bumps a post, or if it has to go through review queue? How far does that usefulness go?
@ff524 To be honest, I've never considered editing an answer to include links to the other answers it mentions, though I always include any such links in my own answers when I write them. If a question were currently active, it probably wouldn't hurt to add the link; I probably wouldn't add such a link to an answer that wasn't on the first page.
To summarize David Richerby's comments:
Everybody knows where to find those sites so the links aren't useful...
I'm not convinced that bulk-editing to add links to sites that are way more famous than this one is worthwhile.
More specifically, I (DR) think it's very unlikely that somebody reading a post here on Academia.SE will think, "Ooh. Twitter. That sounds like an exciting site. I think I'll follow this link to their front page."
And when they cause the question to be bumped,
This kind of trivial edit of a rather old answer is harmful because it moves the question up to the front of the Active list, displacing some other question onto the second page.
EnthusiasticStudent has pointed out that the questions were on the front page anyway when the links were added, so the bumping issue isn't very significant in this particular case. (Though it still means that the edited question will fall off the first page later than it would have done without the edit.)
Re "questions were on the front page anyway", that's exactly why I wrote in the question, "I'm not asking about that particular post, but about the practice in general." :)
But, I honestly took this question personal and I am really upset about the hole action.
To summarize Enthusiastic Student's comments:
I just do such edits, to make links clickable to the users and readers of the posts. This may seem to be useless, but having links on the post is far more attractive for the user than having a simple text. The only benefit is having clickable links on posts, nothing more.
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866 | Questions that say "I'm looking for a degree program that meets requirements X,Y,Z"
We've recently had a few questions that say, "Does anyone know of a degree program that meets requirements X,Y,Z."
For example, Where can I take online MBA courses without being admitted?:
Next year I will enroll in a full time MBA program. Until then, I would like to take transferable online courses to count towards my degree. I talked with admissions, and they will accept up to 6 credits from an AACSB accredited school. Unfortunately, I cannot find a university that offers individual online MBA courses. Does anyone here have suggestions?
Or Cheapest online degrees:
What are the cheapest online degrees in Computer Science?
Or What is the best way to choose an MBA school for someone in lighting industry?:
Is there a university MBA programme featured with lighting industry? Or is it just famous for global marketing/management?
It is my feeling that these questions are off-topic, but I don't see a lot of consistency in the reason given for closure, and they sometimes end up being closed for tangential reasons. (In these three examples: "This question appears to be off-topic because it is not about academia," "Questions about problems facing undergraduate students are off-topic," and not closed, respectively).
Are questions in this category off-topic, and if so, is there a canonical reason for closing questions in this category?
2/3 don't from our About page:
Don't ask about: [...]
Questions that are primarily opinion-based
Questions with too many possible answers or that would require an extremely long answer.
Questions asking about best department to study a given field fell into both. In terms of close votes it is too broad or primarily opinion-based.
For more general reading, Real Questions Have Answers from the StackExchange blog. In particular, polling questions are not seen well.
Also, for recommendations (or even queries - i.e. when there is a list of objective answers, given a set of restrictions), in general it is tricky - see What should be done with questions asking for game recommendations? - Gaming.SE aka Arqade:
Close all game-recs unconditionally as shopping recommendation: 74
Allow game-recs that are specific enough (withdrawn): 70
Only allow game-recs with accessibility constraints: 42
Unconditionally allow them: 41
(That is, initial policy, Close all game-recs unconditionally as shopping recommendation, has been withdrawn.)
However (IMHO), we should allow questions asking for how to search or ones where there answers are meta (pieces of advice on the search, links to listings/rankings/etc), e.g.:
How to search for graduate schools that have Masters in Complexity Science/Complex Systems?
Such questions are usually poor fits, but there's not a single canonical reason to reject. For instance, they might be too specific, so that they're not applicable to other users or focused on purely undergraduate institutions. In both of those cases, the specific reasons listed should be cited as grounds for closing. However, otherwise, it's because list-based questions are a poor fit for the site.
Isn't the canonical reason to close these questions that they are too specific? Essentially, every question that fits the schema "please recommend a program for me based on ZY" is per definition too localized, right?
A counterexample: "What are the top graduate programs in Computer Science?"
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1126 | Usefulness of the "contribution" tag
A user has created a contribution tag and proposed the following definition for the tag wiki excerpt:
The authors, students and advisors contribution to an academic publication. Questions like how much contribution is needed to be a co-author of a paper best fits to this tag.
So far the tag has been applied to
How/when to become independent in research as a graduate student?
To what extent should a professor give students freedom to do independent research?
Advisor's/University's rights in the PhD/MSc alumni's research projects and publications
(It's not clear to me, based on the suggested definition, how this tag is relevant to the first two.)
Is this tag useful and/or necessary? If so, can someone explain how it applies to the first two questions listed above?
I think that this tag is unnecessary, given that the authorship tag is explicitly defined to include issues related to contribution to an academic publication.
It seems like this tag (unless defined much more narrowly) would overlap almost 100% with authorship.
I would just call this a "synonym" for tagging purposes.
@aesmail we don't want synonyms, do we? How does that work?
I think it's exactly what we're looking for here. Here's a how-to guide.
@aeismail given that it's on only three questions, all three are bumped anyways, and I don't think it's appropriate on two of them, I would rather just delete the tag
Fair enough. (But the link is useful enough to keep handy for future reference!)
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1026 | Flag declined on "rude or offensive" comment
I flagged a comment because it referred to somebody as a
known, rabid male-hating feminist
which seems rather rude and offensive to me.
The flag was declined. Anybody have any insight on this?
Well, that won't happen no more :)
@F'x - Ha! The times, they are a'changin'.
To answer my own question, I remain convinced that this comment should be deleted.
Our help center says that we expect users to
Be nice.
Civility is required at all times; rudeness will not be tolerated. Treat others with the same respect you’d want them to treat you because we’re all here to learn, together. Be tolerant of others who may not know everything you know, and bring your sense of humor.
A comment calling another individual (whether a member of Academia.SE or not, it doesn't really matter in my opinion) a "known, rabid male-hating feminist" has no place in respectful discourse. It seems to me like a clear violation of the above policy.
StackExchange is different from many other "communities" on the Internet because we enforce certain standards of behavior, and I believe we are better for it. Offensively worded ad hominem attacks (to borrow a phrase from Mad Scientist) should not be tolerated here.
I fully agree with you here. If "known, rabid male-hating feminist" is not offensive, then what is? What good can come out of keeping such answers around?
+1: As you may know, I favor a light hand in moderation of comments in many cases. But of course this comment is offensive. If it is not offensive to compare people to morbidly diseased animals....You have my full support in deleting comments which target specific groups, especially minority groups.
I disagree with the degree to which you find it offensive; I also respect your right to find it as offensive you say you do. If similar phrases and notions are to be flagged and removed, I think the policy on such phrases should be made more clear. In particular, a list of phrases taken out of context that might be flagged should be part of the policy. I don't mind having to follow special rules at a party I am going to, but I want to know those rules in advance, and I think it only fair that the policy be so modified. I might go so far as to suggest the comment be edited, not deleted.
@NotQuiteAnOutsider The official SE policy on comments is that they are intended to be disposable, so if they are objectionable there is a lower threshold for deleting them. If it had been posted in an answer instead, I would see the case for editing rather than deleting it.
@Not Quite An Outsider: this is a site populated by anglophone academics of one type or another. It seems reasonable to enforce, broadly, the standards of conduct that one would encounter across anglophone academia. Something which would be taken as offensive in, e.g., most American universities is well avoided here. I don't see this as a matter of "special rules".
While I think this comment can be considered offensive, I'm approaching this from a bit of a different perspective. I think that "not constructive" is the more useful argument in this case.
Criticizing the sources of a specific answer is certainly something that should not be discouraged. There is a rather large spectrum between pointing out a bias of a certain source and a plain ad hominem attack, and while the former can be very valuable information, the latter is not useful at all.
I would personally hold the users of this site to a higher standard than the one exhibited in this specific comment. So I think deletion of this comment would be warranted as it is not a constructive way to criticize this source, but a rather offensively worded ad hominem attack.
I'm not a huge fan of this approach, as it's not the place of the mods to impose any moral standard on anyone. If you think higher of a user, let them know via downvotes and reply comments, as was done in this case.
@eykanal It's not a moral standard, but I do think it is the duty of the moderators and the community to enforce a certain level of civil discourse here. Replying with a comment is not an option here, I don't argue with unreasonable people, that never leads to anything useful.
It appears that you flagged that multiple times. I cleared one of those flags because of the discussion we had here. The comment is borderline offensive, but personally (and, apparently, the other mods agree) I didn't find that it was so bad that it warrants deletion. We have a rather open attitude towards commenting here, and to be deleted I think we've generally held that the comment has to be more directly and blatantly insulting.
Edit: Do note that the mods clearing the flags are just acting based on essentially "statutory law", which is what we think we've done in the past and how the community wants us to behave. As always, if we'd like to act differently please post here, as @ff524 has done.
Sorry if there were multiple flags, was trying to use full site on phone (there's no comment flag in mobile version)
@ff524 - No worries :)
The post you linked refers to "chatty" flags. I would imagine name-calling directed at an individual falls squarely under "rude or offensive," which we haven't really discussed on meta
@ff Sorry if I'm being difficult. I'm not trying to be overly process-based, I just didn't think that it was offensive enough to delete, as it seemed to me only was mildly offensive and definitely on-topic.
@ff524: I also cleared one of the flags, and my thoughts on this are pretty close to eykanal's. It was a razor's edge case for me, and in those situations, I have to lean towards not deleting. (In part, it's the "slippery slope" argument: if we automatically delete anything flagged as offensive, how far does that go?)
I should also mention that the user in question followed up with an ad hominem attack, which I have deleted.
@aeismail This is very confusing to me, because I consider them both to be ad hominem attacks; the first (aimed at femalecomputerscientist) was worded offensively, and the second (aimed at me) was not particularly offensive, yet the second is deleted and the first is not.
Going after fellow community members is against SE guidelines.
@aeismail I don't see anything in these guidelines that differentiates between being nice to community members vs. being nice to non-members. I don't really agree with this distinction.
I've always interpreted it as an intra-community guideline; I could see how it could be interpreted globally.
Now that I can see the post flag history, I can say based on the timing of the flags that only (the first) one was mine... so somebody else had a problem with this comment as well, even before this meta post brought attention to it.
I fail to see why whether the insulted person is an academia.SE member or not should make any difference (and yes, the answer is certainly hateful and in no way constructive).
@ff524 - Thanks for deleting the comment, and I hear your point. I guess I wasn't as insulted by the comment. Next time we can definitely clear those types of comments out as well. Thanks!
Actually, it wasn't me (what, you thought my first action as a mod would be to overrule another two? give me some time to spread my dictatorial wings ;))
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2209 | Is it apropriate to use the reference-request tag to prevent discussion-like questions from being closed?
I noticed some users like to ask opinion-based or discussion-like "questions" and systematically use the reference-request tag to prevent them from being closed as such.
I'm talking about cases where, clearly, there can't be any research or publications about the subject such as:
Reference on how often "To the best of our knowledge" assertions turn out to be false
Impact of the visit weekend weather on the admitted graduates' grad school decision in the US
What motivates researchers in industry to publish their results?
etc.
These questions typically do not get accepted answers because, well, there is no such research. While I'm not necessarily against us discussing these topics, I find the use of the tag to sneak through closing a bit annoying. Is that sentiment shared by other users of this site, or is it just me?
Edit
I mean, seriously:
How often can the reviewers correctly guess the identity of the authors when the review is double-blind?
We could of course institute a policy that requests for references are off-topic here and that such requests be posted at Opendata.SE, which would solve the problem, if there is one, at one swell foop...
@StephanKolassa I don't think realistic reference requests are off-topic.
The problem then is deciding which [tag:reference-request] is serious/realistic and which isn't. I don't think we want to start voting on tags. Which is why I'd recommend simply downvoting useless questions into oblivion.
@CapeCode Thanks for linking to the double-blind question. I've just posted an answer with actual references. And seriously: since double-blind reviewing has a cost, doing it without ever evaluating if there's a point would be irresponsible. But of course I shouldn't sneer — as answers say, it's generally hard to evaluate what is likely to have been researched.
@Blaisorblade you have my up-vote for finding a related article. I maintain that the systematic use of the tag is irritating to me.
@CapeCode I was only commenting on the example :-), I won't debate in general :-). And thanks for the vote!
@CapeCode If I don't use the reference-request tag, then the page gets cluttered with guesses and personal experiences, which I'm not interested in most of the time (my colleagues and I have often enough of them). Your claim "there is no such research." is of course not always true, as I cannot know in advance. And I disagree with "there can't be any research or publications about the subject such as [...]": nothing prevent researchers from doing such studies. Lastly, I sometimes don't accepted answers, because there are two equally good ones.
I too, find this use of the "reference-request" tag annoying, particularly because in some cases it seems to unnecessarily preclude providing an answer based on experience (see, for example, my comment and then answer on the "What motivates researchers in industry to publish their results?" question).
My approach has been, whenever possible, to either:
Ignore the "reference-request" tag when used by this particular user and to answer anyway based on experience, or
Explain why no such study is likely to have been created.
Why "unnecessarily"? Sometimes an OP may only want answers supported by some facts, not just personal experiences (e.g., in case the OP already discussed the question with some colleagues, and gleaned enough personal experiences).
@FranckDernoncourt "Supported with facts" is a much weaker statement than "Must be based on an external reference," which is the typical interpretation of "reference-request."
The issue with facts without references is that it is harder to check them.
To be honest, I think you are a little too quick in inferring nefarious motives ("to sneak through closing") to posters. Regarding your three examples:
Reference on how often "To the best of our knowledge" assertions turn out to be false - I agree that I find it hard to believe that there is actual research on this, already because finding this kind of verbiage in papers is hard enough, and then finding out whether such a claim is false or not is at least as hard.
Impact of the visit weekend weather on the admitted graduates' grad school decision in the US - I'm working on including weather information in retail sales forecasts, and I find it quite possible that someone somewhere has done such an analysis.
Not that I think the question is very interesting. But I find that different people find surprisingly many things interesting that would bore me to death.
What motivates researchers in industry to publish their results? - and for this one, I would definitely not be surprised if some sociologist had done surveys on exactly this kind of question.
Conversely, I don't see a "polling" aspect to the questions you refer to, even if they do generate some discussion in the comments.
Bottom line: If you disagree with a tag, edit it away and see whether the poster insists. If you feel that a question is not useful, downvote it. A tag does not prevent you from voting. I'd trust the voting system to make sure useless questions sink.
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2010 | Where does the "0 down vote" in front of my comment come from?
I'm pretty sure I didn't type "0 down vote" in front of this comment:
Is this a feature to indicate that I commented but didn't down vote? Or did I lower-backside-dial this at some point?
I have no ways of exploring the comment's history.
I wondered about this when I saw it. I thought it was a subtle way of saying "would downvote but not enough to -1", or something. Maybe we should start using it... :-)
Looking at the question history, it shows that text as having been present in the original comment. My guess is that when you copy/pasted the answer text, you selected the up/down vote arrows as well. When you copy/paste those, you'll see the number of downvotes in the text. Try it yourself.
Ah, that sounds plausible. I thought it might have been an attempt at addressing the much discussed feature of binding down votes to explaining comments.
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1989 | Would there be a way to save this question that generated the weirdest thread I've seen here?
I saw this question:
Why not outsource the research projects to phd students?
It's so badly formulated that it generated a series of comments and answers that have no real connection with each other. It's closed for the moment, but I think beneath the large confusions in which OP is about what is research and what is a PhD, there is an interesting question. Maybe the title could be changed to something like:
What are the socio-economic reasons for PhD students to receive monetary compensation?
Why is awarding a PhD title not enough to compensate for a graduate student's work?
While I believe I know very well the answer to these, it might be a question worth exploring. Should we try to improve it, and if yes, how?
I wouldn't try to salvage that much controversial and badly received question. But that may be only me.
Note that if nothing further happens, the question will not be deleted, as it has positively scoring answers. The only restriction that closing implies is that no new answers can be added.
@Wrzlprmft You mean that it will not be automatically deleted. Once it is closed, it can be deleted by user vote.
The question is clearly not asking
What are the socio-economic reasons for PhD students to receive monetary compensation?
or
Why is awarding a PhD title not enough to compensate for a graduate student's work?
although those are interesting side issues that were raised in the comments. This seems very clear to me, as the OP does not seem to even consider the possibility that a institution might pay a PhD student - he/she refers to PhD students as being "free" to the institution. So those suggested titles are clearly inappropriate, as they would conflict with the OP's intent.
However, I do think the question can be salvaged by editing it to make the OP's intent clear. In this case, I edited the title to
What incentive does an institution have to hire expensive research staff instead of having PhD students fill all those roles?
Which seems to be what the OP was trying to ask, and is also consistent with the existing answers.
Now that the question is no longer unclear, I shall reopen it.
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3308 | Why was my question about fighting junk science so poorly received?
A few weeks ago I have asked a question that I believe is about a major challenge that academia faces today and will increasingly face in the future (I deleted it since then because of the reactions it got):
How can we fight junk science? [closed]
The question was closed as unclear but I think that question is pretty clear and there are some answer-worthy comments with very practical points.
Is there a political correctness component or something else that I'm missing?
I didn't understand the reason for closure either, nor the downvotes. The only possible objection, I think, is that it might be too broad, but definitely not unclear.
Just my perspective, but your question reads like 3/4 rant and 1/4 question. For example, the statement, "Legitimate scientific literature is being drowned in an ocean of junk journals and articles" is strong, backed with no examples, and seems to insist that any answer first agree with the claim. In other words, you're begging the question. Maybe, in the spirit of science, include your colleagues by first asking if others have noticed this, if they agree, and so on.
@gwg the examples are everywhere. That in particular journalists often pull out bad substandard aka junk science papers that contain spectacular claims not backed up properly by scientific arguments to make loud stories in popular media, is a well known fact these days. And depending on the field, the bad papers overselled in popular media are only the tip of the iceberg. The question is a clear statement of this problem and asks what can be done about it. It is not a "rant".
I think there might well be a good question in there, but right now, it's way too broad and poorly defined. Some issues that I see are:
It's not clear whether the question can be answered per se, or whether in the current state of the world it's more a matter of discussion, debate, and experiment. This makes it like an "I would like to have a discussion about..." question, which of course are off topic.
The definition of the focus is very broad:
"junk science I mean pseudo-science (i.e. work done with flawed or frivolous methodology), deliberately faked results, and generally very low quality research"
The issue that I have here is that pseudo-science, fraud, and general boring crap appear to arise in different ways, and attempting to address them all together is extremely complex.
The motivation of the question is unclear. Are you more concerned about punishing "bad scientists" or being able to find what you're looking for or about some sort of general societal collapse?
I would thus suggest this might be best addressed not as a single question, but as a collection of more focused questions that tease out particular aspects of the more general topic that are narrow enough to possibly be answerable.
These are interesting suggestions. In fact it's true that the issue is, sadly, too broad for a single question. I'm not interested in "punishing" anyone, unless you take rightfully excluding people from scarcely funded grants and positions a form of punishment.
The first item was the biggie for me - this may or may not be an important question in science today, but it is most certainly not a question that any of our member can be expected to have a clear and "correct" answer for. It's the prototype of a "discussion" question, for which SE is just not the right place. As such, I am also not sure that the question is salvageable while keeping it's spirit intact.
Because it's so broad and vague. It could mean one, some or all of sixty things:
how can we individually avoid committing bad science?
how can academics avoid... peers committing bad science?
... their department committing bad science?
... their university committing bad science?
... fellow members of professional societies committing bad science?
how can we advocate for doing some/all of the above?
Your question also mutates. You start by saying a) "junk journals and articles... pompous titles, pay-to-publish [etc.]" but then you say b) "by junk science I mean pseudo-science (i.e. work done with flawed or frivolous methodology), deliberately faked results, and generally very low quality research".
These are each very different things, some of which have no answers, some of which have clear well-known answers. There will always be bad or VLQ research. Peer-review can prevent people publishing e.g. bad physics in recognized physics journals, but it totally can't prevent people splintering off and forming a new field/journal/conference. Grant applications are another thing too, and each grant source has different criteria, levels of rigor, punishment for bad behavior (or lack of). (Peer-review is not perfect either: it's slow, political, fallible and ridden with cliques.)
"Deliberately faked results" constitutes academic fraud, but it's comparatively rare, and I submit to you that many papers simply have no results at all, which is again bad but in a different, passive, way, since it obscures scientific method - unless they're review papers, which they're generally not. There is no shortage of such papers, in most fields.
There are also authors who crank out 10+ papers on essentially the exact same finding - would you call that VLQ? Then again, given reject rates and unpredictable backlogs, who can blame them...?
"Pay-to-publish" is again bad in a different way, not per se, but because it sidesteps peer review, disclosure, replicability, standard use of terminology, which are again all cornerstones of scientific method, so it generally results in a tsunami of crap, and cliques who manufacture plausibility by citing each other.
So, you asked at least sixty different and contradictory questions. The tl;dr is clearly we can't prevent someone setting up the Abkhazia Open Institute of Antigravity and spewing out junk, but we can monitor and publicize any misdeeds, and try to limit them getting access to serious funding. But you knew that already. There is no blunt hammer to prevent the rest of the things you list. Wherever there are economic incentives, however slight, people will respond to them...
A lot of very good points, a bit depressing though. Thanks for taking the time to write that answer.
After reading it, I can tell you exactly why.
According to the article "What questions can't I ask here" in the help menu, there's this powerful quote:
To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …
.. [four others removed] ..
your question is just a rant in disguise: “______ sucks, am I right?”
Simply put, your question is a rant in disguise which is specifically on the do-not-ask list.
That's not to say the thing you're ranting about isn't a problem. But the question that is linked here doesn't appear to be a answerable question (at least, not in this venue.)
Nope-1: Junk science getting too widespread is depending on the field a serious problem these days. Therefore it should be possible to adress the issue here. And indeed, the question is well received by the majority of the mainpage cummunity. If the rules are such that well received questions get closed against the will of the academic community here, these rules should be improved. BTW calling posts you personally dont like or disagree with a rant, is not exactly a good style of discourse ...
I agree junk science is a plague that needs to be abolished. I'm simply saying the question under consideration here isn't really a question. Consider this: how would the true "answer" be decided to that question? It's a very valid rant, and indeed it appears many people on this site agree it's a bad thing. But those votes aren't "This is a great question for our QA format." Instead they're "I stand with you against junk science". I don't want to smother your enthusiasm to campaign against junk science, I'm simply saying the QA format Stack Exchange has isn't designed for this style question.
@Dilaton And, for the record, I'm not saying "it was a rant" as an insult. I'm saying that was the conclusion I reached after I read it - purely factual. Simply put, the question is about "the individual and institutional level" but it never talks about the individual or the institution - the only background info in the question is about the overarching problem. Hence why I used the quote "____ sucks, am I right?". I hope this clears up any confusion around my answer here, because I'm not out to insult anyone - I just have an in-depth knowledge of SE's policies and wanted to share insight.
there is nothing in the software that in principle prevents the academics here from adressing any topic that is of importance to them. IMHO the only rule that is really needed is that what the community thinks is of interest is on-topic, and what is not is off-topic. That the SE company so strongly interfers with what individual communities are allowed to adress and in particular that on Academia rather the SO model of moderation is adopted than the more academic MO model seems unfortunate to me.
I don't understand your point. The question isn't off topic, it's off format. And there's a good reason why - the 'question' at hand isn't a question as much as it's an invitation to discussion. A question for what an individual can do without describing that individual or the specific situation that individual is facing simply cannot be answered. Those kinds of 'questions' end poorly. That's why they aren't allowed. Consider it collateral damage in exchange for having an orderly system.
So you think not everyone agrees that junk science is a problem? I had the impression that this warranted no discussion.
While I feel the phrase "this warrants no discussion" is dangerous in any case as it leads to non-objective results, no that's not what I was saying above. Rather, I was saying the question invites a discussion about "What can a person do about it?" which is not a good fit for Stack Exchange, particularly when the question at hand contains no information about the person or the junk science they face. The question is basically "awareness raising" which, while noble, is expressly discouraged (as per the "no rants" quote.)
I think the answer you wrote somewhere else applies here as well:
The voting rules aren't very strict (as opposed to closing for
example) but I don't think the fact that a question is hard to answer
is a reason to down-vote. A question should "show research effort be
useful and clear" to warrant an up-vote but it's also a matter of
personal interests.
I don't think that the issue with the questions you mention is that
they are "hard" but rather that they look very much like advertisement
for your opinions and pet peeves* that you tried too hard to make look
like questions.
My guess is that some users doubt that you genuinely think there are
possible answers that would fit this site's format but rather hope for
extended discussions in comments supporting your opinion.
Sometimes the click-bait works and you gather many votes, sometimes
it's too obnoxious and the opinionated undertone triggers down-votes.
*Ok, so you dislike that some people pay to read articles. We get it.
Ps. Many of your other questions are fine in my opinion.
I think that your question on junk science is much more important than the vast majority of questions on this Stack Exchange website. However, my own experience in posting questions and getting >100 of downvotes is that questions pertaining to improving the research system are often not well received.
I wish questions on the research system were posted on a different Stack Exchange.
Said question was closed but has a positive vote score, so I don't see how that applies.
@CapeCode same in the other thread. And regardless, the same arguments apply.
Some questions on the research system might be on-topc here. In particular, when making scientific processes more open, junk science might be an issue that should better be kept under control too ...
I don't see how the arguments could apply. Unless you think there is no consensus that junk science is a bad thing, and thus that would be an opinion of mine.
---------> pet peeve
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3508 | By what process was this question reopened?
It took a while to gather the 5 close votes to close this question:
What rights do students in the U.S. have re gender pronouns?
My comment giving my reason to vote to close it was voted up 15 times
The meta post asking if such questions should be closed has a positive vote count:
Should legal questions be closed as too narrow?
Yet the question reopened less than an hour ago in an eye blink. How?
I'm not sure what you're asking, exactly. The edit history shows who voted to reopen. What do you mean by "how"?
Also note that per the post timeline, it was closed about 10 hours after it was asked, and then reopened about 29 hours after it was closed. I wouldn't say that is an "eye blink".
"The meta post asking if such questions should be closed has a positive vote count:" You seem to infer from this community support for closing. But this seems a huge stretch. Users do not vote like this. There are two answers. The one in favor of the post is at +10 the one against at -1. The meta question was asked by somebody in favor of having the question open. An upvote on the question if anything could be seen as support for this. Also see the comment there.
The process is called community moderation, and it obviously works as it should.
For the record, I am not sure about the merits of the question you asked about, but as regards the process of open/close I see not problem at all.
This is the second question against which you have a strong opinion that gets closed at first but then reopened, and for which you have opened a discussion on meta. Probably, you should accept the fact that a part of this community is willing to read and answer a broader range of questions.
@ff524 that's the answer to my question I didn't know the reopen votes were listed there.
OK, I'll post it as an answer.
@Dilaton very helpful. If you have more details as to in which time frame which events happened, please post an answer.
The edit history shows who voted to reopen.
Also note that per the post timeline, it was closed about 10 hours after it was asked, and then reopened about 29 hours after it was closed. (You can click "toggle format" at the top of the post timeline page to see the exact timestamp of each event.)
The timeline is hard to parse for me. It shows it got closed, then there were 3 reviews to leave closed on one to reopen and then all 5 reopen votes show up as a single event.
@CapeCode The question got one reopen vote in the review queue; the other four came from people who voted directly on the post, both before and after it went through the review queue.
Interesting. The timeline does not show at wich time each of the close and reopen votes were casted. It's the speed at which the 5 reopen votes were gathered that surprised me.
@CapeCode 29 hours is speedy to you? Wow :)
Is that from the first reopen vote to the last, or since it was closed?
@CapeCode 29 hours from the time it was closed to the time it was reopened. There's about 2 hours between the time it was closed and the time of the first reopen vote.
@CapeCode votes often come in bunches because of the review queue. When someone votes to open/close a question high rep users get a review notiifcation.
@StrongBad that was also the kind of information I was missing. I saw the post got from 0 or 1 reopen votes to reopened without a phase in between.
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3495 | Should we revive the "canonical" question about authorship standards across fields and regions?
We have this tentative at a canonical answer to authorship standards:
Compiling ethical standards for coauthorship across academic fields and regions
But it's been inactive since 2014. There are many questions that I think should be marked as duplicate of this but the answers are everything but comprehensive. Can we somehow revive this question? Or merge it with better documented threads like these ones:
What are the minimum contributions required for co-authorship
What does author order indicate?
My proposal would be to:
include the above listed questions (an the one pointed out in comments) in the canonical question for reference
mark relevant future questions as duplicate of it.
There is an important question What does first authorship really mean?
Reminder to everyone: voting on meta is different. I downvoted here, and that simply means "I vote 'nay'". The question is a good one and I'm very glad he brought it back up.
My objection to that question (noted in the first comment) and all other similar ones still stands—these types of questions are terrible by design.
Firstly, they are by definition out-of-date as soon as they're posted, as we're just copying information from somewhere else. Who has the time to go back and fact-check to see if something's changed?
Secondly, they're perpetually incomplete, as there will always be some university that we haven't covered.
Thirdly, this is a Q&A site, not an encyclopedia... people don't come here looking for lists of information, they come here to get answers to a specific question that they can't get elsewhere. This information—again, by definition— is available elsewhere; the society websites! Why on Earth would we take it on ourselves to replicate something here? If it happens to be that there isn't a society that defines "ethical standards" for a given field, then who the heck are we to define the standards?
I was unconvinced at the time that this was an effort worth pursuing, and in retrospect it seems that my concerns were not unfounded. If you can convince me I'm wrong, please do so, but as it stands I remain unconvinced that this is worth doing.
A note on the third point: the ethical standards defined by a society might not be followed by the people in the field.
"they come here to get answers to a specific question that they can't get elsewhere" Given the number of times the comment "Have you asked your advisor?" or ones like it show up, I'm not sure this is necessarily true.
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3463 | Should we close questions that have a controversial undertone to avoid lengthy comments threads?
It's the second time in less than a week that a question attracts only junk content and youtube-quality comments war. We failed to close this one soon enough:
If you're black, how do you answer "Oh you're a professor? So you teach African Studies?"
Can we act swiftly on that one?:
What is the purpose of women-only meetings, panels, conferences, etc. in academia?
Deletion would be the best but closing would already help.
Please note that in a typical meta fashion, up-votes on this question mean in favor of closing/deleting said question and down-votes against.
Edit:
Question 2 has now being closed and then reopened after edits. And a major clean up of comments helped a lot. Thanks to the moderation. I'm leaving this question up for a more general consensus discussion about closing such questions.
I think those two questions are quite different, and for what concerns the latter, I'm not even sure whether it should be closed.
@RobertHarvey I think that the question itself, in the form asked by the OP, has more in common with the YouTube-comment mentality than one would like. I would be much much happier with the question if certain claims in it were toned down; I am particularly unhappy with the understandable but naive assertion "I am sure this phenomenon is true elsewhere", which I associate with people who really don't have much actual breadth or depth of experience in academia.
Just to 'fess up to being one of those who upvoted this meta question, BTW
The "hot questions" list keeps showing up as a major root-cause in much bad site behavior. That deserves its own meta-discussion on how to fix it. Individual questions are not the cause.
@smci I personally think "people failing to read the actual question, and instead answering the question they have in their own head" is a bigger problem, but perhaps that is even less out of "our" control
The ambiguity in the title of the second question is problematic: is it "What is the intended purpose?" or "What purpose is actually achieved?". These are two separate things. Do those two things vary if the conference already has 75% female attendees? 50%? 10% female attendees? You can see this confusion from the answers: some are talking about intent (which doesn't lead towards verifiable conclusions, and results in a ton of anecdotes); others are talking about actual effect (if any). And of course this will also vary by field (STEM teachers? academic? linguistics?)
@smci I don't think the question was particularly well thought out: it seemed querulous, prone to excessive generalization from limited personal experience, seeking validation of one's own preconceptions (a tone of "come on, guys, you agree this is pointless amirte?") and so on. Hence my sympathy with this meta post by Cape Code: badly phrased, or badly intended, questions need extra vigilance or perhaps pre-emptive closure, IMO. YMMV as they say
I have mixed feelings on this. I think the questions address legitimate issues in academia that can be answered. The questions attract a lot of discussion in the comments and bad answers. I think we should moderate the comments and answers and not slam the door on relevant questions.
I would rather see comments flag as too chatty and bad answers either flagged as not an answer or down voted into oblivion.
I am a relative newbie to academia.SE but I am concerned about whether there is any clear line from the moderators -- I'm not demanding that they agree with me, but I have seen several questions where comments get out of hand and I wish I could heavily downvote them, but I don't want to start flagging in case I'm the one being out of sync
@YemonChoi just flag them. It's site policy not to have extended discussion in comments. Use the "other" reason and say something about moving the discussion to chat.
@YemonChoi You should flag away. When comments are flagged, we can label it helpful/declined. If lots of your flags are declined, then ask on chat or meta about why (we could be wrong). If we decline a flag, nothing happens to the comment. If we think a flag is helpful we can edit the comment, delete the comment, leave a comment, do nothing (apart from keeping an eye on future comments), or in exceptional circumstances move the comments to chat. The comment chain has to meet certain requirements before the system will let us move it.
@CapeCode other reason is not a great choice when flagging comments. In general, the system does not let us move comments to chat. It is only special cases where we get that option and the bot lets us know when that is an option.
I think one problem is that some comments, perhaps the majority, will be reasonable; but then all it takes is one or two people wading in shooting from the hip, and the whole thing gets derailed. Because the system doesn't have a means for downvoting comments, I think there is a "ratchet" effect whereby dubious comments get upvoted more than they deserve
@YemonChoi We need to be careful with "reasonable". The idea of comments is to help improve the post. Most of these types of questions get comments that are discussion. In a strict sense, discussion comments are never "reasonable" while in a practical sense we can let them slide unless the thing gets derailed.
Related to the points I was trying to make: GregMartin, who has IMO greater experience and knowledge than pay, has noticed the question and is leaving useful and considered comments. But now since they've gone through a round of being moved to chat, it seems that his comments may get deleted. This strikes me as an undesirable outcome. The ratchet effect I mentioned above allows wrongheaded comments to get voted up, in a kind of tabloid mentality
@YemonChoi His comments are an attempt to start a discussion. Regardless of if it is a well reasoned and thoughtful discussion, comments are NOT for discussion (meta is different). He should either write an answer or take it to chat.
Just because something attracts junk comments, doesn't mean it's a bad question. Personally I think the question is legitimate and should stay up.
I believe just because it attracts mostly junk comments and answer means it's a bad question for this site.
@Najibidrissi I make no comment about what's a good subject to study and what's not. A discussion about climate change would be a bad fit for this site all the same. I'd vote to close it.
@NajibIdrissi I think that certain topics are likely to cause quick influxes of ill-informed or prejudiced comments. FWIW I incline towards CapeCode's views. Either academia.SE should get much more pro-active and explicit with moderation (MO style) or it should just steer clear of certain topics. I mean, over on TCS don't you get PvsNP and Collatz crankery?
@NajibIdrissi A fair point, but then the nature of SE system means that the tone is largely set by those who got in early. (After all, am I really an order of magnitude "better" as an MO user than you? I think not). And on contentious issues like these, I think moderation would have to be heavy, not always supporting views you agree with (or that I would agree with).
@YemonChoi "much more pro-active and explicit with moderation (MO style)" What do you mean to propose specifically? My main problem is that I do not consider MO as pro-active and explicitly moderated for an SE site at all. (And there are numerous quotes on its meta where the community praises itself not to be as rigidly moderated as common SE sites.)
@quid on reflection you're right to question my choice of words. If I find a cogent response I'll post it in due course
I think that controversial questions are fine, but require a much higher level of care in community attention and moderation.
In particular, they typically rapidly shoot to the "hot questions" list and start attracting low-quality answers from new site users. I typically protect such questions as soon as I am able, in order to keep the trash-answer rate down, but there is a significant delay (maybe a day?) before non-moderators can protect.
Flagging early to ask the moderators to protect can thus help a lot in mitigating quality issues.
Indeed I'm always surprised to see their vote count skyrocket while I find them utterly uninteresting. The click-bait effect I guess.
What about low-quality comments?
@YemonChoi Comments are already partially protected by reputation requirements: you at least don't get totally random driveby comments. As for the rest, flag for mod attention just like anywhere else.
@jakebeal Thanks for the advice. I would say, however, that reputation requirements aren't much help if, say, people who've racked up rep on other sites wade in. But this has no doubt been done to death in discussion on many different .SE sites as a feature/bug of the susyem
The "hot questions" list keeps showing up as a major root-cause in much bad site behavior. That deserves its own meta-discussion on how to fix it.
I felt that much of the problem with this question was the presence of a personal story that did not bear on the question being asked, so I edited the question to remove the story.
The resulting question (i.e. the underlying question of the original post!) strikes me as much more reasonable.
Thanks, Tom. I am still troubled by "I am sure this phenomenon is true elsewhere" but I agree that the version resulting from your edit is much less problematic
I don't disagree, but wanted to err on the side of removing as little as possible. Perhaps one can charitably read this as "is true in some other places" rather than "is true everywhere else" (whatever the odds that the OP actually meant that).
@YemonChoi I took the "elsewhere" to be other STEM departments in US graduate schools and not just his/her department. If the scope of "elsewhere" that is the issue, we should just edit that bit. The OP can roll it back if need be.
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3322 | Appropriateness of promoting political content via the community promotion ads
One of our community promotion ads redirects to a website listing people who have strong opinions against a publisher. This ad pops up frequently on the homepage, alternating with useful, fun and politically neutral ads, and could give the impression that a majority of users of this site endorse these opinions. Only experienced users know that a very low threshold of up-votes will trigger these ads to show up.
Notwithstanding the fact that I don't think it's helpful to anyone to gather academics to that cause, I think it might tarnish the reputation of users of this site who sometimes use their real names. Especially early career academics certainly don't need that kind of negative publicity.
Should we really use our SE for this kind of promotion?
Note: I'm looking for answers on the generic issue, not for posts or comments trying to convince me said website is the only thing that stands between civilization and obscurantism. I have already endured hours of vociferous campaigning along that line.
"Only experienced users know that a very low threshold of up-votes will trigger these ads to show up."
I suspect the in-experienced users will not know that the ads are proposed and voted on by the community, and will believe that it's a paid ad (as most ads on the Internet are.)
I can totally understand not wanting to participate in a site that advertises for something you strongly disagree with - I can think of ads that would make me rethink my willingness to participate in this site. On the other hand, I don't think tarnished reputations are a serious concern, for that reason.
The whole point of ads on this site is to allow the community to advertise what they, collectively, find useful and relevant. I disagree with your "low vote threshold" comment... the ten-vote threshold on meta for a site like ours is a pretty steep requirement, as the vast majority of our users don't visit meta, ever. For an ad to have accumulated ten votes meant that a non-negligible subset of the active community agrees with that ad.
As such, I think your question is somewhat rhetorical; clearly, the community feels that we should use the site to advance these types of arguments.
However, if you feel differently, you are welcome to campaign against the ad through a meta post. This question seems somewhat broad ("Should our ads involve political content"), which seems to have been your intention given the "edit to add" blurb. However, a question specifically asking about this ad ("Should we allow that particular ad") would give you a chance to voice your concerns very directly and allow for discussion on that ad specifically, and possibly drive others to downvote it and thereby remove it from the rotation.
To me the best ads are for web resources which I would want to visit many times. This means that I think "product" ads (e.g., the one for Zotero) and "political" ads (e.g., the one for the Elsevier Boycott) are not particularly useful. The issue is the static and one-off nature of the material. Having ads be to unchanging webpages (e.g., political blog posts, new articles, or products) which you can digest fully in a single reading seems strange to me.
That said, if the product and political ads point to something that is important to academics (and in the case of political ads, regardless of which side the ad one supports), then I think they are fine to let the community decide on.
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3549 | Why are we challenging the premise rather than answering the question (question on potential sexist remarks)?
I find the reaction to this question quite unreasonable. The responses were overwhelmingly negative and focused on trying to prove that OP is wrong in assessing whether a given situation was possibly sexist or not. The reaction was similar to what happened to an older, very similar question. That one was much better received, and the meta post about it also indicated questioning the premises in the question was not the right way to go.
(Quite ironically ff524 was the first to question the premises in a comment, while she was the "victim" of a similar treatment 2 years ago.)
In the case of the first question, edits to the question to remove possible ambiguity were even less favorably received. I don't really understand why. I think one should stick with answering the question, possibly pointing out a potential false positive, and not just questioning the premises.
To that extent, how should we deal with these types of questions/situations in the future?
I've been trying to think of a more delicate way to put this for awhile and failing, so here it is: Almost every time this community has a question on sexism, I end up thinking ever so slightly less of it than I did before.
@Fomite: For whatever it’s worth, most of the problematic comments and answers come from users attracted to the question via the hot network questions and not directly from our own community.
Too bad I cannot downvote, so instead I'll explain: The original question before edits was almost off topic in my opinion. Besides, it really made no sense to answer it without challenging it. OP assumed sexist behavior because her capability was compared to other teachers' which happened to be male. As the question was written, it seems that she was the only one to notice that pattern, meaning she was probably looking for it. If the premise is not to be questioned, it shouldn't even be mentioned. This is where the edits ended anyway.
Quite ironically ff524 was the first to question the premises in a comment, while she was the "victim" of a similar treatment 2 years ago. I think you misrepresent that situation. A few years ago I posted a question in which I did not include a subjective example, and declined to specify one when asked. I believed then, as I do now, in not putting something in the question to begin with if the OP really doesn't want people to comment on it or address it in their answers.
When dealing with sexism/racism you either need a long history of events to show behavior injections or a very specific event that conveys the issue. To pin "sexist" to someone on a very vague event belittles the idea of sexism and is a reason people don't take more defined examples, seriously. I would hope that the women reading my answer were not offended, because sexism exists and it is a big deal. But to make it a big deal you have to be able to differentiate between what is right and wrong.
@djechlin - how you can get a microagression out of the OP's original question is EXACTLY why we have sexism/racism. If you are going to go so far as accept the worst possible intent than how do you think the person on the other side of the fence will react? And that is how the circle is started.
@djechlin I'm not personally sold on the idea of "microaggressions" and from what I can tell this is not an accepted concept in general either.
@TomášZato she was probably looking for it Sorry, but you don't know that. You couldn't possibly give a valid judgment about the inappropriateness of the student's behavior either, nor could any other stranger on that website. That's why the only useful answers are the ones that assume OP knows the difference between a random rant and something suspiciously aimed towards women.
As I said before, if the premise of the question sounds ridiculous but must not be questioned, it's best to rephrase the question to remove that premise. Also, if OP can judge prejudice from e-mail she received from a student, I can judge prejudice from a post she posted on stack exchange. Especially given what I could read in the edit history of the post.
@CapeCode - She said herself that there was no evidence that it was aimed at her because she was a woman, she even offered alternative reasons. Sexism is a big deal. When we have djechlin and similar posters talking about microagressions and other things that are just clearly opinion it denigrates sexism. That is why some in the population don't take acts of "sexism" seriously, because they don't know if it is a real act or just a baseless opinion. There are some people that have commented that I would never trust them with calling out sexism, which is sad.
I argue that sexism cannot be determined from a single incident, just as a clear pattern cannot be determined from a single point of data collected from an experiment. Therefore, one must be careful when they judge someone. This goes for OPs judgment of the student, and our judgment of the OP.
@CapeCode - Sorry about the bad edit, didn't mean to change your intended question.
-1: The answers in these threads are very reasonable and of good academic common sense.
@Dilaton But, the comments, though?
Please keep the tone in these comments civil, folks.
@blankip My comment again, without the ambiguity: You write above "how you can get a microagression out of the OP's original question is EXACTLY why we have sexism/racism". A few false positives in identifying sexism is certainly not "the reason why we have sexism". I'm sure you know that millennia of government and clergy-backed organized oppression is a much more plausible culprit. That sentence makes me question your ability to tell what's sexist and what's not.
@eykanal Thanks for the clean up, I have removed my responses that were made obsolete. By the way, your edits were useful, my initial phrasing wasn't very clear.
I actually find the meta thread, particularly the rather impassioned disagreement, even more interesting than the original post we're discussing. Maybe posts about this topic that include any sort of context will inevitably be controversial and messy, even though the help center encourages context?
You're making a hugely factually incorrect claim "Quite ironically ff524.. was the "victim" of a similar treatment " that the OP of this question was unambiguously a "victim" of anything, other than a pain-in-the-ass weak student who challenged her teaching credentials in email and was annoying. Please stop mutating the original statement #1 of the question. None of us, including the OP by her own admission, know his motives for sure. The issue as as I see it is to deal with those behaviors, not inject gender motives into everything.
So it's unhelpful to turn conjecture into fact. Mutating the question from #1 "It feels sexist to me" to #5 "clearly sexist" alone is grounds for putting the question on hold as hopelessly unclear. It's also an XY problem: Are we supposed to deal with the student's alleged mindset, the OP's mindset, or the unambiguous behaviors that were annoying and have solutions? It's further unhelpful that edits #5..#12 of the question then become a soapbox for people postulating on the "clearly sexist" premise which never existed.
@smci you "hugely" misunderstood that sentence. I used the work "victim" in quotes to refer to the treatment their respective questions received on this site. By the way, I have made no edits to the linked question.
@CapeCode: oh your quotes were ironic, that wasn't apparent, sorry. Regardless I wasn't saying you did those edits to the question or mutated it; that was someone else and it's pretty obvious who did those, I even give the link to the revisions. The huge misunderstandings were made by respondents who didn't see the mutating/disappearing factual context as the question successively morphed.
Other relevant example, in my view: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/109233/student-caught-cheating-when-leaving-class-after-handing-me-the-exam
Should we ignore the premise?
Let us consider the following, exaggerated, cases:
In the first, a question is posted, reading
If someone's life is in imminent danger due to a threat of a third person, am I justified in using lethal force agains that third person?
and in the second case, the text posted is
Today, I overheard someone saying they wish my friend didn't come back to teach next semester. The person saying this looked as if full of anger. I feel like this person is going to assassinate my colleague any moment, and I think I need to take drastic steps to prevent my colleague from harm.
In a general setting, if someone's life is in imminent danger due to a threat of a third person, am I justified in using lethal force agains that third person?
The first question is already an extremely complicated one, and even though it is commonly discussed in law classes in a general setting, no one answer could provide a complete and unambiguous solution. This is why courts of law are needed.
Now, in the second case, one might argue that the question is exactly the same, since the first paragraph is entirely irrelevant to the question for being introduced with the words "in a general setting". Clearly, though, the person asking the question did not think the story in the first paragraph was irrelevant, even if claimed otherwise, since if it really were, there would have been no point in including the background story. Providing background to complicated problems, especially problems involving people, is a useful thing to do, because it allowes answers that are better suited for the situation which is actually at hand. It also allows people to point out that the question asked may not be "the right one to ask", given the background. The question has not been asked "in a vacuum", but in the context of a real-life situation.
Also, since people are involved, one has to acknowledge that the answers given may have very real consequences to one or more parties. Pretending to not know about the real situation at hand is naive at best, in my view.
So, if you, the reader, are convinced that the background should be ignored, since what is asked for is a general answer, would you think it right to ignore the fact that the situation at hand in no way warrants use of lethal force, and answer in the second case with "Yes, if someone's life is in imminent danger due to a threat of a third person, one is justified in using lethal force"? Provided one knew this was the case in the applicable jurisdiction, of course.
What should we do about that particular question and its answers?
If we ignore for the moment the question whether answering just the generic question is doing the asker any service, one may argue that there is now a disconnect between the edited question and the answers. I would agree, but propose that the solution is not to delete/edit the answers, but rather to roll back the edits to the question. If someone is indeed interested in an answer to the generic question so much, another question can be posted, without destroying the valid answers that have been given so far.
After all, if I edited this meta question to be about the best sushi in town, you wouldn't delete the answers given here and demand discussion of sushi, would you?
I just do not understand why this was downvoted. It exactly describes what happened.
@TomášZato I didn't downvote but comparing initiating a possibly unnecessary discussion about gender bias with the unwarranted use of lethal force seem completely off to me.
@CapeCode: Thanks for the feedback. While I get that my scenario is wildly exaggerated (hence the first sentence in my post), the point that I was trying to make was that, depending on the answers to the original question, there might well have been very serious consequences for both the OP and the accused student, regardless of whether the accusation is found to be backed up by evidence or not at all. Ignoring the premise would, I argue, increase the chances of undesirable outcome. Either way, I think blankip's analogy of circuit breakers is better than mine anyway.
Also, I did not intend to equate the discussion about gender bias with use of lethal force. The discussion about gender bias is completely fine. My comparison was intended to provoke thought about whether it is always acceptable or desirable to ignore the premise, and where the reader might draw the line in his own judgement.
Instead of leaving out background altogether, the OP could ask a followup question that says "this happened (links to current question)". "If it turns out that future interactions with this student reveal solid evidence of sexism, what should I do?". So it's a way to acknowledge that there's insufficient evidence and little cause for worry about sexism at the moment, while still asking what they're wondering.
Turned that comment into an answer
it reminds me of an xy problem. based on a flawed/incomplete understanding of the problem, the question asker asks the wrong question and tries to solve the wrong problem. when given adequate information, the answerers can see that the wrong problem is being addressed, and hopefully can address the real problem. similarly, sometimes the "wrong problem" was still nevertheless interesting, and warrants an extra question by itself. but usually the point of the first question is to solve the OP's specific problem.
@PeterCordes - You could post such a question yourself....
@RQM - "Depending on the answers to the original question, there might well have been very serious consequences for both the OP and the accused student" - How so? No real names were posted; if OP brings the concern to the attention of the Title IX Coordinator, the coordinator would evaluate the concern, decide whether to investigate, etc. No one would be assumed to have done anything wrong.
@RQM, what analogy about circuit breakers? I don't see that in blankip's answer to this meta question or the linked question. Sounds interesting, though.
For future similar questions, in my opinion we should put the question on hold immediately (with reason "unclear what you are asking"), so that it can be edited and improved by the OP without receiving inappropriate answers. Sometimes putting it on hold only means putting it on hold, not closing it, and this is one of those cases.
(As noted by @djechlin, it is a good idea to state explicitly in the comments that it is only a temporary closure while we wait for an edit, not to discourage the OP.)
The alternative is doing some major edits on the question ourselves without waiting for OP: this is appropriate in some cases, but it is a more dangerous practice to suggest in general, because there is always the risk of turning the question into something completely different than what the OP was trying to ask.
I agree. The question was not a good question in the beginning. In a perfect world, people should point that out to the OP and not answer until the question has been improved. The question has now been improved, but there are answers to the original version. I think it would lead to a better result to remove this answers which don't fit the improved question as it is now, but of course this is also not that easy because people who spent time answering probably won't like their answer to be removed. So preventing answers until a question is improved would be the best IMO.
What was wrong with the question in the beginning? The OP asked a very specific, broadly-applicable question after providing their personal context, which is what the help center says to do.
@JeffL. What was wrong is that the context given did not really match the broadly-applicable question. This is a case of "unclear what you are asking" in my view.
@JeffL. I agree that the question was unclear like Federico says. If a question describes a situation and then asks a general rule which doesn't really fit, It's actually two different questions wrongly merged and many people will note this and post a answer noting this. Like if I would ask "Yesterday I saw a strange person I don't know standing near my car! What should I do if I see someone breaking into my car? Go out handling it myself or calling the police?" Some people will answer the first sentence, some the second question and many will note they don't match. So bad question!
@Josef This use of "unclear" feels like that line from the Princess Bride to me. "You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means." The OP asked "If you witness a student engaging in a sexist behavior, would you call him/her out? How would you do this without making the student feel intimidated?" which almost can't get more clear. We should be perfectly able to answer the question while also addressing issues with the underlying context, which is exactly what a lot of the answers did.
@JeffL. No that is not what OP asked. If this would be the entire question, nothing would be unclear. The exact problem is, that OP had, before asking that, described a situation which doesn't exactly fit this question asked afterwards! Ignore my comment up until this sentence, I 100% agree with you!
@Josef I'm not saying there weren't potential issues with the context that were perfectly valid to address in answers. I'm saying this doesn't fit the definition of the word "unclear". You can have issues with the context and still fully acknowledge that what she was asking is perfectly clear.
@JeffL. I wrote "I 100% agree with you!" How should I be more clear? You see, you cannot just take the last sentence and ignore the rest. Even though OP wrote "If you witness a student engaging in a sexist behavior, would you call him/her out?" which asks in general, she also described this situation before. This implicitly also asks about this situation! There is no way to add information to a question but then say "but ignore that". If it should really be ignored, it shouldn't be there in the first place! But because it was there and contradicting the question afterwards, it was unclear
@Josef Contradicting would be if she wrote "This guy treats me completely fairly, but how would you handle a sexist student?" That isn't what she wrote; valid questions about the context remain, but it was neither contradictory nor unclear.
@JeffL. To me it was very unclear!
@Josef And we're back to my Princess Bride quote. Probably best if we leave it at that rather than filling up the comments as we go in circles.
@JeffL Do you normally grade homework and exam papers? If so, you should be familiar with the fact that adding a sentence can make a student's answer a lot less clear, if that sentence creates doubts that the student did not understand at all what he/she wrote in the rest of the answer.
@RobertHarvey I never suggested closing the question in the first place: please check again the sentence after the one you quoted.
@RobertHarvey Where did I claim that inappropriate answers make a question less effective? I just wrote (paraphrasing) "let us put it on hold so that people do not write bad answers to it". Bad questions attract bad answers; bad answers do not travel back in time and make a question bad.
@RobertHarvey The close reason is "unclear what you are asking". It's written right up there in my first comment. Question is unclear => we put it on hold => it doesn't attract bad answers before it's edited. That's a consequence, not a cause. The cause is the question being unclear.
@RobertHarvey I'll edit it in.
The original question patently wasn't unclear. Judging by the responses, no one had a single issue understanding what she was asking. They just disagreed that the context she gave was an example of her question, and there's nothing wrong with that. The problem arose when people chose to only address the context, often angrily, and not the question. There were valid issues, but clarity wasn't one of them.
@JeffL. When I answered (before she made edits) I simply ignored the premise, and focused on the actual question. There was no need, in my opinion, to even address the premise at all.
@JeffL. We are back at the main issue: you think that unambiguous question + disputable, misleading premise = clear question; I think that it equals unclear question. I think it's very similar to an XY problem. Judging by the votes and the discussion in this thread, I am not alone. But I am afraid there is no way to agree on that; it is personal judgment in the end. And, as long as the "close" button is present on my interface, I will vote for it whenever I think a question is unclear.
@RQM's answer (and my guess as well) in a nutshell: people were questioning the premise because they were worried that if they were to answer the question literally, their answer would be misapplied to a situation that doesn't fit it. I find this a reasonable worry given the original post, and would probably have done the same.
Lots of answers on various StackExchange sites question the premise of the question (e.g., a student posts their homework, but the question makes it clear that the student doesn't understand the underlying definitions). This happens particularly often when the question is ambiguous and muddles up different issues. What we've seen here is a case of muddling up, although the political forcefield surrounding the issue has expectedly poisoned the discussion (though, compared to what we've been hearing just a few weeks ago, this was an exceptionally constructive debate).
Thank you for the clear and succinct summary of what I was trying to say in probably more words than necessary. :)
+1 That is a useful answer. I still think the second most up-voted answer goes way beyond a reasonable worry of misapplied recommendations.
@CapeCode: nice to see us agreeing :) I am not sure what I think of blankip's answer: On the nose, it's probably too harsh, but in the context it might not be, as the original poster kept fanning the flames by editing and commenting (I still think the rudest statements in that thread come from the OP, and there is a fair deal of bias in them as well). Who came first, the rudeness in the answer or the rudeness in the comments? I don't know, and I don't have the time to dig. Ultimately, the fact that blankip has relevant personal experience makes his post worth keeping in my opinion.
@darijgrinberg - "blankip has relevant personal experience"? Where was this mentioned or described? (Maybe it's something that was subsequently removed?)
@aparente001: paragraphs 4 and 5 of his post.
@darijgrinberg - Thank you very much. I was looking on this Meta page (wrong place to look!). For anyone else trying to follow this, the post being referenced was an answer to the original question (http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/80593/32436). Question: when you wrote, "I am not sure what I think of blankip's answer," were you talking about his answer here on Meta, or on the original question?
On the original question. I was referring to the answer linked by CapeCode.
You should challenge the premise because that is what intelligent people do.
The OP gave background to a situation. She had nothing more to add when questioned about this background. So to those answering the question we took the background as complete and fact.
The question "how to deal with sexism?" is not a question, or at least one appropriate for this site. You would need to have an example of sexism in the workplace to be able to relate it to the standards of this site. There are hundreds of ways to deal with this at a school, each different depending on the circumstances.
The OP never delivered though. She had a chance to convey to the readers why she thought there was sexism - (maybe there is and she doesn't explain things well). So to answer the question correctly you would have to state your opinion about the OP's situation. And my opinion was there was no sexism described and the OP's behavior seemed sexist.
The OP still had a chance to add information or dispute anything. Instead she started editing and taking away the facts of this case. But even without the facts in the last edit, we still know what they are so we answer the question as complete as we can.
To the contrary of others I think the question originally was valid. It was a microcosm of a teacher/student relationship and where things can go wrong. Now the question is so vague it is unanswerable. The question's edits should be rolled back. This is like someone asking on math stack - what is 2x6? and then editing it to say- what is 2x ? We know the answer is 12, editing the question doesn't help us unknow what was there.
This conversation veered off-topic, and as such has been moved to chat.
I think the answers to the original question were appropriate to the specific situation presented: it would be a bad idea to assume sexism was the reason for the student's actions.
Now the OP has a different question: what to do when there is sexism.
The best way to ask that is as a separate question, not an edit of the old question. A new question could be phrased something like:
I've had some interactions with a student (link to rev1 of old
question) that I'm worried are signs of or due to sexism. If future
interactions with this student provide clear evidence of sexism, what
should I do?
I can't yet confirm or rule out sexism, but I'd like to be prepared in the unfortunate case that my suspicions are confirmed.
As originally written, the question was:
So I am not necessarily soliciting an answer specific to my situation,
but in a more general setting.
If you witness a student engaging in a sexist behavior, would you call
him/her out? How would you do this without making the student feel
intimidated?
If this were the original question and no other context was presented, it would be difficult to answer because it is so open-ended in the "more general setting". What is "sexist behavior"? How was it "witnessed" (did others see it)? Did the student make direct remarks? What is physical? The context in which this occurred would be very important for moving forward. Depending on the severity of the remark and the context, different actions might be appropriate. Sexist behavior of any kind should not be tolerated but there is still a (debatable) scale, perhaps:
implied sexism > direct verbal sexism > institutional sexism >
physical sexism.
Each of these cases should be treated differently. So when the question is asked without context, I would have asked context to be presented. Without the context, the answer may not be applicable to the real life situation.
In this case the background was originally given. The background of the question suggested to me that, on the scale above, it was implied sexism and even then, perhaps not even true based on the details given. Therefore, it seemed necessary to (politely) inquire into the nature of the context or question the premise of the question in more detail.
While the post itself was well-meaning, there were a few comments in the background that made me question the premise. First, the question author states:
It feels sexist to me (I am female).
This suggests that the remark might have been sexist but the author is not sure. However, the next few comments:
I feel that I would be bullying the student if I were calling him out
on his sexist remarks
(which, he is probably not aware of)
even the young people can have sexist views, and that this will
probably happen again in the future
If you witness a student engaging in a sexist behavior
All of these suggest the post author has already made up their mind which does not seem like the best conclusion given the story. We weren't there, of course, so all we can go off of is what is written in the background. It seems reasonable to me to question the premise because it suggests the author has gone from "there may have been sexist remarks" to "there were sexist remarks". We should never discourage individuals from reporting sexism but we should also not encourage false accusations of sexism. False accusations are not professional. In an attempt to ensure that the author receives the best possible outcome to the situation, questioning their underlying assumptions is valid to me. This situation would be far more straightfoward if the student directly stated a sexist comment.
I do not approve of attacking the post author or aggressively trying to change their mind. But I see nothing wrong with politely engaging in a discussion to clarify the context. Additionally, the post author referred to the all posters as "collectively dyslexic" and was also aggressive with their comments and edits (some of which were later removed) which inflammed the situation further.
In conclusion: The premise is being challenged because if the premise is incorrect, it may not be necessary to take action at all.
What is happening with that question about handling a potentially sexist behavior?
Briefly: People don’t read or are incapable of sticking to the actual question. It’s a problem that we see an all sorts of question. Sometimes it’s not even a problem, because the asker clearly needs something else than what they asked for – but this does not apply here.
Quite ironically @ff524 was the first to question the premises in a comment, while she was the "victim" of a similar treatment 2 years ago.
In this case, addressing a problem with the premises in the comments is exactly the right way to go in my opinion. It does not address the actual question (hence it should not be an answer), but it points out potentially relevant information to the asker. Whether this information is actually relevant is something the asker has to decide¹, but we cannot just leave such a problem unmentioned.
However, given that the asker is now obviously aware of this potential problem and has entirely removed the respective parts from the question, all comments pertaining to this should be removed.
I think one should stick with answering the question, why not while pointing out a potential false positive, and not just question the premises.
For answers to this question, I agree. Every answer that does nothing but addressing issues with the premise should be deleted for failing to address the question. Note that this is not deleting an answer because it is bad or incorrect; it’s deleting an answer because it does not even attempt to answer the question at hand – it may be an answer to another question, but then almost everything is.
I wish to state that this is not a chameleon question – the question was clearly stating that it was not about this specific situation:
So I am not necessarily soliciting an answer specific to my situation, but in a more general setting.
Thus, everybody posting an answer addressing the premises was entering the risk of having their answer deleted anyway.
¹ after all, it could just be that the asker forgot to report a detail relevant to her allegations (but not to her question) as her report was intended to be “without disclosing too much of it”.
You cannot answer a question about sexism, racism, agism without context. Everything is about a situation. There is no way to simply answer a question - What should I do about sexism?
@blankip For more on that, see Providing explicit examples in potentially subjective cases
@blankip: You need some context, but you do not need all of the context (which nobody can provide anyway). If you did, such questions would be useless for future visitors and too localised for this platform. On the other hand, “How do I react to sexist remarks in an e-mail by a student” is already sufficiently specific to be answerable.
Completely disagree. So if I emailed a female teacher (I am male) and say, "Can you have a male professor grade my papers? I don't think any of the females on campus are smart enough to understand my thoughts." that is the same thing as saying, "I can help carry the tables outside for class. Would you like me to ask a couple of other guys to carry them too?" You aren't serious right? Context is everything. She gave us the facts how she knew them and we answered, that's a question. Someone else might have a similar question with different context.
@blankip: Context is sometimes relevant to judge whether something is sexism, but that’s not the question here. The question in question is about how to address it and this is largely independent of the details, except perhaps the general severity of the sexism.
@Wrzlprmft - The example I gave has two things that could be construed as sexist. No one would be wrong in saying there was a hint of sexism at least with both. And you are saying that your answer would be the same for each? Let's take this to the next step... The OP in my example is talking about moving tables outside and says that on a "sexist severity scale" it is a 8 out of 10. Wow pretty severe right. Someone might tell her to take the student to judicial review or to advisors or to dean of school.
This would still be about judging the sexism itself, which is not the point here. This is something that has to be done by the asker or people directly involved anyway and its their responsibility to do this properly. We should and must rely on the premises being correct (otherwise we cannot answer any question). All we can do is post a comment if we spot a potential flaw.
@Wrzlprmft - That isn't how the site works. When something is unclear we ask for more information until you can answer. You don't just assume the OP is right about vague accusations and details. She could have made something up and we would have to go along with it - but she didn't. I would like you to give an answer for my example that is the same for each case since you will trust me as an OP that someone emailed me and was very sexist. I am actually giving you more information than you think the OP should give here.
@blankip: When something is unclear we ask for more information until you can answer. – Sure, but this question can be answered without details on the precise nature of the sexism. — You don't just assume the OP is right about vague accusations and details. – It doesn’t matter whether the OP is right, as long as she is not accusing a specific person. But for the purposes of answering, we assume the premises given by the OP. We do not have to give the correct answer for the real-life situation the OP is facing; we only have to give the correct answer for the premises given to us.
@Wrzlprmft But assume someone asks a question what to do about a sexist mail. You say, go to the dean! Sexism is unacceptable. This person then shows up at the deans office with a mail stating "Hello ProfX, I was wondering if you need help to bring back the tables after the event tomorrow. I could ask a few guys and we carry them back." That might not end too well...
@Josef: But assume someone asks a question what to do about a sexist mail. […] That might not end too well... – In this case, it’s the asker’s fault for not correctly assessing the premises of the question. If the asker elaborated on the content of the e-mail, we can and should leave one comment warning them that they may have assessed the situation wrongly. Still, this is the asker’s responsibility, not ours. We do not get to see the actual e-mail (or at least we shouldn’t) and cannot know all the context, and it might as well just be that the asker forgot to mention some detail.
@Wrzlprmft: What I don't understand is why some here, including you, suggest that it is a problem if more than one answer touches on the validity of the premise. If I answer a question, I might do differently than someone else or reach different conclusions, and still we both have to address the premise because it is an important element in our reasoning. I can imagine questions where there are 20 answers, each different, and each challenging the premise in the same way, because it is crucial to their argument. The asker still should not interpret this as a personal attack, because it isn't.
@RQM: The OP stated (from the very beginning) that their depiction of the premises was “without disclosing too much of it” and that that they want to ask about “a more general setting”. (Also some of the answers attacking the premises were clearly overdoing it.)
@Wrzlprmft You can't imagine a full book on the subject of, "What to do about written sexist remarks"? I can't imagine answering it without one.
@blankip - "There is no way to simply answer a question - What should I do about sexism?" -- There is a simple answer to that question, on campus in the U.S.: Take your concern to the Title IX Coordinator.
@aparente001 - Then her next question would be... Do I need to go to a sexism awareness class because I reported a male student to the Title IX Coordinator for offering to help carry tables? You aren't serious right? What do you think will happen in the real world - not the internets - when a Title IX Coordinator asked to talk to a student, gets their side of the story, and then has to report back to the teacher's dean/boss? You think this will work out well for her?
@blankip - I don't have specific personal experience taking a concern to a Title IX coordinator, but I do have specific personal experience taking a concern to the folks that instructed universities to create the positions of Title IX coordinators, the US Department of Education Office for Civil Rights. I am extrapolating from my experience with OCR back to Title IX Coordinators. But Blank, if in doubt what a Title IX Coordinator would do, why not just make an appointment and ask?
My experience with OCR isn't around Title IX, it's around disability discrimination. Again, some extrapolation is needed. At any rate, my experience is that OCR reads the complaint, interviews the complainant, looks at the supporting documentation, and then issues an initial evaluation, which states which allegations, if any, are going to be investigated. Also, OCR makes itself available to answer questions. If someone has a concern, and is not sure whether the incident is complainable, the person can have a conversation with one of the investigators about it.
I've looked at several universities' Title IX instructions, and my impression is that a university community member with a concern can talk over the concern in confidence with the Title IX Coordinator. I would encourage anyone in doubt about an incident s/he personally experienced, or observed, or considered as a thought experiment, to take it to the Title IX Coordinator for a reality check. – aparente001 7 hours ago
I feel like the combative answers (and the ensuing combative replies by the OP) are more problematic than the original question. If you look at the original un-edited post, its tone is fairly neutral and it describes the author's specific situation and then very explicitly asks a general question:
So I am not necessarily soliciting an answer specific to my situation,
but in a more general setting. If you witness a student engaging in a
sexist behavior, would you call him/her out? How would you do this
without making the student feel intimidated?
It also seems problematic to me that we're potentially retroactively identifying this as a question worthy of being put on hold. It's not unusual to see bad questions on hold within hours, if not minutes. This lends further evidence to me that the problem is in the answers, not the post. Also, from the help center:
But if you give us details and context, we can provide a useful answer.
Context is explicitly encouraged. However, it's not necessary to attack the OPs perception of the situation while still addressing both the actual question and the problems entailed in the context, which I tried to do in my answer.
In the future I think it would be useful to:
Flag and delete answers that only address the context, and not the question
Point out early in comments to the OP that context in a situation like this may distract from answers to their question. Or maybe that should be in the help center?
And then the bigger problem seems to me the way we moderate comments. I rarely see comments subject to much (perfectly possible I'm just missing that, so correct me if I'm wrong), other than getting moved to chat when there are too many. And yet here, most of the mess is in comments - there are only a handful of answers that ignored the question and only talked about the context. Just looking over our own guidelines, I feel like there's grounds to delete a ton of these comments.
I've deleted dozens of comments from that question and its answers, and left those that seem to be consistent with what comments are for. Do you see more comments there that should be removed, according to our guidelines? If so, please flag them.
@ff524 Actually it looks like a lot of the ones I had in mind have been cleaned up since I last looked at it. I shouldn't doubt your moderating skills! But regardless, a lot of the mess came out of the comments.
As a general rule, if anyone ever feels inclined to complain about "the way we moderate comments", go flag the comments you're about to complain about. Moderators are not responsible for reading and responding to every bit of content posted on this site; our main responsibility is to handle flags raised by users. (Reading every bit of content on this site is something I often do when I'm avoiding my real work, but every now and then I have to actually do some research or my advisor will get suspicious ;))
As I've searched around more, our problem seems more related to this: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3615/allow-downvoting-comments What we really need is a way to be more fine-grained in comment moderation, and a disincentive to post bad comments that will get downvoted. But that doesn't appear to be on the radar.
@djechlin It looks like it comes up regularly, and all of them get closed and linked as duplicates to this old one.
I know I don't have much rep here, but I look up to this site as I work my way up college, and it was honestly pretty embarrassing to see the comments on that post. I left a few comments, but they're gone now, as they probably should be.
What frustrated me was two dozen people don't need to question the OP! I know it's nice to think that academia has no problems with sexism, but we all know that's not true.
Yes, it was easy to point to the older professor and say "Oh, well he was older, that's obviously 100% of the reason why the student respects him more than you! No sexism!"
But what annoyed me was that so many people felt the need to weigh in and make comments like "Wait ... where's the sexism here?" It didn't read like people questioning the premise in a rhetorical sense, it read like a bunch of people getting very defensive of accusations of mild sexism in a university probably hundreds of miles from them.
I know it would be frustrating as a man to be accused of sexism - especially when it is absolutely not clear the student was being sexist - but that's how the community should have responded, by politely pointing out other factors, not by dogpiling on the OP in an effort to prove how absolutely unimaginable it would be that a little bit of sexism occurred in the ivory tower.
Why do you only admit to the possibility that the student was not consciously sexist? Why stop there, and not give the student the benefit of doubt and consider that maybe, he was not sexist at all? Maybe it was not about the other professor being older either? Maybe there are perfectly valid reasons to retract a request after arguments against it have been brought forward, reasons that do not involve superficial properties such as sex, gender, and age? Noone claimed it was absolutely unimaginable that there is sexism. It's just that accusations are so much more than just frustrating
@RQM Why not give the poster the benefit of the doubt?
@RQM You're missing my point. A dozen people responding indignantly to the OP can across very rudely. I don't blame her for throwing her hands up in frustration and leaving. The answers are all fine and well-written, I was addressing the comments.
@RQM You're right, I removed "consciously." But your last sentence proves my point: Academia.SE focuses on how much it sucks to be accused of sexism, rather than how much it sucks to actually be a victim of sexism, which need not be overt. Don't get me wrong, I'm not convinced the student was motivated entirely by sexism either, but I wanted to address the tone of the community when sexism gets brought up.
@Azor-Ahai: Warning people not to accuse others of serious wrongdoings without sufficient evidence and warning people not to be sexist are not mutually exclusive. In some cases, they even are the same thing. Regarding focussing on victims of accusations vs victims of sexism: most of western justice systems agree that it is more important to not punish those who cannot be shown guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, than it is to punish those who in fact committed wrongdoing. I think is this the right thing to do, even if it means some perpetrators go free. There is no absolute justice.
@RQM You articulated your argument well. Many of the comments did not, and that's what I was attempting to call out. It isn't helpful to be the tenth person to be unnecessarily snarky to an OP that is being sincere in her concerns.
@Azor-Ahai I do have a lot of rep here and I found the comments on that question embarrassing.
"I know it's nice to think that academia has no problems with sexism, but we all know that's not true." I don't think anyone suggested that. If someone says, "This specific instance does not look like sexism," that doesn't for one second imply that it doesn't exist. And maybe that's the real problem here: some users seem to find it unacceptable to say one specific instance of claimed sexism does not in fact appear to actually be sexism.
It's not about academia!
The question is stated in some academic context, but that quickly becomes a backstory of the sexism related problem in the question. That is fine.
Sexism as a concept is not the problem. Differences in opinion are not the problem.
Sexism is hard to discuss
It is all about communication, discussion of differing opinions on the topic. And sexism is a topic that is hard to discuss, with a long, well known tradition.
So we can assume that the academia-related parts of the original question were actually meant as a context to express the communication in, a backstory.
So the original question is not much about academia, but about communication of a difficult topic in the first place.
My proposal is to move the question over to
Interpersonal Skills SE.
They routinely help solving communication about sexism. Not only the one in the question, but also the much more intense one in the comment discussion.
That flareup will not even start there. In part because they are beta, and somewhat small. But with high density of competence.
There, communication about sexism is one of the easier topics. They routinely handle things like family problems between three persons.
The more I look at this question, the more I think that plainly deleting answers or parts of answers that do not address the actual question won’t suffice to resolve the situation.
Most answers have been voted upon on account of their attack of the premises instead of the solution they provide to the actual problem (if any). Hence the mess could only be resolved by resetting all votes (which is not possible even for moderators and would yield more confusion and disturbance than anything else).
I therefore suggest the following course of action:
Let the asker re-post the question in its current state (without explicit premises).
Under all answers addressing the actual question, leave comments inviting the authors to re-post their answer on the actual question.
Delete the original question after locking it for a week or so for reference.
For future similar questions, we should take care to emphasise the focus early by editing the question accordingly and deleting non-answers quickly.
Answering OPs question turned hypothetical wasn't all that hard, I think most people got a bit too emotionally charged. Also, it didn't help that OP responded to some comments with "this is irrelevant" which to some would come across as argumentative. I do find it somewhat ironic that in a question on how to take on gender bias/sexism, so many would argue with the OP and seemingly show gender bias, even if it is subconscious.
I wasn't trying to attack/insult the OP, but some of what was stated in the question was one sided, as in we only had OPs side of the situation. One cannot make an informed decision on anything without all information. Also, one described incident, lets call it a data point, is not sufficient to determine a pattern of behavior. If we all just thought a bit more analytically, than emotionally, I feel this entire situation could have been avoided.
Unfortunately I think @djechlin is right. On top of that, I feel comfortable defending the OP's original post, but the OP's follow-up behavior definitely made things worse. I don't think there's any fixing it now. Whether that means it should all be deleted or not... I think it might be least disruptive to just moderate until it dies, then try to keep future posts from devolving this way.
There is nothing wrong with critisizing unreasonable premises (the OP of a question seeing sexist behind each corner when there are non for example). If you disagree with an answer just vote down as I did with yours here, and that s it!
Interesting idea. Since it seems unlikely the OP will re-post the question, I suggest you do the re-posting.
@djechlin - you must be the type of friend that gets pissed when someone tells you that you have spinach in your teeth and it looks gross. I have posted a few questions on several SE sites, where the consensus was basically "What the hell are you doing?" I was grateful that these people called me out, because being a dumbass to people who don't know you is nothing. If the OP is upset she should contemplate all of the responses more.
@djechlin - not a character jab, it is called an analogy. You think the OP should be pissed because of the "backlash"... I am saying we are just telling her she has spinach in her teeth. Man this conversation is getting dense.
The general question
If the question had no context, it would be Too Broad and need to be closed immediately. I cite the What types of questions should I avoid asking? page:
Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.
I consider this to be self evident. These kind of open ended posts don't make good questions for SE's Q&A format.
Asking, "How do I handle sexist remarks in general?" is as vague and open ended as going to DBA and asking, "How do I index my columns, in general?" or to SO and asking, "How do I parse files in general?" or to SciFi and asking, "How do Sith win battles, in general?" The only reasonable answer you can give is, "It depends on the specifics."
The specific question
So the general question is unanswerable, but the user decided to provide some context anyway. On the other hand, the specific situation described is answerable. So as an SE user, you're left with two possible actions:
Edit out the specific situation and close the question.
Edit out the general question and answer in the specific context.
The first option throws away a perfectly good question. The second option salvages the question and creates a useful resource, but if you believe no action should be taken in this case, it probably requires a frame challenge. At a bare minimum, you'd have to say, "You shouldn't do anything because there isn't sufficient evidence of sexism here. Taking action is likely to be detrimental to everyone involved." But that isn't much different than the frame challenge.
So the answer to, "Why don't people stick to the question?" is, "Because they were trying to salvage the question and make it a useful resource." The only real failing on that front is that no one dared to edit out the "general" bits. Any issues with rudeness or arguing are a completely separate matter.
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3631 | Should we be more welcoming of "technical" questions?
Following up a recent meta post wondering about the direction this site is taking, I wanted to discuss the possibility of changing one of our current habit, which is to close "technical" questions as off-topic.
While some are clear cuts, say someone asking about the content of an algorithm, some are actually effectively about the academic process. One example are questions pertaining to good practice when designing a study. We might then benefit from a "study-design" tag.
A few examples:
Creating a research questionnaire with repeating sections
What tradeoffs are there between internal and external validity?
Is it possible to "validate" a simulator without comparing it with the actual tool?
Yes these questions are field-specific, but a lot of the existing one are as well. Apparently we're capable of dealing with that.
with the pool of clever and successful academics participating to this site it would be great to leverage that knowledge. Also, it would be a refreshing change to all the questions along the line of "someone stole my work/my GPA is not so great how do I still get into grad school/something mildly entertaining happened in class" for which we now have a comprehensive set of answers.
In a typical meta fashion, vote this question up if you're in favor, down if you're against.
We already have an [tag:experiment-design] tag. Are you referring to questions like those? Or more subject-specific? Can you give an example of a closed question that you think should be acceptable?
My feeling is No. There are a couple reasons I think this way:
Academia is, in many ways, a site about the practice of academia, the process of being an academic, etc. rather than highly technical questions about narrow aspects of research. I like that, and there's not actually firm evidence in the question you link in your question that Academia isn't "sustainable" with that scope. Stepping away from that has the potential to dilute what people are interested in coming here for with technical questions, effectively decreasing the signal:noise ratio. This has happened on other sites I have been on - for example, when CrossValidated took in the machine learning questions from a failed site, my interest dropped pretty dramatically as I had to do far more sifting to find questions I was interested in. This risk is, IMO, higher on Academia, as you're not just talking about "one adjacent" fields, but all fields.
Academia does not have good field coverage. There are lots of people in CS, Applied Math, etc. There are some in the biological sciences. There are vanishingly few in say, Medieval History. This is important not only for "can someone answer this" but for field specific norms. An economist and I might be able to answer the same question, but we'd answer it differently, and potentially miss field-specific nuances (for example, epidemiology as a field is pushing pretty hard against p-values). You can already see this happening occasionally (for example, the LaTeX vs. anti-LaTeX soapboxing).
It serves the technical sites poorly. At least one of those questions is more suited to CrossValidated. The StackExchange network is best served by directing people to the site with experts, rather than trying to take on those questions on more generalist sites, which at best ends up fragmenting "Where can I find answers to questions about X" and at worst results in lower-quality answers. Because many of us are probably decent Python programmers does not mean we should be answering programming questions when SO exists.
I have a concern about "procedural" issues, not about the idea you're proposing:
By this point, some votes have accrued on this question. But they are not so useful for moderation purposes, since you have not clarified what kind of question you're referring to:
I doubt all of the people voting on this question have the same thing in mind, so it's hard to point to this post as evidence of "consensus" for something.
I (and other users) use meta posts as a reference (in comments) when I see close votes on a question that I think should stay open. I couldn't use this post as a reference to explain why a particular question should stay open - it's too vague.
Moving forward with this suggestion, can you (or someone else) open a new meta post with a much more specific "type" of question you think we should be more tolerant of, with an example? You can look at closed questions for ideas - if we are actually getting and closing questions of the type you're referring to, there should be some examples in there.
(Ideally, answers to this new meta question should explain why the category of question is good for the site, if in favor, or bad, if opposed. That way the post is useful as a reference for purpose #2. Then votes on the answers can show consensus - purpose #1.)
I added a few examples.
@CapeCode thanks - that definitely clarifies what you meant! But it's still hard to say if the 8 people that already voted (7 up, 1 down) had the same thing in mind when they voted on the previous version. I guess we'll have to mostly look at the new votes that come in now.
Agreed. Lesson learned for my next meta post.
In principle I agree with you, and I upvoted your proposal.
In practice, I'm worried about how we could ensure uniformity of treatment between different disciplines, when people might not understand the potential generality of a certain relatively technical question related to a certain field, and where to draw the line of technical but not-too-technical.
Will we be spending time reminding people, in comments or here in meta, that certain questions are on topic?
Just to give an example from the recent past, several people would vote to close questions about writing style and formatting. These are somehow technical questions related to what is clearly a major activity of ours. How can we ensure uniformity of views with more borderline questions?
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1151 | Should we edit questions to match how they were answered?
Consider this question: Best strategy to learn programing for graduate research data analysis in biology
This question attracted interesting answers (I'm excluding mine from this judgment). Most of them are about not using books to learn neither Matlab nor Excel.
An edit example would be to change the title to something along the line: 'Best strategy to learn programing for graduate research data analysis in biology (OP would need to narrow the field down)'
This is a special case, my question is in the general sense. Is it appropriate to edit questions to fit the scope of their answers?
Can you specify the exact edit you had in mind? I think answers to this question depend on the extent of the change to the question.
@ff524 added an edit example.
Your question is nice. Because if the person edits his question, the answers may not meet the newer questions and if he post a new question it may be flagged as a duplicate one. What should be exactly done? I am waiting for answers to your meta question.
Great question. I would propose that the answer is yes, after some time (>2 days) has passed since last activity. Relatedly, this should be a rare occurrence.
My rationale is that once the question has been viewed, edited, commented on, and answered, it's value is in it's searchability. After two days of quiet, it's probably safe to say that the question is in it's "final form" and won't be significantly altered any more. At that point we can edit the question title to ensure that it can be easily found via keyword searches.
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740 | MathJax on Academia?
Should we have MathJax support on Academia?
I think it would be useful if questions about math in academic writing are common here.
I just asked this question and there it would have been nice (but not necessary).
I cannot think of why it would be a bad thing to have.
longer page loads and JavaScript processing afterwards is the only thing that comes to my mind.
Has there been questions that are on topic on AC.SE that required mathematical formulation so far?
I believe Stack Exchange's position on MathJax support is on an "as needed" basis. First we have to demonstrate that there is a substantial need for it. Then we can make an argument to ask for it. Without a substantial number of questions actually requiring it, it's unlikely to go through. (You could generate a PNG of the LaTeX code and upload that instead, for instance.)
How do we document this need and whom do we ask?
If you'd like, you can use this question space to list questions that would have been easier to ask if MathJax were used. When the list looks fairly substantial, we can ask the SE staff to see if it's worthwhile.
Seems like an overly complicated procedure for switching one bit in the system settings to me, but OK, let's go the way you suggest. (Let's celebrate Christmas and New Year first, however :-))
No, we should not have Mathjax.
There are several reasons why not, but the nub is that it's unnecessary. This isn't a site for maths questions.
It adds bloat to the page. And it really messes up formatting when you innocently put the dollar symbol twice on one line. So you end up having to explain to people that they should escape the dollar symbol with a prefixed backslash every time they want to display a dollar.
Wanting to display a dollar symbol does happen now and again. Whereas displaying an equation is incredibly rare here. Making it easier to display equations is only going to encourage off-topic questions. Adding an arcane barrier to the sane display of dollar symbols is only going to annoy posters.
If we do get some incredibly freaky circumstance where a formatted equation is essential to a question, then just stick an image of the equation in. Most mathjax & latex renderers allow you to capture the equation as an image. The equation isn't going to be any use to search engines anyway.
I really don't know---is displayed math that uncommon? I would think asking how to write about math (as oppose to doing math) would be on-topic, here.
If one sees that $ creates a problem, he can just use a single word (dollars, bucks, USD) to fix it and nobody will waste any time. There is no such easy way out with math., when you need it. As to the "arcane barrier to the sane display of dollar symbols", why don't you launch a crusade against * and other markup too? Be consistent! Down with them! Also, if you bother to look at the lines that enable mathjax in HTML documents, you'll see that you can reconfigure it to take any combination of symbols as an escape sequence, and I don't care in the slightest whether it is $, or #$#, or ...
@fedja Or they can be completely confused by what's going on, since they've maybe never seen LaTeX before. This is not the case on [Math.SE] or [Physics.SE], where everybody knows what $ does.
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3274 | Should we have a canonical question for "should I quit my PhD"?
I've seen a lot of posts on here where someone is in a PhD programme, and they're very stressed and unhappy, and want to know if they should quit. Typically, there are a number of complicating factors, such as: They're away from home, and haven't made any friends yet AND they suffer from depression or panic attacks or some other mental health problem AND there's a sick relative or some other family situation that they're stressed about AND they're worried about money...
Usually these questions are closed because they aren't a good fit for our Q&A format. However, I think we could offer some useful general answers to a canonical question. E.g., address the mental health issue before making any big decisions, if possible; maybe see the student counselor; think about YOUR goals rather than just trying to please parents/advisors; realise that a PhD programme is very different than anything you've likely done before, so don't expect to feel comfortable in it for the first N months; try to think about each problem in isolation; consider a leave of absence; etc.
Here are some examples of the type of questions I'm talking about.
I want to quit PhD after 4 months. Should I?
Leave of Absence from PHD
Should I quit my PhD - workload, self-esteem and social life
My PhD situation is giving me anxiety attacks. Is quitting (and losing 2 years) my only option?
Is feeling lonely and uncomfortable in my (foreign) country of study a valid reason to drop out of a PhD?
I am currently debating whether to leave my PhD program- any advice
I've created the question and provided an answer: Should I quit my PhD? Additional answers are welcome.
@BenCrowell For questions like this which are very broad, and would probably be closed as "too broad" if asked straight out on the main site, users are encouraged to first ask on meta whether this question would be valuable to warrant an exception to the "too broad" and "depends on your particular situation, only someone familiar can answer" close reasons.
@BenCrowell meta is a little different: http://academia.stackexchange.com/help/whats-meta
Look at questions tagged both "PhD" and "quitting". There are far too many different aspects about a decision like this. I don't see how we can create a useful canonical question here.
Wouldn't this just lead to closing questions like this one as "duplicate" and having the OP argue about how it's not a duplicate? Or indicate "hey this one is just as broad"?
@Raystafarian The first line of the canonical question I created says that it's too broad and not a good fit for the site, and implies that it's a special case. We could expand that note to clarify the situation, if needed.
Overall, it looks like a rather broad question. While doing a PhD can be stressful at times, many of these points (worries about money, disagreement with supervisor, ...) are just broader things of life that could equally happen in any job. While some answers can be specific to academia and PhD programmes, many of these things are quite general.
I just want to remind people that on meta up/down votes generally mean the voter agrees/disagrees and it is not to say the question or answer is good or bad.
The question was created and attracted a large number of answers with variable quality which was a concern expressed in this highly up voted answer. Therefore the question has been closed.
I think it is hard to provide a canonical answer to "should I quit". I am worried that it is such a personal question that the answer(s) will not help the majority of people and only lead to discussion in the comments.
Then the comments get flagged.
Good point. I've created the question, and worded it so that it's not really asking "should I quit". Instead, it's asking for tools and advice on how to approach the decision.
This expresses my worries precisely.
I really wish I said "no" in my answer. As it stands I don't know if the up votes are for the concern or because people are against the question.
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1005 | How is the site policy on content-editing other people's answer?
The accepted answer to this question suggests that community wiki is deemed sort of a legacy feature that serves no real purpose anymore, as people are supposed to just edit additional information into existing answers, if they feel that a given answer is good but is missing "something".
Both, Jigg and Pete L. Clark remark that this in practice basically never happens (essentially all edits are just grammar or spelling fixes, with the occasional do-over for clarity and style). This is also my impression - I have been reasonably active on the site in the last few months, and from the top of my head I cannot remember a single case where I have seen an edit that actually added content to an existing answer. Personally speaking, I would also see this as highly inappropriate, as there is no guarantee that the original author even endorses a given change. Pete L. Clark goes into detail in his answer why people seem reluctant to do anything but minor style edits to other people's answers.
My question is now as follows:
If we encounter a question that already has one or more answers that we consider really good, but we feel some minor-ish detail needs to be added. What is the right way to do it?
Post a comment and ask the original author to edit it in.
Edit it in directly.
Provide a new answer, which starts with something along the lines of "The existing answer by XY is good, but ...". I have done something similar myself today.
Option 1 is ok but cumbersome. The question linked at the top seems to suggest to me option 2, but how do we guarantee that the original author even has the same opinion on the topic? Option 3 seems to be the common way how it is currently done (my impression at least), but brings us close to community wiki territory.
There is a HUGE difference between community wiki questions and community wiki answers. Anyone, I believe at anytime, can convert one of their answers to a community wiki. Additionally, once an answer has been edited by enough people/times it will automatically be converted into community wiki. Questions cannot be converted into community wiki by the OP. I am not sure if multiple edits to a question will convert it, but moderators can do it.
@StrongBad There is no more automatic conversion to CW on questions or answers.
@StrongBad Automatic conversion to community wiki doesn't exist anymore, any newer CW posts are created intentionally, there are no mechanisms left that automatically make any post CW.
In the example you linked to for Option 3, that is actually the correct option to use. You are not editing their answer—because it's providing a new viewpoint that the other respondents missed. Moreover, it was a substantial answer in its own right, so doing what you did is exactly correct.
For smaller-scale edits—correcting facts, adding links or appropriate qualifying statements, and so on, either option 1 or 2 works, depending on your comfort level with editing posts directly or not. I personally use option 1 as the default, but that's in part because of having "privileged" status as a moderator.
If you would like an answer to contain additional detail, which you feel will likely be endorsed by the poster, but you are worried that they may not be notified or may not quite approve, one option is to edit the post directly and add a comment along the lines of
Good answer, XXX! I have added some detail on YYY because ZZZ, but of course feel free to roll it back.
This makes immediately visible to anyone that there's content that's been edited in, and what that content is. It also ensures the poster will get an inbox notification next time they log in, and I feel it is more polite than a blunt edit.
Of course, this still has disadvantages and should only be done if you really are only adding details to which the post's owner likely won't object.
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2180 | Are we supposed to be closing questions that may be thinly-veiled self-promotions?
I have the very strong suspicion that this question is essentially a thinly veiled promotion for the OP's business. That is, it seems to me that the OP is not primarily looking for an answer to his question, but mainly uses it as a vehicle to promote his services.
Are we ok with this? And if not, what can we do? The question, while rather uninteresting to me personally, does not really appear to be out of scope based on our rules.
I fail to see any promotion in the post. The OP is just giving context to his question.
To take yet another point of view and to address the more general question:
I do not think that we can distinguish whether such a post was created for purposes of self-promotion or from a genuine interest in learning about new ways of finding customers, jobs or similar. Therefore we should apply the presumption of innocence to such posts (maybe unless we are overrun by them). In this specific case, I find it plausible that the asker is honestly interested in what he is asking for. Therefore I do not think that it should be closed for this reason.
Moreover, I do not see how this question is much different from many questions from users who are looking for a position. Both imply that the asker has certain skills and is available for hire.
I disagree with the last paragraph, but the second paragraph certainly makes some sense.
As someone who started in CV. I can vouch for this questioner as he has been nothing but a wonderful participant at CV. He always provides very apt and helpful answers.
Though, I think the question can definitely use some clarification. The deep root is about networking in academia, which I believe is a valid question for this board.
If the question was asked from the other side of the table and was about finding a reputable paid statistical consultant, I think it would be fine (assuming on topic otherwise).
The question itself reveals the potential conflict of interest with the "advertising" discreetly mentioned in his profile. This is exactly what we ask for in situations like this.
While he might be looking to gain clients here, it reads to me like he is trying to improve his networking/advertising efforts. So in general, I think questions with this level of "advertising" are okay.
Specifically, I am not sure the question is particularly clear or really answerable. I am not sure it is so unclear that it should be closed.
I kinda agree that closing the question feels "wrong" in the sense that nothing in it is against our rules per se (I also don't find the question particularly unclear). But, and maybe I am just paranoid, I also still think that the main purpose of the question is to post on a board frequented by grad students that the OP is offering stats consultancy.
That was indeed my intention. I know there are potential clients out there for me; I doubt many of them are here on this list. But people on this list seem likely to know where people who did want my services would look.
I think trying to project motives onto a posters question, and then closing it because it may be self-promoting, is flawed. The post is far from an egregious case, and honestly, even if it is a thinly veiled bit of self promotion, it involves the following chain of logic:
Someone searching StackExchange for statistical help will somehow miss CrossValidated and come here instead.
Having failed to find the proper StackExchange site, rather than just asking their question (and getting it migrated or closed), they'll search for, I don't know, "Statistics Help".
They'll find Peter's question.
They'll read Peter's profile.
They click on his link, contact him, and this ends with a doubtlessly lucrative consulting contract...
That's a chain of events that I'm pretty sure will never actually happen.
If instead we read this post as a legitimate question, I think it's a much more reasonable one. Connecting people who need statistical expertise with the people who have it is a problem for people in the same university (I know this from experience). Working outside that system strikes me as harder, and something worthy of discussion.
Hm, the user is a high-rep user on cross-validated...which actually makes the question particularly odd, because I don't really understand how the user doesn't know how to find academics who need help - he's answered over 1600 questions on Cross Validated alone. I too suspected something might be 'off' here, but I figured it would be best to close as "Unclear what you are asking".
It could be a valid question, but in its present state I think it could be closed anyway. But if it turned out to indeed be an attempt to advertise a commercial service or gain leads, then certainly it could be closed as "spam" - but we don't have that as a close reason, so indeed I wonder how these should be handled? Just closed as 'other', or do we need something more specific?
It's entirely possible to be helpful on CrossValidated, yet not necessarily have a good intuition for how to do something more than that. Consider that, at CV, the questions come to you.
‘spam’ shows as a reason to close on my se client, but only if the asker doesn't disclose a commercial interest.
As @fomite says, knowing how to help someone is not the same as knowing how to find people to help. One involves expertise in statistics and consulting; the other involves expertise in advertising, marketing and networking.
Though I don't question the OP's statistical knowledge and his capacity as a consultant, I think that leaving this question open as is can cause a flood of questions advertising a variety of consulting services or offers of collaborations.
… most of which would probably be closed as duplicates.
@Wrzlprmft maybe that is the best answer. We could try and ceate a canonical CW question
@StrongBad: I do not think that one canonical question can cover all types of such questions. My comment was aiming at the fact that even if we are overrun by such questions, we can only have one such question per type of service. What we could do is deciding that such questions shall all be CW’ed immediately or after a given time to reduce the visibility of the asker a bit. We could also have them disowned to remove all traces to the asker, but this needs CM intervention. I do not like both of these ideas.
@StrongBad I'm a bit confused about what can be an answerable canonical question, taking also into account that anyone in academia is a potential consultant in their field of expertise.
I feel like that's a problem that can be dealt with if it arises.
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1512 | Why is there no way to vote on a post in the "Review Low Quality Posts" review queue?
In the "low quality" review queue:
Most of the time what I really want to be doing is downvote the answer. Look specifically at this example. The post is (sorry to the poster) just bad. I don't want to edit it and none of the Delete reasons applies. However, I definitely want to downvote it. There is no button that actually lets me do that. What I need to do is press Looks Ok (which it doesn't), click the tiny Link button on the right, and downvote outside of the review queue.
This is the case for me for 2 out of 3 entries in this queue. I would like to see buttons for up- and downvoting here on the level of Edit and Delete.
See this main meta post
This is how we've been explained to interpret stuff in our queues on Stack Overflow, which gets a much higher volume of questions. The goal is to check whether the answer passes the smell test as an answer, not whether it holds water as an answer.
Here's an example of usage from Stack Overflow over the use of "Looks Okay".
Looks Okay does not mean Is Correct.
Consider the following example question:
What is 1 + 1?
And the example answers, with the correct(ish) response in parentheses
Two (Looks Okay)
1.99999 (Looks Okay)
I like turtles! (Not an Answer)
example.com (Link-only Answer)
Has anyone figured it out? (Not an Answer)
As awkward as it may seem, the second answer, 1.99999, based on what the LQPRQ is looking for, should be marked as "Looks Okay." The answer may be categorically wrong (in which case you would downvote it), but the goal of the queue itself is to get rid of content which do not meet the guidelines to be considered an answer.
So long as it is an attempt at an answer, the correct action we're supposed to do is mark it as "Looks Okay" from an Answer perspective.
After that, we can go to the page and downvote, comment that this is wrong, unsafe, insane, etc.
Answers that get downvoted because they are wrong and answers that get deleted because they are not answers fall in different buckets.
I understand. My problem is that the majority of answers in this queue on academia.SE seem to be case two, which needs to be handled outside the review interface currently (not particularly cool).
@xLeitix That's unfortunately the price of a system where subjective answers are encouraged. There's a few right ways to do most things on most Stacks, but on this one, a question with a single answer is normally pretty trivial.
This is a Stack Exchange-wide "feature," which I imagine would have to be implemented at that level, rather than just on Academia.SE.
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949 | Are we presenting an idealised view of academia?
In a comment to this answer, rocinante wrote:
And while I get that the site is heavily skewed to ignore or shut down any hint of criticism of professors in academia, rosy pictures of idyllic collaborations do not serve anybody who is not in that ideal position. If the questioner was in the ideal position, they wouldn't have a problem in the first place.
While I disagree with the strong wording in the comment, it made me wonder.
Are we in fact presenting an idealised view of academia, where professors are always helpful and competent, where advisors and mentors only have the best interest of their mentees in mind, and where research is always about contributing to the body of knowledge and never about politics?
If so, is this a good or a bad thing?
If it is a bad thing, can it be changed and how?
I think this is a very good meta question, that will likely (and hopefully) incite some good meta discussion. I don't understand the motivation to down-vote...
I feel a lot of the answers I see are the old "speech in the answer" problem you see in a lot of academic conferences or cross-disciplinary faculty meetings. We all know we're smart, that's why we're professors. But I guess some people can't but help showing off.
In my time in grad school and beyond, I've seen my share of strife and suffering, to the point where even though I've been lucky enough not to struggle too greatly myself, I can appreciate (if not necessarily empathize) with people having troubles.
Therefore when I answer, I try to distinguish as far as possible
what we would all like to happen
what typically happens
what should NOT happen under any circumstances (even if it's sadly not rare)
what is completely abnormal.
And in all cases, the evidence presented for the actual situation should be more important than abstract principles, mainly because every situation is different in important ways, and concrete evidence should carry weight.
Coming now to the actual cases,
The first element is not so much idealized as wishful thinking ("I wish my advisor would give me research problems all ready to solve") or ("I wish my advisor behaved like a rational robot all the time") and so on.
The second element is the one most susceptible to bias, in that we're talking about what we think is the typical case, and as I've discovered, different communities have very different notions of typical, and that's a good thing to be aware of. In that sense, I've learnt a lot.
The third and fourth elements are very important though especially for students going through something relatively alone. It's very important that there are people who can tell them that a situation is just wrong as opposed to being "normal", and I think we can fairly do that even if these wrong situations are not unusual. Pointing that out isn't presenting an idealized view but is identifying (a) dysfunction and (b) ways to "Run, don't walk".
Ultimately many of us on this site are academics. We wouldn't be in academia if we didn't at some level perceive value in the profession we're in, and so we can't help but take a rosier view of things.
+1 for splitting idealism/reality into 4 meaningful options and appealing to solving a particular problem rather than idealized abstraction.
Not sure who the "we" is in your question. Assuming you're referring to people who answer questions on this site...
In answering questions, "we" are trying to provide hints as to how the student/advisor relationship should work. Is that idealized? Yes, and intentionally so. In most cases, the question is asking whether the behavior is normal ("ideal") or abnormal ("not ideal"), and the answer provide that clarification.
The comment you quoted, though, suggests that "we" intentionally avoid posting any criticism of academia and/or academics. This is far from the case, as can be seen by simply browsing the front page at any given day. Many academics are wonderful people, and many are absolute jerks, just like in any other environment. If the commenter has a problem with a specific question, they can definitely bring it to our attention via flags or posting here on meta, but the general accusation seems unfounded (to me, at least).
"we", as in "we, the academia.SE community". So yes, I meant the people that answer questions, comment, ask questions, etc.
Why do you identify ideal with normal? If something bad is common, it's normal .
@CodesInChaos - I was thinking about that as I was posting it, not sure it's the best way to phrase it. The problem is that I'm using "ideal" as in "the way it should be", not "extraordinary". I was using the terms used by the OP, but it may not be the best word choice.
Chiming in on my own question after reading previous answers and giving this a bit more thought.
Are we in fact presenting an idealised view of academia?
I think we do. Don't get me wrong, most of what is posted here is fully accurate, but I do think there are some neuralgic topics on which the general opinion here seems to be much more optimistic than my honest impression of the reality:
Advisors generally have the best for the candidate in mind
Researchers generally are really concerned about research ethics
The chances that certain applicants have in the gradudate school / postdoc / tenure track market
The reasons for this may be three-fold.
Firstly, I would argue that people that made terrible experiences in academia are by and large underrepresented among our top posters, simply because those people usually leave academia pretty quickly. The people that stay (and choose to engage in a network like academia.SE) are the ones that have not been burned by terrible advisors or some such. That does not mean that counterexamples are rare out there.
Secondly, at least for myself, I can certainly see that I am sometimes posting how I would want the academic world to work, and not how it always presents itself. It is hard to admit that, e.g., in my work life, the question of who becomes a co-author often has much more to do with politics than the absolute merit of contributions.
Thirdly, I think the more theoretical fields (maths, theoretical CS, etc.) are a bit overrepresented here, and I think that hard reality in these fields approximates the academic ideal more closely than, e.g., in applied CS.
If so, is this a good or a bad thing?
I have thought long and hard about that, and I tend to agree with Fomite, Mangara and others that this is in fact not a bad thing in itself, at least as long as it does not lead to actively bad advice. In the end, there is no point in by default assuming that something abusive or unethical is happening whenever somebody comes for advice, as, in all of these cases, the suggestion will be the same (JeffE's trademark Don't Walk. Run.).
There also may be a self-selection bias that people here who have been burnt possibly tend to be reluctant to relate their experience in a detailed enough way to make it helpful, e.g. if the other part of the burning is still an important person in their small field. After all, this is not very anonymous (even with anonymous login) and the answers are completely public (even officially licensed that way).
I'm not sure who the "we" is in the question. There are broadly two categories of people on this site, namely senior people (faculty) and junior people (postdocs and students).
A lot of questions here seem to be by students and post-docs who have problems with their advisors and P.I.s. Often these problems seem quite major. It is difficult to draw any conclusions from this, however, since the people writing this are after all self-selecting, and may not be representative. (After all, junior people relatively rarely write to talk about how wonderful their advisors are, and how well things are going.)
One hopes such questions are not representative, of course. In any case, it is possible one gets a worse than actual view of how bad academia is from more junior people.
On the other hand, I think perhaps the senior researchers have a better than average view of how good academia is. For at least a couple of reasons.
First. senior academics are people for who things, in general, have gone well much of the way. Maybe there has been some bad stuff, but not much. My observation has been that in academia, partly because it is quite stratified and hierarchical, that it can be difficult to recover from bad things. If you have a couple or more bad things happen, it can easily seriously jeopardise your chances of a good career. For the obvious reasons, because bad things makes the probability of more bad things in the future, and conversely good things happening make the probability of more good things happening in the future. Of course, this is true of life in general, but in academia, in my experience, it is particularly true. You are expected to be in a particular place at a particular time in your life, given certain educational attainments, and people are intolerant if you are not. In any case, people who have had a reasonably good time in a system tend to think the system works well, because it worked well for them.
Second, the senior people who post here are, sort of again by a process of self-selection, not your typical academic. Typical senior academics typically don't spend time on a question/answer site about academics. Virtually all senior academics I've known would have fainted dead away with surprise at the suggestion that they do so. For lack of a better word, I think the senior academics here are "nicer" than average. Therefore, I think there is a tendency for them to think the better of the academic world in which they reside. Basically, they tend to think other academic people are nice too. Maybe because the other academics they choose to associate with are also reasonable, functional, people? I know this is a bit speculative, but I think I have observed this phenomenon on this site.
I don't think that presenting a unrealistic or distorted view of academia is a good thing, of course, but I think some distortion in inevitable, if only for the reasons I mentioned.
I agree with your assessment of the "niceness" of the average senior person here. I wouldn't call it "being nice", though - I think it is just that people that feel a strong desire to help out the next generation of researchers are also more likely to show up here than more self-centered professors.
@xLeitix Fair enough. What adjective would you prefer then, if any?
I don't know, helpful maybe?
I don't think so… while some questions & answers deal with “what should happen in this situation” (theoretical and ideal workings of academia), the site also abounds with questions on real life in academia, the system's shortcomings, how to handle them, etc.
To be more specific, and follow your example: we have plenty of useful questions and answers on how to behave in certain specific situations which are very far from the norm (crappy colleagues, cheating students, unhelpful supervisors, professors that try to evict you from the university, ethical shortcomings and utter failures, etc.).
When someone comes here to ask for advice in dealing with others, it often falls into one of two cases:
Everyone acted in good faith, but due to miscommunication or other circumstances, problems arose.
Someone acted in bad faith and caused problems.
While Case 2 does happen from time to time, the large majority of answers here address Case 1 (the 'idealised' scenario). There are good reasons for this:
For someone answering the question, these two cases are nearly indistinguishable. The questioner is usually the 'wronged' party and as such naturally biased, so even if the questioner is convinced that others are acting in bad faith, this is not necessarily true. In fact, the easiest way to discover that the problem is in Case 2, is to try and apply the Case 1 solution.
The appropriate response to Case 2 is typically to escalate the problem by appealing to a higher authority, or to get out of the situation altogether (Don't walk. Run.). This should be a last resort, as it can easily burn bridges.
As such, I think that yes, most answers present a somewhat idealised view of academia, but that's because it results in better answers.
To echo the sentiments of other posters, I don't think we're presenting an idealized view of academia - and indeed, regularly acknowledging that academia is full of petty nonsense and bad behavior.
What are are often presenting in answers to "What should I do..." questions is a general stance that abuse, exploitation and poor mentorship are not normalized behaviors that, if someone is experiencing, they should just accept as their fate.
I don't think that's a bad thing.
I think that sometimes "we" do.
I do understand very well that some people may have not met certain problems (either they had careless personal experience or their faculty or group didn't have such problem). But it does not mean that they are non-existing.
Similarly, if someone has issues with advisor (I know little people who have none... every relationship has its own problems) I dislike answers implying that advisor does and wants the best. Sure, some of the answerers are great advisors but it does not yet mean that it is true for all others.
There are many very symptomatic answers (or comments), of the form "Just ask your advisor.". Well, I guess if it were the case this site would not be needed that much.
Or another short example: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/20419/49. You had great PhD experience? Great! All of your friends as well? Great! But it does not imply that it is true for everyone.
I think this will always be a problem as long as most top-ranked users link to their department website in their bios. Most academics don't want their colleagues reading their controversial, academia-related posts, so they keep their posts idealized and benign.
Personally, I would never use my real name on this site (my display name comes from a textbook). It wouldn't be as fun if I had to keep my posts sanitized.
I'm not sure that's a fair assumption... my hunch is that there's much more likely to be a problem of survivorship bias and selection bias. There is also some significant community bias: there's just not enough money in the more theoretical areas that are best represented here to really stir up a lot of the nastiest behavior that appears in other areas.
And to your other point... I wonder if we can get Alyssa P. Hacker to sign up too...
@jakebeal Yeah I don't think it would be healthy for failed academics to keep visiting this site and dwelling on their pain. And it's really easy for successful people to be idealistic IME
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1581 | What should we do with questions that are out of scope but apparently of great interest to the community?
Following the suggestion of @Davidmh, I want to start a discussion about this recently holded question.
First of, the facts (as I see them):
The question has been put on hold (with 5 community votes, no direct closing by a mod). I think given the tone and scope of the question as written, this is in line with our usual practices. One can argue that the question is currently all of unclear, opinion-based, and maybe also somewhat of a rant.
However, the question has also garnered a lot of responses: there are 32 upvotes (2 downvotes), 2000 views, 9 answers, and many, many comments. We do not all that often have questions that trigger more community interest in such short time.
The second point makes me think that there has to be something relevant in this question, something that a good edit may be able to salvage. However, I am not entirely sure what the golden core is that makes this question more interesting to the community than all the other "I hate grad school, shall I quit?" questions that we usually close rather unceremoniously. I have the theory that it has a lot to do with the impression that the OP's self-esteem seems rather unhealthily tied to her grad student status, but I am not sure.
What are your opinions on this question?
Anyone know if the question was on the "hot list"?
@StrongBad I am not sure. Would it matter?
@StrongBad I remember seeing it there
@xLeitix questions on the hot list often attract lots of views and votes regardless of their quality or fit.
@StrongBad Sure, but to get on the host list a question already needs some starting velocity, right?
@xLeitix - Not anymore. I'll try to find the link, but they changed the algorithm and it's much more of a random sample now than it used to be.
Questions asking for the best cat videos to defeat boredom would probably be of great interest to many in the community while being about as off-topic as you can get.
It was most definitely on the hot list.
Sometimes (SE-)crap gets upvotes and excites people -- doesn't make the crap less crappy. People with legit but utterly unsuited questions should be directed to [chat].
If the community obviously likes something but it is beyond the current scope, the scope is not properly defined and should be broadend to include these questions.
@Dilaton the scope is not properly defined and should be broadend [sic] to include these questions. Or better worded without changing the range of the definition?
I'm in favor of closing it as soon as possible.
It matches this closing criterion perfectly:
This question appears to be off-topic because it seems to seek
specific advice for a very specific situation, and it's likely that
only someone with a good understanding of your situation will be able
to provide an objectively correct answer.
It attracted, and will continue to attract, all the worst of 'personal advice' that one gets in such a situation, ranging from pet-social theories to pseudo-psychology and plain old judgment (not to mention daunting walls of text). While one or two answers will eventually be sort of interesting for the OP, it's unlikely that the whole batch will be worth archiving.
Our site, IMHO, shouldn't be about telling people to loose weight, whether or not their use of dating websites is appropriate, or whether or not they should quit their PhD. We don't know that.
Example of content that I find utterly out of place:
From answers:
"I think you should not quit your PhD. Not right now. There will be time for that, maybe."
"You are smart, you can lose weight, you can dress better"
"You can quit if you like."
"Always be grateful, never compare yourself with people better then you, but think about people who are in worse situation then yours".
"Don't quit. Quitting easily becomes habit forming."
From comments:
"Research shows a high correlation between online dating and depression"
"Diet is 95% of weight loss, you don't need to exercise"
"Consider learning dancing. Dancing is really good exercise, is social, and is fun."
I see a lot of value in this answer.
Given the nature of Meta questions, I am not sure whether it makes sense to "accept" an answer here. Basically, this is a discussion. Whether I as the OP like your answer shouldn't be more important than whether the other community members like it. (I upvoted though)
I have closed the question again, given the margin of upvotes this answer has.
@xLeitix I agree that accepting discussion meta questions doesn't make much sense.
@xLeitix I think it is reasonable to accept meta answers since it lets the community know you found and answer which clarifies the issue. As for wether or not the community does something based on the answers, both accepted and not accepted, is tied to the votes and not the green tick.
IMHO, being to eager to close is not a good thing (especially for community-building):
Jason Sachs, My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow: Arthur S., Arthur T., and the Soup Nazi
In the case of doubt, I would judge the question by answers it brings. If they make sense and are highly upvoted, I wouldn't close a question.
For this particular case, I voted to reopen (though, before answers, I wasn't so sure). This question is general enough (i.e. presents a general issue, rather than a very specific one).
Echo here. (and re-open vote too.)
I tend to agree (although I think semi-agressive question closing is a fundamental principle of why SO works), but it kinda still seems to me that the question needs some editing before it should be re-opened. The problem with "Question got good answer, question is fine" is that one can never tell in advance whether a question will bring in good answers ... so conservatively, you should never close anything.
There were a couple (or three?) of "Unclear what you're asking" close votes before Piotr made an edit.
@scaaahu Piotr only added some tags. Certainly helpful, but nothing that would make the question itself clearer.
@xLeitix For such open-ended question my rule of thumb is that they should generate good answers soon (1-2 days?). I edited only title and added tags - to pinpoint the main issues rather than to left it vague and unanswerable.
There is an extensive literature in reply to people like Sachs. The quick summary is that the SE format is the worst format imaginable for a QA site -- except for all the others that have been tried. If you choose to go this way, you risk the problems of the things SE was invented to avoid.
@xLeitix then the question should be left alone when in doubt, to see if interesting answers turn up. Conserning SO, the SO model of moderation (including very aggressive closing of questions) is not appropriate for a high-level academic site. The MathOverflow model, also successfully applied on Theoretical Computer Science which is research-level too fits better to academic/scientific communities.
(Being the first one to answer and the one that got 39 upvotes for the reply, I think I have to weight in...)
Yes, the question is probably out of scope.
Yes, my answer is probably out of scope.
The reason why I did it is that that was a cry for help and I would have been a terrible person saying: sorry, your question does not belong here.
I chose to sit in the "Be nice" part of academia.se, and this is the part why I love this site, more than others: it is a safe space, where people are treated like people.
I've read warm and honest answers, and many questions here are related to how people feel in academia.
This, to me, it's important for community building and thus for the project as a whole.
I've seen other projects go bad because the community felt they had to be stricter with rules. I would dare to say that is better to be a bit out of scope but more welcoming, but that is an opinion.
I would love to see some research confirming or refuting my insights (for example, what is the rate of male/female users in academia.se?)
What do you believe would the ratio of male/female users tell you?
That there are more females here than in other projects. I know this may sound funny, but the Wikimedia community has a well-know gender gap issue, and this is attributed (among other factors) to a harsh, competitive culture within Wikipedia.
@Aubrey Feel free to ask demographic questions here: http://meta.academia.stackexchange.com/questions/467/academia-community-polls. Though its always voting sample + I bet there will be a strong effect when it comes to representation from disciplines (how could you distinguish it from effect of community being more friendly?).
Thanks! Well, I couldn't distinguish it. But large site as Wikipedia have less than 10% female users, and it's bigger and more complicated regarding disciplines and topics. So I'd like just to have a quick, not definitive answer.
Done! http://meta.academia.stackexchange.com/a/1596/26682 I hope my wording is correct enough.
I think what we've seen on this question is the less favorable side of allowing questions that are out of scope to stay. While you may post a warm, sympathetic, answer, there is a lot of well-meaning but misplaced, and possibly harmful, advice posted there too. In my opinion, the only way to avoid the latter is to close the question and add a comment directing the OP to where she might get help from a qualified professional (eg, campus mental health services).
In other words, I think your answer would have been better if you had closed the question and posted the text of your answer as comments.
Thanks, ff524, I understand your concern. I also had doubt on how to react to the question. I'm also not really into moderation mechanisms in AC.SE (e.g. I don't even know if I can close a question). Will remember for next time.
I'd like to thank everyone for the lovely answers to my question. I was not in the best mood a couple days ago, and I'm feeling much better now, although still slightly miserable.
However, I am not entirely sure what the golden core is that makes this question more interesting to the community than all the other "I hate grad school, shall I quit?" questions that we usually close rather unceremoniously. I have the theory that it has a lot to do with the impression that the OP's self-esteem seems rather unhealthily tied to her grad student status, but I am not sure.
I think it's because a lot of people feel (or have felt) the same way as me, so they have opinions and want to help. But usually people don't talk about this stuff, because it's taboo to do a PhD for any reason other than passion for the subject, let alone fear of being a fat loser. I think there's a general expectation that grad students not care too much about money (except research funding) or social status (except within the academic community).
@BenCrowell: Thanks for the link!
And [chat], of course.
I am torn because it is a terrible question (I was going to vote to close until I saw the responses) but it is a site of community-making in action (which is why I ended up voting to keep it open).
We have to admit that the 'chat' function of SE (at least A.SE) is broken and we don't use it for communal conversation. So popular questions like the one in question is really where we see community building.
That being said, it's still a bad question. But I would suggest rather than rapidly closing it -- we allow people to use it to build a sense of community -- and then when the number of answers starts to fade, that we close it for all the right reasons (it's off topic).
[I also wish we had a downvote option for comments given all of the bad personal advice being given through that vector].
Perhaps it should be protected, though?
I agree, protection would be useful. You have enough rep to do so.
Since it's not a crisis, I figure I'll wait a little longer to see if there's any objection to the idea...
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876 | Should a undergrad-level question be down-voted?
e.g.
Harvard Multiple authors- Alphabetical or not?
I was surprised to see it down-voted. The question may appear stupid to the majority of users here, but I can understand it being a legitimate question from an undergrad.
So, should a question related to academia, but not relevant to postgrad students be down-voted?
(different to Undergraduate questions because these are not specific to an undergraduate situation, but are of the level of understanding that an undergrad would have about academic writing)
I think it was downvoted because it was badly asked, not because it seemed to be a "stupid question." (Although probably some people downvoted it for the latter reason, too, and I disagree that they should have.)
I think the downvote is probably a little harsh, but the question in question is just not very good or interesting. It also is not particularly clear in that the OP refers to a set of Harvard guidelines, but doesn't tell us which ones. This might be worthy of an downvote accompanied by a comment.
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1327 | Comments deletion in Academia SE
I know that extended comment discussions are discouraged and by SE rules they should be continued in chat. A prime example of this situation was the recent I was caught cheating on an exam, how can I minimize the damage?
On the other hand, I consider Academia SE one of the more "civilized" SE communities, where trolls are almost non-existent and due to the smaller size of this community, they are immediately "shot down in flames" before even attempting to troll. On this assumption, deleting or wanting to delete comments, because they state that "a cheater should be punished" or "welcome to adulthood" as JeffE said, for me really has no meaning. This too-much moderation is unnecessary here and it only resulted that a valued member (at least for me) of the community (Omen) has left. Was it really worth it? It has happened before (I think Pete was a little bit offended after some of his comments were deleted) and it will happen again. I am not saying anything bad about StrongBad (get the joke) because he was very polite, but still why do we need this extended moderation here? Why can't we leave the comments as they are, if they are not simply trolling.
This too-much moderation is unnecessary here and it only resulted that a valued member (at least for me) of the community (Omen) has left. - Omen left because he wanted to leave. I don't think it's relevant to this question; we don't base site policy on whether or not someone once misinterpreted SOP as some kind of "singling out."
The specific discussion of Omen is not really relevant for site policy (as @ff524 writes above). However, I just want to point out that from what I've seen, he has created, deleted, recreated and then re-deleted accounts on several SE sites over time, so he seems to be "ambivalent" towards SE, irrespectively of what happened in this particular question.
I have noticed some comments of mine vanishing, too. It has not happend often enough and in such situations that I would be offended, but still: they were deleted without any communication in my direction so I can't learn why. (And, of course, I thought the comments were appropriate.) That said, in cases of comments moved to chat, maybe the affected users should get a notification?
@Raphael In many cases, the reason why is one of (1) flagged as "chatty" (2) part of a conversation in which the other user deleted his/her comments, so they no longer made sense (3) entire comment thread was cleaned up because it was getting distracting, or (4) edits to the post it's on made the comment obsolete. None of these require a user to learn anything from the comment deletion; these kinds of comments are perfectly appropriate when they are made, but are removed because they are no longer helpful.
Couple of things. I don't believe I deleted any comments. I simply moved them to a chat room. I left a few comments that I thought were directly relevant and not yet addressed by answers.
As for Omen. I asked in chat about the comments and what we should do since at that point there were not a lot of flags on the question, but I felt uncomfortable with the comments. I was not singling him out. He chose to delete his comment and leave. It would have been nice had some other community members jumped in at that point to help out and either let Omen know that we loved him and/or let me know that we wanted the comments left.
As to why I moved the comments to chat, it was in response to comments and flags. The question itself has been flagged 25 times and a number of the answers have had multiple flags also. To give you an idea of what 25 flags means, there have been a total of 127 flags in the past week on the entire site. Most of these flags are for either obvious spam or obsolete comments. Most of the flags on the question in question were for rude/offensive and not constructive comments. I took that as an indication that the community wanted to do something. I felt moving the comments to chat was a nice compromise as it cleaned up the question while still preserving the comments.
EDIT I just look through the comment history and I was wrong. I deleted half a dozen comments that were truly offensive and personal attacks. Those comments were so inappropriate that I will not repost them here, or even hint at the content. I what I will say is they were so bad that I also took additional moderator action at the time of deleting them and warned the user that future comments like that would result in a suspension.
I am sorry to say but you do not answer the actual question. You basically said it yourself. Rarely this community has had a problem with comments (this is why we get so little flags per week). This specific question was a little bit "provocative" and some comments were rude. So what? We are humans. Why do we need to moderate this one question among the thousands and drive people away? Why cannot we leave the comments for one week for example and delete them when everybody has cooled down?
@Alexandros I wasn't trying to avoid your question. As you said some of the comments were rude and many were not constructive or obsolete. No one responded to the meta question or my comment in chat with an out cry to keep the comments. Only one user suggested the comments were helpful. While there was limited public support, there were 25 flags and comments on both the meta question and chat asking for the comments to be dealt with. Had I left the comments I would have been letting down the people who asked for them to be dealt with.
I was one of the people who requested the clean-up for the comments. The tail-end of the comments was getting pretty inappropriate and likely to incite additional arguments. That, and it was getting excessively long to read and turning into a narrative of events rather than a discussion of actual problem-solving outside the vein of the author's sole purpose.
Comments are ephemeral. They are there to ask for clarifications on a question or an answer. Once they've served that purpose, they can be deleted. If they don't attempt to do that, they can be deleted.
That's how comments are designed here on Stack Exchange.
There are occasions where a comment can help point out an egregious error in an answer; often, a better route is just to post a better answer; that better answer could include a summary of why it is better, including mention of the egregious error.
Deletion of comments is a routine bit of tidying up.
Discussions belong in chat, nowhere else. Well, they belong here on meta, in contained form, if they're about the operation of academia.SE itself.
If something's worth preserving, find where it belongs, and put it there. Not in comments. Put it either in a question, an answer, or a tag-wiki. If it doesn't belong in any of those, put it in a blog post on your own site, or in a journal paper, or a monograph, or a book. But not here.
I understand that comments are ephemeral. But why can't we delete those comments two days later, when everyone has cooled down?
@Alexandros The purpose of comments on the main site is to seek clarification. Did these comments seek clarification? No. So they were suitable for immediate deletion. That's the system working just as it is designed to. This design makes for a very successful network of sites.
"Discussions belong in chat, nowhere else." -- Then move the comments to chat.
@Raphael no, that's just pandering to bad behaviour. The trick is to get people to post to chat in the first place. If they find their typing deleted, they'll be deterred from doing it again. If they find them moved to the right place, they can carry on putting discussions in the wrong place, knowing that someone else will clean up after them.
@Raphael ummm, that is what I did.
@EnergyNumbers I don't think deleting content is the right way to shape behaviour. Mentioning in comment, chat, and meta (and in extreme cases through private mod messages) I think is a much better way to shape behaviour.
Really? I often find a lot of value in comments, which seems to have no better place than comments, even on very old questions. Comments often add useful, interesting, entertaining, or otherwise-valuable additional information that is not another question and is not an answer.
In my relatively short experience with the site, I haven't noticed significant problems with comment deletion. I do, however, find chat very problematic to deal with. At least as my browser presents the site to me, there is no equivalent to the comment inbox for chat, and so I never know whether there is something worth paying attention to going on there.
Some browsers allow you to respond to chat messages in a way that the OP will get a notification. Not every browser and not everyone uses this feature so it is a bit problematic. Then again the SE network is about delivering top notch Q/A sites and not about discussion forums or chat rooms.
I believe the chat sends messages when you use an @ reference. I received one yesterday from Strongbad, for example. We can always test to make sure it's functioning, if that's necessary.
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700 | The GRE Program discontinued the Computer Science Test
According to the ETS they have discontinued the computer science GRE test as of April 2013 https://www.ets.org/gre/subject/faq and there are some questions regarding the computer science GRE test and scores, should these questions be dealt with now (maybe by adding a header note to the question), or after five years as the scores will continue to be reportable for that period?
Is a general GRE test required if I have already passed a GRE Subject Test?
How much score in GRE computer science subject test is considered 'good'?
So long as the scores can still be reported, then we should keep the questions as such, although we could of course add a note that the test can no longer be taken.
How can we add that note?
Well, if you have enough reputation points, you can directly edit the post to include a disclaimer at the top of the question. If not, you can still make the change, but it would need to be approved by a moderator.
One note: mass editing of such warnings would move all these posts to the top of the front-page, and flood it with these old questions… maybe we should do it on an as-needed basis
Excellent point. I would suggest that whenever such a question becomes active again, add the note. Also, we should probably add it already to the one or two most-viewed questions. That way we add it where the most eyeballs will see it.
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715 | Questions tagged with only the tag "untagged"
There are five questions that are tagged with the tag "untagged" I strongly believe that this tag should be removed and the accompanying five questions tagged properly!
Is there a reason why this tag even exists?
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/untagged
After searching the meta stackoverflow, apparently this tag "untagged" is used as a temporary state
What causes a question to be tagged as [untagged]?
Which means that these questions should be dealt with.
Other related questions on meta:
Review task for untagged questions
Do not allow users to tag questions with "untagged"
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693 | RSS feed for responses
In other stackexchange sites like biology, there is an RSS feed for responses to my posts (e.g., here). No similar syntax seems to work for academia - is there a feed URL that I'm missing?
RSS feeds do work on Academia.SE. For instance, here's mine.
The issue is that even though your user name is user4936, your actual user ID on this board is 9530—check out the URL. So, if I use that ID, I get a feed.
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1905 | Too many edits - You have already edited 5 of your own posts today
I am seeing this message after I've re-added appropriate tags to my migrated posts:
Too many edits
You have already edited 5 of your own posts today (not including very recent posts). Further edits are not allowed until tomorrow.
Please contact a moderator if you require assistance.
Is it something normal to be happening? The 5 posts is not a really high number. Do I have to wait till tomorrow to correct few things then? Just double checking.
If you post some modified text in either comments or answers, along with a request that others put the edits in for you, I imagine there would be people who would help you out.
According to this, the number of edits you're allowed per day depends on your reputation.
You're running into this issue because of the sudden flood of migrated questions which need editing, which is an unusual scenario.
It does appear to be the normal, expected behavior, though.
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2021 | Possible question: use of euphemism by journal editors when rejecting articles
I would like to know if the following question would be appropriate for academia.SE
Several times now I've had desk rejections from journals in pure mathematics that are variations on the theme of 'we have a large backlog of very good articles, so unfortunately we won't even be sending your paper to a referee even though we might ordinarily do so'. I suspect this is just euphemism for 'we aren't interested in your paper/your paper is not good enough/go away', as claiming a large backlog seems to me to be more objectively defendable than making an editorial decision (ie 'not significant enough') and standing by it on its own terms. Alternatively, it may be phrased this way to soften the blow in claiming to not make an explicit judgement call on paper quality.
Is this common practice among editors and/or journals? I haven't in my admittedly limited experience heard similar wording in rejections from, say, experimental sciences journals. More controversially, am I correct in my reading, that it is just euphemism? (If so, I do not appreciate it, in the interest of academic honesty over lawyer-approved weasel words.)
What you are talking about is called lie, not euphemism. (Ironically, the act of calling it euphemism would be euphemistic, though.)
@Wrzlprmft it may not be a lie, in that it is true they have a backlog, but what journal doesn't? But I'm looking for feedback as the appropriateness of this question.
If they do have a backlog, but that’s not the reason why they reject your article, it’s still a lie, if they say so. Anyway, it’s certainly not a euphemism. — But I'm looking for feedback as the appropriateness of this question. – I know, that’s why I posted a comment and not an answer.
I do not see anything that would make your first question (“Is this common practice among editors and/or journals?”) closeworthy. However, I suggest to clearly state that you want answers that are at least somewhat based on first-hand experience (i.e., by editors of such journals or people obtaining trustworthy information from editors). Otherwise, I prophecise that you will attract useless “me too” answers and similar. Also be prepared to get no satisfying answer.
Moreover, I suggest that you should consider, whether you really want to use the word euphemism. If you decide to use it, I suggest that you clarify how you understand that term.
As for your second question (“More controversially, am I correct in my reading, that it is just euphemism?”), I fail to understand what exactly you are asking. If you are unsure about the meaning of the word euphemism, you are in the wrong place (you might ask at English Language & Usage). If you are asking whether your interpretation of the motivation for the presumed practice is correct, you should clarify this.
In the latter case, I think that it’s okay to ask these questions as one, as somebody who can answer your first question (from first-hand experience) is very likely to answer your this question.
Thanks for the suggestions, I'll take those on board, but wait for more support before I ask. As to your point on my second question, I know what euphemism means, and my given interpretation as above ("it may be phrased this way to soften the blow in claiming to not make an explicit judgement call on paper quality.") seems to fit it precisely.
I should add that my intended audience for the second Q is precisely editors, and the first question suits editors or otherwise people with a long publishing history who can perhaps point to an emerging trend.
@DavidRoberts: If you are still interested in asking the question, I would just go ahead w/o holding my breath for further meta support. The meta on this site has little traffic compared to MO or MSE, say, so that might take a while, or simply never happen.
@gnometorule alright, the question is asked, here: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/58097/use-of-euphemism-by-journal-editors-when-rejecting-articles
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3430 | Completely wrong answers (in my opinion) and wrong advices written with an assertive/threatening/intimidating tone
I am sorry for this contentious question, but I couldn't help but noticing lately that many answers and comments here are, to my perception and understanding and experience in academia, completely wrong :) If the answers were a bit modest and reserved it would be mildly okay. But it seems that the more wrong some answers are the more assertive tone they use!
Question: Is there anything a user can do about this? Is there a way to advise major users here to reserve their answers a bit more, as to avoid giving people a possibly wrong advice by mistake?
Here is a recent example, where people are claiming, e.g., that the student cannot ask to waive his/her conference fees by contacting the organizers (this is in comments, though).
Is it ok to show up to a conference without registering if I don't eat any meals?
Or another example: Would it be rude to ask a famous professor who doesn't know me personally for a recommendation letter if I have published in a high ranking journal?
Where people claim that it is inadequate to ask for a reference from a senior professor unless he/she knows you personally!
Comment the wrong answers, possibly downvote them, but there's nothing more you can do. But if you see a lot of wrong answers, uh, maybe it's your perception which is biased.
Moreover take into account that academia varies more than you think around the world: thus, an answer which seems "wrong" from your perspective is right from the perspective of another country, or field. That's why one should always specify the country when asking certain type of questions.
@Massimo Maybe turn those comments into an answer? Unless you're afraid they're wrong ;)
Related (not a duplicate :-) Why do people on academia.SE often suggest courses of action that are very different from what most people would do in real life?
@MassimoOrtolano, precisely my point! Academia varies a lot. That's why I would suggest people to be more reserved in their answers here. You can say "I would suggest this course of action, but you have to be aware of the norms in your area/department/country, etc."
Good question after edits, I disagree with the close votes. Maybe the title could be made a bit more neutral, but I it's a question I have asked myself and I find useful to gather the possible actions.
I downvoted the question because I disagree with what the OP says. However, I strongly disagree with the close vote here. Meta is different from the main site. I cannot think of any reason to close this question. If anyone has different opinions, they can comment or answer the question. If the question is unclear, please leave a comment or edit it to make it clear. To close a question on Meta is like to tell somebody to shut up.
Interestingly, there was a comment here that was removed. Anyone knows why?
While I share the wish expressed in your opening paragraph: gnothi seauton
I am actually having trouble understanding the examples you give as evidence.
This comment, which seems to be one of your examples of the problem you are asking about, does not appear to me to be written in an assertive tone:
You can of course email the organisers and ask if you can participate without paying I would not actually recommend this unless you have a reason much more compelling than "I couldn't get funding". I think it will simply annoy the organizers, who are usually influential people whose bad side you don't want to be on.
Frankly, I don't see any assertiveness in its tone. It actually includes several qualifiers - "I would not recommend this", "I think", "usually".
Whereas to me, your response does seem to have an assertive tone. Instead of saying in a more reserved way "in the conferences I attend this is different from what you report, and here's how", or "this is not true as a general rule", you appear to deny the other person's experience by saying it is "certainly not true":
@NateEldredge, certainly this is not true. The organizers are usually not influential, but local academics which are not influential. The most influential people are usually the PC members and especially chairs. Not organizers. Emailing the organizers with a reasonable reason is a good advice.
Your main proposal seems to be that users should use a less assertive tone. Perhaps you could rewrite that first comment you gave as an example to indicate how you would write it in a less assertive way?
Finally, when a user asks about how something will be perceived by other academics, I think it is useful for them to know if the response will be emphatic, and if different people have passionate and diverging responses. To quote a comment by user2390246 on one of the other threads you find objectionable,
Yes, very nice answer. The range of (quite passionate!) opinion expressed on this page is a clear indication that your mileage may vary. So, OP needs to find out a) will such a letter help him/her in their particular situation, and b) will the professor be able to write them a strong letter? @BenWebster's suggestions for how to do this are spot on.
Note also the element of "gamble". There clearly (as evidenced here) exist people who would look very favourably on such a letter, and others who would consider it very negatively. So having canvassed opinion, OP needs to decide whether it is worth gambling, or whether they are better off going for a set of "standard" (but hopefully strong) recommendations.
As I said, I use assertive tone in my answers to counter the assertive answers by others, who I consider false or subjective. This comment you gave is objectively false: organizers are not influential in average. I also think that this comment doesn't seem assertive on it's face, but uses extreme or intimidating claims like "who are usually influential people whose bad side you don't want to be on". So the OP would now fill threatened to even email the organizers!
Note also that the other person has not expressed an "experience", but a claim about organizers which is factually incorrect.
Of course, I can edit my post to add the qualification "threatening tone" along with "assertive tone".
I guess I agree with your last paragraph though.
@Dilworth So... you find it impossible to believe that the conference organizers Nate Eldredge knows and has interacted with are different from the conference organizers you know and have interacted with? And it is objectively impossible that his perspective might be accurate in some contexts based on the conference organizers in his circles, while yours is accurate in other contexts based on the conference organizers in yours?
@ff524, since Nate Eldredge used a universal statement, stating that conference organizers in information science are usually (meaning, in average) are influential with frightening bad side, it can be refuted objectively. Had he not used the term "usually" and reserved his statements by "in my experience" it would be perhaps okay.
Also, Nate himself retracted in some sense his claim about the influence of organizers.
@Dilworth I still don't understand what you are proposing to change here. Are you suggesting that every answer and comment that does not include citations to objective evidence should be prefaced with "In my experience,..."? ("In my experience" is somehow a better qualifier than "I think"?) I don't see you doing that in your content, including on questions where yours is the first or only answer.
I'm trying to get the message that some commenters here are saying things that are a bit baseless, and it would be good for all of us (yes, including me) to cast doubt on what we write here, unless we are 100% sure.
(Yes, "in my experience" or "in my opinion" is a reservation. "I think" has not semantic content and so the former is better).
@ff524 To be honest, I have to admit that I've found, too, Nate's comment totally exagerrated, from whatever point of view, and I've replied accordingly (uhm... maybe a bit too harshly).
@MassimoOrtolano So you did what you yourself suggested people do in response to wrong or misleading content. Do you feel like more action is necessary, or that Nate should have done something differently (presumably that comment was made in good faith, with the belief that it was accurate)?
@ff524 Eh eh, yes, I tend to do what I suggest :-) No, I really don't think more action is necessary (actually, it wouldn't have been a bad comment were it not for the last sentence): one points out what they think is wrong and that's it. The issue might be instead in the visibility of a reply, when a possible misleading comment is highly upvoted, but there's nothing we can do about that.
This site is a forum for academics from all fields, all nationalities, and all cultures to speak with one another. We have had many questions where the answers have contained the types of contradictions you mention—this one stands out in my mind, mostly because I was one of the answerers. I was right, for my field (and some others), and he was right for his field (and some others). There are lots of differences between fields and these differences frequently come out in the answers.
To that extent, if you think an answer is incorrect, or if you think it's representing only a subset of academia, post a different answer and call out those differences. Even if the answer gets no votes people should know that there are other ways of doing things.
More than just differences between fields, everyone answers based on their own experiences. Everything from how hands off their PhD advisor was, to how much oversight there is of faculty in their departments, can lead to multiple answers that are accurate based on the author's experiences but are wildly diverging.
Yes, precisely my point. This is a universal forum. Hence the assertive tone in expressing personal experiences and judgment is misleading. I have also stated some of my answers in an assertive way, but this is slightly to counter other answers.
@Dilworth - I'm not really following. It doesn't seem that you're so bothered by assertiveness, but rather just that they're stating something at odds with your experience. I don't see that as a problem so long as everyone understands the parameters under which each answer applies.
@eykanal, no, I am bothered by the assertive, authoritative and even threatening at times (see below), tone of these unsubstantiated answers.
@Dilworth If someone believes that the OP faces a potential threat if they follow a certain course of action, they should warn the OP about it. That's not called being threatening, that's called being helpful. (If they are wrong about the threat then other users should post another comment correcting them.) Are you really suggesting that if someone believes there's a potential for harm to the OP, they shouldn't say anything?
@Dilworth you seem to believe that "correct" advice can be assertive, and can describe potential threats, and that the problem is when "incorrect" advice does this. But most people (including you) only write what they believe to be correct, so how are they supposed to act any differently? All we can do is correct the record by pointing out incorrect information whenever we see it.
If someone is taking an assertive or threatening tone they should be damn sure what they say is correct, and to reflect on it seriously. I have the impression that some commenters are actually "talking out of their a**" with no reflection. If you're sure your threat is correct that's different---still be more careful and reserved.
Of all the answers on that recommendation letter question, yours is the one that uses the most bold print. Moreover, in that answer, not only do you disagree, but you "completely disagree with all the other answers" [emphasis added].
I don't see what you're driving at. You've made your comments (12 of them); you've put forth your opinion in an answer; presumably, you've voted your conscious as well. I don't see any need to raise the matter here in meta and accuse your peers of being "assertive, threatening, and intimidating." (That seems to describe your behavior as much as anyone's.)
You've had the chance to make your case and the community has heard you out.
Indeed, when you go against the (assertive) stream, you need to shout.
Maybe. But don't then turn around and call everyone else assertive and intimidating; it just makes you look close-minded and petty.
No, as I explained above, I use it as a tactic to rectify completely wrong answers haphazardly written with assertive tone, that apparently have no basis. It is not good if readers of this site get wrong answers written with bloated confidence. It is much better if they see contradicting answers both written with self-confidence, so that they will need to make up their own mind whose right.
@Dilworth - If ten people respond one way and one person responds another, then perhaps the other 10 aren't really as "wrong" as you seem to think they are. I didn't see much "bloated confidence" in the other answers on that question, nor were they "haphazardly written" – it was merely a lot of sound, common-sense advice.
I don't think the ratio of 1 against 10 people here is strong enough. First, it's not 1million against, but rather 1 only 10. And second, even if it was, there's no reason to assume that the majority opinion is correct, since it might be, e.g., influenced by group-thinking, common fallacies etc. Moreover, In one example, talking about the "bad side" of conference's organizers is certainly haphazard and also factually false (as a universal statement).
Wow, it takes a million people to convince you that there may be two different ways to look at a situation? I suppose, then, there's not much point in me bothering to say anything else about this matter.
@Dilworth "It is not good if readers of this site get wrong answers written with bloated confidence." I agree, but once again: physician, heal thyself
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3412 | Unjustified trend of labelling too many questions as "duplicates"
I'll keep this very short: I believe there is a tendency here to label every similarity between questions as "duplication". This seems to harm the intention of this site and is overall unjustified. Questions that are "similar" can still vary in a very substantive way.
Recent example:
Publishing: quality vs. quantity
was tagged as duplicate. But it seems to me as different than the alleged original. (See my comment there).
Actually, it is not completely different, but slightly different.
When a question is marked as a duplicate, it doesn't necessarily mean that the exact question asked is the same. (The text of the duplicate notice is misleading in this respect.) Rather, it means that members of the community believe that some or all of the answers to the marked duplicate directly address this question, and there is nothing useful to say other than what's already in the answers to the other question (or could be added as an answer to the other question).
Or, to quote another meta post here,
I think it is important to consider closing as duplicate as "these are very similar questions, to the extend that the answers will be pretty much the same", and not "these are absolutely identical questions".
So, a question being different from "duplicate" isn't necessarily a good reason not to close it as a duplicate, if the answers will be the same.
What to do if you disagree that "the answers will be pretty much the same"? Easy: edit the post to highlight the difference, and explain why you believe that this difference could potentially lead to different answers. Then cast a reopen vote, if you have the privilege. (Even if you don't, your edits will push the question into a reopen queue where others can cast votes.)
For example, if the post was previously "Publishing: quality vs. quantity", in the body of the post, note what the marked duplicate says and why you believe the considerations are different when not asked in the context of a single project. Then it will go through the reopen queue where, if community members actually think the answers will be different, they will vote to reopen.
The benefits of this approach are:
if the answers to the marked duplicate do answer the OP's question, they get (multiple, very good) answers very quickly.
if the answers to the marked duplicate don't answer the OP's question, then by focusing the question on the different aspect, the OP gets advice targeted to the differences in their situation, rather than just having the answers to the other question repeated (which would of course be pointless).
Thanks for the explanations of the formal protocols. I still believe that it is wise to ask members of the "community" here not to jump into haphazard decisions of duplication and similarity before understanding carefully the difference between questions. Indeed, it is the burden of the people asking to close as duplicate to prove that questions are similar; and it's not the burden of the user who asked the question to prove it is different, when indeed the they are different.
@Dilworth As I said, nobody has to prove whether or not the questions are different, as what matters is whether or not the answers are different.
this is clearly not a reasonable justification. Since you don't know whether future answers will be different or not. If you close the question as duplicate the OP will lose his/her chance of getting an answer for his/her different question.
I also don't find the protocol for re-editing clear enough: how should the user clarify it is different? If he mentions it in the body of the question, then it looks odd, as this is not part of the question. Should he write it in comments?
@Dilworth In the body of the post. you can see examples here, here, here and here
I see. Thanks for the clarification. But I think it would be better to INFORM the OP about this, instead of simply closing as duplicate the questions.
@Dilworth Feel free to leave a comment on the post informing the OP of anything you think is necessary.
I was talking about the general procedure: instead of closing, it should say something like: "This might be a duplicate of ___. Please explain the difference in your post", or something like this.
@Dilworth It already does. To the person who asked the question, that box looks like this and has the text "If those answers do not fully address your question, please edit this question to explain how it is different" and the link on the word "edit" opens the editor for the post. Other users (not the OP) see a different message without the edit link.
First, let's see if your premise, that is that there is a trend towards closing more questions as duplicates, is backed by the site closing stats (status on 17/Aug/16):
Period | # closed as dup. | % of all closed | % of total asked
last 90d | 159 | 22.36 % | 8.82
last 30d | 53 | 23.14 % | 9.41
last 14d | 22 | 23.16 % | 8.39
last 7d | 12 | 26.09 % | 8.45
last 2d | 5 | 29.41 % | 9.43
It seems indeed, that the last week has seen an increased percentage of closed question for which the reason was duplicate, but the percentage of duplicates per question asked is relatively stable. I'm not sure that there is such a trend.
I spend time and effort identifying duplicates, and I'm "guilty" of identifying the one you mention. Whenever I feel I'm reading the same question again, or that the question is so common that I feel we must have had this question before (for example: What to do if I'm afraid that my idea will get stolen during review process?) I search the existing questions and re-read them. I then indicate that I believe the question to be a duplicate.
This does not mean that the question is automatically closed as other users or a community moderator have to agree. If you see a question that you feel should be kept open, use your reopen vote privilege.
This seems to harm the intention of this site and is overall unjustified
I disagree, identifying duplicates is beneficial to the community as it ensures all answers are archived at the same place. It prevents the scattering of information in many posts, ultimately leading to users missing useful content. This is in my opinion more crucial than missing a subtle nuance between two questions.
Yes, sure, identifying duplicates is important. But here we're talking about different questions, that only share some similarity, but that does not warrant a closure. So for archive purposes it is great to have a link to similar questions. This is the "right" way to handle similarities, not by closing, in my opinion.
@Dilworth yes, I also indicate related questions that are not duplicates in with a comment quite often.
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3230 | Expanding shopping criteria
Based on earlier discussions on defining shopping (in a specific case), I suggest that the Shopping needs to be expanded. At the moment, the Asking section suggests not asking shopping questions of certain types:
Suggestions or recommendations for a university, journal, or research
topic (a "shopping question")
However, often there are questions doing the very same thing asking about existing research (i.e., not asking for a topic or venue, but the research itelf). This is same as asking others to do the work for you. For instance, I'd think that a good question, on the other hand, asks for a specific information. Questions that are explicitly about finding whether a prior research exists or not are shopping for ideas. So, a question that asks for providing evidence of prior research should be treated as shopping question. A hypothetical example would be:
Is there any research that have studied the the impact of such and
such?
On the other hand, if the above does not fall under shopping, then, one can argue that asking for a research topic should also be removed from the criteria since both are asking (read: shopping) for guidance.
Are you basically saying that you think all [tag:reference-request] questions should be off topic?
Quite the contrary, I think a distinction needs to be made between delegating literature review to the internet and requesting references.
@Parrhesiastes: Can you please elaborate the distinction between what you consider a good reference request and what you want to ban?
I am not proposing to ban anything. I am simply suggesting to expand the criteria of what considered as a shopping question. Specifically, since the original criteria already include "research topic" it might be good idea to include "research" as well. I have included an example of each (good reference request and shopping for literature), but perhaps I have misunderstood what shopping means for populace.
I downvoted this question because I believe we make an important distinction that separates the cases the OP has mentioned.
A question of the form
Is there research that has studied the impact of X?
is normally permitted only when X is an educational or pedagogical concept. A research topic that is specific to an individual's research would not be permitted; a question asking about the usefulness of a particular teaching or research approach would be on-topic here.
In addition, one of the big challenges in academia is that different fields use very different terms to describe the same concepts and ideas. Therefore, someone could easily do research into a given pedagogical principle and come up empty, when in reality the problem is that it just goes by another name in another field.
Therefore, I don't believe the OP's suggestion needs to be implemented.
Asking about usefulness is of course on-topic. But this is not what I asked.
I think the rule of thumb is: if a question would not be off topic if it doesn't ask for references, asking for research doesn't make it off topic.
If
What is the effect of X on Y?
is in scope for some particular values of X and Y, then
Is there any research looking at the effect of X on Y?
or
What does the research say about the effect of X on Y?
should also be.
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1168 | Downvotes on answers becuase they come from the tools author?
This question
asks about the tools to do a particular task.
This answer, is down voted quiet alot.
It is by the author of said tool.
On other sites in the StackExchange network my experience has been that it is allowed, to mention tools that you happen to be the creator of -- if it is a valid answer.
Software Recommendations.SE
Meta.SE
To me that answer seems to be at least on par with the others:
It goes into some detail about the difficulties of the question.
It recommends a tool
It explains briefly how to use the tool to solve the problems of the author.
The other answers also recommend tools (Point 2),
and some do go into some details about some issues (Point 1).
He did the right thing in making it clear in his answer that he made the tool in question. It is also on his profile.
So was the answer downvoted because it is self-promotion?
Or is it actually flawed in some other way that I could not see?
Does this site have slightly different standards on self-promotion to other SE sites? (Which is Ok, SE sites are allowed to be different).
to be fair, people are allowed to downvote for what ever reasons they like, and are not required to explain themselves (and I think this is a good thing.)
But I want to know how this community as a whole generally feels about self-promotion, in service of others.
The author also recommends his tool here, which is again fairly tailored to the question (as recommended on the Meta.SE I linked earlier).
Though in that question the other answers are of fairly high quality.
In that case while his answer may be less good than some other, it is not a bad answer, just less good.
If you look at the edit history a substantial edit was made by the author of the answer 7 hours after it was originally made. In my opinion, the answer prior to the edit was worthy of a down vote. Similarly, the answer as it currently stands does not seems worthy of down votes, and probably deserves some up votes. If I remember the time line of the voting, I think the down votes happened end before the edit.
I think the behavior page accurately sums up our views of 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.
The thread timeline mostly confirms this. All the upvotes are after the edit. It's unclear whether the downvotes were before or after, but it's likely they were before it.
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720 | Is question 17571 on The Workplace on-topic here?
Although I'm doubtful, after going through help/on-topic of this site, but thought I'd still ask.
Is the question How should a teacher respond to his/her student in school, when they happend to be parent and child? on-topic here?
This question seems more geared toward elementary and high-school level parent-child relationships, but you could write a postsecondary-level version of this which would be appropriate for our board.
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729 | Tag Synonym Request [citations] [references]
Should references, 51 questions, no tag wiki,
and citations 151 questions, with a tag wiki,
be merged?
There is a overlap of 13 posts.
See also Merge “Citations” and “bibliography” tags?
The problem I see with references is some users think it refers to citations and others think it refers to reference letters. I think we probably need to decide which one is which, retag the questions that do not belong, and add a tag wiki and synonym. It might be best to come up with a list and let the diamond mods do a mass retag to avoid flooding the front page.
I think tagging is one area we are weak on. I have a bunch of proposed synonyms that have just been sitting in voted on. Some I am not sure about, but others are pretty obvious in my mind.
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787 | Why do I not see an "other" option when flagging a question as off-topic?
Today I tried to flag a question as off-topic, because it has nothing to do with academia.
The three options given to me for the reason for this were,
cannot be generalized to apply to others in similar situations
about problems facing undergraduate students
belongs on another SE site
These are three very specific reasons that do not cover a wide swathe of other possibilities. This question, which may superficially appear as a dupe (but is not a dupe), shows a fourth option being offered: "Other". However, I do not see the "other" option.
I suspect that "Other" is shown in the vote-to-close dialog, but not in the Flag one (but I can't confirm this as I can't vote to close on this site). Hence, effectively, "Other" is only available to those with certain rep.
Is this discrepancy deliberate? Without an "Other" option for those without vote-to-close rep, it is very difficult to provide a helpful flag for an off-topic post.
Following comments:
The exact steps taken:
Click "Flag"
Click "It should be closed for another reason"
Click "off-topic because..."
See the screen shown below:
It sounds as though perhaps the "Other" option is only shown to people with enough rep to vote to close, which is why most people on Meta are unable to replicate :-)
Hesitant to tag this as "bug" at present, as it may be intended behavior - albeit baffling ;-)
@StrongBad edited to add details and screenshot. As you say, I do not have sufficient rep to vote to close, but this shouldn't stop me flagging?
@CharlesMorisset sometimes I get asked to review flags. I thought other went right to moderator but the rest of the reasons got put into the review queue.
@CharlesMorisset Hmm. OK, I understand that. It just seems a little odd that there is an option to flag for off-topic, but only if it fits one of the 3 very specific reasons. Seems inconsistent. I could understand if off-topic wasn't a flag reason at all, in which case I would just downvote...
Yes, this is status-by-design. If you are flagging, rather than voting, to close, then you have very limited options.
But it doesn't matter. The flag will get handled through the usual queues, as an off-topic flag. So the specific nature of the off-topicedness doesn't matter for the flag. Those reviewing it, will make their own call on whether it is on or off topic, and if the latter, why it is off-topic.
This is not the behaviour I see. When I click flag>>it should be closed>>off-topic I get:
Note that in addition to the "other" option the button is "Vote To Close" and a vote counts against my vote count and not my flag count. It is exactly the same screen I see if I vote to close instead of flag. Presumably this is because you currently do not have the reputation required to vote to close. When I flag a question I get the following window
again I have an "other" and this could be use to handle close>off-topic>other type situations (although potentially slightly less efficiently).
That would seem to confirm the suggestion that the "other" option only shows up if you have vote-to-close rights. Bug, or as intended?
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2085 | What to do with questions that are likely to be made-up click bait?
For example:
Student doesn't want to take credit for his own extraordinary paper – 269 views and +9/−0 votes in 11 hours.
My paper was too revolutionary - reviewers at a top journal rejected it "by simply reading the title". What now? – 3141 views and +15/−8 votes in 8 days; closed as a duplicate.
These questions are about extraordinary stories (which are thus likely to attract viewers and votes) that are at least on the edge of plausibilty. In both example cases, there are some details which are fishy and leave the impression that the asker is not really as familiar with academia as they claim to be.
Now the help center states:
You should only ask practical […] questions based on actual problems that you face.
which would make these questions officially closeworthy, if the situations are indeed made up. Also, as these questions are naturally attracting a considerable amount of votes and views, they could be part of a scheme to game the system. On the other hand, it’s impossible to determine with high confidence whether these situations are really made up.
Thus I ask:
What should we do about such questions?
If we should close them, what is a good way to determine the plausibility threshold?
Similar discussion on Travel SE
I'm still scratching my head over what exactly someone would hope to gain by posting clickbait. Inflate their reputation so they can post spam later on? But the spam would be flagged and deleted pretty much immediately in spite of high reputation. So: why would a troll attempt to "game the system" in this way?
@StephanKolassa: There are more things you can do with reputation, e.g., if this was created by a sockpuppet, it could serve for vote fraud.
Someone sets up five accounts for sockpuppetry, posts one clickbait question from each account, and then proceeds to cast fraudulent votes from each of the clickbaited sockpuppets... sounds like a lot of work to me. I don't see how this would have enough of an impact to justify specific interventions. (And if the sockpuppets voted serially, this would likely be detected and reversed.)
@StephanKolassa: Sure, there are flaws, but the culprit may not be aware of them. Also, one central problem of exploits is that you can never know/predict all of them.
Sure. I'm just still unsure whether this is an exploit... mainly because I don't see anything to be exploited...
@StephanKolassa I can't really see a bonus there, and weirdly, I can't really see a malus, either. Usually exploits that are hard to understand involve delivering a malus to a site, host, user, etc. instead of gaining a bonus for anyone. In this case... just make SE seem less credible? Anyone who knows the system understands it already. They may simply be cases of people flattering themselves or engaging in the ancient tradition of fantastical storytelling. No idea.
I asked a question on possible motivations for such activities on [communitybuilding.se].
I assume the second question is a genuine, but very misguided, question, and is not trolling.
@AndrewGrimm: It's not trolling, but it is deliberate self-delusion, and don't be surprised that it still flourishes today in the midst of modern society. It is similar to how members of a cult suppress their awareness that their cult cherishes false beliefs (and often detrimental practices), and so only a small minority actually leave.
I think that some people here are perhaps a bit overly skeptical about what exists out there in academia. (I know that my own eyes have widened quite a bit in the time I've spent on this site.) I think that many posters here are quite confused / distressed either about academia in general or about their specific issues. It is clearly also the case that people are writing from all over the world, and sometimes there are serious language issues and/or cultural differences in play.
The fact that (say) graduate students can be quite confused, even to the extent of not correctly understanding the basic facts of their situation, is unfortunately quite recognizable to me from my real world academic experience. So many times I have seen students troubled because they are getting contradictory information / advice from different faculty members. When I talk to the faculty members, very often the contradiction disappears. Clearly a lot of students are not comfortable asking "What do you mean?" and similar basic clarifying questions, so they can live in quite counterfactual worlds. (This describes me as a student, by the way.)
In particular I find the second question quite believable. I think that if I were to meet the OP in real life and could brush aside linguistic differences, the way I would describe his situation would be quite different from the way he has described it, but I find the overall sentiments very sincere.
The first question is a bit different: it's a highly unusual situation combined with an OP who doesn't sound like a faculty member and thesis advisor to me. I stayed away from it because it seemed, if true, to be too exceptional to be worth wading into.
Anyway, I agree with @jakebeal: we don't have to believe that the OP is in the situation s/he claims in order to accept the question. We have to believe that the question is a useful one for others in academia. Hypothetical or bizarre questions can be silly or bait for arguments, but not necessarily so: sometimes they elicit very interesting and useful answers.
By the way, I have always found the SE-wide policy
You should only ask practical […] questions based on actual problems that you face.
to be off-center enough not to take too seriously. In sites based on branches of academia like mathematics or philosophy, what is a "practical question" or an "actual problem"? I take this to mean that people asking questions should be asking them in good faith and out of a sincere desire to know the answer. I would urge others not to read too much more into this than that.
In particular I find the second question quite believable. – Fun fact: Now that I have access to moderator tools, I can confirm that both questions were made up by the same person.
These sorts of questions do not worry me too much, for the following reason: we judge questions here based on whether they are likely to have durable value to others, not based on whether the original poster is likely to find the answer valuable. Thus, it doesn't really matter all that much whether the OP is sane or real (I think more of this is crazy than trolling, personally). Instead, it matters whether we think the question is interesting and answerable. If it's interesting and answerable, we keep it; if not, we close it. Strange and inappropriate origins of questions can still produce good answers, and that's the real measure of a question in my view.
Hopefully we don't start seeing more of them, though. Personally, I'm a bit worried that clickbait-y questions will start becoming more popular across all stack exchange sites as they become increasingly popular. It seems to happen to every online community that becomes too large.
I can recommend you apply one or more of the following strategies:
Downvote them. If they seem unlikely to be true and not useful to the site, downvote them. If trollers find that their questions are downvoted, eventually they will get the message and move on.
If the troll-question is covered by an existing question, vote to close it as a duplicate of the existing question.
Ask a new question that is a more reasonable, generalization of the troll-question. Choose a new question that will actually be useful and that gets at the heart of the troll-question, but without the silly click-bait dramatics. Then, once your new question gets answers, vote to close the troll-question as a duplicate of the new question. This way, you have improved the site by posting a new, useful question that might be useful to others.
Do nothing. Move on, and answer some other question.
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885 | Can I get my reputations back from the suspicious downvote abuse?
I have asked a maybe controversial question, which pisses someone off (I cannot really see why). Apparently, he or she basically downvotes all my questions that I have asked.
I think this is against the concept of down voting here - aimed at the question not the question raiser himself.
Can I get my reputations back or can that down voting abuser be warned?
The system is smart enough to tell when this sort of thing happens. Those should be reverted overnight.
And will the system find regular downvoting of two answers a day over days as this is what is happening to me?
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922 | Stronger visual divider between answers
A nitpick but with the new format, when I'm reading answers, I keep seeing the answer below as a comment. I scroll down and I get the realisation "oh it's an answer, not a comment".
To give an idea of what I mean:
(Screenshot from this question.)
... my immediate visual reaction is that "1. HAVE them write ..." starts a comment under the answer, not a new answer.
Or is it just me?
I noticed the exact same thing, but I couldn't put my finger on why I was doing that. Good eye.
The figure you show might not be the best example, because of the offset in the text caused by the numbered list.
@aeismal, indeed. But I'm a computer scientist and I'm interested in worst case analysis! :)
An alternative to reinforcing the visual divider (making it bold would do wonders) would be to have the questions and answers alternate between white and perhaps the beige in the logo/header bar. Optionally the question itself could have a 3rd distinct colour. This makes delineation (e.g. whether you are reading a very long question/comment string or the start of an answer) immediately visually obvious.
I'm noticing it too, and would like some better/bolder visual seperation - I was comparing this site to CrossValidated, now that I've had some time to use the new site design extensively, and I am noticing that the "beige on slightly lighter beige" color scheme, while soothing, is letting my eye slide down the page without registering a transition from Question to Answer, and between answers.
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1016 | How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Boat. (Or not)
One of my questions—Topical tag cloud generator for researchers/academics—was migrated to a site I'm not a member of and have no intention of signing up for. Thus I can no longer interact with it. It was migrated with about 5 upvotes and an answer with 4 upvotes (that I never had the chance to upvote). I shall speak of it using the past tense, may it rest in peace.
Seemingly it was migrated after @EnergyNumbers put forward in a comment that it was a "boat programming" question. His comment got some upvotes and (I guess) close votes started to appear afterwards and it got migrated somehow (I don't know the process). Hence this seemed to be an important comment.
I did not know what "boat programming" meant before but based on the discussion here, @EnergyNumbers was putting forward that my question was analogous to asking "What is the best boat for an academic" ... the argument being that adding "for an academic" doesn't make a question about boats a relevant question. Now I had previously added discussion to my question specifying the reasons why a generic tag cloud generator would be insufficient, and why I was looking for something specific for academic papers. One could argue that it was still a boat programming question since one could argue why a programmer needs a certain type of boat ... it needs a good coffee machine for example.
The other part of the comment was that it was a "shopping question", which I understand is like asking (as an academic) for your favourite x from a set of well-known X or something. I would argue that my question was not asking for one's favourite anything from a set of well-known anythings. It was looking for software packages to extract and visualise topics from research papers. Others could argue it was a shopping question I guess because I was asking for things.
The last part of the comment was that it was relevant to another StackExchange site—Software Recommendations—where it eventually migrated.
Was it a "boat programming" question? ...
Was it a "shopping" question? ...
Was it ...
I went looking through the FAQ to see what I missed. I didn't really find anything. I mean I can see that one could make arguments that my question was doing X or wasn't doing Y in the FAQ but far from anything clear-cut and far from anything umpteen other questions (including highly voted questions) on the site do.
But okay, I tried to take as given the explicit/implicit premises applied to my question, akin to a perfect storm:
boat programming: making a generic question and sticking "for academics" after it;
shopping: "my favourite X is x', what's yours?";
software request for which there is a dedicated SE site.
... and apply it to other questions on the site. Here's just some (not-so-)quick examples where I roughly tried to use my question as a yardstick (of course I'm biased, so make up your own minds):
Software to use for creating posters for academic conferences? (28 upvotes, 11 answers.) [Boat programming. Shopping. Software recommendation.]
Mapping connections between topics covered in academic papers - does such a tool exist? (3 upvotes, 1 answer) [Shopping. Software recommendation.]
Tools for data organising and processing (5 upvotes, 2 answers) [Boat programming. Shopping. Software recommendation.]
Saving handwritten notes for future reference (18 upvotes, 9 answers) [Boat programming. Shopping. Software recommendation.]
Software to draw illustrative figures in tables (57 upvotes, 12 answers) [Boat programming. Shopping. Software recommendation.]
Is there an open source tool for producing bibtex entries from paper PDFs? (6 upvotes, 1 answer) [Shopping. Software recommendation.]
Searching for a quotation manager (10 upvotes, 3 answers) [Shopping. Software recommendation.]
Issue tracking when writing a paper (19 upvotes, 3 answers) [Boat programming. Shopping. Software recommendation.]
Note taking software: referencing text to searchable keywords (2 upvotes, 1 answer) [Boat programming. Shopping. Software recommendation.]
Do you find a computer-assisted qualitative data analysis tool useful? (2 upvotes, 1 answer) [Boat programming. Shopping. Software recommendation.]
Internet Git repository for collaboration on a paper (18 upvotes, 3 answers) [Boat programming. Shopping. Software recommendation.]
...
I am not arguing one way or the other that these questions are off-topic for this site. I'm trying to highlight that the reason(s) my question was commented on/voted to close/migrated apply to many other questions.
None of these questions have been migrated. None have close votes. None even have comments along the lines of the ones I got on my question.
Likewise there's the (software) tag itself (which I didn't see until later):
Queries related to various software used in academia. Questions shall not address highly technical aspects of the software but shall address features/issues highly relevant to academia.
In any case, aside from being confused, I feel like I have already spent too much time on this and other topics. I'm not going to be engaging on this question. But maybe it helps give examples of something or other. I dunno.
Having come to the end of this long meta-question whose effort–reward ratio is seemingly vanishingly small, irrespective of what you thought of the question itself, all I can put forward is the request to not view moderation tools as nails for which you have the hammer, and to moderate with clarity, consistency and common sense ... and reluctance.
Ciao!
Specifically regarding software questions, there has been this meta discussion which is relevant
...that I never had the chance to upvote Fear not, I hear your from beyond the Internet grave.
I'm still confused about what you think the problem is. Your question was moved to a place where it'll likely get better answers. This is a problem because ...?
@TRiG ... because unless badroit registers to the site in question (SR.SE) s/he won't be able to get notifications, up/down-vote answers, or give comments.
I think that the question is gone from software recs now...
@TRiG: Unfortunately, SR.SE has very few users, and very few (or no) answers, more often than not in my experience. Few people go on SR.SE to answer rather than ask. In a larger community like this one, people might notice your request for a software tool while engaging on other subjects.
It takes approximately 12 seconds (and exactly 4 mouse clicks) to log in to a new StackExchange site and create an account there.
Migration is harmless. StackExchange sites are extremely well integrated. User accounts on new sites do not cost anything. There is a unified system through which you will get notifications related to your questions on any of the sites.
I would prefer to see a gray-area question be closed (and possibly migrated a little later) rather than migrated immediately.
Migration is qualitatively different from other kinds of closure. Assuming we don't have accounts on the target site,
Closed Questions
High-rep users can vote to reopen
Users can continue to discuss the closure in comments
OP can edit the question to make it a better fit
Migrated Questions
High-rep users on the original site cannot vote to reopen
Users on the original site cannot comment
OP cannot edit the question to make it a better fit for the original site
I still don't really understand why a tag-cloud generator for an academic is different from a tag-cloud generator for anyone else ("logic programming" in an academic paper seems the same to me as "Asian cuisine" in a cooking blog, for example).
But given that more than a few users who can vote to close saw this question and chose not to, I'd prefer not to migrate right away.
Migrated questions can be re-opened, as I just did. Anyone can flag it for a mod to look at it. I do hear your points, though. Honestly, I was taking care of the flags in between meetings at work, did this quickly, and didn't give it much of a second thought. Here's my second thought :)
I second with closing rather than migrating. Of course unless the OP ask for migration OR (it is clearly off-topic beyond hope for reformulation AND at the same time it is clearly on-topic on the site we want to migrate it to). For this question, in the current form, I don't think SoftwareRecs.SE is an appropriate site. After some edits it may be a question to SR.SE, Stats.SE or, well, Academia.SE.
There are questions that clearly are out of scope and there are questions that are clearly in scope. I think the mods do a great job handling the questions that fall into the grey area. Yes you can find grey area questions that have not been closed. It is much harder to find the examples of the numerous "boat" questions that have been closed. This means what you see is a biased example.
Don't look at your question as being dead. If it gets a good answer there, great, problem solved. If it doesn't, we can migrate it back, or you can ask a follow up. The whole point of the SE network is to get the best possible answers as efficiently as possible.
I was the mod who migrated that question. I didn't realize it would cause any issue, I apologize if it did. In that case, I migrated for two reasons:
The question was off-topic here, as it was asking for a particular piece of technology. As stated by @ff524, the fact that it related to academia was entirely tangential and unrelated to the question. By the time I got to it there were already three other close votes on the question.
There is an entire SE site dedicated to software recommendations, which (like all other SE sites) does not require any registration for the user to interact with the question.
Given the nature of the question and that site, my immediate assumption was that the user would appreciate that move, as it would lead to more answers. Seeing how many upvotes are on this meta question, it appears that more people feel that it is on-topic here than off-topic.
Given all that, the question has been re-opened for the time being.
If you want to reopen a question that's been migrated away, please contact the moderators on the target site. We don't want to have two copies of the question around (leading to people doing the work of answering twice), and that's what happened when you reopened the question here. I happened to wander by, and deleted the copy on [softwarerecs.se] (which fortunately hadn't seen any significant activity in the meantime). You still need to clear the migration history on your end (from the mod menu). Undoing a migration is possible but is more involved than just unlocking and reopening.
@Gilles - Thanks. I think this one could have been opened on both sites, as it's relevant to both audiences, but I appreciate the technical difficulties. I'll clear the history here.
@Gilles and eykanal, Tangential question: can one flag one's question and request that it be migrated? Can the question take its answers with it (if the moderators agreed that that would be a good idea)?
@aparente001 Yes, you can use a flag to request migration. It should be clear that the question is off-topic for the site. Migration copies the whole content: question, answers, comments, votes. Migration is only possible within 2 months after a question has been posted.
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975 | Don't walk. Don't run either
If we have a meme on this site, it's "Don't walk. Run." It is like an inside joke for the community ... but the joke might not be clear to newcomers.
If we could get past the semantic satiation for a minute, somebody quitting their real-life position and looking for employment/studies elsewhere is a serious issue and should be treated seriously.
I think it's especially problematic coming from hugely successful academics working in rock-star departments who don't know the culture in other areas and departments.
Lots of questions are coming from inexperienced researchers and typically paint a one-sided picture. Highly-upvoted comments in bold left by experienced academics telling inexperienced academics that they leave their job as soon as possible ... I sometimes find it uncomfortable.
A couple of examples of where it made me cringe:
Handling credit with advisor: a question that seems almost too simple in terms of not being the whole story. The first piece of advice isn't "have you tried talking with her?" but rather "Don't walk. Run." ... with 18 upvotes.
What to do: PI lied to me and is keeping my grant!: a difficult question that requires legal advice, not a pithy comment.
There was another example I can't find right now where a student mentioned that in their school, they require the permission of their supervisor to publish. This was met with "Don't walk. Run" from JeffE which seemed entirely inappropriate. A school guideline requiring students to clear affiliated publications with their supervisor seems pretty reasonable (if a tad distrustful) ... certainly not grounds to quit.
Anyone agree that this meme is potentially damaging? It just doesn't seem worth the risk.
Folks using this meme should have some respect for the fact that they're advising another human being to quit their job/studies ... and they should keep in mind that they are simultaneously communicating with thousands of vulnerable people from a variety of areas who see such questions and who might project themselves as being in similar situations.
Great question. I think Jeff used it somewhat sparingly, but as it becomes a meme it gets used as memes do, which is always and inappropriately, and for those not in the know that can definitely be a problem.
I think common sense should solve the issues here. Common sense tells us: 1) search for a job and find a new one before leaving the one you are at, 2) be sure the new place is better, get some evidence and 3) consider the costs of moving (time, resources, etc.) every investment requires considering the costs and the risks. Anyway this is probably something that could be said to anyone in academia or considering to enter academia, unfortunately the world outside doesn't look much better. In the end, we need to start a new society from scratch in a new planet.
I use the response "Don't walk. Run." to mean exactly two things, neither of which is intended as a joke.
You are being abused. Get out now. Further engagement will only hurt you more. Seek professional (and possibly legal) help, but from a safe distance, after you extract yourself.
Your relationship with your advisor/colleague/department is broken beyond repair. The situation has progressed beyond the point where it can be salvaged. Further engagement will not be productive, and may do you permanent professional harm.
In retrospect, I really should distinguish between these two responses, and I will certainly be more careful in the future. The latter is probably better summarized as "Walk away."
I sometimes find it uncomfortable
Good. It is uncomfortable.
There was another example I can't find right now where a student mentioned that in their school, they require the permission of their supervisor to publish. This was met with "Don't walk. Run" from JeffE which seemed entirely inappropriate.
I stand by my response. Forbidding researchers (students or otherwise) to publish without their supervisor's permission, in an academic environment, is unethical bordering on abusive. Of course, research should only be published with the agreement of all contributors (or as they are usually known after publication, coauthors), and it's entirely appropriate for equipment owners to restrict access to their research equipment, but those are completely separate issues. If your students' poor-quality publications are sullying the reputation of your department, it's your responsibility to mentor and reward them more effectively, not lock them up.
Folks using this meme should have some respect for the fact that they're advising another human being to quit their job/studies ... and they should keep in mind that they are simultaneously communicating with thousands of vulnerable people from a variety of areas who see such questions and who might project themselves as being in similar situations.
This is absolutely correct. I am indeed advising another human being to quit their job, leave their department, or at least find a new advisor. And I am communicating that message to thousands to vulnerable people who might believe themselves to be in similar situations. Which is exactly why I give that answer.
Thanks for the response! It was actually the second last point where I disagree most and it was the issue that put this question in my mind. If that person left just because their supervisor has to give permission for them to publish, I think that would be way overboard. I believe that there are many valid reasons why this would be required in certain departments, particularly those with NDAs/industry collaborations, for example. In your culture it might be unthinkable but in many other academic cultures it is probably necessary for publications to be cleared.
I added a related question here since it seems relevant to the main site: Is it okay for a supervisor to require students to seek permission before publishing?.
@badroit - One thing to keep in mind here: Jeff's answers are simply Jeff's answers. When dealing with a meme, you must ignore upvotes; they're simply people piggybacking on his catchphrase. He is giving you his opinion, and you can take it or leave it, as you would any other advice. You are more than free to disagree, as are the people who read his advice.
What @eykanal said.
"Forbidding researchers (students or otherwise) to publish without their supervisor's permission"---if it is the actual situation, your advice is right. In some cases, however, students try to publish bad works and include the names of supervisors without their knowledge or consent. Or they want to publish studies in which their supervisors played a major part. If a supervisor doesn't allow students to publish work they did all themselves and rightfully without mentioning the supervisor, then yes, run. But I guess in 90% of student studies, supervisors have to confirm...
...and this is not always clear to students. Usually, supervisor thinks of a project and supervises the student and corrects any errors. Then it is not solely the work of that student anymore and the supervisor would have to be asked for permission to publish. You would have to make sure this is not the case, before advising actions with severe consequences (e.g., leaving university). Real situations are always more complex than two sentences posted in a forum and not always people know all the rules. If someone considered experienced gives a 3 word advice based on that, it might do no good.
Actually, "don't walk—run" is a shorthand for a different situation, in my opinion:
"Don't walk. Run." is a signal that the questioner is in a situation where the status quo is completely unsustainable.
Such situations are usually ones where things have deteriorated to the point where leaving is likely a better option than just "toughing things out."
So perhaps a little bit of caution is in order before using the line, but I wouldn't say it is always unacceptable.
This, exactly. It's the unfortunate truth that there are occasional situations where the outcome is almost guaranteed to be trouble. While Jeff's catchphrase has turned into a meme, when used appropriately it conveys the sense that something is seriously wrong with whatever is happening.
I like the classification in SNAFU, TARFUN and FUBAR. For me, SNAFU means: "keep working", TARFUN means: "you should take immediate, decisive and careful actions" and FUBAR means: "no matter what you do, you are screwed up, update your CV". The difference is that these codes are meant to be used in reports, not answers (not exactly the same thing).
Initially I liked the Don't walk. Run! line. However, it may be more fun as an inside joke for the Academia.SE community than for the person who is experiencing the problem.
Imagine when an already confused student or young researcher gets such comment. Is it that helpful and actionable? Especially as academic market is not very flexible and typically you can't start a new position the next day (or have savings to get you past unemployment). Also, as recommendation letters are crucial, in many cases enduring outright mistreatment might be "the lesser evil" to burning bridges. (I don't say it should work that way, but we are dealing with real, not idealized, academia.)
So for Don't walk. Run! (for anything below an advisor asking a student for their kidney) now my immediate though is Great! But how and where?.
Also, as recommendation letters are crucial, in many cases enduring outright mistreatment might be "the lesser evil" to burning bridges. — I take it as written that if your advisor is mistreating you, he is not going to write you a useful letter of recommendation.
Things move slowly in academia, so "run" may mean "start seeking position for the next academic year if you want to stay in academia".
I know this is old, but I'll focus on OP's last paragraph, and propose a work around.
Folks using this meme should have some respect for the fact that they're advising another human being to quit their job/studies ... and they should keep in mind that they are simultaneously communicating with thousands of vulnerable people from a variety of areas who see such questions and who might project themselves as being in similar situations.
I agree that the meme doesn't become clear right away to total newbie's on the site. It takes a while to get acquainted. And while Jeff is not aiming to patronize, his remark his well intended, it can potentially be misread.
The easiest resolution is to post Don't Walk, Run, as Don't Walk, Run, i.e. link to this post.
This will serve three purposes at once:
1 The meme doesn't get killed.
2 The context and underlying intention becomes clear even to first timers.
3 Possibility of anyone taking offense gets eliminated.
I read "Don't walk. Run." as an acknowledgement that the difficult situation described in the question is drastically wrong and needs to be addressed quickly. As the answers to the questions often eventually point out, the correct "answer" is rarely to quit then and there. The key to the "Don't walk. Run." meme is that it is saying: your interpretation is correct and there is a problem you need to go talk to a trusted colleague NOW instead of waiting for answers (but it is using a lot less words).
Now the question becomes how do new users who are potentially inexperienced academics interpret a highly up voted "Don't walk. Run." If they are quitting their jobs, we have a problem, but if they are seeing it as encouraging comment then it is serving its purpose. As I have never seen an OP question the meme, I don't think we have a problem.
I think the second paragraph is the more important part of the discussion ... I know that regulars here have some context for the comment, but taken out of context even once by a non-regular (not just by an OP but by someone reading the question) could have a major impact. Oftentimes the use seems justified, but on the other hand situations are never that simple and we only ever have one side of a story.
I was just told this phrase, and it has been one of the most encouraging phrases throughout the entire process of me choosing to go for another supervisor. So, perhaps it has used its purpose with me. I know that my environment is toxic and immoral, but hearing it online from a community serves some validation that I can't get so easily in real life.
I've always understood it to mean "Don't walk to wherever you need to go to deal with this, run!", i.e., a pithy way of stressing the urgency of the situation; it was only by reading this question that I became aware of the possible interpretation of "Don't walk out, run away!"
Now, internet communication is a narrow-bandwidth medium, internet comments doubly so; hence that subtlety might get lost. I think having this discussion is already quite helpful -- now whenever JeffE leaves his trademark comment, and someone is afraid that it can be misunderstood, they can give a link to this Meta post explaining the implied (or to be inferred) meaning and demonstrating that it's not (just) a snarky comment.
(Being able to give a link to an accepted consensus answer as a sort of FAQ entry would be even better.)
This is interesting because conversely I never read the comment as "Don't walk (to wherever you need to go to deal with this), run!". I always read it as "Don't walk (out), run (away)!"
I would agree with Christian - the meaning that people are apparently assuming here is alien to me. "Don't walk, run..." to me is an intensifier with positive overtones rather than a warning to get out fast - if I was given this response to a question of, say, "should I take this job", barring any other context, I'd read it as a rather strangely worded but emphatic yes - "Don't walk, run, [to sign up]!"
It's not a constructive comment: i.e. it doesn't seek clarification on the question.
So when you see it, flag it as non-constructive.
This should get the comment deleted, when the flag is reviewed. Comments are ephemeral here (just as across almost all Stack Exchange sites), and need little reason for deletion. A single flag prompting it should, in almost all cases, be sufficient.
If your flags get declined, then come back to meta and post about it, and we'll discuss moderation policy.
I'm not sure it's a candidate for flagging but perhaps this is what this discussion is here to find out. I think I'm mainly advocating some consideration of how it might be interpreted. (At least I know that I too sometimes post non-constructive comments.)
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596 | Edits disappearing?
I found this question interesting so I took a few minutes to remove a variety of typos ("gouvernemental", etc.).
I saved the edits, double-checked the question and closed the page.
Later I come back to check responses for the question and the typos I had fixed have returned.
Why?
Did I waste my time editing the question?
The changes you made are currently visible on the page; no subsequent edits have reverted them. It's possible your browser is showing you an outdated version of the page due to caching or something similar. Try refreshing and see if the problem still exists. If so, let me know and I'll mention it to the site admins.
Curious but I don't see my edits even after a no-cache browser refresh (either as being on the question or in the list of edits). For example, the word "gouvernemental" still appears in the question text whereas I fixed that spelling, amongst others. (I presumed that there was a peer-review system for edits from low-rep users and that my edits were rejected, or some such.)
@badroit - If you click on the second link in my answer (this one), you'll see exactly what you edited. From that, it doesn't look like you changed the word "gouvernemental". There's no editing system in beta sites, so your changes were all recorded directly. Not sure what's up.
In that view, I see four edits: three by Oaoa and one by Shion. I don't see the edits I added at all. Do you see edits by user "badroit"?
@badroit - Oh my, you're right; I just assumed the second one was yours. I don't see yours as having been recorded at all. That's very odd. I'm not even sure what we can do about it, looks like a site glitch.
Might also be related to the fact that the question was migrated. In any case, thanks for the input!
Okay, I tried again and now it goes to "peer review" so let's see.
@badroit - Looks like it was approved, and the changes are live. Guess I was wrong about the beta edit thing :) Thanks for fixing the question up!
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1727 | Narrowing down a closed question would invalidate existing answers – how to proceed?
This question is inspired by the events on this question, but I think it is applicable more generally:
Suppose, somebody asks a question that is too broad and gets closed as such. However the closure does not happen quickly enough and some people post partial answers to the question. Now the asker responds to the closure by narrowing down the question in a way that would invalidate the existing answers. Alternatively, the question does not get closed in the first place and narrowed down quickly but only after partial answers were posted. How should we proceed?
I can think of the following alternatives and problems with them:
Keep the question as it is (and possibley reopen it). This invalidates the existing answers, but one could consider this a risk that somebody enters who partially answers a too-broad question. The advantage is that the asker (who is usally a new user) does not get more frustrated by feeling to have done things wrong.
Rollback to the broad question, keep the existing answers and leave the question closed; ask the asker to ask a new question. This is a possible source of frustration for the asker and the answerers.
Edit the question to match the answers; ask the asker to ask a new question. Less frustration for the answerers than the above, but only possible if a question can be found that matches all existing answers.
In general, my feeling is that obsolescence of answers is a risk one takes when answering a too-broad question. We see the same sort of thing happening when people answer a question that has been poorly worded and then gets clarified. As such, I think that as a general principle, we should follow the intent of the OP, and let the answers shift or be deleted if needed.
As a counter to that, though, if the OP had a reasonable question that drew good answers, and then totally changed the question, I think that they should be rolled back and encouraged to ask a new question.
The particular question in this case I think is in a grey zone: it's way too broad, and the revised version wasn't really much better. As such, I think the roll-back was dubious: neither clearly right nor clearly wrong. My preference would be for the current question to remain closed and the OP to read a few more questions about their topic and try asking a new question from scratch.
Note that in the exapmle the OP changed their question twice. Do you really consider the latest version by the OP too broad?
@Wrzlprmft I would no longer consider it too broad, but I would still consider it not a very good question. It's now pretty opinion-based, and the answer I would now give to it is essentially: "meh, if you feel like it."
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1566 | Why was “Physics research journal for undergraduates” not closed?
A few days ago, this question was asked. While the author is somewhat unclear about what he is actually looking for, he is certainly looking for an individual journal or a list of journals as an answer. Thus the question would be a shopping question in my opinion as by the help center’s on-topic section:
However, please do not ask questions about
[…]
Suggestions or recommendations for a […] journal […] (a "shopping question")
Consequently I voted to close this question but apparently nobody agreed with my close vote (or even voted to close the question as unclear what you are asking). Thus my question is: What did I miss here?
Note that I did answer the question almost two days after my close vote.
Edit: The question was deleted by author, original text of question (titled "Physics research journal for undergraduates") follows:
I'm currently working on a new approach to understanding rotational motion and am anticipating promising results. I'm looking forward to publishing it in an undergraduate physics journal that is open to all submissions from around the globe. I would be pleased to obtain information about a few.
Also of interest: three reviewers explicitly voted to leave open, as seen in the review history. Perhaps one of them could chime in here explaining the rationale behind that decision..
I am one of the people who voted to lead the question open. My reasoning was as follows:
This might be closed as an undergraduate-only question, but since it is explicitly about publishing research I think it still arguable within a "big tent" interpretation of academia.
This might be closed as a shopping question, since it is asking for recommendations. However, it seemed like the final question could just as easily have been "Does a good such journal exist?" rather than "I would be pleased to obtain information about a few", and the question might be reasonably answered in this way.
"Does X exist?" is a question this community often seems comfortable with. I think this is because it can be cleanly and succinctly answered with one good example. The big problem with shopping questions, in my opinion, is that they are not generally answerable: they invite open-ended lists and are often bad-subjective. This question was still borderline, in my opinion, but I tend toward inclusionism in such cases, and thus voted to leave it open.
Thank you for sharing your reasoning. However, I think that “Does a good such journal exist?” eventually has the same problems as a regular shopping question. Even if the question is theoretically answered with one example, people will try to list every possible journal or argue why some journal is the best for the asker. And it’s not easy to tell before an answer, how many such possible answers exist. Also compare to a question “Is there any university in the US that offers a PhD programme in llama wrangling with no restriction on your previous grades?”
@Wrzlprmft Like I said, borderline. I'd have had no objection if the final judgement went against my opinion.
@Wrzlprmft I agree: the question is asking for a list, even if it turns out that the list has only one item. Also, "a good X" is an opinion question.
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1886 | For which tags (if any) do we want tag warnings?
Introduction
In another discussion, a Stack Exchange employee indicated that we might get so-called tag warnings, if we want them.
These warnings are meant to provide users with just-in-time information to help them avoid common mistakes in the tag they’re using (e.g. SQL questions should mention the engine they use).
Here’s what they look like:
(More information on this here, from which the above text and image were taken.)
Question
For which tags, if any, do we want such tag alerts? I suggest following this procedure:
If you want a tag to have such a warning, post an answer to this question containing the tag, the corresponding warning and a rationale. Upvote suggestions you agree with, downvote suggestions you disagree with. Post one answer per warning.
General ideas and inspiration
The whole suggestion came up during the discussion: How can we encourage posters to mention their country of study/work? So, a hot candidate would be tags used for questions where we often have to ask for the country, such as graduate-admissions.
Relatedly, we can remind users to state their field for questions where answers are often field-specific.
You can use this query to obtain the tags for which we have most closed questions, i.e., possible problem tags. Note that this excludes deleted questions and thus certain tags may be misrepresented (depending on the ratio of closed question that are deleted). Also remember that some tags are just misused. The current leaders in this query are phd, graduate-admissions and publications.
We could use tag warnings to prevent the misuse of rather general tags such as research, phd or thesis. Even if you regard this as overkill, consider it for tags where you want a warning for other reasons.
This is now implemented for the [graduate-admissions] tag (the only answer with a lot of votes at time of writing). We'll see how things go; hopefully it'll make a dent. If you have further requests, post them as separate questions, maybe with a link back here for context.
I just tested this feature for the first time, and I found the message actually appears in the sidebar where it is very difficult to spot.
graduate-admissions
Before asking your question on graduate admissions, please consider the following:
We cannot predict the success of your application and answer questions like: “Can I get into [program] with [prerequisites]?”. This question may help you though.
We do not know details of procedures – such as deadlines, required formats and handling times – any better than you. Probably only the admissions office or similar can answer you such questions.
Please state country and field as answers may strongly depend on this.
This tag has a very high number of closed questions, absolutely and relatively, (146 closed questions with 1222 questions in total) and that despite the tag not being prone to spurious use and that I would guess that a high number of questions fall victim to the roomba deletion bot.
The linked question was explicitly created as a master duplicate for a certain type of question. As of now, it is the duplicate of 49 questions.
Questions for details on procedures are one of the main reasons for the following close reason (at least in my understanding):
The answer to this question strongly depends on individual factors such as a certain person’s preferences, a given institution’s regulations, the exact contents of your work or your personal values. Thus only someone familiar can answer this question and it cannot be generalised to apply to others.
Note that I am truly no expert on this tag; in fact it’s the only tag I ignore. I thus welcome any suggestions and edits (note that this answer is a community wiki).
TL;DR
Equip tags that are frequently used for off-topic questions about the contents of an academic discipline with warnings that inform askers about the nature of this site and where such off-topic questions should be asked instead.
General
some-academic-field
If you have a {{field}} question, please do not ask it here – ask it on {{field.se}} and please check {{their guidelines}} before asking.
If your questions is about academic standards, conventions and life specific to the academic field of {{field}}, however, you are at the right place.
For example:
If you have a physics question, please do not ask it here – ask it on Physics SE instead and please check their guidelines before asking.
If your questions is about academic standards, conventions and life specific to the academic field of physics, however, you are at the right place.
We get a lot of blatantly off-topic questions that are about the teachings or contents of an academic field instead of academia. Many of these questions are tagged with the respective field’s tag. A tag warning could prevent some of those questions from being asked in the first place and direct the asker to the right place (and make them read the guidelines before asking).
Specific
The above scheme can be straightforwardly applied to the following tags:
biology,
chemistry,
computer-science,
economics,
engineering,
electrical-engineering,
law,
linguistics,
mathematics,
medicine (Health SE),
philosophy,
physics,
political-science (Politics SE),
psychology (Cognitive Sciences SE),
statistics (Cross Validated),
Note that I explicitly do not link to Math Overflow and Theoretical Computer Science, as they are limited to research-level questions and very unlikely to help somebody. Also, I refrained from referencing more specific sites such as Math Educators or Computational Science as well as other sites such as Stack Overflow that are the right place for some questions misposted under one of the about tags as they are mentioned on the on-topic helps of the sites directly corresponding to the tags, which give a much better guidance than what we can fit into a tag warning.
The following tags require slight changes:
social-science
This tag is for questions about the academic standards, conventions and life specific to the social sciences.
Note that questions on the contents or teachings of a social science are off-topic here (unless academia is targeted as a research subject).
They may be on-topic on
Economics SE,
Politics SE,
History SE,
History of Science and Mathematics SE,
Law SE or
Linguistics SE.
Please check their guidelines before asking.
science
If you have a science question, please do not ask it here – ask it on the respective field’s site and please check their guidelines before asking.
If your questions is about academic standards, conventions and life specific to the sciences, however, you are at the right place.
programming
If you have a programming question, please do not ask it here – ask it on Stack Overflow or one of the other programming-specific Stack Exchange sites. Please see this Meta post to find the appropriate site.
If your question is on the interplay between programming and academic research, teaching or learning, however, you are at the right place.
code
This tag is for questions on the licensing, ownership, sharing, distribution, and formatting of source code in an academic context.
Programming questions are off-topic here. They may be on-topic on Stack Overflow or one of the other programming-specific Stack Exchange sites. Please see this Meta post to find the appropriate site.
My apologies to whoever has to implement this, should it be accepted by the community.
As much as I hate to say this, I'm not sure directing Medicine tags to the Health site will be useful for users.
@Fomite: Well, if a medicine questions is on-topic anywhere on Stack Exchange, it’s on Health. In particular questions, students of medicine may encounter during their studies seem to be on-topic there – or on [biology.se], which is explicitly mentioned on Health’s on-topic help page, which I suggest to link in such tag warnings. The latter should also prevent users from asking off-topic questions on the respective other page. Remember that this text is only shown to users who try to ask a question tagged medicine on Academia.
@Fomite: Also, I am open for suggestions of specific additions or changes to these warnings for certain tags.
I think the problem is that's not how the culture of the Health board is shaping up. It's very much got the feel at the moment of "Lay people ask a limited number of experts" things board. Which is fine - but I'd also note that asking medical questions on here doesn't seem to be nearly as prevalent a problem as some other subjects.
@Fomite: What exactly is your issue then? If we are preventing a user from asking a blatantly off-topic question on this site and instead have them ask an on-topic question on another site, this is better than nothing, even if the latter question may not get optimal attention. You are right, however, that we do not get that many blatantly off-topic medicine questions.
It's not an "issue". There were no down votes. This was more "Unlike most of this suggestion, which will likely be quite helpful to posters, Health isn't a splendid fit either" comment.
There were no down votes. – Well, there were no upvotes either, though you consider most of this suggestion “quite helpful”. I fully respect your assessment, as you are likely more experienced with Health’s culture, but I fail to understand it or possible conclusions. Do you suggest that we also mention [biology.se] on the respective warning or would you not make a tag warning for medicine altogether?
I think the suggestion is just not bothering for medicine, at least until that actually becomes a problem in need of a solution, or medicine finds its feet in a way where that redirect actually constitutes useful advice.
For "copyright" and "plagiarism," could we please have a message like:
Questions which are primarily about copyright law may be more suited to https://law.stackexchange.com/. Questions about academic integrity customs and plagiarism ethics in academic settings are appropriate for this site.
This would be good to have for "legal-issues" too. For "copyright" and "legal-issues" it might be worth adding a sentence like "Please state country or jurisdiction as answers may strongly depend on this."
At the moment there is only one tag warning active, for the graduate-admissions tag. Tag warnings do not seem very visible in the new question dialog, so we may need to review whether it's worth asking to implement other tag warnings or not.
@MassimoOrtolano I agree; fixing visibility would be more important. I presume that is not one of your powers.
@AnonymousPhysicist Definitely not. In the main meta, here, there is already a request to make warnings more prominent. Let's upvote that request in the hope that it gets noted from SE.
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1148 | Do we need a tag to comprise questions about predatory, shady, scam and fake publishers?
As of now, searching for questions containing the following words mainly used in the context of disreputable publishers yields the following number of results:
fake: 23 results
predatory: 13 results
scam: 8 results
shady: 5 results
Now, not all of these questions are actually about disreputable publishers and the search results are not disjunct, but I consider it safe to assume that there are more than 20 questions about this subject without counting them.
There is not one keyword shared amongst all questions about this subject – some examples lacking the respective keywords:
predatory,
scam,
fake,
shady.
Therefore it is difficult to access all our information about this subject and one might easily miss something.
I therefore suggest that we create a tag for such questions.
Should we agree on this: What should this tag be called?
Please post your suggested tag as an answer, so that people can vote on the question (indicating agreement or disagreement with the need for the tag) and the answer (approval or disapproval for your proposed tag name) separately.
As there seems to be no big opposition, I added the tag to the first two questions (as soon as the edits are approved). To avoid massive bumping to the front page, I will apply this tag slowly. See also here.
I suggest disreputable-publishers as name, which has the advantage of comprising all predatory, scam, fake, shady. (Not every shady or predatory publisher is a total fake or scam and fake and scam publishers are more than just shady.)
On the other hand, it has the disadvantage of not being frequently used in this context.
I assume this is also meant to include fake conferences?
@DavidKetcheson: As long as they come together with publications (as it is the default in, e.g., computer science, AFAIK) or hosted by a disreputable publisher: Definetely. I would not have a problem with including other cases (if there are any) under this tag, but somebody else might have. After all, there are a lot of parallels to expect.
@DavidKetcheson: To add to this: In my research for questions for this tag, I have not found any question about a fake conference (or similar) that was neither hosted by a dubious publisher nor connected with a publication.
The current accepted answer strikes a nice middle ground with disreputable-publishers, but it has the disadvantage that few people posting questions to which the tag will apply will search for such a tag. I propose setting up synonyms for this tag, along the lines of fake-journal,fake-conference,predatory-publisher.
These will be activated when users start typing "fake..." or "predatory..." in the tag selection box, and will guide them to the appropriate tag. For example, typing "pay" currently guides users to the accepted synonym, salary:
These synonyms can be set up by popular vote, but the easiest and cleanest way to get them going (and in particular to avoid questions getting tagged with the subsidiary tags, which changes the behaviour (example) is via moderator action - if this is OK by the community, of course.
I might recommend disreputable-actions or disreputable-practices, as I would think that questions about degree mills and other shady actions could fit into the same category.
Seems like that would overlap a little too much with "ethics"...
Also, I would expect questions under disreputable actions or practices about such actions being commited by the asker or fellow academics. Relatedly, this would include such topics as cheating and plagiarism and make the new tag too broad.
I should have written that a little more clearly. I still think diploma mills are not that different from predatory publishers—maybe [tag:disreputable-companies] fits the bill?
We appear to have two questions about diploma mills. I'm not sure need to include them in this tag, if doing so will make it less obvious what the tag is about.
If you want to bundle disreputable publishers and diploma mills together, how about not-worth-the-paper ?
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1462 | Are questions about the reputability of individual journals, publishers or conferences on topic?
Yesterday, we closed this question about an individual conference’s reputability, i.e., as to whether the conference is a scam or not. The author correctly remarked that a similar questions remained open and there are comparable questions about individual publishers (1, 2, 3).
I thus think, we should have a clear decision as to whether such questions are welcome here or not.
An important related discussion is: Should we name names when talking about bad publishers and researchers?
As I've said here, I believe it is much more useful to characterize a publisher (or conference, university, etc) than ask about it by name.
Consider the question "Is a university that grants me a PhD for $1000 and a copy of my unpublished book fake?", which has a great, general answer that someone put some non-trivial effort into. There are dozens of diploma mills out there. If this question is asked dozens of times (once for each diploma mill, by name), either (a) they won't all get such great answers, or (b) a lot of effort will be duplicated providing essentially the same answer to dozens of questions.
So I am in favor of the following policy for questions that ask about reputability of X:
If there's an existing question about a Y which has essentially the same characteristics of X (for purposes of the question), close as a duplicate1. Indicate to the OP in a comment that while the name is different, X and Y have the same relevant characteristics and so the answers still apply.
else, edit the question to ask about something with the characteristics of X, not just X itself.
1 I prefer closing as a duplicate over closing as 'too localized' in this situation. Duplicate questions are not usually deleted. So it's still searchable by name (i.e. will still show up in Google results for "Is X a scam?"), and also, can be reopened by the community if, in the future, somebody decides that X is different from Y in a way that affects the answer to the question.
I think that there is an important distinction between "Is this a good conference?" vs. "Is this a scam?"
The first is often a matter of opinion and perspective ("good" as evaluated by which community?), and may also change over time, so I think it is not appropriate for this forum. The second is both more objective and less likely to change, but the boundary between the two may be fuzzy regarding certain for-profit venues. Thus I think that the question may be appropriate, but should be approached gingerly and only answered with independent evidence rather than opinion.
I therefore think we ought to accept "is this a scam?" questions on a trial basis, and if they prove to be problematic reverse the policy.
Should be... answered with independent evidence rather than opinion - Call me cynical, but I'm against any proposal that assumes users will independently refrain from posting unsubstantiated opinions or even completely libelous answers.
(This is a fundamental limitation of the SE platform. There is a mechanism for restricting questions based on the kind of answers they might elicit. There is no mechanism for enforcing restrictions on certain kinds of answers, or even discouraging them (even really lazy, opinion-based answers usually get an upvote or two).)
I upvoted becuse I think there is a difference, as Jakebeal says. I trust the community in managing answers and even libelous answers, as she always does. The fact that a journal/conference is a scam brings much more damage for the academia community (and thus, society as a whole) than an opinion-based answer, IMHO.
See this comment and all the deleted answers on that post. That's why I'm so cynical :( I think "Is this conference a scam" questions have already been problematic.
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3707 | Do we want a canonical question for how to react to long paper-handling times?
We get a considerable amount of questions, where the asker submitted a paper to some journal and gets impatient because it appears to be stuck at a some stage:
What to do when you have not received a response three weeks after submitting minor revisions?
Article awaiting reviewer invitation 6 months after submission
What should I do, as my submitted paper is still under review after 1 year?
Is it okay to inquire about the status of a paper when the online submission system shows no update three months after submission?
Three month delay in reviewing the revision of paper, Editor doesn't even answer the email
What to do when two months after submitting a major revision, its status is still "Editor Assigned"?
Is it rude to remind an editor about a manuscript submission still waiting for an invitee after 2 months?
Will it be ok if I politely enquire about a paper which is under review for 8.5 months
(Note that this selection is probably above average in quality. I remember many bad questions of this kind which I fail to find, be it because they were deleted, badly written or downvoted into oblivion.)
Most of these questions are not duplicates of each other, because they differ in detail. Yet there is a lot of overlap between the answers, which could be covered in a canonical question and answer. It could cover such basics as:
How do I find out whether this is normal or not?
How do I decide when to act?
How should I act?
This would have the following advantage:
Basic questions of this type where we can answer nothing but general advice can be closed as a duplicate of the canonical question. This avoids us reïterating the same advice again and again and is more helpful to the asker. Some askers may even find this question before asking and get help immediately.
Questions that are about a special, interesting situation can focus on this. We can refer the asker to the canonical Q&A to cover the basic information.
Typical comments can be avoided or at least reduced by asking the asker to read the canonical Q&A first and editing their question accordingly. Such comments include:
What is your field?
Wait at least half a year.
(which is bad guidance in some fields with quicker review processes)
The typical replies to such comments.
Thus, I am proposing to create such a canonical question and answer. If you think that an existing question is already suitable for this purpose, please suggest it.
This is a feature-request, i.e., you can indicate approval or opposition by voting on the question.
I created a question as proposed:
Is my paper under review for too long and if yes, how should I react?
(I just forgot to post it here.)
I think that a canonical Q&A should refer to the field.
From what I have seen the amount of time the review process takes can vary widely between fields. Astronomy and Astrophysics papers (from personal experience as well as speaking with others) can make the transition from submission to acceptance (without revision) within a few weeks, but quite commonly from submission through the review process, submitting revisions and then acceptance for publication usually within only a few months. But this is the exception as other fields can take months upon months. I have colleagues who work in marine sciences - underwater acoustics, current modelling, hydrodynamics, etc. - and in biological sciences who are quite happy if they get a paper to publication in under a year.
Of course, long review process times are a separate issue to lack of response from editors.
This will be the essence of the answer to “How do I find out whether this is normal or not?”: First find out what is normal for this field/subfield/journal. Most experienced users here are aware that review times vary considerably across fields and even subfields. Askers and inexperienced users not being aware is one source of problems with the questions in question as it leads to unanswerable questions (because we cannot know what is long in the asker’s field) and potentially misleading comments or answers (“wait at least half a year”).
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3318 | Obviously insincere posts – how should users/reviewers react?
Sometimes, malicious (usually new) users post
a question that is obviously not about a real situation or even a hypothetical situation that the asker is honestly interested in (note that I am not talking about possibly made-up clickbait but more blatant examples such as this one or worse);
an answer that technically addresses the question but is obviously not honest advice, but intentionally bad advice.
How should I deal with such posts or posts that I strongly suspect to fall in the above category?
If you are sure, flag as abusive (it’s abusing our site) and move on. Do not downvote. Do not engage. Six abusive flags will automatically delete the post and impose some bans on the poster. These flags will also alert the moderators (having highest priority). Under most circumstances this is the fastest way to get rid of the post.
If you only suspect, flag for moderator attention. Flag for closure or deletion as appropriate.
What would be the practical difference, from the mod's point of view, between a post flagged as abusive and one flagged for mod attention because just possibly abusive?
@MassimoOrtolano: Six abusive flags delete the post and put some automatic bans on the poster without needing any moderator intervention. The only way of deletion that requires fewer non-moderator users is the deletion of answers by three 20 k users. However, this is unlikely to happen faster as flagging only requires 15 reputation.
@Wrzlprmft Is there a section of any particular SE site or SE in general that lists these rules/implications of actions? Or are we all supposed to search through the Metas until we find a Q/A like yours?
@ChrisCirefice: Sort-of. There is [meta.se] which is about general network rules and which hosts a general FAQ, which contains a section on the rude/abusive flag, for example. Note, however, that this particular Q&A is tailored to address a case that is generally rare on Stack Exchange but has been rather common on Academia recently.
@Wrzlprmft Coolio, I just couldn't find the FAQ. I know this is an issue specific to Academia, but I see questions about these kinds of things all the time on all the metas and I just never could figure out if there was actually a collection of all this information :)
Also downvote so that the questions or answers get moved to the review queue for faster handling.
I don't think downvoting puts posts into the review queue. It does make it easier for users with "delete" vote privileges to delete a post, though. Also, enough downvotes remove a post from the default front page view.
Unless this is somewhere in the grey zone, downvoting may be bad for the same reasons as downvoting spam: It does not accelerate deletion of the post and may hide it before it is deleted. If you want something in a review queue, flag it for closure or low quality. Abusive flags come with an auto-downvote, which should be enough to enable deletion.
Downvoting does allow answers to receive delete votes, however, and potentially be deleted by the community prior to passing (or failing? not sure which! :P) the review queue. I will say too as a moderator on a different SE site I love it when a post has multiple community delete votes on it - it is far easier for me to act than if there are none.
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969 | Will two very closely related questions be downvoted for "rep-gaming"?
I have recently asked a question about the benefits of graduate students joining unions: What are the benefits/detriments to graduate students joining unions?
I also want to ask a question about the drawbacks thereof, but according to this meta thread: Multiple questions in one thread I should ask a new question. However, the new post will largely be a copy-paste of the first one, and I do not want to seem like I'm just doing it for the rep. Should I edit my first post to have two questions, or put up a new post?
Asking about benefits and drawbacks are two parts of the same question. You should ask for both in the same post.
+1. "What are the benefits and drawbacks of graduate students joining a union?" can be rendered as a single question.
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2212 | Springer Shop uses an image quite similar to the Academia logo (or vice-versa)
After scrolling down in an email received from Springer, I stumbled across an image that looks undoubtedly similar to the Academia StackExchange logo. I made my little investigation, and found it again on the Springer Shop website.
When the site was still in beta, this post was created to discuss the future design. From what I know, this is where our logo comes from. Since I don't know if either our logo or their image is copyrighted (and have no legal knowledge anyway), I just wanted to highlight this (possible) issue to the community.
I know this is not much of a StackExchange question, but are the mods aware about this? If problematical, I do believe that this situation must be sorted as soon as possible.
Since I don't know if either our logo or their image is copyrighted. – Copyright is an automatic thing. If you create something (that is above the innovation threshold), you have the copyright.
@Wrzlprmft If you create something (that is above the innovation threshold), then, depending on circumstances, you or your employer has the copyright.
I don't think there is anything to worry about:
The logos are not exactly identical, there is no copyright or attribution license issue.
It seems pretty clear from Springer's website that this drawing is not a registered trademark.
The image is rather generic and very similar instances can be found on stock design websites:
I thought the community would be better safe than sorry. Thanks for clarifying that.
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3466 | Answer on Academia SE encourages the OP to use illegal cracked software
This question https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/76733/6526 presents the problem where the OP has a problem with his teacher telling him to crack software despite the fact that he knows it's illegal.
One of the more highly upvoted answers encourages him to use the cracked software despite the fact that it's illegal and the user has said it makes him feel morally uncomfortable.
I flagged with a custom flag saying that we can't condone the use of cracked software, but my response was -
declined - flags should only be used to make moderators aware of content that requires their intervention
So... what? We are going to tell people it's ok to crack software from other countries because 'hey the companies there are rich enough and it's not a big deal here cause... culture, even though it is against the law;' which is basically the stance taken in the answer?
As a software dev I find this highly troubling.
Note I don't think this is a dupe of this question I know we aren't the licence police, but at the same time actively encouraging someone who hasn't already cracked software to crack software is, I think, far different from trying to police someone who already has done it.
Also I think not a dupe of this question, accourding to international treaty which China is party too cracking Mathmatica there is illigal. That's not at question here.
"it is against the law" [citation needed]
@AlexanderO'Mara https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIPS_Agreement#Software_and_business_method_patents, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_TRIPs_Agreement, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention
None of those links seem to make software license restriction cracking illegal in the relevant jurisdiction. One does seem to make the relevant jurisdiction recognize the copyrights of other jurisdictions the same as it recognizes their own, but that appears to be all.
@AlexanderO'Mara, the software in question is Mathmatica, which is copyrighted in the US. The Op in said question stated he was in China. Copyright on software is a civil right in China, they also have office of registration, i.e as you just said, Mathmatica must be treated at least as well as their own software because of above treaties meaning under Chinese law piracy of and cracking of Mathmatica is illegal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_copyright_in_China
There are a lot of problems with that article, and using it as the sole basic for determining if software cracking would be found illegal in the relevant jurisdiction, but you're welcome to post your own answer using it as reference if you like.
See http://meta.academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3411/what-is-our-stance-on-questions-that-can-be-used-for-legal-and-illegal-purposes
From what I can tell, they are not breaking the copyright on the software at all. Just the license key. Which is to say they are forcing "unauthorized access." The software of the program itself is not reverse engineered, it is merely accessed without payment, so this should fall under piracy. But, IANAL
So... what do you want to happen here?
The answer isn't providing instructions for cracking the software. The answer isn't linking to cracked software, or suggesting possible search terms for finding cracked software.
The answer boils down to, "if you want to take a class run by a teacher who instructs you to crack the software you'll be using, then follow the teacher's instructions."
That... Isn't actually all that unreasonable. It may still be bad advice for exactly the reasons you cite - but the answer itself is hardly illegal.
If you disagree with the advice given in that answer, then downvote it and upvote a different one. For instance, the answer which describes how one might complete the course without actually using Mathematica, or the one which suggests buying a license. Or write your own answer.
That's how Stack Exchange is supposed to work: bad advice gets downvoted, good advice gets upvoted. Perhaps it would benefit your cause here to find out why so many people seem to think that answer provides good advice...
Obviously the answer isn't illegal. The behavior it suggests is. Interesting that the policy being adopted is that answers promoting illegal behavior are being given the OK. And as a software dev who's worked with remote teams around the world I know a lot of individuals around the world have a different view of software piracy then me. That still doesn't make it ok, or legal in their country.
So, write an answer that tells him this then, @ryan. What else would you have us do?
@ryan So, you want Stack Exchange to start policing what is suggested by answers, and check that is legal against... what? The laws of some special jurisdiction? The laws of every jurisdiction in the world? Both seem rather ridiculous.
@AlexanderO'Mara, Stack Exchange doesn't police anything, they set policy and the community and moderators police the content according to that policy. And it's worked well for the last 8 years. And the majority of the world recognizes that piracy is illegal (physical and digital), so it doesn't seem that hard to say "our policy is don't tell users to break the law".
Terms of service are linked to on every page - note that while they clearly prohibit various forms of lawbreaking, there is no blanket ban on the discussion thereof, much less a singling out of specific forms of lawbreaking for which any positive mention must necessarily be removed without discussion nor input from the community. Also, don't call people names when they take the time to engage with you in a discussion you raised, @ryan. Also, I've asked you a question twice now and you've dodged it both times...
@ryan I'm not sure I can expect a more compelling argument than further insults, but your "our policy is don't tell users to break the law" brings you right back to the same problem I just pointed out of "what law is the law?".
@Shog9, yea I read the ToS, since when can you edit other people's comments? Finally I guess that was my answer to your question you just can't ping more then 1 person in a single post. Policy statement "If a majority of the world recognizes X is against the law, don't tell users to do X". That seems clear enough. If someone on academia posted their psychology teacher told them to go shoot people in the foot in Somalia and they asked about it here, and the top answer said "Don't rock the boat go shoot people in the foot, people get shot worse there all the time." Would we let that stand?
What if Hitler rose from the dead and posted something all racist and murdery on Academia, @ryan? WHAT THEN? Do we need a hypothetical situation here? We have an answer on Academia that recommends something many of us wouldn't advise. What do you think should be done with it? A) nothing, B) downvote, C) edit, D) cake and prizes, E) deletion, F) none of the above, G) all of the above.
Sometimes shog..., Anyways that wasn't a hypothetical it was a recast of the same question, Teacher told me to steal, " well go steal then, worse gets stolen all the time. don't rock the boat." The answers (E) @Shog9, the answer is E. Answers that tell users to do illegal activity, that's considered illegal in most of the world should be deleted when they are reported.
@ryan But the majority of the people have voted overwhelmingly against your position. How are you determining the majority of the world agrees with you?
Ok. Finally we're getting somewhere. So you wanted the answer deleted, and of course you lack both the privilege of doing so directly and the support of the moderator team who do have that privilege. Then your recourse, @ryan, is to take your case to meta and appeal to the rest of the community who elected those moderators. I've taken the liberty of moving your question there, since it had already been closed and a moderator on this site expressed interest...
We have discussed what our stances are on legality in regards to questions What is our stance on questions that can be used for legal and illegal purposes? This is not necessarily the same as for answers, but my opinion is the same. I am hesitant to provide answers that will likely be used to break the law, even if there is a technically legal way of using the information. For answers, I would not go so far as delete them, but would like to see answers about ways to break the law down voted.
I am not a lawyer or expert on international copyright law as it pertains to software. That said, the answer does not particularly focus on the act of "cracking" the software, but rather on the use of cracked software. As I said in this answer I think there is a difference between distributing material that is in violation of copyright law and using the material. The answer also presents a case why using the cracked software may not be unethical (which is another aspect that is important in my opinion). I do not like answers which promote legal, but unethical, behavior either.
Overall, I do not like the answer and have down voted it. There is a comment, left by you, expressing concerns about the legality of the answer. Apart from leaving an additional comment about the ethics, or writing a new answer, I do not see anything else that needs to be done.
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686 | Need for a tag to describe teaching/student evaluations?
I recently added the new tag 'student-evaluation' to the question Is it appropriate to include additional materials in an academic job application?, but this was quickly removed. However, from what I could find, there are no tags describing this subject, even though such a tag should be relevant for many questions here on AcademiaSE (both current and future ones).
Searching the main site, 'evaluation + teaching' turns up 62 results, and from scanning these the tag would clearly be relevant for many of them. The specific phrases '"teaching evaluations"' and '"student evaluations"' shows up 6 and 7 times respectively.
When adding the tag I initially chose between 'student-evaluation' and 'teaching-evaluation', and chose the former. However, either one would fit the purpose, and on a second thought the latter option might be more general (could encompass 'student-evaluation' but also other types of evaluations of teaching skills).
Do you think that there is a need for such a tag? From what I can see there seems to be a "research-bias" in the current tags, with relatively few tags that deal with the teaching side of academic activities.
@CharlesMorisset Have added some background now.
I think a fairer search is to limit yourself to questions and not questions and answers.
https://academia.stackexchange.com/search?q=evaluation+%2B+teaching+is%3Aquestion
Limiting the search to questions only gives 12 hits, some of which don't seem like they would be relevant for teaching-evaluation. I could imagine in the future such a tag could be helpful, but until the questions are asked, I don't see a need for the tag.
As for the linked question, it doesn't seem to be about teaching evals.
The linked question is specifically asking about advice on whether to include results from student course evaluations to an academic application, i.e an evaluation of teaching. Did you read the question? I agree about the search results though, but still think that it is fairly obvious that such a tag would be useful, now and in the future. I'm pretty certain that I can find 10+ questions where this tag would be relevant, and at the moment there are a large number of tags with much fewer questions than that on AcademiaSE.
We have assessment, which Noble P. Abraham introduced in an edit to a question of mine a year ago. It currently has 5 questions, and I think it would be fitting for your questions.
That could work if the scope is expanded. However, all the current questions deal with the assessment of students, and the wiki says; "Queries related to assessment of students for skills, attitudes, knowledge etc.". Since the assessment of students is a quite separate thing from evaluations of teaching I would definately prefer a separate tag. Personally, I also doubt that the tag name "assessment" is the first thing that comes to mind when people are thinking about possible tags to add to questions that deal with teaching evaluations.
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1826 | To the moderators, especially the pseudonymous user called "StrongBad"
Somewhat over a month ago I flagged a posted by Dr. Jake Beale and explained that he had been stalking and harrassing me and had posted an irrational and dishonest ad hominem attack against me in extraordinarily rude language in comments under a question.
The user called "StrongBad" later wrote this about that flag:
We saw the flag, discussed it amongst ourselves and the SE employees. We decided that it would be best if an SE employee handled the issue. I believe when the flag was cleared, you received a message saying essentially "give us some time". The SE employees are busy, but I am sure they will get to the issue.
I haven't heard anything from them.
Let us note Jake Beale's words:
@MichaelHardy Is this about your same rant on mathematical fraud? Because it sure sounds like it, and you're ranting in the comments again as well. Please go set yourself up a blog or something where you can explain your views in a clear long-form format rather than trying to shoehorn them into the StackExchange format. – jakebeal May 18 at 5:12
That is about as rude as people ever get, with no apparent motive besides the fact that he didn't like an opinion I expressed in a DIFFERENT question on a DIFFERENT topic. And it referred to a question in which I made no attempt to defend the opinion he considered "ranting" but I was only asking for advice about where to publish it. Nonetheless he considered the question "ranting".
At one point I was told I should not contact Jake Beale by email. The fact is, I did so exactly once, on May 18, 2015, and the email was polite and very short. It said this:
Dr. Beale,
You need to understand this answer:
Should one down-vote a question because one disagrees with the questioner's views expressed on a past occasion not mentioned in the question?
That was my entire and only email to him. It apparently inspired him to complain to moderators that I was "stalking and harrassing" him. "Stalking" and "harrassing" correctly describe what he did, quoted above.
"StrongBad" wrote the words I attribute to him or her above: "I am sure they will get to the issue". I haven't heard from them. Will the matter be dealt with?
PS: I now find a moderator mistakenly informing me in comments below that I had some other means to contact the moderators besides posting this present question. That same moderator earlier actually recommended posting here as a way of contacting the moderators.
Is there a reason for the down-vote here? I was quite emphatically told by several of the moderators that the proper way to contact the moderators about a concern was by a posting here on meta.
I need to make two small corrections: 1) I've been following the standard advice of simply disengaging and trusting the community to handle your accusations (thank you community!); even your out-of-band email to me I simply deleted. I don't know who reported you as stalking and harassing, but it wasn't me. 2) If you are going to continue your sequence of complaints about me, can you please at least get my name right?
It would be great of you could split your meta questions into smaller more mangle chunks. As for the "request" to me, looks like ff524 is following up on it. Hopefully, you or the mod team, will hear something back this time. As for the other stuff about the other user, I am not sure it is relevant to the issue of the SE team not responding. I currently do not see question or discussion topic, so I am going to ignore it for now. Although part of me is inclined to edit out the rant.
The reason for my downvote is that this is a somewhat private issue you have with a single moderator and a single users, and both you and the mod team have discussed this issue in a number of emails. If you have a further problem, or if you feel that the mod team isn't meeting your needs, you can just email us again and we can bring it up with the SE mods again. Posting this here and calling out users seems pretty bad form and fairly "rude", for lack of a better word; hence the downvote.
@eykanal The ability to respond to mod messages is limited. There are some meta posts about it, but it is like one response per message. I don't feel like I was being called out, but the comments about the other user do seem rude.
@eykanal : The options for contacting "StrongBad" appeared to be these: (1) find some post to flag that I hadn't flagged before, and (2) post here. The latter course of action was in fact recommended by you, eykanal.
You can reply to the emails you receive from the mod messages as many times as you like. We have a few instances here on Academia where there were far more than one email on the chain (@StrongBad - see here) (mod-only link, sorry). If you reply to the email, we'll all see it.
The only "trick" on the mod message system is that the messages need to be done in turns, alternated between mod team and user. That means that if the mod team does not send a reply back to the user, the user will not be able to message the team again. This was also explained in the message I sent to @MichaelHardy over a month ago.
@eykanal : If you mean the system by which private messages are exchanged between a user and moderators, then as of last time I encountered that, one could not reply as many times as desired. Rather, one could reply once provided the moderators allowed it, and then as soon as a moderator decided the matter was closed, the system was no longer available and no reply could be sent.
@eykanal : I was surprised when I first learned that you were not aware of the fact that JNat's comment above informs you of. Apparently you're still not aware of it. It is NOT TRUE that I can reply as many times as I choose. The system prevents me from contacting moderators in that way.
@JNat - Thanks for clarifying, wasn't aware of that.
@MichaelHardy and whoever else comes by. I'm upvoting solely for the PS as that's the public issue here. As far as I'm concerned the rest can be deleted.
I’ve reviewed all the posts involved once again, and it seems that there were actually no updates at all since I had last checked aside from this new meta post. The text quoted above from StrogBad was from an answer posted on June 4th, and I did reply to your messages sent to our team via the contact us page. I replied to two of them, each pertaining to different matters. I sent these replies back to you on June 5th, and you replied back to one of them on the next day and got a reply back to that one two days later (the weekend got in the way). I ended one of the messages with the following paragraph:
I hope to, together with the moderator message exchange and the feedback you got on the Meta post you created, have addressed all of your concerns. But please let me know if there's anything else I can help make clearer.
That still stands: if there’s anything I can help make clearer, please let me know.
I’m not sure if the messages got sent to your spam folder, or if something else happened, but they did get sent. If you cannot find them, let me know and I’ll personally make sure to send them out again. That being said, I think most of the issues were indeed addressed either on the message I sent to you, on the previous replies to your earlier meta post, or on the message exchange between you and the moderators. Once again, though, do let me know if there was anything left unaddressed or unclear.
I am so glad to hear that the SE team was/is on top of this.
@JNat : I did receive an email from you on June 5, but it dealt only with other topics than the one I was referring to when I wrote " Will the matter be dealt with?". There I was referring to my complaint about the abusive behavior of Jake Beal. You didn't mention anything about that in your email.
@StrongBad : They're not on top of this; see my comment above.
"if there’s anything I can help make clearer, please let me know", "do let me know if there was anything left unaddressed or unclear." The only email I can find that you sent me was on the 5th of June and simply does not mention or even hint at this matter at all. Are you claiming to have sent me more than one email on that day?
I am not claiming to have sent you e-mails, I did send you two e-mails on June 5th. One at 17:56 UTC, to which you replied on the next day and got another reply back on the 8th (and that little to do with this situation); and another one at 19:15 UTC, to which you never replied back, and that had that final paragraph I quoted above. As I mentioned before, I'll be happy to forward it to you again if you cannot find it, just let me know.
We as mods have been lucky to have not had to deal with too many sticky situations where we have had to communicate with users via mod messages so we are not experts on the process. I apologize for this short coming and we have created a new FAQ covering how to get in touch with moderators and CMs.
In regards to the issues leading up to and following on from your suspension, we think the issue is being well handled by the SE team and are handing off future issues arising from this incident to them. You are still welcome use AC.SE and we hope you will continue to offer your expertise. If you have new questions and issues unrelated to the above mentioned incident, feel free to post on meta or in chat. For new issues related to or arising from your suspension, please use the contact us link to contact the SE team directly. We are happy to accept any recommendations by the CMs after they have reviewed any new information.
Regarding
"I am sure they [StackExchange community team] will get to the issue". I haven't heard from them.
I have just flagged your profile for attention from the community team (my first time using this new feature!) so hopefully they will reach out to you as a result.
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1857 | Comprehensibility of a question
https://matheducators.stackexchange.com/questions/8411/definition-of-curriculum
Why is the question above, which is so readily comprehensible to those who post to matheducators.stackexchange.com/, so incomprehensible to those who post to academia.stackexchange.com that they closed it as "not clear what you're asking"? (One of those who voted to close had an ulterior motive, shown by the fact that under the question he expressed anger about an opinion I had expressed on a different topic on a different occasion. He identified himself as one of those who thought the question was unclear. But it takes more than one to close a question.)
I cast the final close vote on your now deleted question. Had you edited it here, I would have voted/nominated it for reopening. I think it is as simple as your original wording was unclear and your new wording is clear.
On Math Educators, you wrote:
Definition of "curriculum"
In standard usage does the word "curriculum" mean
That which ought to be taught and learned, as prescribed by authorities (i.e. teachers and textbook authors and the like); or
That which actually is taught and learned in conventional practice, regardless of whether it is consistent with what authorities say ought to be taught and learned; or
Something else?
On Academia, you wrote:
What is a curriculum?
The concept of "curriculum" seems to include prescriptive as opposed to descriptive lists of topics, i.e. things that ought to be taught and learned over the course of a term or of sequence of terms.
Does it also included descriptive lists of topics that actually are taught and learned in widespread and enduring practice?
Would that also be called a curriculum?
and later, after the question was closed, you added
Primarily this question is about how this terminology is conventionally understood.
Often, the phrasing of a question plays a large role in its comprehensibility. While these two may seem equivalent to you, as the person who wrote the question, you have a head start in understanding what you mean.
I don't think it's unreasonable to conclude that significant differences in the way a question is phrased can have a significant effect on how clear it is to readers.
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503 | Importance of going to university in the 21st century? [moved to meta]
The question https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9794/importance-of-going-to-university-in-the-21st-century was closed on the main site, and identified as non-constructive, although it has received 5 different answers.
How could this question be changed to be more constructive?
This could work in chat or a special chat room...
@DanielE.Shub Suggest some none stackexchange communities. Thanks!
Feel free to suggest how could this question be changed to be more constructive?
If you're looking for an alternative location for discussion, there are a number of places you can try:
Quora allows questions of any type and has a large user base.
The Chronicle forums may be a good place, but it may be off-topic there.
You can try to bring it up on the relevant communities on Reddit. I'm not going to link to specific subreddits as I'm not familiar with them, but there are many that deal with universities, colleges, and higher education.
suggest subtopicforums on quora and chronicle
Not sure, as I'm not a frequent visitor to either site. Check both sites out, poke around the FAQs, and post wherever it seems most appropriate. Best of luck!
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1295 | Question about BSc in preparation for research career closed as "undergrad" question?
This question asks about qualities to consider in an undergrad degree, in order to get into AI research in the future:
What factors are important in an online BSc for eventual goal of AI research?
It was closed as an "undergrad" question.
However, as far as I can tell, it seems to be about preparation for entry into a research field. It's not any different from questions asking about undergraduate degrees in preparation for graduate admissions (which are firmly on-topic here). It just looks a couple of steps farther, i.e. getting into research vs. getting into graduate school.
If "Transitioning from undergraduate to graduate researcher" is explicitly on-topic, it's not clear to me why "Transitioning from undergraduate to researcher" is off-topic.
Is this kind of question really an "undergrad" question? If so, why?
@CharlesMorisset My comments about shopping are obsolete (now deleted) since the latest edits to the question; it's no longer asking us to recommend a program. As far as I can tell, it's now about what factors to consider in choosing a degree program, which seems on-topic to me.
@CharlesMorisset Per this meta post, it seems that the community considers questions like these to be academia questions, not domain-specific questions, so yes.
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1245 | Proposal to narrow the scope of 'paper-submission'
Currently, the tag wiki excerpt for paper-submission defines the scope of this tag as follows:
The process of preparing a scientific manuscript, finding suitable journal or conference and submitting the manuscript for publication.
This seems overly broad to me. There is so much entropy in questions with this tag that it is practically meaningless. It's become a catch-all tag for everything related to publishing academic papers, which we already have in publications. Furthermore,
"The process of preparing a scientific manuscript" is already covered pretty thoroughly by other tags: writing, formatting, typesetting, and probably some others I haven't thought of.
On "finding suitable journal or conference" - seems like conference or journal are a more natural fit than paper-submission.
I therefore propose to narrow the scope of the paper-submission tag as follows:
On the process of submitting a paper for review or publication by a conference or journal. Typical questions with this tag relate to selection of preferred or conflicted reviewers, timeline of the submission process, and typesetting or compilation by the publisher.
Examples of questions within the scope of this tag would include:
Is there any paper submission deadline timezone convention?
On a Conflict of Interest disclosure, what's the difference between 'ongoing' and 'current'?
What typesetters do with the submitted paper?
Is it okay to inquire about the status of a paper when the online submission system shows no update three months after submission?
How much time is usually left for authors to return page proofs? What happens if I am late?
but would not include other aspects of manuscript preparation, such as deciding what content should go in the paper, or what journal to submit to.
For those new to meta: voting on meta is different from voting on the main site. Vote this post up if you agree overall with the proposed change in scope; vote down if you disagree with the proposed change.
If you would like to express arguments for or against the proposed change, or suggest minor changes to this proposal, write an answer!
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1246 | Suggestions for avoiding disruption when retagging?
There has been general agreement here on meta that our tags are not in great shape, to say the least.
Big tags like phd and graduate-school are beyond the scope of this particular post, and need major discussion on meta before anyone acts on them. But some (very small) tags lend themselves easily to cleanup with just a few retags. I've been working on some of these lately.
Given that mass retags are very disruptive to regular operations on this site, I've been taking any steps I can think of to minimize disruption:
only bump 5-6 old posts at a time
only bump old posts when the front page (in 'active' view) doesn't already have a bunch of old posts near the top. (i.e. don't everybody go on tagging sprees at the same time)
when bumping an old post for retagging (or when someone else bumps an old post), fix everything else that's wrong with the post at the same time: correct typos, remove incorrect tags, etc. This way, we won't have to bump it again to fix something else.
fix tags on new questions immediately when they're asked.
Does anyone have any other comments or suggestions on how to minimize disruption when cleaning up tags as part of small, focused effort?
At least I know now why so many ancient posts are currently bobbling to the front :D
Maybe it’s a good idea to ask about this on Meta Stackexchange. I asked a question regarding the introduction of a single tag (and got no answer), but some other sites may have experiences with a massive retagging.
I just noticed that Super User plans a Tag Cleanup Weekend.
How is it "given that mass retags are very disruptive to regular operations on this site"? Do you mean the fact that (re)tagged questions are bumped?
I think the best way to minimize disruptions is to make sure the changes to the tags are correct. Removing needed tags or adding unneeded tags is a huge disruption and requires intervention from people. Further, if a particular users edits/efforts are not highly reliable, this can cause other users to want to constantly review the user's edits. This seems hugely disruptive. On that note
when bumping an old post for retagging (or when someone else bumps an old post), fix everything else that's wrong with the post at the same time: correct typos, remove incorrect tags, etc. This way, we won't have to bump it again to fix something else.
While this is laudable, I think it is incredibly hard to fix all the tag issues in one go. In order to do that the editor would need an in depth understanding of the entire tag taxonomy. I think this type of approach leads to more mistakes. I think the cost of these mistakes would easily offset the advantages associated with the decrease in the total number of edits.
only bump 5-6 old posts at a time
I am not sure if bumping 5-6 old posts a couple of times every day (potentially by different users) for weeks on end is more or less disruptive then a single large disruption during a period of low use. A single large disruption would flood the front page, but we would then be fully recovered with a day or so.
The mod only analytics show that our total page views consistently spike early in the week and then drop to the lowest point on Saturday (about 60% of the peak). How the number of questions and answers varies is less clear, but I think the weekends are also the low points.
Proposal
Users that want to improve the tagging should chose a problem tag and create an list of questions that need the tag added and a list of questions that need the tag removed. Post this list to meta for some discussion and community agreement and then make the changes in a single session.
I agree, and also think: the best tags to choose to fix are the ones you understand very well already, where it's clear what needs to be done. If everyone did that, we could fix most of the well-defined and scoped tags with minimal fuss. Then we could focus most of the meta and chat discussion on tags that aren't well-defined to anyone and really need more discussion.
Also, we should have a tag on meta - 'tag-cleanup-proposal'? - for meta posts where you aren't asking anything, just saying "I plan to do the following to tag X in a few days unless there are objections"
Agreed, +1. I like the "single large disruption during a period of low use" idea. Question: what would a period of low use be? I.e., when should one do such a mass retag? (Please remember time zones.)
@StephanKolassa it looks like weekends are low use. My impression, but no hard evidence, is that we start to get more active starting about 8:00 UK time.
After a good discussion went on between some users of the site about the need of having some strategies when we edit the tags, as a clear and working strategy, strongbad suggested that a good strategy to tag edits might be something like the following:
Would it be better choosing a tag you would like to improve and
removing it from questions that do not need it and adding it to those
that do? That way you only have to keep a good mental representation
of one tag at a time. Your approach seems to require you to understand
all the tags.
Also, ff524 supported such strategy by
I also think that since many tags are currently not well-defined in
scope (see several ongoing meta discussions), it's not even possible
to "properly" tag every question right now
To conclude that discussion, the strategy that each user is better to pick a tag and add it to or remove it from the questions seems to be a good strategy, minimizes double works on tag edits and makes the tag edits an efficient and a less time-consuming work.
However, we have no clear job distribution between users. One user may have edited a question and brought it in a good shape but after a while, another user double edits the question and ruins previous revisions.
As stated in the discussion, I suggested having the following approach which makes tag edits more clear;
Isn't it better to make a meta question with a title like "Tags under
edit" and each person working on a tag post an answer to the question.
So, we will have a list of tags under edit, and a list of off-on topic
questions relatively?
By having a meta question in which each user states that s/he is working a particular tag, so another users do not waste their time re-editing the questions with that tag; it is obvious that another user may edit that question for another tag. This way, we solve the problem of multiple works on any tags.
This helps with the problem of multiple users working on tags, since
if it's obvious what should be done it's unlikely someone will ruin a
good edit; and if it's not obvious, the community should weigh in
first anyways
Also, in her/his answer to that question; s/he can edit and ask about on-topic or off-topic questions and after her/his is completed, we have a list of on/off-topic questions in each answer which will be a valuable list, will help users in future to learn more about the off-topic questions and helps them become aware about the site's policies about each tag. Another benefit would be the discussions which can be made in the comments of each answer (each tag) or in a separate chat-room (with similar name) which will improve the user's vision about the tags.
Proposal:
We need following spaces on the Academia website to manage our edits to tags:
A question on academia's meta with a title like Tag edits
management page in which each user posts an answer to take the
responsibility of editing one (or two) tag(s) (no more, when s/he
finishes his edit with a tag; the s/he can pick another tag).
A chat-room with similar name to that meta question in which users
can bring further discussions about question. This way, we will not
miss our discussions between normal chats in our main
chat-room. Also, we can mention a link to the chat discussion
about questions and tags in front of it's answer in the edits-page
on meta; so users can easily follow the discussions.
Benefits:
Editing the tags systematically and avoiding multiple and
unneccessary revisions;
User will be focused on only one tag and his mind will not be
crowded with many definitions of multiple tags;
Concentrated discussion and good archiving to the off-topic and
on-topic questions on each tag will help the users of the site
become more familiar with the site's proffered policies on each tags
and helps the users better choose tags for their questions.
Considerations:
We should take care and encourage users, if they want to do any edit
to any tags; they post their proposal in a comment to the
responsible's answer on the edit's question in meta, so users will
be rejecting such edits instantly if their suggestions are
irrelevant; however, the comments to each answer will be so crowded
after a while; so we should think about the following issue:
After one round of edits is finished to each tag, what procedure
should be proposed to new tag edit? Should we ask users not to edit
completed tags or we should ask them send a proposal to each edit
they want to make in a separate question in meta?
What should we do about the problem of bumping question to the
active questions list? We should think about it too, we can announce
a period of six month for editing the website's tags. Or even, one
day a week for editing the questions' tags. This way, users will not
face a list of questions bumped in to the top list every day; Only
one day per week we will have the bumping problem which will be
completely reasonable. During this period of time, we can apology
the users for some inconsistency by showing them a message in the
first page; something like: Sorry for inconvenience, the site is in
the tag edits period; for a list of newest questions please visit
the list of newest questions.
Edits suggestions to the excerpt and wiki of each tag may be made as
was in the past (suggesting edits in meta in separate questions).
I don't think every tag edit proposal needs a discussion in chat. Things you are uncertain about, should be asked in a new meta question (as they have been until now); this post you suggest is really only suitable for proposing small, focused, edits you're reasonably certain are good. For these, it should be enough to use comments on the answer if anybody wants to object to the suggestion or offer improvements.
This is about a temporary, focused effort to clean up a few narrowly-scoped very badly misused tags. Once it's done, it's done; you don't have ownership of the tag going forward just because you helped clean it up now. Users are always free to use and edit tags in a normal way (read: not mass retagging), without asking for permission on meta.
I suggest that after posting an answer, users should wait at least three days before acting on the proposed suggestion, to see if anybody raises any issues or suggests improvements.
Here is a proposed format for answers to this post.
The problem of how least to annoy people while bumping old questions is an orthogonal problem to how to organize tag edits between users; if you have ideas for this, I suggest adding another answer addressing that specifically.
@ff524 I don't agree with the format you proposed for the answers; because we are not going to discuss the excerpts, wikis and also tag names. These are issues which should be discussed in separate meta questions. In answers to such question, the responsible only posts an answer to inform other users that s/he is working a tag and a list of on/off-topic question which need more consideration; with a link in front of each related discussion in the chat-room to make it easier for the user to follow tag-specified discussions and chats.
I see; in that case, I misunderstood what you originally proposed and I disagree with the suggestion. I think that every edit that requires extended discussion should get its own meta question, since that is the place to preserve discussions on things like this. I think this a good idea only for edits that don't require extended discussion.
Let us continue this discussion in chat.
@ff524 let's think about this topic some more and continue our discussion at that chat room in the next days.
I did not read every sentence, so I may be redundant: If we make clear what we want to change about the tags and get as many users to participate as possible, I could imagine that we can get the retagging done during a short retagging event. I may be overoptimistic about the feasibility of this but this would minimise the retagging disruption as the front page would be useless anyway.
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1235 | Question just like this one was marked duplicate, but I disagree; what action to take?
Suppose we have the following three questions:
Question 1: Can I include the completion of Udacity and Coursera classes I have attended in an academic CV?
Question 2: Is an X-Series Certificate from edx useful for graduate school?
Question 3: How would a Coursera specialization be regarded in graduate admissions?
Question 2 was long ago marked as a duplicate of Question 1. However, I do not think it is an exact duplicate.
Question 3 was just asked, and I think it is an exact duplicate of Question 2.
What to do now?
I don't want to vote it as a duplicate of Question 1, since I don't think it is.
I also don't want to vote it as a duplicate of Question 2, since Question 2 is itself a duplicate.
And I don't want to leave it open, since I think it's an exact duplicate of an existing question.
I suggested that the OP edit it to highlight the difference from Question 2, but I still think it's fundamentally the same question.
Why not reopening Q2 in the first place?
@Piotr just saw this comment, sorry. As a mod, I can't cast a vote to reopen like a "normal" user, and this isn't straightforward enough to warrant using a magic moderator reopen.
This exact question is addressed here on Meta.SE: Someone flagged my question as already answered, but it's not
My pragmatic proposal would be to just leave it open. While it may be a duplicate of Question 2, Question 2 is closed and hence "does not really exist". It should be closed if it is a duplicate of Question 1, but as you say it isn't, I see no reason to mark it as duplicate.
More generally, I think it is important to consider closing as duplicate as "these are very similar questions, to the extend that the answers will be pretty much the same", and not "these are absolutely identical questions". With the first, more practical, definition in mind, it becomes clear that being a duplicate is not necessarily a transitive relationship (that is, it is possible that A is a duplicate of B, B of C, but A not of C).
I think you mean transitive, rater than transient.
@TobiasKildetoft Yup, thanks.
(1) I don't think that making paths any longer than one in the dupe graph makes any sense. (2) ad "more practical definition": A question should be only a duplicate if it's clear that the answers apply for the question being closed, this may require some comments being kept in the closed question explaining how exactly it is a duplicate.
I don't think the fact that question 2 is itself a duplicate of something is a reason not to close question 3 as a duplicate of it. If you do close Q3 as a duplicate of Q2, it keeps the "duplication graph" sensible in case question 2 is reopened sometime in the future. And if that doesn't happen, someone browsing the questions is still going to be pointed to Q1 in the end. The only thing you give up by closing Q3 as a duplicate of Q2 rather than of Q1 is a slight amount of convenience on the part of the reader.
So I would recommend closing question 3 as a duplicate of question 2.
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1256 | Proposal to resolve ambiguity of 'independent-researcher' tag
The independent-researcher tag has the following tag wiki excerpt:
An independent researcher is not affiliated with any university or academic institution, and does not receive grants from any such institutions.
Many of the questions in the tag are consistent with this meaning. For example,
What to put in “affiliation” field when submitting paper without affiliation?
Applying for research funding as an independent researcher?
Independent Research and institutional review boards?
How to get a .edu email address as an independent mathematician?
However, other relate to the different meaning of "developing academic independence (from one's supervisor) as a research student or postdoc." For example:
To what extent should a professor give students freedom to do independent research?
Can a 3 years PhD make an independent researcher ? Or how many post-docs after PhD to be an independent researcher?
How important is advisor's supervision for a Ph.D. student to be an independent researcher?
and several others.
This is a bad ambiguity, since people looking for questions about "unaffiliated researchers" are not the same people who are looking for questions about "research independence".
I therefore propose to:
Rename independent-researcher to unaffiliated-researcher (using the magic mod tool, so it won't bump any questions)
Create a tag research-independence with the wiki excerpt
On developing academic independence (e.g., from one's supervisor) as a research student or postdoc.
Re-tag the mistagged questions in independent-researcher that are really about research-independence
One thing I am not sure about is what to do with independent-researcher. I feel like it should be made a synonym of something, since people are likely to try and create it otherwise; but I'm not sure which it should be made a synonym of.
I approve of the split into two tags. However, I feel like there might need to be professional-development instead of just research-independence. I think it does a better job of encapsulating the goal.
Then, I would lump independent-researcher into unaffiliated-researcher.
There is [tag:professional-development], and it's a synonym of [tag:career-path]. I think [tag:career-path] is getting much too broad, so I don't want to lump [tag:research-independence] in there too.
Why is it a synonym of [tag:career-path]? They're not the same thing at all.
Not in name or by definition, but in the way it was used, I seem to recall that it was. I think [tag:professional-development] might be too ambiguous for a tag name.
If we're thinking to do something more general, it should probably subsume [tag:soft-skills] too. I don't know what the right name is, though.
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1258 | What is the 'scientific-productivity' tag supposed to be for?
Currently, the tag wiki excerpt for scientific-productivity read:
Queries and Discussion related to either qualitative or quantitative productivity of a scientist/scholar.
The full tag wiki then goes on to say:
The term scientific productivity often refers to attempts on quantifying to scientific impact of an individual’s research publications. There are a number of indices to quantify impact of a scientist in their respective fields, by means of number of papers produced, etc.; like h-index, g-index etc.
So OK, it's about measuring the impact of a scientist/scholar. Indeed, some of the questions in this tag are consistent with this meaning - notably, those that are also tagged with bibliometrics.
However, more of the questions with this tag are about productivity in the sense of "tips for being more efficient as a scientist." For example,
How to efficiently read mathematically and theoretically dense books in STEM fields?
How does one keep herself updated with new research without forgetting older results?
How to avoid procrastination during the research phase of my PhD?
Finally, some are about neither of these things, like
Charging graduate students for printing
How to prevent physical/psychological health side effects of workaholism in academia and research?
Can one be average in academics but great in research at same time in PhD
It's not clear to me whether there is another meaning of scientific-productivity that I'm not getting, that applies to these and similar questions, or whether they are just tagged incorrectly.
I am concerned about this ambiguity, because it does not seem like people searching for questions about "measuring the impact of a scientist/scholar" are also looking for questions on "becoming more efficient".
What should be done about the scientific-productivity tag?
I say burninate. I agree that bibliometrics seems to cover the intended use.
I'm also not really happy about its name. "Scientific" leaves out vast swaths of the academic community, which tend to be under-represented here to start with. We don't need to further alienate our colleagues in the arts, humanities, and other fields.
Do you think we need a tag for the unintended use, "tips for being more efficient as a scholar"? Or do you think an existing tag already covers these?
Maybe simply [tag:productivity]? Or is that too vague? A couple of them may be covered by [tag:work-life-balance].
burninate would remove the tag entirely from every question it's on. If we should have a "productivity" tag, then the course of action would be not to burninate, but to rename "scientific-productivity" to "productivity" (and then retag the questions where it isn't appropriate). I'm not sure which approach you're advocating, can you edit your answer to clarify?
@ff254: Well, to put it this way, I don't think a tag named [tag:scientific-productivity] with a purpose as currently described in the wiki needs to exist. Perhaps a tag called [tag:productivity] should exist and be applied to some questions that are currently mistagged [tag:scientific-productivity] but I am not sure about that. If it is more convenient to rename rather than burninating and letting the potential [tag:productivity] be gradually added to those questions that need it, that is fine too.
Rename (aka "merge") would instantly and silently change every existing instance of [tag:scientific-productivity] to [tag:productivity]. This is very different from just removing the tag altogether, because it preserves the information that somebody thought these questions are somehow related to "scientific-productivity"
I would have to become Trogdor to burninate.
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1340 | On-topic-ness of questions on legal issues related to academia?
We seem to have a very inconsistent policy with respect to questions on legal issues related to academia.
I am not referring to questions asking for legal advice for a particular situation (these would certainly be off topic as "too localized" or "seeks advice for a very specific situation, so that only someone close to the situation can give an objectively correct answer.") I am referring to questions asking more generally, "Is [specific behavior related to academia] legal?" or "What are the legal issues surrounding [some academic behavior]?"
There are many examples of such questions in the legal-issues tag. There are also examples of legal questions in other tags, e.g. visa.
At the same time, we've closed questions that seem just like those, for being off topic as legal questions. For example,
Are there any laws against professors publishing scientific papers without acknowledging student's contributions?
Panelist hacks my system during a defense, is this legal? (this was closed, then reopened after it was changed from "legal" to "ethical")
In both of these examples, the behavior in question is clearly related to academia. The close reason for the first one also mentions that it is a hypothetical question; but we don't generally close hypothetical questions if they are perfectly feasible, as this one is. So the issue appears to be that it asks about legal issues.
Inconsistency like this is bad; it makes it difficult for new users to understand whether their question is on topic, and it makes it difficult for not-so-new users to judge when to vote to close. I would therefore like to raise this issue for community discussion:
Are questions on legal issues related to academia on topic?
It seems to me that "Are there any laws against professors publishing scientific papers without acknowledging student's contributions?" is such a poor question that the off-topicness is only one of its problems. With no jurisdiction mentioned, it's unanswerable. It's a theoretical situation, so the OP is not asking about an actual problem they face. And it shows no research nor awareness of related similar questions already answered here.
Note that there is a Law proposal in commitment phase. I think it should be on-topic as legal issues arise frequently in the academic environment, but some seem to disagree and downvote/close, so it might be good to have some other SE where it is safe to ask such questions.
Certainly, random Internet users should not be considered authoritative on legal matters. People needing legal advice for a specific situation should consult a lawyer. The tag excerpt for legal-issues says as much:
Note that Academia.SE, like any SE site, cannot offer specific legal advice; consult a lawyer for such questions.
On the other hand, SE sites should also not be considered authoritative on moral and ethical matters, but I don't see any complaints about the ethics tag.
I believe questions asking for general legal background about a particular academic issue should be considered on topic here.
For example, I think Could research data fall under the Freedom of Information Act? is an excellent question. Is it illegal to share publications not in the public domain with collaborators? has quite a few upvotes. And I think Are there any laws against professors publishing scientific papers without acknowledging student's contributions? should be reopened.
"People needing legal advice for a specific situation should consult a lawyer." Very true. Nevertheless I'd often say it is good to go there prepared - and a well posed question here may be part of such preparations. (I'm somehow thinking of copyright questions, and of questions where people initially have no clue but are told to check e.g. whether their university has a complaint office etc.)
FYI: Has the stance on questions pertaining to legal issues changed?
I can think of many cases for visas, copyright questions, etc. where the right answer would be "Have you heard of the Q81 visa? Ask your lawyer about it." Further, if someone asks whether a certain law exists somewhere, no one would reasonably conclude from a lack of answers that the law doesn't exist and that they can disregard it, but they could greatly benefit if someone can point them to such a law (or, say, a ruling that seems to say such laws are invalid), which they can then ask a lawyer about as @cbeleites mentions.
I think this is a tricky question because:
Even taking IANAL into account, the correct answer to a legal question is often determined by small details that make it hard to answer generally.
In academic disputes, law is often the nuclear option. Many of the legal questions that I have seen down-voted and closed should really be asking about ethics, policy, or various other sub-legal regulatory mechanisms.
Legal questions can often be complicated, time-consuming, or contentious to answer.
I think that #1 and #2 are good reasons to close legal questions, and #3 is a good reason to apply a higher level of scrutiny than fast and simple things like citation style.
Thus, for example, I voted to close the question about laws regarding publishing without acknowledging a student when I learned that it was just a theoretical question and thus failed both #1 and #2 in my view. I feel that for that question to become high enough quality to be answered meaningfully, more information would have been required about the situation and the reasons for considering the nuclear option in the dispute. Since it was theoretical, however, that couldn't really be provided. A similar but more general topic, however, like, "Are there circumstances where you should resolve a publication dispute legally rather than by working with the journal?" might well make a good question.
I agree with your self-answer that random internet users aren't legal authorities. However, that doesn't stop people all over the internet from giving their opinions. People working in an area (e.g., academia) often have some awareness of relevant legal issues, and I think a site like StackExchange can benefit from the legal knowledge that people have through experience, even if it carries no official imprimatur.
In other words, I think it's perfectly fine for people to ask about legal issues, and perfectly fine for anyone to give their perspective, with reference to situations they've encountered in the past, and where possible citations to external resources (e.g., legal disclaimers on university websites). If people feel the need to hedge their statements with "I am not a lawyer"-type remarks, fine. It's up the answerer to do that if they feel it necessarey, and up to the questioner to take the advice for what it is (free advice from non-lawyers), and people who don't want to get involved can just not ask or answer such questions. The mere fact that a question happens to deal with legal matters has no bearing on whether or not it should be closed.
It's very important then to keep [academia.SE] free from opinion (that is not rooted in cited facts). This does clearly not happen.
I am one of the users who voted to close one of the questions (the contribution one) linked in this meta question and I just voted to leave it closed. I think I owe some explanation.
First of all, I agree with seteropere's answer here.
The main reason I voted to close and leave it closed is because the OP did not specify the location. As we know, the law varies in different locations.
The following is what I know about Taiwan-specific cases. A few years ago, a graduate student sued a professor for stealing her contribution in a paper. The judge's decision (note here, the judicial system is very different from US.) was that the professor was guilty because the prof had financial gains due to the plagiarism. The financial gain was due to the fact that the prof used the paper to get the promotion (from assistant professorship to associate professorship), thus the salary was increased. Had the professor not used the paper for the promotion, the decision would be different. There was a similar case, the result was different. The judge determined that the student lost the case because the student sued the prof only because the student did not pass the oral exam. Therefore, there was no case. Please do not ask me for the details. The above was what I read from the local news report (in Chinese).
So, you can see that the legal issues are complicated even in the same location. To me, this question is too broad to ask.
I always have a hard time with general questions related to the law. I believe they are unanswerable without
Pointing out the context (i.e. country or educational system)
Seeking general advice.
This is different from ethical questions. In which, the questions can be general or specific and the answers would give general advice (about the ethicality of the behaviour) and the OP has to verify it against the local law.
Compare a general law-related question
Does this violate any laws at all?
to another legal-issue question
Can the university legally impose this on us, or are they just trying
to take advantage of us being foreign? Is there anything we can do?
The first one is very general (without any context) and asks explicitly for a law, which makes it unanswerable. The second question can be answered in general and the OP has to verify it.
Are questions on legal issues related to academia on topic?
If the question is about a specific educational system and seeks general advice about the legality of something, then it should be on-topic. Otherwise it should be off-topic (as in too-localized or too-broad question).
"asks explicitly for a law which makes it unanswerable" - I don't understand why it would be unanswerable. I think a valid answer to this question would be any that specifies the jurisdiction in which it applies, e.g. I might answer, "In the United States, the only applicable laws on a federal level would be copyright-related civil law violations - which would only apply if the student's text and/or graphical description of the computer program was plagiarized. There might be relevant state laws in some cases."
@ff524 Agree with you that we do the same (i.e. localising our answers to what we know) in other non-law questions. I just fail to see how this question by its current content is on-topic.
These questions are quite dangerous, simply because it is impossible to give cogent legal advice on a situation without full details of jurisdiction, applicable policies and laws, details of agreements, factual and evidentiary details, etc. Even for a trained lawyer, you would not give legal advice with the information available in these questions.
While I appreciate that users can contribute some legal knowledge, and there is also a warning to users (which they probably are not even aware of), the danger is that answers might induce a questioner to act on legal advice on the site, which turns out to be wrong or inapplicable to their situation, and leads them to suffer harm. That would be a great shame.
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1278 | What is the etiquette on edits to other people's posts for subjective style changes?
Academia.SE users (myself included) have been known to make edits to other users' posts that are merely a matter of style. For example, edits that:
Add semi-colons to the end of list items. For example, see revision 3 on this post
Remove a "Q" denoting beginning of question. For example, see revision 3 on this post
Add question mark at the end of question title. For example, see revision 3 on this post.
Add clickable links to widely known sites (already discussed here)
Add 'quote' formatting to quotes, e.g. revision 2 of this post
Add full citations for links that are given as URL, e.g. revision 2 of this post
Add full citation for links that are given inline as clickable text, e.g. revision 4 here
Capitalize acronyms like "IEEE" or "DOI", e.g. revision 4 of this post
Capitalize 'Phd' or 'phd' to 'PhD', e.g. revision 3 here
Capitalize (only) first word of title, e.g. revision 3 here
Break up wall-of-text posts
It is my opinion that some of these edits are generally useful; some are useful only if you are anyways making more substantial changes to a post at the same time; some are useful only if it doesn't involve bumping an old post; and some are not useful at all, or even annoying to some users. However, I think it's hard to tell which edits fall in which category.
What are some guidelines for users to determine whether to make an edit that is purely a matter of style, as in the examples above? How, specifically, would these guidelines apply to the examples above?
This has been discussed on main meta, but only with regard to style of code snippets. There, the consensus seems to be that subjective style changes to code snippets are inappropriate.
As long as the users have the opportunity to rollback the edits made to their posts, this post of yours seems to be irrelevant and gives me sense of imposing your preference on edits to me as far as most of the referred edits are the ones which I made recently.
@EnthusiasticStudent Your edits are heavily represented because you are an especially prolific editor lately; that is all.
@EnthusiasticStudent However, if your suggested approach is that all edits in the list I gave are OK because rollbacks are possible, please post this as an answer. If it's upvoted, it will become site policy. If it's not posted as an answer, it won't become site policy.
My own suggested guidelines are (a) to check whether a style is your own preference, or seems to be used very widely on Academia.SE, and (b) to check the impact of the edit.
1. Style that is used consistently by many long-term users of the site
This category has two sub-categories:
1.1 If the edit makes a big difference to readability of post, or appearance of front page
I think that these edits are generally good edits. But I would usually avoid doing them if it'll bump an old post, to which I'm not making more substantial edits at the same time.
Examples of edits in this category:
Break up wall of text
Fix title capitalization
1.2 If the edit doesn't make a big difference to readability, or appearance of front page
I think these edits are helpful if you're also making more substantial edits at the same time, or if it's already near the top of the front page:
Examples:
Remove a "Q" denoting beginning of question
Add 'quote' formatting to quotes
Capitalize acronyms like "IEEE" or "DOI" in body of post
Add question mark at the end of question title (this one's a little questionable)
Change numbered lists to proper markdown formatting
2. Style that isn't used consistently by long-term users of the site
I would suggest that edits like these should not generally be made at all (unless it's brought up on meta first and the community agrees to adopt this style). It's perfectly fine to use your preferred style in your own posts, but injecting it into others' seems a bit rude to me.
Edits in this category would include:
Add semi-colons to the end of list items
Add clickable links to widely known sites
Add full citation for links that are given inline as clickable text
Add links to users' profile pages if they're mentioned by name in text of post
Change inline numbered lists with a couple of items (like in the first paragraph of this answer) to a non-inline list
Changing the spelling between British and American English (or other variants)
In my opinion, only 1.1 and edits that fix clear spelling errors should be done. 1.2 and 2 really don't add much to the question, and I myself find those edits of my posts at least a little bit annoying.
I'd add to 1.1 conversion of URL links to plain text format (as I've done in both of the answers to this question).
While I mostly agree, I find that, in some cases, quote formatting, markdown lists and capitalising acronyms make a big difference to the readability of the post. I would therefore make clear that these are only guidelines. Also I would add converting between two variants of English (such as British and American) to 2.
@Wrzlprmft please go ahead and edit in the language variant thing. I strongly agree
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850 | Are questions about professional non-research degree programs (law, business, medicine) on-topic?
There seems to be some disagreement about whether professional non-research degree programs (law, business, medicine) and entry into such programs is on-topic.
One the one hand, in a comment on York Undergraduate student looking to get into medical school? (on hold):
Moreover, questions related to professional schools are also generally considered off-topic (unless they're related to research-driven degrees, or looking to pursue an academic career—an MD-PhD program, for instance)
and
the point of the restriction is to avoid having the board overrun with pre-med/pre-law/pre-business questions (which is decidedly not what this site is about).
Then the opposite view on What preparatory steps should I be taking for admission into med school?:
This is a straightforward question about admission to a post-graduate academic program; I think it's perfectly in scope.
I also believe the help-center text, which refers to "professional students," can be interpreted to include professional law, medicine, and business degrees (and others like them). If the consensus is that such questions are not in scope, perhaps this text should be clarified to unambiguously exclude questions about professional graduate-level degree programs.
In the help center, the first question is "What topics can I ask about here?" and the first sentence of the answer is
This site 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.
To me this is unambiguous: questions coming from aspiring professional students are on-topic.
If the site consensus has moved away from the acceptability of these questions, then it has moved pretty far, and some kind of referendum may be in order to make a policy change at this basic level.
I have several comments:
The site is really not overrun with questions from professional students. On the contrary they seem to come up quite rarely. (This is not really surprising because the entire SE community is strongly tilted towards CS, math and other STEM types. What percentage of questions asked here specifically concern the humanities: 10%? Less?)
Added: It is good for theoreticians to try their hands at experiments now and then, so I searched for "medical school" (in quotes) on the main site and got 5 matches. By way of comparison, I searched for "HCI" (i.e., Human Computer Interaction, a fairly narrow academic subfield that I had not even heard of until I arrived at this site): 30 matches. I am convinced that we are not overrun with questions about medical school.
The sentence could be more clear that undergraduate level questions are excluded. Do undergraduate students not comprise part of "academics of all levels"? And technically any undergraduate could be an "aspiring graduate or professional student".
The use of the word "research" and "researcher" in the sentence confuses me. It does not seem even approximately synonymous with "academic" because (i) reseachers can work in industry or for the government or for themselves or be unemployed, whereas academics work in an academy, and (ii) academics do a range of research, teaching, service and administration, the mixture of which varies wildly from job to job. Probably the majority of Americans who self-identify as "academics" are not spending a significant amount of their professional life on research. Questions about university-level teaching are among the ones which are being migrated and otherwise directed here from content-area sites in the highest volume, so it would be nice to see some word like "pedagogy" appear even more prominently in the answer to this question: it does get its own bullet point, but the word "research" is repeated again and again, even to the extent of "research department", which is a strange term to my ear.
I am also surprised that the word "faculty" does not appear. In general the relatively low percentage of involvement from university faculty seems to be one of the elephants in this particular room...but I had better not try to get into this here.
I think the cited question should be closed for being too localized, but NOT for being about med school.
So presumably, it is your understanding that med/law/business school questions (that are not problematic for other reasons) are on-topic?
that is correct.
I think professioal students include law and medical students. However, I'd like point out that this is somewhat location dependent.
For example, medical school and law school students in Taiwan have to pass the very same college entrance exam as other undergraduate students when they enter law/medical school. They stay in the school longer time (medical school is 7 years) to get different degrees when they graduate.
If those students ask questions about the issues they encounter in school, do we say those are undergraduate related questions or graduate school related questions?
I am concerned that we do not have enough experts to answer the medical/law school related questions when they come up. This is more or less chicken and egg problem. Those experts will not visit us if they have nothing to do with the Q&As on our site. Law school/medical school people will not ask questions if they will not get good answers.
The distinction between undergraduate and graduate is itself highly location dependent. For instance, is a German "diplom" an undergraduate degree or a graduate degree? In content it often compares well with an American master's degree.
With respect to your last paragraph: sure. The site in my opinion has quite uneven coverage across the academic disciplines, and there is a definite chicken/egg problem. Here is one way to try to cure it: create a culture where the "experts" (here, more senior academics) also ask questions of each other and thus feel that they can learn something by coming here.
@PeteL.Clark I agree. That's why I want to point it out.
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1544 | What are we generally looking for in answers?
I am interested in learning what users of this site look for and appreciate in an answer.
On this site, what are the characteristics of a good answer? (Examples of exceptionally good answers, and what makes them so exceptional, are welcome!)
What are the characteristics of a bad answer on this site? (if such a thing even exists...)
Possible aspects to consider include but are not limited to: length, content, style, tone, disclosing background of answer-er or not, citing outside sources, addressing question in general vs situation-specific way, answers from users with or without specific relevant experience, bias, etc.
Of course, not all questions benefit from the same kinds of answers, and responses addressing subtleties like this are also very welcome.
(This post is shamelessly stolen from Biblical Hermeneutics meta. Yes, I read other SE sites' metas, including those of sites I don't participate in at all.)
"Yes, I read other SE sites' metas, including those of sites I don't participate in at all." I approve of the level of SE nerdiness at display here :)
Personally, I usually upvote almost every answer I read that isn't terrible.
What I look for in answers: (i.e., what I typically upvote)
A neutral, down-to-earth tone
A fresh take on a question (i.e., don't make your answer start with "I agree with XY")
Substantial answers (very short answers are not typically very useful to me)
A user that, based on her/his bio and SE habitus, seems trustworthy to answer the question
Sources, if appropriate for the question
The last-but-one bullet likely requires more explanation: given that we usually deal with rather subjective topics, I usually take into account who posts an answer if it goes against my own opinion or seems counter-intuitive. Yes, that's unfair towards new users, but I have certainly seen new users post, well, stupid things much more frequently than high-rep users, who, often, also happen to be senior academics.
What I hate in answers: (i.e., what I typically downvote)
Agenda answers ("this clearly shows that [professors|students|...] are just ..." - we had a few of those recently)
Answers that seem to fall into the "uninformed opinion" category ("I don't have experience with this, but clearly ...")
Excessive strong language, uncalled-for attacks towards the OP or somebody else mentioned in the question
Circumventing the actual question asked, and instead answering what the answerer thinks "should" be the question (although there is definitely a substantial grey area here)
Bonus point: What I hate in questions:
More than everything, I hate questions where the OP has clearly a pre-formed opinion, argues with everybody who answers differently, and then goes ahead to accept the first answer that validates her/his opinion no matter how much more votes all the other answers had.
Another question hate: I hate shopping questions.
Another reason: the answer is to the point and addresses what is asked; for the same reason, I upvoted this answer.
Along the line of your last paragraphs, There are users who accept answers that the community clearly indicated were wrong or sketchy.
@CapeCode The second one seems particularly interesting as there were a bunch of highly-voted better answers. This is kind of what I hate - you don't necessarily need to accept the highest-voted answer, but if you don't care about what the community thinks at all, then why ask?
I don't know if this question asks about what we should look for or what we are looking for. I ran this query and extracted the answers that received 100 votes or more*.
Here are the links to the best voted answers to date in decreasing order of vote count:
232
- 182
- 156
- 154
- 152
- 151
- 147
- 128
- 120
- 118
- 113
- 106
- 102
- 101
- 100
Some observations (listed in the order used by xLeitix in his answer):
Most have a polite, down-to-earth tone. One ('Mind your own business') has had its tone disputed and one politely questions the good faith of the original question.
None of them are 'support' answers repeating or confirming an existing answer. One is even clearly at odd with the others.
The average answer length on Academia.SE according to this query is 1212 characters. The character count in the listed answers (obtained with a Firefox plugin) are: 376 2234 5964 1098 2354 3389 6303 3091 3476 1692 2535 793 3686 2100 279 in the respective order. Mean: 2624.66; standard deviation: 1791.99; and median: 2354. They are substantially longer than average, with a few exceptions.
High-rep users are well represented: 3 are from JeffE, 9 out of 15 are from 20k+ users. But there are exceptions and some are even almost the only answer given by the poster. It seems like we are still pretty open to newcomers inputs.
Only one cites a reference document (a policy description on a university website), 2 give links to Wikipedia articles, and one to a book. None cite scientific publications or data. Citing sources does not seem to be a criteria for success.
* I know it's more a measure of popularity than quality, but I think it still shows which answers we are looking for. There is an obvious bias due to the popularity of the question, two questions have actually multiple answers in this list. Popular questions attract popular answers, and it's not a surprise.
I love that answer. re: the 'Mind your own business' one - I think this is an artefact more than anything else. This style of answer would likely not go down well with many questions, but apparently many users felt that it was appropriate for this one. Also, Jeff has a bit of a trademark here for very direct statements and answers. I am not sure if the same answer given by @userXXXXXX would have received as many upvotes.
Adding to the other things already said, I also think it is very valuable when an answer delves into the principles and reasoning the lead the poster to answer in the way that they did. I think that this is particularly valuable because many answers are derived from a broader scientific or pedagogical ethos. Communicating that ethos helps beyond the specific situation in the question, and helps to build and reinforce the better elements of academia.
Good point. This is the "show your work" principle. It's a common value across many SE sites (some require it more strictly than others).
xLeitix's answer is great, just want to add one thing to that: answers should be concise. Many answers here tend to have lots of examples or stories or other stuff that's relevant but not required, and it almost always makes the answers much harder to read with little benefit. Shorter is almost always better.
I actually disagree with that. I think examples etc. very often improve answers substantially.
There is a balance point... explanation is good, multi-page walls of text like this answer not so much.
@jakebeal Well, I think it goes without saying that multiple pages of incoherent ramblings are not what we are looking for in an answer.
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1380 | Should moderators delete comments that are about moderation, once they become obsolete with respect to the question they're posted on?
Questions on Academia.SE are often closed, and then reopened after they have been edited and improved (either by the original poster or by other users). Usually this involves an extended discussion in comments about whether or not the question should be closed, reasons it should be reopened, how to improve it, etc.
Once the question has been fixed and reopened, the comments are no longer pertinent for purposes of improving the question. They don't directly relate to the subject of the question, and they make it more difficult for readers, who have to review a long, obsolete comment thread before getting to more recent and relevant comments. Therefore, they are typically flagged as obsolete and deleted, or deleted proactively by a moderator who happens to see them.
However, Pete Clark has suggested in an edit to another post that this may not be desirable behavior:
A comment of mine was recently deleted without warning or acknowledgment. This comment was pertaining to a question that was unilaterally closed by a moderator. My comment expressed -- wholly civilly -- an opinion about in what circumstances moderator closure was appropriate. It included the information that I had been typing an answer while it was unilaterally closed (another user had just said the same). Thus my comment about how moderator intervention literally wasted my time and nullified my actions on this site was deleted by a moderator. I have made my views on this clear in this question. When moderators delete relevant comments which pertain to them, they participate in the most troubling form of censorship.
I think this is a sufficiently important question to be asked separately from the post it was just added to. So:
Should moderators delete comments that are about moderation, once they become obsolete with respect to the question they're posted on?
For the sake of transparency, here is the relevant comment thread (from this question). The pink comments are the ones that were deleted by me after I reopened the question:
I think the fact that a moderator deleted a comment (without notifying the author) about his or her own unilateral moderation adds a slight twist to it, especially when the commenter is known to have a strong opinion about deletion of comments in the first place.
Perhaps, it would have been a little nicer if you had let another moderator (or moderators) handle it and let Pete L. Clark know that his comment was going to be deleted if the other moderator(s) agreed to do so or if users flagged it. I'm not saying this should be the standard procedure. But I think it'd be nice to at least let the other party know your action in a bit tricky case like this.
Use meta for content about moderation that you want to be kept around. Comments can be deleted for any reason and for no reason.
Obsolete comments relating to moderation of questions are one of the primary reasons why comments should not be viewed as permanent. Comments such as "I think this should be reopened" serves no use once the question has been reopened.
If there is "non-meta" content in the comment, that's a different issue, but purely meta comments shouldn't be regarded as "privileged."
I think that generally it's worth leaving some delay before acting, however. Otherwise it can be confusing and cut off conversation while it's still happening.
@jakebeal: Irrelevant. Comments are not for conversation. If you were having a conversation in comments and your conversation was cut off, that is not only your fault but also a good thing! Moderators are supposed to stop comment conversations in their tracks. Can't really emphasise this enough. :)
I highly disagree. At most, they should be moving conversations to chat.
@LightnessRacesinOrbit: Since we do have chat rooms, it certainly makes more sense to move conversations there when appropriate.
@jakebeal unfortunately, moderators do not generally have the ability to move comments to chat, except in a few situations where the (highly capricious) system presents it as an option to us.
@jakebeal Sorry that you disagree but reality and policy appear to be at odds with your opinion.
@ff524 That's frustrating... I'd thought that mods had the option more generally. I do feel that commentary has more value on a site like this, where many of the answers are built on personal experience and judgement: to extend the metaphor, many feel more like footnotes than sticky notes, and I appreciate the moderators general light hand in managing them.
@jakebeal Just modifying my previous comment for the record (this is a really old question): moderators have the ability to move a comment thread to chat on demand now. (We can still only do it once per question, though.)
@ff524 Thank you for adding the update: it's good to have the record here.
I only come to Academia occasionally, but I moderate on another SE site.
I think moderators have the right to edit comments in a way that they deem best for the site, and I don't think they should be handcuffed into making a group decision before deleting a comment. The Stack Exchange is pretty clear on this one: answers are permanent, comments are temporary.
When I'm moderating, I treat each situation as its own case. Sometimes I'll delete an obsolete conversation, sometimes I'll leave it as a helpful guide for new users. (Comments explaining why a question was closed might help new users learn more about the standards for a site, even when there's some disagreement and debate among regulars.) Sometimes I'll leave part of the conversation there, and trim the excess. Every once in a while, I'll combine two comments into one.
Overall, occasional deletion of comments is healthy for the site, particularly when they become too "chatty," too distracting, too hostile, too lengthy, too sidetracked, or unconstructive. Of course, everyone has their own dividing line. One man's trash is another man's treasure (or, as George Carlin once remarked, "Ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?"). The crowd doesn't always agree with the umpire behind home plate, but the game would take forever if everyone had to vote on each pitch. In the same way, some moderator decisions won't please everyone.
In short, I try to do what's best for the site as a whole. My vote would be for that to be the prevailing guidance: let the moderators do their job, and don't make mountains out of molehills when comments get deleted.
"The crowd doesn't always agree with the umpire behind home plate, but the game would take forever if everyone had to vote on each pitch." Your use of the conditional is at odds with the fact that several SE sites are moderated in the way I am advocating for. It is pretty strange to see people arguing that what is actually happening is impossible or impractical. Also, your metaphor suggests that this is a game. As I said in this answer, I view participation in this site as part of my professional development. I hope that helps to explain why I take it seriously.
"and don't make mountains out of molehills when comments get deleted." You have the right to the opinion that deletion of comments is necessary or helpful for the site to run. Your mountains and molehills comment suggests that you don't take the matter very seriously either way. Can you respect that I and others do? If not, why not? What is your background? Are you an academic? Do you take academic matters seriously?
@Pete = RE: your metaphor suggests that this is a game... Really? Sports metaphors are often used in business, psychology, etc. You've drawn an unfair conclusion. I don't see this as "a game," but I do see a situation where it's impossible to reach a concensus. Some comments should stay, some comments should go, and some are on the border where there's bound to be disagreement. Similarly, a pitch "down the pike" is a strike, a pitch over the batter's head is a ball, and a pitch on the corner may be subject to interpretation – but only one opinion matters: the person who was hired to call it.
Suggests to me. I find it highly tedious to have a discussion in metaphors: one spends too much debating the appropriateness of the metaphor. Also, my idea of a discussion is that people listen and respond to my points, and either answer my questions or explain why they have chosen not to. I am not going to have a discussion that could be deleted at any time, but please feel free to contact me to continue the discussion. Also, please be aware that as a professional rule I do not respond to anonymously sent emails.
I find it highly tedious to have a discussion in metaphors. That's cool; my answer was directed at the O.P.'s question anyway. As I said, "Some moderator decisions won't please everyone." You can ignore the metaphor if you'd like; I'm sorry it was misinterpreted.
Comments are designed as ephemeral. So deletion is almost always a valid option, and very often the preferred option, with some exceptions.
Any comment should stay, as long as it doesn't break any guidelines, if and only if:
it requests clarification, and that clarification hasn't happened yet;
it identifies a significant extant flaw in a question or answer;
it provides guidance on editing, and that editing hasn't happened yet
it forms a live part of a short live discussion about the post's status (on hold, to be reopened, to be deleted)
it is addressing some other live aspect of the post that is better served in comments than in meta or chat
(I might have missed some other corner cases - I'll be happy to add other sensible exceptions, so please suggest some in comments below)
But in this particular case, a prolonged discussion took place about a question's status: that might be best placed here on meta, where the moderators and the rest of the community can have space to explore the issues.
Exactly this: if you have a concern you wish to discuss beyond directly resolving the localized issue, you should create a question here in meta. Comments should not involve meta-discussion of anything that is not question specific and happy to have removed after the issue (close/open in this case) is resolved.
Excellent summary
Pete wrote in his answer:
I am aware that the current SE party line is Comments are ephemeral, and I think that people here are aware that I and many other users find that position to be highly obnoxious: deal-breakingly so in some cases. If you want to delete my comments, ask me first: that way, at least I get a chance to preserve my own text for my own use!
My impression is that if you have content in comments that is so valuable to you that you desperately need to preserve it, it maybe really shouldn't have been a comment in the first place. I don't find the SE mandate that important stuff should go into answers "obnoxious", but a pretty nifty design decision.
That being said, I really don't have a strong opinion on this. By and large, I think removing comments is perfectly in line with how SE sites are supposed to work, but I also have to say that generally leaving comments in place does not seem to have a huge downside either. If it is in fact the case that this policy keeps valuable, high-profile users such as Pete and JeffE (as indicated by his support in the comments) from contributing, I could definitely see this just not get enforced on Academia.
We've always had a few very active, valuable users who are vocal about not liking comment deletion, yet the community majority has generally supported the "comments are ephemeral" thing (as per votes in meta). I'm pretty uncomfortable with the idea of following a few highly valued users' suggestions over a clear community preference. (I'm also pretty uncomfortable with setting a precedent where threatening to leave becomes a way to influence site policy, though I'm sure that's not Pete's intent.)
@ff524 Fair enough. However, I am not sure whether we actually have evidence that "the community majority has generally supported the comments are ephemeral thing". If we have this evidence, I agree with you.
Along the same lines, my personal opinion about comments is that I really don't care about them one way or the other; but since becoming a mod and seeing how many people flag comments, it seems to me that this community is in favor of comment deletion, and I should honor that.
Re: evidence, I was referring to meta votes on answers to this and this. Answers in favor of comment deletion get up votes; answers against (if anyone even posts one) get almost no support. If that's not evidence of the community majority, I don't know what is...
Removing the comments was entirely appropriate, specifically because of the quantity of comments on the question. If there were two or three total comments it would make sense to leave them for a while perhaps - but with 10+ comments on the question, removing the ones that don't really provide useful context immediately makes the remaining comments more useful.
ff524 wasn't hiding anything, after all; the edit history clearly shows who closed the question. If Pete's comment was intended to convince ff524 to not close questions quite so quickly in the future, well, in order to delete it she must have read it - so it served its purpose.
If the point was to have a larger discussion about when it is appropriate to close or not close a question, that should happen in meta and not in comments on a single question.
Either way, it needed to go (as did most of the other comments about closing/reopening) once the question was improved and reopened.
In my interactions on this site last night, twice in one hour I spent time and effort putting content on this site, and both times that content was nullified or erased by immediate, unilateral moderator intervention.
This started with a question that was closed by one person as "unclear" while two other people were answering it. That one person then proceeded to explain precisely what steps the other two people could do in order for her to reopen the question. When moderators unilaterally close questions and then administrate the reopening process, they take away the agency that is supposed to lie with all sufficiently experienced users of the site. Whether questions get closed or reopened is supposed to be a vote, after all. The model of a site in which moderators feel that they know better than the other users which questions should be opened or closed and act immediately and unilaterally to me is strikingly different from the other SE sites on which I've been one of the most active participants over a period of five years: too much so for me to want to participate.
I then expressed concern over unilateral moderator closure in a comment recorded above (and described how my time was wasted by the closure). This comment was deleted within an hour without being responded to. In my opinion, it is alarmingly disrespectful to remove someone's comments while they are engaged in a discourse with you and others -- comments which express civil, reasoned criticism of your own recent actions in a way which obviously has a larger scope than any one question. I'm not going to argue that anymore: I think that the moderators here understand this opinion and just disagree with it. I am also not going to further argue that "comments need not be permanent" is very, very different from "Any moderator who feels in the moment that a comment is no longer relevant or on-topic -- even if the comment pertains to them or to something they have been directly involved with -- can freely delete it without consultation or notification of the commenter". I am aware that the current SE party line is Comments are ephemeral, and I think that people here are aware that I and many other users find that position to be highly obnoxious: deal-breakingly so in some cases. If you want to delete my comments, ask me first: that way, at least I get a chance to preserve my own text for my own use!
I feel a bit like I have a World of Warcraft avatar who is a math professor named Pete L. Clark. I can play whatever character I want, but I am still subject to the local and changeable metaphysics of the site, just as any orc (or whatever: in case it's not clear, I have never played WoW) would be. The similarity between my SE avatar and its controller may well have lulled me into a category error: I think of this site as being part of my professional life. Because of that I expect to be treated as I would in my professional life (which is not with any kind of royal respect, but in fact with the same courtesy that all academics are accustomed to, no matter their seniority). Every once in a while I get singed by a fireball and realize that this is not the real academic world. When that happens, I think the only sane response is to log off. I will now do so for a period of time. If anyone wants to have further discussion with me, I will be happy to have it in the real world, where my name is also Pete L. Clark, I am a professor at the University of Georgia, and my contact information is publicly available. My only requirement is that since I use my real, professional name, I ask you to do the same, in order to receive a response.
P.S.: Since this will be my last content posted on this site for (at least) a little while, let me say that I do not think that ff524 is a bad person, a bad academic or even a bad moderator. The first two things I really don't know about but the available evidence is to the contrary. For the last, I think that 99.5% of the time she is an excellent moderator: she puts in so much time and effort into this site. The moderators here do a lot of great work: they just seem to fall into the practice, from time to time, of doing too much. When you spend time doing something that nullifies actions, deletes content or wastes the time of some other experienced, committed user, you're spending your time working against someone else. From one academic to another: it's so easy to work against each other, and the effect is always one of at least partial cancellation of time and effort. Please just do a little less: this leaves room for other people to be involved in a way which feels meaningful to them, and after all there is always more academic work to do.
Added: Thanks to all those who have responded. I wanted to further respond to some of these issues.
There is an issue contained in the very title of this post. When do comments become "obsolete with respect to the question they're posted on"? This is not obvious. In the case at hand, I think that comments which discuss the history of closing, editing and/or reopening a question do not soon become obsolete: certainly not in the space of less than an hour and while the question is experiencing all three of these activities. The sentiments expressed in comments like these -- should the question be closed again, etc. -- may or may not be supported by others who come across the question later. Expressing carefully and politely why you think a question should be closed, for instance, takes time and effort. I don't think it should be deleted immediately after the question is reopened.
The site has a mechanism for users to express that comments are obsolete: they can flag them for that purpose. (Unfortunately users cannot see how many flags a comment has and thus cannot precisely express the opposite opinion. They can upvote, which is not exactly the same thing.) The comment in question was there for well under an hour and had received one upvote. How many users flagged it as obsolete? If the answer is more than one, then that is something I will have to take into account. But if the answer is none, then that means that moderators are taking it upon themselves to decide what content is acceptable for the site or when an interchange has run its course. That's certainly unnecessary, and to me it's unacceptable.
EnergyNumbers wrote "Comments are designed as ephemeral."
I have two issues with that statement. My comments are created by me, so I get to say whether they are designed as ephemeral. I have been clear that they are not. What is probably meant is that the platform was designed so as to make comments ephemeral. I don't think that is quite historically accurate: I have been using SE sites for more than five years, and the push to limit the number of comments is much more recent than that, but that seems more like a quibble. The point is that the platform itself doesn't want anything. This site was created by a specific set of users for a specific purpose, so we get to decide how to use it. There are several other SE sites -- highly correlated to be the ones most closely tied to academia -- where comments are handled in the way I am used to. So it is obviously our choice how to treat comments: it is not an issue of "design".
D.W. wrote that I have misunderstood something about how SE sites work. He doesn't explain exactly what I've misunderstood or why he thinks that. In my line of work, it would be a little less than collegial to suggest misunderstanding so casually. All I can say is that I've been involved with four different SE sites over a period of five years. The idea that I simply "don't get it" after all this time simply does not seem very plausible to me...so much so that I do not feel compelled to further defend myself or rehearse the depth of my experience here (you can certainly see it for yourself).
However the comment that "It's entirely standard for moderators to unilaterally close or re-open questions; that is not illegitimate in any sense. The moderators job is to act to enforce the site policies, as set by the community." seems at the very least to lack nuance. Yes, it is entirely standard for moderators to unilaterally close certain questions: they should (ideally: this is a service they provide for us, after all) do this when it is completely clear that in doing so they are enforcing the site policies. They should not take a role as people who understand the on-topicness or off-topicness of a question better than any other experienced individual user. But that's what has happened. Other users have called attention to the problematic nature of this, and there has not yet been any response.
I am aware that I (or someone) could write a script that would save my comments. Or this could be done in other ways: I could create a separate account Pete_L_Clarks_Comments, direct every comment to this account, and in this way have the SE engine automatically mail me all my comments. I think this is a bit of a hack and a use of a site that would be at least somewhat disruptive to other users, so I would hesitate to do it, but I suppose it is an option. But doesn't it say something that the site already has all this infrastructure for others' comments to get emailed to me, but it doesn't even save my own comments?? I find that totally bizarre. Also this approach would not alert me to the deletion of my comments. The fact that I am not even alerted to the removal of my content is very jarring.
Others have emphasized that the model pursued by the moderators here is similar to that of most other SE sites. They have said this so much that I feel that I should reply: yes, I know. Not all SE sites though: I have been active on MathOverflow, math.SE, mathematics educators, and the moderation style is the one I prefer. To all accounts the same holds on the tcs site (I say this because one of the formerly top users on our site is Suresh Venkat, who is a moderator on tcs. The last time these issues came around, he expressed great surprise that on-topic comments ever needed to be deleted. I note that he is no longer very active on this site). Many people seem to hint or occasionally implicitly say that the moderators have to behave as they are or the site could not thrive. I think it's clear that is not the case. It is our choice.
I don't think we know how the majority of users feel on this issue, because the majority of users are not at all active on meta. We had a recent poll on "winter bash", and the number of participants was obviously a tiny minority of the total number of users of the site. The people who show up to vote on meta may be those who are used to frequenting SE meta sites (that includes me). For instance one of the answers to this question is from someone who has zero questions and three answers on the main site. He is certainly entitled to his opinion, but it is coming from someone who has put in a lot of time on SO itself and orders of magnitude less time here than I have. So my honest appraisal of the community response to these issues is: the community as a whole does not have strong feelings either way. I haven't heard anyone say that they would not like to participate in a site in which deletion of comments is done more rarely and gingerly than is currently the case.
I find the sentiment "I'm also pretty uncomfortable with setting a precedent where threatening to leave becomes a way to influence site policy" a bit surprising. My leaving this site could only be a "threat" if my contributions are so valuable that leaving it would jeopardize the site's well-being. I think that is clearly not the case: I am one of the most active and highly reputed members of this site, but not the most and not uniquely so, and my particular areas of expertise are represented by others. Rather I think that when someone has been a member of a group for a long time and had a significant amount of group interactions, it is the honorable thing to do to vocalize any discontent they have with the group that reaches the level which makes them seriously consider leaving the group. That is what I am doing here. If no one else feels the way I do about these issues, then the mere matter of my departure is no great tragedy to anyone. I am slightly disappointed not to have heard from anyone about these issues "in real life". It would be nice to hear personally from people who are involved in doing what they certainly think is in the site's best interest. I would like to think of the serious users of this site as being my academic colleagues.
It seems that I still have some things to think through.
That's quite a lot to absorb. I think you've misunderstood how SE sites and drawn some unwarranted conclusions based on that misunderstanding. (Yes, I know you have lots of rep. I still think you've misunderstood.) It's entirely standard for moderators to unilaterally close or re-open questions; that is not illegitimate in any sense. The moderators job is to act to enforce the site policies, as set by the community. They're just enforcing the rules established by the community and established by Stackexchange; you shouldn't be blaming them. (cont.)
For anyone who wants to preserve a copy of all their own content, might I recommend taking a copy at time of posting? There's probably a way to write a script to do that, and there are probably folk around who would help in writing that. Alternatively, one could draft in an application that auto-saves (e.g. onenote), and then paste into this site.
(cont.) If you feel that the moderators have made a mistake in closing or opening a question inappropriately, the next step is to take it to this site's Meta, and make your case, and let the community speak their voice. This is routine and standard, and I've seen it done many times. My experience is that moderators are glad to abide by the decisions of the community.
You should also understand that Academia.SE is not unusual -- most Stackexchange sites do work this way. (Yes, MO works very differently from most Stackexchange sites, in many respects. My sense is that Math.SE also works somewhat differently.) If you don't like this model, that's entirely your call -- that's understandable and I respect it. But please understand that the SE model exists for good reasons (to enable the platform to scale). And these policies have been discussed in great detail on Meta.Stackexchange. It's not about respect or courtesy; this is just how the site works.
I think it's unfortunate to see the negative votes here. But I do think it's important to remember that MathOverflow and math.SE have very different practices than most (all?) other SE sites.
+1 for "When moderators unilaterally close questions and then administrate the reopening process, they take away the agency that is supposed to lie with all sufficiently experienced users of the site." And no, I haven't misunderstood anything.
I believe that "comments are ephemeral" is hardly a reflection of the facts and is more of a excuse for arbitrary behavior, just like certain laws in restrictive countries. Comments can have significant value and deleting them unexpectedly leaves a bad taste.
It's also discouraging to put time into helping someone, an almost entirely altruistic act, and then to have someone else destroy that effort for seemingly no reason (whether there is a good reason or not). Especially when the author is unable to view his own work. Moderators being able to see deleted comments is hardly a solution; the content is for all purposes lost.
@Anonymous "comments are ephemeral" is one of the cornerstones of how StackExchange sites work. It's put in place not by mods wishing to have an excuse to delete stuff they don't like, but as a mechanism to force people to formulate things they want preserved as answers rather than as (un-downvotable) comments.
@Anonymous Having a comment removed does not destroy that effort, only the record of it. If the act is worth doing, it's worth doing.
I understand your concerns about meta participation, but we don't currently have a better way to share site governance. Realistically, those who choose to participate in governance are going to be the ones who influence policy, and I don't know any way to make that group more representative of main site participation.
To look at the specific situation, ignoring comments made by ff524, the comments that were deleted are:
User A: Did you submit a paper to the journal, or did the email come unsolicited? If you did not submit to the journal, I would not recommend doing so.
OP: yes , i submitted my paper to this journal online , after 10 days i received the cited email below
Note that user51189 is the OP and he/she made an edit that appears to address the comments making them obsolete. I don't see any question that they should have been deleted.
OP: I see it a spam
ff524: "Spam" is unsolicited communication (by definition). If you submitted a paper to this journal, than their email to you is not "spam," because you contacted them first. Please [edit] your question to clarify what you are asking.
OP: ok, thank you . Then i can pay to this journal for publication
OP: and telling me pleas , what do u know about the publisher cited , is he a predatory ?
I am not sure where the "I see it a spam" comment originated from, but the question was edited to remove references to spam and after ff524 deleted her comments, the remaining comments seem obsolete.
User B: I have voted to reopen. The OP has asked whether a particular mathematical journal is reputable or not and also how to tell whether a math journal is reputable. These are both good questions for this site, I think.
This comment is clearly valuable while the question is closed and votes are being made to reopen the question. Once the question is reopened it seems obsolete to me.
User B: Let me say that I was also writing an answer to the question when it was closed, and in my opinion the question is not so clearly inappropriate as to warrant moderator closure. Moderators should close questions only when the vast majority of serious users of the site would agree that the question should be closed or when there is something truly exceptional or pressingly problematic. If a question is really "unclear", then five users of the site will think so. There is no hurry to close it unilaterally.
This comment is very chatty and discussion oriented and not directly related to the question. Any discussion arising from that comment would be better held in meta or chat. Since the relevant portion of the question is on the closing of the question, once the question is reopened, the comment seems obsolete.
While I agree that moderators need to exercise caution when deleting comments, I really do not see any comment that was deleted that should have been left.
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1498 | How to disambiguate the 'statistics' tag?
Tags are meant to collect questions on a single subject, so a tag that applies to several completely different kinds of questions is a bad tag.
The statistics tag is one of the worst offenders. I've seen people apply it to:
Questions on "standards and conventions specific to statistics as an academic discipline, and programs leading to a degree in this field." For example, Should I do a PhD or Master in Statistics for a career in Data Science?
Questions on "the use of statistics in academic research. Statistics is the science of collecting, analyzing and drawing inference from data." For example, Should I cite all R packages I used? This is the use currently specified by the tag wiki excerpt, which reflected the actual use of the tag at the time that I last edited it, but doesn't seem to now.
Questions asking for statistics about research or academia. For example, Can you get statistical data on research paper submissions and publications?
I believe the best way to disambiguate is to have differently-named tags to address these different use cases. The tag names should clearly indicate which usage the tag is referring to, since people don't always read the tag wiki excerpt (they're not easy to get to while posting a question on mobile site, for example).
Any suggestions?
(I believe tags are limited to 24 characters on this site.)
I'd prefer statistics-discipline, statistics-in-research, and statistics-meta as an alternative naming convention. The discipline covers the subject, in-research covers the practice, and meta covers meta-statistics that are not related directly to research.
I like the first two, but I don't know about 'statistics-meta'... if I were a new user here, I don't think its usage would be obvious to me.
@ff524 It's hard to get the last one. I know there's a word for it, but I can't remember what it is.
@ff524 statistics-request?
Maybe the existing 'reference-request' makes more sense - the statistics have to come from somewhere, right?
@ff524 That's fine with me.
It sounds like we need something along the lines of stats-depts for the first case, stats-research for the second, and stats-on-academia for the last. I'd prefer to keep them all starting with "stat" for convenience in the tag browser.
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1226 | Editing "weak" questions that are closed for being off-topic without resolving the reason for the closure
Should questions that are closed for being off-topic be edited for formatting, grammar, retagging, or other issues that don't resolve the reason the question was closed?
Is this a valid reason for rejecting suggested edits?
The argument against these edits is that they have several negative consequences:
In many cases, it causes the question to be pushed into the reopen review queue. The edit didn't help resolve the issue that caused the question to be closed as off-topic. So, this creates unnecessary work for reviewers (since the question doesn't really need a review for reopening at this point). Having unnecessary reviews in the queue can decrease users' motivation to help out with reviews.
Users can only vote once in each direction (close, reopen) on any question. It's not clear to me whether "Leave Closed" votes in the reopen review queue count as voting once in the close direction. If it does, this means that by unnecessarily reviewing a question following edits that don't resolve the reason for closure, users are prevented from voting to close this question again if it becomes necessary. Given that we currently have fewer than 50 active users who can cast these votes, this is a cause for concern.
If the user proposing the edit does not have enough reputation to apply edits unilaterally, then it will go into the suggested edits review queue. This is also demoralizing to reviewers, for the same reason; it's a waste of effort for questions that are going to be deleted, anyways.
Edits bump these posts to the front page. If the edit makes the question a candidate for reopening, that's a good thing. But if not, it looks bad to have many closed off-topic questions on the front page; I'd rather not bump these if we can avoid it.
The argument in favor of these edits is that they may turn out to be useful if the question is also, separately, edited to make it on-topic, and it is then reopened. However, it seems to me that it might be preferable to do these formatting, grammar, or other edits only after the issue that led to the closure has been resolved.
I am especially thinking of edits to posts that are not likely to be reopened because they are shopping questions or one of the other off topic questions listed in the help center. For example,
this suggested edit of a shopping question
this suggested edit to a shopping question
this suggested edit to a "Choose a university for me" question
this edit of a programming question
(Not suggesting that users who made these edits were doing anything wrong, since until now we have not had a site policy on the matter.)
@Charles you rejected one of the edits I gave as an example with the reason "I don't see the point of tagging a question that will be deleted anyway." Sounds like you have an opinion on the matter :)
We recently discussed this on Computer Science meta. Consensus was that edits to closed/on-hold questions that do nothing to address the reason for closure should be avoided and, if made, they should be rejected as "No improvement whatsoever."
For me, this applies even if the question could be suitable for reopening if improved. We don't close questions just because they're badly formatted or have poor grammer. By the same token, we shouldn't refuse to reopen a question that's been edited to make it appropriate for the site, even if it's still badly formatted or still has poor grammar. To be honest, it seems unlikely that somebody would make the question appropriate for reopening without also improving the formatting and grammar but, if they did that, somebody else can always come along and fix those minor issues once the question's been opened again (or even while the reopen vote is in progress).
In my experience, people who do make grammar and formatting improvements to on-hold questions are usually well-meaning new users. A polite "Thanks but please don't do that because XYZ; here are some useful things you could do instead" message always seems to redirect their energies to something productive.
If they're mostly well-meaning new users, then unless it's a real problem for the mods I'd be inclined to let it be for encouragement of the new users. When these come past me, I generally just say "approve" and move on. Likewise, they're infrequent enough in the reopen queue that I have no issue with them there.
I think too often closed questions that are salvageable do not get the attention that is required to reopen them. In my opinion anything that people are willing to do to try and move a question closer to being reopened is a good thing. Editing the title and tags can help attract attention from the "right" people who may be able to edit the question even more. Editing grammar and formatting can also be helpful. Sometimes questions are so poorly written that it is difficult to know where to begin in terms of salvaging the question. Other times the question is going to need rephrasing and improved grammar/formatting before it can be reopened.
I was referring more to questions that are not likely to be reopened, like shopping questions, programming questions, etc.
When a salvageable question has been edited, I try to improve the edit if that would help. But that depends on on much I know of the area, and if I have a bit of free time.
I would restrict editing to the titles of closed questions, since this is the information that is most readily visible to the user (in Web searches, internal searches, and the front page).
My argument is that the front page is your "advertisement" to stick around. If there are a lot of typos and poorly worded titles on the front page, it gives a bad impression of the site overall.
Perhaps we should then restrict these edits to actual corrections of the titles, excluding wordsmithing.
Well, we can't really restrict people from editing things, but we can at least recommend that they not do so.
I think the question I meant to ask was, "is this issue a valid reason to reject edits." No plans to restrict people from making edits :)
In that case, yes, it would be a valid reason.
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1230 | Challenge: Describe your country's academic idiosyncrasies in its tag wiki
We have a number of country- and continent-specific tags on Academia.SE:
united-states
europe
united-kingdom
india
asia
switzerland
germany
france
sweden
japan
new-zealand
(feel free to add any existing "country" tags I missed).
These tags are used alongside other tags when asking about conventions or academic systems that are specific to a particular country.
Some, like Europe and Germany, have excellent tag wikis that describe in some detail the specific quirks of that country's academic system. Others... not so much.
If you are personally familiar with a particular academic system, please take a moment to look over its tag wiki and fill in these details.
I think the asia and europe tags are pretty useless. There is just too much variability across the contents to make the tags useful. A few questions from the europe tag (e.g., the ones on FP7 funding and ECTS) might be better served by the eu tag.
I agree, but I think this is a subtly different issue to the question - might I suggest making it a new Meta question?
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1467 | Under what conditions should "thank you" comments be deleted?
Users of this site sometimes flag comments that say
Thank you
or
+1, good answer
for moderator deletion as 'too chatty.'
There are varying opinions on MSE as to when such comments should be deleted.
Some say they make the community more human and friendly, and are nice to keep around
Some say they are useful if they also offer constructive criticism or highlight something useful in the post (e.g. "+1, especially for the very useful link")
Some say they should be removed if there are other, more useful, comments on a post, and the thanks get in the way of the more useful comments.
Some say they should always be removed.
Right now, there is very little consistency on this site - a flag on a "thank you" comment might be declined by a moderator one day, then the same comment might deleted by another moderator the next day if the same user raises a flag again.
On Academia, under what conditions should "thank you" comments be deleted by moderators?
Just FYI, both of the linked MSE posts are relatively old, dating back to when the site was the meta for both the network and issues specific to Stack Overflow. For the purposes of this question, it's probably best to treat them as just helpful commentary, not anything authoritative, as you try to figure out what's right for your own community. (Based on the responses below, it doesn't seem like this was an actual problem; I just want to remove any confusion.)
My quick thoughts:
I would definitely leave in comments that highlight parts of the answer, as they reinforce the message of the answer and indicate why it's important.
A simple "Thanks!" or "+1. Nice answer." that doesn't really contribute anything probably can go.
Comments should at least be left up for a day or so, unless it's clear that they've already been seen and responded to.
+1 for "leave up for at least a day". I would even go further and say a week, as people don't always log in regularly.
@eykanal +1 for writing an example of a good "+1"-style comment where such comments are part of the subject under discussion.
And keep any comment like "Thanks, this worked" or "+1 this is what I do". Any clues about real-world success are useful to see.
If it's been flagged, and there isn't a really good reason for it to stay, just delete it.
What would be a really good reason? If it's asking for clarification, and that clarification has not yet been made. Or if it's pointing out an egregious error in an answer.
I think your definition of "really good reason" is much too narrow. Also, I'm not sure how this answer applies to the specific kinds of comments being asked about in the question.
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1422 | What do we want Academia.SE to be?
Edit: This was not intended to be a "Choose #1 or #2 proposal." This was intended to be a prompt for discussion about what the current community wants from this site. #1 and #2 are just things I've heard from users in the recent past. I am looking for answers that address the general idea of "What should Academia.SE be?" whether they relate to these themes or not.
Recently, we've had several disagreements on meta that I think stem from slightly conflicting views of what this community is (or should be). Broadly, these are:
We are building up a library of concise, clear and correct questions and answers as an archive for interested readers. The main goal of this site is to help both those asking questions and future Google users. We want to make it as easy as possible for others to get/find accurate, focused answers to questions and problems that are within the scope of this site.
We are facilitating "on-the-record" problem-solving between academics/researchers with questions and academics/researchers with answers. The goal of this site is mostly to connect users with questions to other users who want to answer those questions. The main purpose of a thread is to help the people who participated in it, with the entire thread preserved for the benefit of participants and future viewers.
Both of the sites I've just described can be extremely useful and valuable resources (I think Cross Validated is an example of the former, and MathOverflow is an example of the latter), but trying to be both at once causes some friction. For example,
Editing: The first Academia.SE encourages editing - improving question titles, removing "noise" ("sorry for the dumb question," extended thanks, over-lengthy and irrelevant personal information, and pleas of desperation) while still preserving the intent of the OP. The second Academia.SE has a hands-off approach to other people's content, in which edits are discouraged unless a post is made CW to explicitly signal that edits are welcome.
Closing questions: On the first Academia.SE, questions that are outside the scope of the site (as defined on meta) are "noise" and should be closed and/or edited to fit the scope of the site. On the second Academia.SE, if a question is broadly relevant to academia and someone is willing to answer it, it should stay open/be reopened if it's closed.
Comments: To the first Academia.SE, comments that no longer add any value to the author of a post or to future readers are distracting, and should be removed (once they no longer serve a useful purpose). To the second Academia.SE, comments are a part of the historical record of the communication, and should preserved (except for offensive comments).
Answers: On the first Academia.SE, answers that might be useful to the OP but are not really answers to the question should be downvoted, converted to comment, or deleted, so as not to distract from "real" answers. On the second Academia.SE, answers that aren't really answers are useful content, and should be treated as such.
I don't think either of these approaches is especially bad - but trying to be both at once, or to be different things to different users, is (I think) not healthy. As a moderator, it makes it difficult to act on the community's wishes (which part of the community should I follow in acting on flags)? It is confusing to new users, since the site policies are so inconsistent (both in action, and as expressed on meta). And I think it leads to conflict between users (in a bad way, not in a healthy way).
We have grown quite a lot (and graduated!) in the last year, and I think it's well past time to revisit what this community is and what primary role it serves. Do we want to tend more towards Academia.SE #1 or Academia.SE #2? How far do we want to go in whatever direction we choose? What goals are most important to us, as a community?
Note: this is not a question about a specific scenario or a specific site policy. This is a general question about the future direction of the site, please answer accordingly.
Thank you so much for this question. I think we really needed it on site.
I'm strongly in favor of option 1.
If you want the site to be high-level and useful to academics, you have to follow option 2 as MathOverflow does. Option 1 is orthogonal to any high-level academic community, it just wants to lure academics and experts in to write a dead online book useful for an as large as possible audience of random external viewers, without allowing the site to be useful to the people who actually write the content.
@Dilation If you want your opinion to be heard and taken seriously, please write an answer. Otherwise you deprive others of the ability to downvote and comment specifically on your answer.
The different impacts of option 1 and 2 have been "tested" on Physics SE: In its first two years, the site was moderated in accordance with option 2, the level was rather high-level, and there were many experts. After the elections December 2012, option 1 was strongly enforced (together with giving up on keeping up any non-trivial level of the content) with the effect that at present the site is now more appropriate for basic, popular-level, and every-day life questions and answers.
@ff524 ok later, if nobody else writes something in favor of option 2.
@ff524 if I understand the post, there was some migration from beta to normal? I dont know the process, but was there any official decision to make a beta site a full site, and if so, was there any reason it was accepted. As in, are either of the two propositions linked to the original mandate?
@user1938107 Our graduation was nine months ago and the current discussion is not linked to any mandate.
I find it interesting that you consider Cross Validated as an example for type 1. Many questions there seem highly individual and of no general use to me.
I think that the question presents a false dichotomy. We do not have to choose one option vs the other. Also, as users or moderators we are exactly like comments. We are ephemeral (as moderators tend to remind us about comments). Who knows which one of us will still be around to answer questions or moderate this forum in ten years from now? Why do we need to strictly enforce one policy or the other, based on our "vision" we have for this site. Why do we need to actually have a vision for this site, instead of letting it evolve naturally? Why can't we decide on a question-per-question basis or on comment-per-comment basis? Why do we actually need to have a prevailing policy after all? We are mostly scientists and there maybe more than one correct and viable approaches to the exact same problem exist. Why must we enforce the prevailing one? Academia SE really does not have to be our little science project where we calibrate the results to best fit our theory.
The SE policies have been tested multiple times on many sites and they really work. They are harsh but they help avoid the disintegration of SE sites into a mash of newbies who ask silly questions and chase away the serious users who really want to contribute. But here, we do not have any of those problems. We do not have newbies who want to solve their homework. We do not have "Java HasMap. Plz hlp" questions. We do not have help vampires who answer their questions to increase their rep. The high-rep users are established people who just want to contribute and would never waste their time to answer idiotic questions for increasing their rep. As such, this community has none of the problems of Stack Overflow as pointed in many meta questions there (e.g., here and here).
Also, on a personal view, I am not very interested in rounding different questions and answers so that all the different use cases are rounded to the exact same problem, to be marked as duplicates to facilitate easier Google searching. 90% of the answers in this forum may be answered by canned answers like, "Ask your advisor", "Do not walk, run", "Do research as an undergraduate and get good grades to get a good PHD position", "You are not too old for a PHD" and so-on. Do we really need rounded / identical questions and canned answers or we need personalized, high-quality advice from Academia professionals? This is the real question and what we should decide after all. And to that end, option 2 is a a far better choice.
I agree with this. While I like the spirit behind the question, I also think it presents a false dichotomy. I think the more relevant dichotomy is "Live and let live" versus "This site needs to be X; everything which is not X should be expunged". This is certainly a case of an interior point maximum, but I would like to see the site correct in the former direction. It is actually okay for us to have somewhat different goals as long as we give each other some leeway to meet them.
Why do we need to actually have a vision for this site - The reason I am asking for the community's vision for the site is best stated by @PeteL.Clark here: "the basic philosophies of the site should be made clear by the users, and ideally the moderators will do their best to enforce them." As a moderator, I would like to have these basic philosophies expressed/documented in a highly visible place where everyone has a chance to say their piece. Hence, this question.
That's not to say this vision should be static. There won't be an "accepted" answer to this question, and we can revisit it as often as we need to. I'm just looking for a snapshot of where the community (in general) stands right now.
Honestly, I think that we can and should effectively serve both goals.
I see the aim of this site as consistent with #1: providing consistent, clear, and correct answers.
Because of the nature of the questions and answers, however, there is inherently more subjectivity and personal perspective involved in creating a good answer than there is for a question on programming or statistics. For this same reason, I believe that in many cases even answering a fairly question can provide a much more general value in the answer: it is for this reason that I typically take pains to explain the principles and reasoning process that I use to arrive at an answer, because I think that in many cases those are more of the takeaway than the answer itself. I see many others doing the same, and suspect it may be for the same reasons.
From these basic principles, I would propose the following approaches to the various policy questions:
Editing: Removing "noise" is fine, but should be careful to preserve as much of the original intent and also voice of the OP as possible.
Closing questions: Off-topic questions should be closed, but when a question is borderline it is best if it closes more slowly, rather than getting a mod-jump to the end. I see a lot of questions that get a quick answer and/or de facto answers in comments that probably adequately address the OP's problem, even though the question is then deemed not worth of retention. I think this is a good balance between problem solving and curation.
Comments: Many comments serve as good "footnotes" to the original posts, as well as information about how an edge case is best resolved. We should definitely remove obsolete comments, but be slow about it and generous about what we consider a footnote.
Answers: Again, I think we should be fairly generous in what we consider to be an on-topic answer, because many times the exact question asked is not actually the question the person actually wants answered, often due to some degree of ignorance on their part. Anything that doesn't fit a fairly generous reading, however, should be downvoted, converted, or deleted.
As you may notice, I think that in principle we should hew to #1, but in practice due to the nature of the comments there will be a lot of #2 as part of the reality of providing good answers to many issues, especially around judgement and ethics.
tl;dr: vigorous maintenance and weeding help make this site the success it is
Stack Exchange software and guidelines are all designed for "building up a library of concise, clear and correct questions and answers".
That's not the only way to do things. As userxxxx noted in a now-deleted answer, places like the Ask Academia sub-Reddit provide a great venue for other approaches.
But expert Q&A about Academia is what we do well - better than anywhere else on the web, IME. It's how we do things on Stack Exchange - that's why most of us are here rather than somewhere else. There are other places for long discussions all over the web, and have been for many years. There are other places for opinion pieces, for mutual support groups, and so on. We don't need to try to provide those platforms as well as being a Q&A site, because there are already plenty of places on the web for those, with software platforms tailored for them.
The software platform here is tailored for expert Q&A. That's what we've been so far, that's what we're good at: we've got a great web niche, and we fill it really well.
We don't have help vampires, precisely because we are a type #1 site: we close and delete nonsense quickly and efficiently.
We have the tools to close duplicates; to close opinion-based questions; to keep discussions contained to chat. And we use them. Academia.SE has one of the lowest ratios of questions in limbo (closed, but not deleted) of the whole network.
I agree with Alexandros that we're not here to maintain a tiny number of canonical questions and close everything else as duplicates. At the same time, having a hundred answers scattered across fifty questions that all boil down to variants of the same answer is an unmaintanable mess, and that would get in the way of us helping each other.
We've had the discussion about comments here several times, and every time we come back to yes, comments are designed to be ephemeral, and that's what works.
There's a lot of experience across over a hundred Stack Exchange sites about what works in the short run and in the long run. Those are embodied in the guidelines that are common to almost all the sites. They all point to building a library of concise, clear questions and answers. Not discussion. So that means deleting comments once they've served their purposes of seeking clarification or pointing out egregious errors. That means closing questions that are not clear, are off-topic, are too broad, that are primarily opinion based; and then getting those closed questions either edited and reopened, or deleted.
This is about whether we continue with the meticulous weeding and maintenance tasks, or let the site get overgrown with whatever happens to self-sow here. There are already plenty of briar patches all over the internet, and it would be a real waste to take on of the web's best-maintained academic gardens and let it decay into just another briar patch.
Academia in generally is pretty harsh and we all have a lot of things to rant about. What I really like about AC.SE is that we are NOT a discussion board and we have a low tolerance for ranting. Many of our questions are "soft" and our answers are our opinions driven by our experience. While our answers may be our opinions, I think sometimes others can better express MY opinion better than I can. I would like to see AC.SE as a community driven site where we all work together to improve the questions and answers by freely editing them to be as helpful and clear as possible. I think that adding an answer that simply tweaks the meaning of another answer just adds noise to the site. We need to be able to edit things. If answers and comments are not directly relevant, they should be improved or deleted.
I think closing questions is the biggest issue. Keeping AC.SE rant free is important to me. Questions should be closed if they are outside our scope and most definitely if they are discussion oriented. It doesn't matter if someone wants to answer the question or not.
It depends on who you want to get as targetted audience, both as active contributors to the site AND as "passive" external readers.
If the goal is, as the name Academia of the site implies, to have a high expert-level site useful to and used by academics such as professors, active researchers, posdocs, ect you have to treat these folks and their generous contributions with the appropriate respect and appreciation. The schedule of academics and researchers is often very time constrained, which means that the time and effort they voluntarily offer to contribute to something such as this site, can not be taken for granted. If they dont get something back from contributing to Academia themself and dont think the site is of use and helpful to them, they simply dont come or leave again.
So if the targetted audience of Academia is academics and active researchers, the only appropriate (and demonstrably successful) way to moderate the site is the MathOverflow model (Option 2), which is in addition to MathOverflow also successfully applied (adopted exactly) by the research-level Theoretical Computer Science site in the SE network.
From an academics/active researchers point of view, option 1 is orthogonal to any high-level academic community, it just wants to lure academics and experts in to write a dead online book useful for an as large as possible general audience of random external viewers for free, without giving anything back to them or allowing the site to be useful to the people who actually offer their time and effort to write the content.
In summary: if a high density of accomplished academics and active researchers is important for Academia, the SO model (option 1) is not suitable and the MathOverflow model (option 2) should be adopted.
the only appropriate (and demonstrably successful) way to moderate the site is the MathOverflow model Citation needed.
@jakebeal just look at how MO and TCS are successful in maintaining a high density of and being useful for researchers, experts, and academics. MathOverflow is even acknowledged and endorsed as a respectable source by the ("real-world") American Mathematical Society for example. MO and TCS are the only research-level (science) sites in the SE network. If a high density of experts and research-level are less important for Academia, the SO model might do the job too of course ...
Stack Overflow does perfectly fine as a resource. A larger general population simply masks the number of quality questions that are posted. When you have 7 times the population, you're bound to have 7 times the garbage, but the solution is equally countered by 7 times the capability to handle the garbage.
@Compass by applying the MathOverflow model together with keeping up a high (research) level of the site, you can avoid the garbage right from the start. Of course the kind of targetted audience on SO and on a high-level academic (science) sites are rather different, this among the reasons why I say the SO model (which may work perfectly there) should not be extrapolated to high-level academic science sites (including Academia).
@Dilaton I would take your opinion much more seriously if you had done much of anything on this site other than comment on this post. As it is, you appear to be turning up primarily to push a personal agenda. Further, your arguments seem to be based on the assertion that this site is largely devoid of active researchers, which seems rather contradicted by the identities of most of the highly ranked members of the site.
@jakebeal it is the strict application of option 1 (the SO model) which I noted already when looking around at the site more than a year ago, which prevented me from becoming active and involved, even though being a physicist myself there have been questions about academic issues in my mind from time to time and maybe I could give some advice to others too in principle. But again from the discussions I have read just now, I learn that Academia will most probably never offer the good professional environment and academic atmosphere MO and TCS do (and Theoretical Physics SE did).
Looking at our top ten users by reputation, I believe all but one has a PhD, and the rest have tenure track positions, tenure and a number are full professors. All appear to be research active with PhDs from top universities. If anything our density of accomplished academics is too high and not representative of the struggles early career academics face. That said, I think the MO model has value.
@StrongBad taking the top 10 users is usually not an accurate representation of the community. The average Stack Overflow user is no Jon Skeet. I fit into the category you're looking for quite well, for example. It's really hard to maintain a person at the early-struggle academic phase, anyways. Having people who have experienced it should be sufficient.
You're distorting the SE position, just because posts here are useful to more than the user asking a question doesn't hurt the users contributing content here in any way. I think it is especially obvious on this site that many situations users describe in their questions are familiar to other people in academia. This is a good thing, a single good answer can benefit far more people than the asking user alone. This doesn't reduce the value of the site to contributing users in any way.
@MadScientist Applying the MathOverflow model, it comes naturally (without enforcing specific rules and limitations on things that are useful for the community) that what people ask on MathOverflow is useful to many people doing mathematical research. The really bad things happen, when applying the SO model to enforce the content to be useful to a much broader and more general audience than the contributing community. In the case it would mean to enforce the content to be useful for a broad audience unrelated to academia too.
The problem here is that the topics of MathOverflow and Academia are far from being comparable. Mathematics has far harder questions (as opposed to soft questions) than Academia. There are arguably less than a hundred people in the world that are experts on academia in the same way that MathOverflow users are experts on mathematics.
It’s inherently impossible for Academia to be an appropriate place for asking highly specialised questions related to my work (that are otherwise on-topic), because they could only be answered by somebody willing to understand my whole work or already understanding it – in which case there is a good chance that I already know this person. And this is not even taking questions about interpersonal issues into account.
@Wrzlprmft ok, but still on both sites MO and Academia the targetted audience is academics from graduate-level on upwards, which means to be successful as perceived by the corresponding real-world community, it would be wise to take the moderation style of MathOverflow as a role model for Academia too, instead of the SO model. Academics simply dont like to be treated as kindergarten kids who have to be supervised, they and their contributions, needs, and experience have to be respected and taken serious, instead of getting closed, edited, and deleted for the goals of a commercial company.
@Dilaton In my own experience, academics are neither more nor less mature than anybody other group of professionals. Some people need no supervision, others most definitely do; we all deserve respect, but also constructive criticism.
Well, Wikipedia is very much like Option 1, and I see plenty of people contributing to that.
@BenBitdiddle then content of Wikipedia is often not reliable. In addition, I heared (I am not an editor there) that Wikipedia is largely moderated by people who are not qualified enough from a technical point of view with respect to highly advanced (physics) topics for example, they tend to remove good technical content which includes mathematical details as too technical (or for other Wikipedia political reasons that have nothing to do with the objective quality and correctnes) etc ... So I would not take the Wikipedia style of moderation as a role model for an academic site ...
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832 | Duplicates where answer is not easy to find in old question
There have been a few questions recently that I voted to close as duplicates and also answered, because of the following:
I think the old question includes a valid answer to the new question, but I don't think it's trivial for the asker to identify how it answers their specific question even after we point them to the duplicate.
For example:
I marked How do I negotiate an offer for PhD funding as a dup of Negotiating PhD funding. Roughly, the answer is the same (it can't hurt to ask if you are polite about it). But I think it might be onerous for the asker of the new question to identify the "nugget" that applies to his scenario, from among the advice that only applies to the old question.
I marked Is IJCA a valid open access journal?
as a dup of How do you judge the quality of a journal?. The answer to the former is basically a distillation of the latter; but I don't think the asker of the new question could have done that distillation himself.
How do we want to handle questions like these?
On the one hand, we don't want to spread answers to essentially the same question across duplicates.
On the other hand, we want users who come to this site and ask valid questions to feel like they got an answer. We don't want to tell them, "There's an answer, but you'll have to expend significant effort to dig through another question's answers to find the part you came for" (if they're even capable of doing so).
Also, sometimes there is an answer that is a better answer to the new question than any of the old answers; but the new answer wouldn't be a good answer to the old question.
In many cases, the Related questions on the right-most column when you enter the question title of your newly asked question will tell you the questions that are related to the question you are about to ask. Many new users did not know this feature or simply ignore them.
@scaaahu edited to clarify; I am referring to difficulty in finding the relevant part of the answer, after we point out the duplicate
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2075 | Should we specify that questions where "expert" answers are from experts outside of academia are off-topic?
Occasionally we get questions that are about the on-topic areas listed in the help center, but that are considered off-topic here because an expert answer to such a question would come from an expert in something else (not academia.)
For example,
Are Harvard-style open access policies lawful under civil law? is about academic publishing, which is on-topic, but needs expertise in law (not expertise in academia) to answer.
How does one determine he has a learning disability? is about life as a graduate student, which is on-topic, but requires expertise in adult learning disabilities (i.e. from psychologists, educational specialists, etc.), not expertise in academia, to answer.
Should we add another item to this list in the help center
However, please do not ask questions about
Undergraduate-specific issues that could not apply to graduate or post-graduate academicians
Suggestions or recommendations for a university, journal, or research topic (a "shopping question")
Preparation for a non-academic career ("What graduate degree will help me get a job as X?")
The content of your research, rather than the process of doing research
specifying that this kind of question is off-topic?
For example, we might add
Subjects that require expertise from another domain, that could not reasonably be answered by experts in academia. For example, questions about legal-issues affecting academics that require expertise in law to answer should be asked at Law Stack Exchange, not here. Similarly, questions about health-issues affecting academics that require medical expertise to answer should be asked at Health Stack Exchange, not here.
In general, I think an on-topic question on this site should at least have a significant component which can be answered by those with expertise in academia. While abstractly it need not be so, in reality this site is populated by a relatively temporary community of questioners and a relatively permanent community of answerers (I would like it better if there were more give and take, by the way, but the SE model seems to push things in this direction). If the answerers, as a group, answer most questions well (as I think we do) then over time the site itself acquires a reputation of legitimacy and expertise in certain areas.
When we get asked questions which are set in academia but academics are unqualified to answer, I think everything is set up for much worse answers. SE is designed precisely to condition people to participate more, rather than less, and so such questions are very likely to attract answers anyway...just with the absence of expertise. When the locus of expertise is too remote, it becomes difficult even for the community to evaluate answers, which is a key step of the process. When it comes to, say, legal and medical advice, it is hard for me to tell the difference between someone with knowledge and someone who googled the keywords and is reporting the search results.
I think that these issues should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, and it is the serious users of the site who should determine what is on-topic. (I strongly doubt that most users determine what questions they should be asking using the help center, but let met not digress.) For the two sample questions above, the first one looks like it requires both academic and legal expertise, and moreover academic experts -- enough of us, anyway -- should have some level of professional expertise in the law as it pertains to academic publication. I think the second sample question is a clear mismatch for our site. I don't think it is about student life in an essential way: the way a graduate student goes about determining if he has a learning disability is the way any other educated adult goes about determining if he has a learning disability...right? By the way, I don't really know: as a lifelong academic I have precisely zero training in diagnosing learning disabilities in myself and others. Rather I have been trained not to pretend that I know how to do this but rather to refer interested parties to the appropriate resource centers on my university campus. I think we serve our clientele well by making a similar referral rather than taking a shot at answering questions like this.
Half in response to a comment:
It seems a little unfair to me that we close these questions without saying anywhere in the help center that they're off topic. That is what I perceive as the "gap" in the current system.
You cannot specify a site’s scope so precisely that you list everything that is off-topic somewhere. What we do list in the help centre is (boldface mine):
If you have a question about...
Life as a graduate student, postdoctoral researcher, university professor
Transitioning from undergraduate to graduate researcher
Inner workings of research departments
Requirements and expectations of academicians
University-level pedagogy
... then you're in the right place!
The argument for closing the example questions (whether you agree with it or not), is essentially, that they are not about any of the above but about crafting a copyright policy or psychiatric assessment, respectively. With other words: Boat academia.
Of course, drawing a clear line between on-topicness and off-topicness here is impossible, as the questions are not entirely not about academia. But this would be the case with your proposed extension as well. Therefore closure is eventually opinion-based to some point.
I thus do not think that we need a line in the help centre covering such questions as it could rather do harm in form of people feeling obliged to close questions with this argument, even though nobody actually considers them off-topic and they are best fit on our site (rather than, e.g., Law or Health). (On German Language SE, we had a some quarrel and confusion about a close reason that said that some specific type of question was off-topic under certain conditions, which most people did not really agree with, and eventually solved it by making the close reason more fuzzy and less prescriptive.)
I feel like these are fairly rare cases, and that each tends to be unique---they're just very perceptually prominent to us right now because we happened to get two in close succession. As such, I think that the current system (identify as off-topic, migrate if well-formed) is fine for dealing with them.
Complementarily, I would worry that a scaring off people who have a good question to ask on topics like law and health, since many times there is sufficient practical expertise to handle these questions, as can be seen when browsing those tags.
In many cases, in fact, I believe that the highly technical questions of these types are XY problems. For example, this question on legal rights to demand information from a university drew many strong answers that pointed out that the legal approach was not the right way to approach the problem and suggested better ones instead.
In short: let's leave them be and see if they accumulate enough that it's actually a critical mass demanding action.
It seems a little unfair to me that we close these questions without saying anywhere in the help center that they're off topic. That is what I perceive as the "gap" in the current system.
@ff524 I would be concerned if they don't end up migrating---if they do end up migrating, then I feel it's entirely reasonable. Is failure to migrate a pattern?
Just because we cannot answer them, does not make them off topic. I think we should leave them open. I think we should also help get them answered, possibly by posting in another SE site's chat or even someplace like REDDIT. If they remain unanswered for a while, we could offer bounties to try and help get an answer.
I agree with "just because we cannot answer them, does not make them off topic" in cases where the answer is expected to come from someone who is an expert in academia - if someone asks a questions that requires expertise in an area of academia that isn't well-represented here, that question shouldn't be closed just because we can't answer it. But I disagree with this when the question mainly requires expertise in some other domain (not academia.)
Finally some common sense.
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1915 | New feeds in chat from relevant tags on other SE sites
Following the suggestion in this meta post, some new feeds have been added to the Academia chat room. The feed will post in the room each time a new question is posted on one of these tags:
career-development on Mathematics SE
career on MathOverflow
career on Theoretical Computer Science SE
academia on Cross Validated
graduate-education and undergraduate-education on Math Educators SE
These specific tags were chosen because:
The content of most of the questions in them is highly related to the areas that are in the scope of Academia, and
They are fairly low-volume (we don’t want to overwhelm chat)
The purpose of this meta post is for users to give feedback on the feeds in chat: “I hate this and want all the feeds to go away,” “I want X tag on Y site to also be added because Z,” etc.
As each of these feeds is posted by its own dedicated user, you can get rid of them on a per-feed basis by simply ignoring the respective user.
My goodness: this means chat might actually be used on a regular basis!
I suggest to add:
research on Mathematics SE.
research-process on Biology SE
research-practice on Theoretical Computer Science SE
education-research on Math Educators SE
research on Computer Science SE
The CS Theory tag looks good. The Math and Biology tags have many questions that are too math- and biology- specific, and the CS tag seems to have many questions that are low-quality or not suitable for SE. I feel like the education-research questions on Math Educators that are relevant will mostly also be tagged with undergraduate-education or graduate-education. (I don't think we're as interested in general education-research questions.)
I agree that the tags from Math, CS and Biology seem to be misused – pretty much like our [tag:research] tag. If I had editing privileges on one of those sites, I would probably clean them up. And as with all those feeds, we have to expect questions that are not interesting for us at all.
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