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3269 | Canonical Q&A suggestion: "I've been admitted to multiple graduate programs, how to choose between them?"
This question is now live: I've been admitted to multiple PhD programs, how should I choose between them?
In March/early April, we often get (highly specific) questions from students who have been admitted to multiple graduate programs, and are not sure how to choose between them.
I think we could benefit from a "canonical" question and high-quality answer explaining what kinds of things to take into consideration in making such a decision. This Q&A would serve as a duplicate target for questions asking for help deciding between multiple programs, and would aggregate all this advice in one place.
We have several such canonical posts for other similarly broad questions, and they have been fairly successful:
What does the typical workflow of a journal look like?
How does the admissions process work for Ph.D. programs in the US, particularly for weak or borderline students?
Graduate school admission with a degree in a different field
The proposed Q&A would be community wiki, and the answer would quote relevant parts from existing answers to questions on topics such as:
Comparing universities
University rank/stature - How much does it affect one's career post-Ph.D?
Is it a good idea to go to a university just because of its high international ranking?
How to decide which university to study for PhD
Deciding whether to study abroad or continue at my current university for my PhD, what factors to consider?
Choosing universities or programs
Evaluating Grad Schools on grounds other than research
Comparing potential advisors
What questions should one ask to the former/current students of a professor before deciding whether to do PhD under him/her?
How to evaluate potential advisers on grounds other than their research/publications?
What are the advantages/disadvantages of a PhD advisor who is experienced vs. one at the beginning of his career?
Why would one choose a particular advisor, other than having shared interests?
Comparing research groups
Is alumni success a valid parameter for selecting a group?
How to judge the reputation of a potential advisor or research group for good quality research for PhD?
Comparing offers based on funding
What are some of the issues one should keep in mind while choosing between a fully funded offer and another with no funding?
If no funding is available at the time of admission, what are the chances of getting funding later, and when would I find out?
Will I be treated differently from funded students if I attend graduate school without full funding?
Will self funding a PhD hurt employment chances?
Implications of being accepted without funding to a computer science PhD in the United States?
Balancing multiple metrics
What's more important in choosing a PhD program, advisor or institution?
Low ranking university with fund VS Unsure opportunity at a higher ranking one
Does this canonical Q&A seem like it would be useful?
As a soon-to-be graduate student, I thank everyone in this community for taking the time to answer such questions, as well as rounding up some really important ones to help people like me through the process!
I like this proposal, because it offers useful advice while still giving us a mechanism to weed out the "A or B" questions we get this time of year.
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906 | Site graduated! New design launched
As you can see the new design just went live. Which means this site has been officially launched! Congratulations! Thank you for your valuable design feedback.
If you're still seeing the old favicons, please load the follow urls and do a hard browser refresh.
http://cdn.sstatic.net/academia/img/favicon.ico
http://cdn.sstatic.net/academiameta/img/favicon.ico
If you see any CSS/styling bugs, please start a new post and tag it with "design" and "bug."
Congrats on the launch and thank you for being an awesome community!
oooh spiffy! (Just noticed a new icon on a question in the hot list, and came to investigate.)
Awesome everyone :)
I need to do some work to regain my reputation-earned moderator privileges (;
Thanks for the work. Looks really good in its final form.
Stéphane, I freely admit that I'm using an outdated browser, which may be the problem, but I'm seeing little to no difference in the color of Q titles for unvisited/visited. Should I see a difference? I like having a color or bold/normal change so I can quickly scan for Qs that I have or haven't visited yet.
Flat design, I love it!
That is such an elitist design. Academia is not defined by institutional buildings.
@user13107 I don't agree with either of your statements. 1) In many (western) countries, the majority of every year attends a university, so a campus is not elitist per se. 2) Arguably, it is; academia does overwhelmingly happen at physical universities. Also, the design should project some recognisable visualisation of the site topic which is not necessarily its definition (cf. [math.SE], [physics.SE], ...)
Congratulations!
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3445 | Suitable answers to my A.SE question could be either backed by personal experience OR a reference: Use the reference-request tag?
I have asked a question on Academia SE, and I'm looking for answers to my question that are either backed up by personal experience or that provide a reference.
Ideally, even a reference-based answer would still include a bit of explanation from the answerer about why the solution mentioned in the reference is, for example, a viable solution to my problem, etc.
In this case, is it advisable to use the reference-request tag?
I mainly want to make sure that I follow the norms of the site (whatever they may be), and I don't want to turn potential answerers away by using/excluding the reference-request tag.
Related meta question: How should the reference-request tag be used?
Edited to add: the sole answer to this meta question doesn't answer the question I am asking at all (yet, the answer is receiving up votes for some reason). So, I'm hoping to get a useful answer to this question.
In my experience, if you are explicitly asking for references, people with answer with personal experience anyway.
You can try that, but the most effective approach here would be to add a bounty to the question. You can only start a bounty two days after the question was posted, so you have some time left.
Adding tags is not a very effective way to look for more answers. Tags are used differently by different users, but I've seen them used mostly for searching, and less for highlighting.
I think the meta question is whether the tag is appropriate on this kind of question, not whether it is useful for drawing attention.
@MadJack - Ah, sorry about that. I don't have much to say on that topic.
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1890 | Moderator casting one of only two reopen votes — Someone's got some 'splainin to do
Moderator aeismail cast one of two reopen votes for the following question:
Is it reasonable to request an exemption from certain degree requirements?
In my view, this question has several problems:
It deals with an undergraduate problem which cannot be generalized to graduate students,
Any answers related to increasing OP's likelihood of success strongly depends on institutional policies, and
A really interesting take suggested by RoboKaren here: the question is a "boat-programming" question.
It is interesting that moderator aeismail cast one of only two reopen votes, when he clearly explains his view on such matters here. In the linked meta question, aeismail states:
Stack Exchange sites are community-driven. Therefore, as much as possible, the moderators try to leave decisions to the general community. We will act unilaterally in clear-cut cases (abusive or spam posts, duplicates, completely off-topic questions such as programming questions, and so on). Otherwise, we prefer to wait until there's a consensus.
In this particular instance, the close votes were entirely from regular users; the moderators played no role in closing the question. Personally, I agree that the question you've cited should be reopened, and would support a reopening "campaign"; I've indicated this in the comments section. However, as I also pointed out above, the moderators here prefer to work from a consensus standpoint, so I'd rather if several users voted to reopen instead of acting unilaterally.
I agree with what aeismail wrote in his answer above. But, unfortunately, that is clearly not what happened in the case of the "undergraduate-trying-to-get-out-of-a-humanities-requirement" question.
I like to assume that there are good reasons for things which happen on Academia SE, and that I've probably missed something.
Can someone explain why aesimail's actions on this question are good for this community-driven site?
Edited to add:
It seems that I've misjudged the value that the community places on the "undergraduate" question that started this thread. As of this writing, there have been only 3 close votes recast (not to mention several additional upvotes). I'm not going to stand in the way of this question: I have retracted my close vote.
Hats off to aeismail for seeing the value in the question that I did not.
Note that close votes cannot be "recast"; as far as I know, you can only vote once to close a question, and once to reopen it. So it's actually quite difficult to get enough votes to re-close a question.
@ff524 Ahh, I did not know that. Thanks!
I reviewed the question based on it being flagged for moderator attention.
The main reason citing it being closed was that it was "undergraduate focused." However, the fundamental question relates to requesting the exemption in the context of applying to graduate schools, which makes it relevant for this board. (Again, I will also note that I have said on multiple occasions that the undergraduate flag is overused.)
In that spirit, I viewed that the original basis for closing the question was no longer valid, and cast a reopen vote. I do not feel that this is an "abuse" of moderator power, as it came out of a direct request for intervention, not as a "drive by" reopening.
.
Thanks for the explanation. I'm still not sure I agree that the question is a good fit for the site, but that's life.
I would still argue that "applying to graduate school" is the boat programming analogy to our "undergraduate focus" problem. If we (as a community) think that we should include undergrad questions, then we should definite a clear policy that defines what is and what isn't allowed, rather than allowing ".. if I'm going to grad school..." to the be magic words that allow them.
@RoboKaren: I agree we have to be careful about this, but I think here the issue was actually germane to the question as a whole.
Can someone explain why aesimail's actions on this question are good for this community-driven site?
I think the simple answer is, because aeismail does an excellent job of moderating the site. Based on the responses, he probably jumped the gun a little on his reopen vote. Note that he wasn't obviously wrong in his actions since the question has still not be reclosed. In fact, had I seen the edit and not had a mod vote, I would not have hesitated on voting to reopen. Overall, I like how aeismail moderates, and it seems a little harsh to ask him to justify himself for such a minor issue.
As a mod, I think there is a difference between mod hammering a question to close it versus to reopen it. Further, we tend to have a high bar for reopening questions and a few users are very against under graduate questions. The cost of reopening it, means a few people need to vote to close it again, the benefit is a new user.
Finally, I think this is where comments about closing can help. Had we been clearer about what needed to be fixed, I would have been less ikely to vote to open, and hopefully we would have gotten a better answer.
I think the simple answer is, because aeismail does an excellent job of moderating the site. — I don't think this answers the quoted question. Moving on: from a user perspective, the best moderators are the ones you don't really notice, and I think aesmail scores excellently in that regard. In this particular instance, though, I think his actions were a little on the heavy-handed side. Just my $0.02.
Thanks for offering your take on this issue. Now that a few days have passed, I see that I am in the ultra minority on this particular question.
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1763 | Two similar questions about non-academic jobs/internships — one closed as off-topic, the other was not: what gives?
Inspired by recent meta questions (Are question about job outside academia but related to on topic? and Are questions regarding academic internships off-topic?), I'd like to get some feedback on two very similar questions related to non-academic jobs/internships which were handled very differently.
The first question, Does your university name matter?, was closed as off-topic.
The second question, Does name of university matter for internships?, was not closed.
These two questions seem to be quite similar to my mind (perhaps, one is a duplicate of the other, but that is another matter). However, the outcomes of the two questions above is inconsistent and, I must say, confusing (to me, anyway). Why were these two questions handled so differently by the "powers that be?"
I am one of the voters who voted to close the first question and voted to leave the second question open. I feel obligated to answer your question from my own perspective.
However, I can only speak for myself. Please take my answer as my own opinion.
My vote to close the first question was because it is about an undergrad student seeking jobs outside Academia.
My vote to "Leave Open" the second question because of the word "internships". To me, an internship job is temporary. The OP will go back to school at the end of it. In my opinion, it's on the borderline between Academia and industry. This is what was on my mind at the time I was reviewing Close Votes.
If I remember it correctly, I did hesitate to leave open the second one because the OP is an undergrad student. It seems that it was an undergrad question. Then my thought was that the same could happen to graduate students. So, there was my vote.
Come to think of the whole thing, the first question deals with the issue "prestigious school vs. average school" while seeking industry jobs. This is an important question because everyone needs a job, whether in Academia or industry. We do have questions concerning Academians' job hunting in industry on this site. If expanding the question to undergrad students, I am not sure our community would accept it.
The above is my opinion and mine only.
You ask an excellent question. I don't know how they ended up with different dispositions; they should either both be left open or both be closed on the same grounds. I would tend to lean towards them both being left open.
One thing to note, though—the "powers that be" are all the users that have sufficient representation to cast close votes. Also, close votes expire after a certain window. So it may be the case that "critical mass" was achieved in one case but not the other.
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1749 | Please don't edit away all the questions in a post
Although the questions in the original version of this post were an implicit request for advice which should probably have been closed as "cannot be generalized to others", there was at least something approaching a question in the post. Unfortunately, the post was edited to remove this implicit question and the post is now, instead, on the brink of being closed as "Unclear what you're asking." The cumulative effect seems rather unfair on the original asker: we delete the question and then appear to be dinging her for not asking a question. (Related phenomenon: Motorist given parking ticket after council contractors moved her legally parked car.)
Please be careful when editing that you don't remove all the questions from a post. If the only questions there are unsuitable for the site, we should just close the post for that reason.
I'm not posting this to criticize the person who made the edit, or the people who voted to close. But I do think we should be careful not to do this kind of thing.
Ironically, there's no question in this post, either.
There was never really a viable question there. It was (and remains) a long, rambling, "here's my [boyfriend's] story, what do you think?"
The edits were pretty much pointless. The question should have just been put on hold straight away, for the OP to to edit down to a specific answerable question.
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1699 | What to do about old questions whose answers are now invalid
This is inspired by the close vote on this question, which asks whether one should put MOOCs on one's CV. The comments are:
I would note that this was asked three years ago, here; I'm not sure if the answer hasn't changed a small (very small) amount since 2012 though, particularly as several MOOCs move closer to a kind of accreditation. Joe
[I]t is a duplicate. Etiquette is not to re-ask an old question for which the answer might have changed over time; but rather to add new answers, or update existing ones, on the old question. [...] EnergyNumbers
While I agree with the points raised, there are several problems here.
By construction, the asker of the new question cannot add a new answer to the old question or update an existing answer: they are asking because they do not know the answer. Is there anything that a user can do to encourage new answers to old questions that has approximately the same force as adding a new question?
Even if somebody does post a new answer to an old question, that new answer won't be noticed if there are high-scoring out-of-date answers. How can new answers to old questions get noticed? e.g.,
+157 Giant lizards are the most important creatures on earth. – A. Dinosaur [200M years ago]
1 Homo sapiens is having a big impact. – Hugh Man [13 mins ago]
Extensive editing of old answers seems misleading. People presumably upvoted A. Dinosaur's answer because they thought it was correct, not because they thought that anything he might change it to in the future would be correct. An unscrupulous dinosaur could, for example, change his answer to "The world is, in fact, controlled by a cabal of blueberries" which, now, apparently 157 people agree with. But, even after a reasonable but substantial change, the score no longer represents the community's view of the current answer.
What should we do about high-scoring answers that are no longer valid?
I suppose points 2 and 3 are something of a flaw in the Stack Exchange model. It kind of aims for objective truth, but objective truth isn't measured by voting.
We have a nice case study on this that has just appeared: a question about Elsevier's new system that has been flagged as a possible duplicate of a question about the system it replaces.
I would suggest a perhaps rather unusual solution that hacks the SE model: for a case in which the situation has radically changed over time, create the new question and link to the old question as a possible duplicate with the explicit declaration that the new question has been created because the situation has changed. Then:
If the community thinks things have really changed, close the old question as duplicate and add an edit at the top saying: "This is how things used to be, but see the new question because they have changed"
If the community things things haven't changed, close the new question as duplicate.
Another possibility, similar to what jakebeal suggests, is to simply ask directly if the answer is now invalid.
This is more or less the approach I took with my recent question:
How has the application review process for NSF graduate fellowships changed?.
It seems to have been well accepted by the community.
Of course, this could lead to questions whose answer is simply "No", but no one said all the question of our site had to be interesting.
Looking forward to "How has the ... fellowships changed 2: Electric Boogaloo" in a couple years.
Adding a bounty to an old question asking for new answers will likely get it noticed. New answers to old questions get added to a special review queue, which increases the visibility. As for answer that are now outdated, adding a comment saying they are outdated is probably useful or even an edit which explains how thing shave changed and why the answer is now out dated.
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987 | How and why should a question be made a community wiki?
I wrote this question: How should academics handle communication with the media? and think it would benefit from people editing it by adding their personal experience so that we can cover more aspects of this issue.
Is it a candidate to become a community wiki? If yes, what is the procedure for a low-rep worm like me to suggest it might be?
Why would the question need to be community wiki for users to add their experiences? Those belong in answers, not in the question.
@MadScientist I think answers should answer the question, not expand it.
To answer the why, there isn't much of a reason anymore; the added feature of "suggested edits" made it mostly superfluous (source). Nowadays, questions almost never would be marked community wiki (CW), and only the very rare answer that truly requires the community to comprehensively answer would be converted.
To answer the how, just flag a question and a mod can convert it. But we would probably decline the flag as it would not almost certainly not be necessary.
To address the specific question at hand, the question is highly relevant to Academia, and the answers are all very appropriate and stand on their own. I don't think that should be marked CW.
I see. It feels like no one ever edit questions to add information in them, probably out of respect for the OP. So the wiki-like questions are not really the way this site works I guess. Thanks for the explanations.
@Jigg - Not exactly. People can edit questions, and do so all the time. The real difference is that people with >2k reputation can make edits as they wish, and people with <2k rep can suggest edits that other experienced users (and mods) can approve. Because of that new(er) functionality, CW doesn't really serve much of a purpose anymore.
I understand, thanks for the additional info. I see people editing questions to correct typos and formatting, but not to e.g add items to a bullet list (which would be what I would see as wiki-like behavior). I get a better sense at how this site works now.
The accepted answer neglects an important feature of community-wiki questions: they do not confer reputation on the asker. This is an important feature, because some users do not want to gain lots of reputation for questions which tend to be high-traffic and highly upvoted but (often) convey less subject-area acumen.
On many other sites, questions are routinely made CW. For the first several years of SE's existence, on SE sites one had the option of making a question CW upon asking it. Many longtime SE users (like me) view the removal of this feature as slightly obnoxious. It was slightly obnoxious provided that requests to convert questions to CW were routinely granted. If they are not being granted, then I at least view the change as a very obnoxious loss of functionality. For a platform whose motto is "We don't run XXXX, you do!", SE has been slowly but steadily moving towards a model which micro-manages user contributions. I would welcome moderators who push back against this a bit, as do most or all of the moderators on the other SE sites I frequent.
Added: There are further nuances of CW which are not discussed in the accepted answer. A non-CW question is attached to a single user. Although high rep users can edit the question, in the culture of many sites -- including this one -- edits to questions are done sparingly, mostly at the level of copyediting, adding links and removing obviously problematic content. There is the sense that a question is still being asked by a specific person and that one should not mess with it too much without their consent. Making a question CW is a clear signal that everyone is encouraged to edit it as much as possible. Losing this feature is...is a loss. I can't understand why that would not be desirable on a site like this.
You seem to be leading a crusade for marking questions as CW, and ignoring the three-year-old Stack Exchange blog post to the contraray that has been pointed out a few times now. I'm having a difficult time understanding your continued insistence that CW is a current feature given this post.
@eykanal: I am currently trying to take a short break from this site to gain perspective (and await the outcome of the current election). But you implicitly asked me for clarification, so I don't want to be rude by not responding at all. On the other hand, I am getting a strong defensive vibe from you and the other moderators: for instance, it has been suggested to me that expressing criticism and vocalizing my own disappointment is not "civil".
You used the word "crusade" to describe this behavior of mine: asking a question and flagging it for CW, then responding to your critical comments about the question by leaving two answers on the meta site. Thus I have reason to believe that a full engagement with your comments is not something that you want to receive. But here is a brief preview: what you claim I have "ignored" was explicitly pointed out in the answer above. My "continued insistence that CW is a current feature" is justified by this recently asked CW question:http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20901/.
Also, the post that you link to says: "Community wiki is like a cheese knife: it is a specialized tool to be used sparingly." I have asked exactly one CW question on this site: this seems wonderfully consistent with sparing use. Also I explained why cultural specific features on sites frequented by academics -- like academia.SE -- makes CW a more useful feature. Finally, in another post you write that CW is commonly used on some other SE sites but not this one. When the topic of discussion is whether CW should be used on this site, that is not a strong argument.
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1588 | Is the seemingly high prevalence of clinical depression cases in A.SE askers normal?
I recently ran a simple Google search for instances of the word 'depression' on this site, and was shocked to see how frequent they were.
Does anyone else finds it surprising? Is it just an artifact, or does our site somehow attract depressed peoples? Despite what some say, I'm unconvinced that the prevalence of clinical depression amongst academics is higher than usual. I'm ready to change my mind when confronted to hard evidence of the contrary.
Questions where OP mention their clinical depression always make me uncomfortable, because they are often borderline off-topic and I sometimes don't have the hart to mention it. On the other hand I really think it's a bad idea to rely on random internet posts to handle serious nervous issues and don't want to be a part of a community that does that.
So I'm interested in your opinions about it. Should we do specific things in terms of moderation, or do we need a tag for it?
List of question mentioning depression (I stopped after 2 pages of search results)
Explicit mention of clinical depression:
What do I do as a depressed and incompetent TA?
Overcoming depression and getting back on rails with PhD work
Should a postdoc talk about his depression with his mentor?
Would most PhD supervisors stop working with a student who was unproductive due to clinical depression?
How to overcome feeling that published articles lack public interest?
What to do if one has had an unsuccessful PhD (because of others' fault)?
Is it possible to recover after a career setback such as this?
Should I leave my PhD in year 6 or just take a bit of a leave and try to regroup?/ What is an "appropriate" level of angst to go through with a PhD?
Graduate without a job offer or delay
Thinking about leaving a master's program
Applying to grad school for mathematics with low GPA, but reluctant to bring up the health issues that caused it
If I have an academic dismissal from a school should I ever go back there?
...
Borderline questions:
Career advice: How can I move on from my probable PhD flop?
Should I quit my PhD - workload, self-esteem and social life
How to cope with feelings of powerlessness on a PhD?
Is feeling lonely and uncomfortable in my (foreign) country of study a valid reason to drop out of a PhD?
Due to the "stigma" normally associated with depression, A.SE offers an anonymous enough out that allows users to ask questions they would consider as taboo in the workplace.
I am always up for a tag. (As a taxonomist badge holder.)
Remember, these are all self diagnosed.
@Raystafarian Not all of those are self-diagnosed. You might think about deleting your comment.
No idea if it's true, but I have heard claims that depression correlates with high intelligence — perhaps there are more depressed people in Academia — or perhaps this correlation is a myth.
@Raystafarian At least one of the listed OPs says diagnosed, and other people have as well. Why not give them the benefit of a doubt?
@mkennedy it's that the "seemingly high prevalence" is self-reported, it has nothing to do with individuals. My point is that the data may be skewed.
What?! Are you suggesting to discriminate OPs (or their questions) by moderation actions, just because they mention suffering from a clinical depression? I see nothing bad about the questions in your list, and I dont see why you classify some of them as "borderline". I thought Academia is meant to be helpful for people who look for advice concerning academic life, including negative aspects and difficulties. The answers of questions about how to deal with difficulties of different kinds (including personal difficulties other people may have too) are among the most helpful.
@Dilaton my question is more about the reason for this high number of depression occurrences. I wanted to know what other users think about it. But yes I think we should keep an eye on this. I don't think this site is the place for personal advice and certainly not about medical conditions of any kind.
@CapeCode I agree that the site can not give advice from a medicine point of view, but people here on Academia can obviously give better advice about how to cope with certain issues with respect to everyday academic life. Psychologist who are not academics themself often dont know how academic communities work. So I see nothing wrong with such questions who ask about things that are specific to the academic life, conversely to general questions focused on the medical condition as such. Also, the community of Academia consists of highly qualified people who are capable of moderating themself
and decide themself what kind of questions they appreciate and want to answer. The questions you listed, including the ones you call "borderline", and their answers are largely upvoted and appreciated by the community. So they should just been left alone and nothing has to be done.
@Dilaton gathering opinions was the point of this question, please compile yours in an answer.
@gerrit that sounds phony. Plus I doubt that there more intelligent people in academia than outside.
I think that there is probably a lot of selection bias in the questions that we see. There are a lot of depressed people out there, and people who are struggling with something (depression or otherwise) are a lot more likely to come and ask a question on this site. I'm not surprised that depression is one of our themes. I agree with ff524 that health-issues reasonably covers it, though it's worth wondering whether we should add mental-health as well.
It is also worth distinguishing between two major classes of depression:
Chronic depression is a condition that is long-term and people who suffer from it generally need some form of ongoing professional medical support. We cannot and should not help with this, other than to recommend that people take their depression seriously and seek help, and to make recommendations on professional actions that can help limit the damage that is a byproduct.
Situational depression is a common response to situations of major and unusual stress, and graduate school is simply full of major and unusual stress. Just like with chronic depression, people experiencing situational depression can benefit strongly from professional help. Here, however, there is also a likelihood of significant benefits just from learning that their experience is common and hearing how others have gotten through similar difficulties---much like and strongly linked to imposter syndrome.
In short: I don't think depression is over-represented, and there are some ways that we can help, but we must not succumb to the temptation to play consequence-free internet doctor.
I am very much against a [tag:mental-health] tag, just because I am concerned about contributing to the misconception that mental health issues are somehow not "real" medical issues.
@ff524 I was proposing it as a subcategory of health issues, but I can see your point as well...
I like this answer a lot, especially the 'consequences-free internet doctors' bit.
I like Jake's differentiation between chronic and situational depression. Great answer.
How about [tag:psychological-issues] (alike [tag:interpersonal-issues])? It does cover a similar topic, but it does not sound as serious (or authoritative) as anything with mental, medical or health. Especially as we really don't want to diagnose people ("A real depression, burn-out, low mood, impostor syndrome or laziness? Should you change it with drugs or changing your life situation?").
@PiotrMigdal I don't see how "you have a psychological issue" is less diagnostic than "you have a health issue," and "psychological issues" has some stigma attached that "health issues" does not.
@PiotrMigdal Also: We tag questions based on the OP's self-assessment ("I am depressed" -> gets [tag:health-issues]) not our own assessment ("You sound like you may be depressed" -> no [tag:health-issues]). (We do also have [tag:emotional-responses] for situations where the OP says "I am sad about X" but not "I am depressed.")
@ff524 When I cannot bring myself to work (because of my mind, not - my body) then I would eagerly classify it as a psychological issue but not necessary as a health issue. psychiatry is a subset of medicine but psychology isn't. To get a direct example - being in love is a psychological thing but (usually) not - psychiatric. When it comes to A.SE - impostor syndrome classifies as a psychological issue but not necessary as a health issue (at least IMHO, or rather - IMHTerminology).
@ff524 Well, tagging is based on the content of the question, but we DO correct them to comply with A.SE taxonomy, standards, etc. When it comes to "depressed" it is unfortunate that in English it does not differentiate between "being sad" and "having depression" (correct me if I am wrong). Plus, more than often psychological problems (in questions) are being implied rather than being written explicitly.
@ff524: While this may be an unfortunate side effect, I do not think this should play into such decisions. Also, I would consider the effect negligible against other effects leading to that decision. That being said, I do not think we need a separate tag, because there are sufficient communalities and we do not have so many questions of this kind that they need a substructure.
I don't think this is academia-specific. Depression is a common human condition. Evidence: Google search for Workplace.SE mentions of depression (10 pages of results).
I don't think we need a separate tag; health-issues seems adequate to me.
I also don't think we need to handle it differently than we currently do: close questions that are about depression itself, and answer questions that are about academic problems related to or caused by depression.
Depression is a common human condition really?
@CapeCode I can't tell if you're being sarcastic, so here's the NIMH estimate of prevalence in the US, which sets it at 6.7% of the population.
@jakebeal No, I 'm genuinely surprised. I haven't been confronted with depression in people I know since my teen years.
@CapeCode You are probably not aware of when people are clinically depressed. Depression is not just when people kill themselves - lots of people are depressed and only their closest friends and family (or nobody) knows it.
@CapeCode: in addition, depression is heavily stigmatized. People will go out of their way not to disclose it. (In addition, note that jakebeal refers to point prevalence - lifetime prevalence of MDD in the US has been estimated at 17%.)
As far as the health related questions are less than 35 questions on this website and separating questions to mental and physical health issues is so hard and not so productive; I also think that the current [tag:health-issues] tag is enough for our website. This site is not a medical website to have precise tags for questions about health issues.
@CapeCode: Even for health issues that are not stigmatised, people communicate these issues less than you would expect. Also, many health issues are less obvious than most people think. For example, epilepsy has a prevalence of 1 %, yet I know of nobody I know that suffers from it – and that’s despite me doing epilepsy-related research.
@CapeCode: You’re seeing people’s public fronts. My experience is that those of us who are chronically depressed and willing to talk about it with acquaintances soon learn that we have lots of company behind those public fronts.
Does anyone else finds it surprising? Is it just an artifact, or does our site somehow attract depressed peoples?
Not surprising at all. You get rants and voices of frustration on most Internet places. And I don't think that A.SE attracts more of such than other places for people related to academia.
I'm unconvinced that the prevalence of clinical depression amongst academics is higher than usual.
@JeffE would say, ex cathedra, No. (vide Why do PhD students complain so much?).
But I think that it might be:
http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2014/may/08/work-pressure-fuels-academic-mental-illness-guardian-study-health
or do we need a tag for it?
I did introduce tag quitting for situations where someone is quitting (whether dropping out or not continuing academic track) or considering doing so (for whatever reason). It may be worth to add a tag psychological-issues (there is already one for problems between people: interpersonal-issues).
And for reason mentioned in comments on other answers, I am in favor of psychological-issues (or something similar) rather than putting everything in health-issues bag (as not all psychological issues are psychiatric).
Based on your sample, most of these questions seem to be coming from students in graduate programs, not from faculty. In my mind, this rules out the pressure due to publish-or-perish hypothesis.
However, getting through an advanced degree program can be hard, particularly at the PhD level.
Something else may be at play, too: take your average PhD candidate. Chances are this individual has largely excelled in academia – otherwise, they wouldn't be in a PhD program. But not all who enter these programs emerge with a degree, and that can be a tough pill to swallow, particularly when one has had 16 or more previous years of success. (The same is true for a master's candidate, too, though the failure rates probably aren't as high.) In short, some are dealing with failure in academia for the very first time. Throw in some other factors, too – students may have moved away from their hometown to go to school, they may be caught in the crossfire of departmental infighting, etc. – and it seems like a recipe for the blues.
Given that environment, I'm not surprised at all to find no small number of questions that at least mention some form of depression. In fact, I might have been surprised to find the opposite.
I think there could be another factor.
Academia (especially in the US, I guess, but everywhere) is an highly competitive industry. There is publish or perish, seeking grants, fast moving disciplines, an overwhelming tide of new papers and results everyday. Research is hard. There are many people who struggle in academia.
This site is specific. It regards academia, and is full of clever people. All questions and answers are written correctly and there is a lot of work from everyone in choosing words. This make it valuable, for both Q and A.
The other point is that this site is welcoming. I see it as a positive thing, of course. I feel (and I can be refuted) that people find here a safe space and so they ask, because they know they will be answered politely. Politely and correctly.
All these things together make me think that there will be a good share of questions related to the emotional life of people in academia. Depression/discouragement is definitely a good share of that life.
As I read elsewhere on this site, outside academia there is the equivalent of 'publish or perish', it's called 'do your job or get fired'.
@CapeCode There is often a difference, however, between pressures that are directly and indirectly imposed. Research-focused academics are fundamentally intellectual entrepreneurs, and have a lot in common with artists and company founders. There is, at least in US culture, a sense that if you fail as an academic, it's a personal failing. If you're unhappy in a "normal" workplace, it may be easier to externalize onto "your crappy boss" than when you are your own boss. Both can certainly cause mental health issues, but the mechanism of action is a bit trickier for entrepreneurial careers.
@CapeCode: is it typical that you either get promoted to a manager level (associate professor) or you get fired?
"Publish or perish" is not equivalent to "do your job or get fired". It's equivalent to "do a bunch of stuff that we won't actually pay you for, and do a bunch of other things that we ostensibly pay you for but refuse to respect whether considering when to fire you, or get fired"
I dont find it surprising at all for two reasons:
Internet is where people go to complain, rant and whine...
Academia does leave a lot of people frustrated, sad, angry or depressed.
As a matter of fact emotional/mental health problems is rather prevalent in academia. I want to take a specific paragraph out:
A 2015 study at the University of California Berkeley found that 47%
of graduate students suffer from depression, following a previous 2005
study that showed 10% had contemplated suicide. A 2003 Australian
study found that that the rate of mental illness in academic staff was
three to four times higher than in the general population, according
to a New Scientist article. The same article notes that the percentage
of academics with mental illness in the United Kingdom has been
estimated at 53%.
Also I think it's rather disturbing or insulting, when someone who's not having difficulties claims that there are no problems and PhD students (or any other generalized group of people) complain too much. The fact that you, specifically, do fine does not invalidate anybody else's troubles, worries or difficulties.
I have more than a couple of colleagues and friends that ended up with rather severe problems through-out their graduate studies, some still suffering from these problems after therapy and medication.
Without any intent to sound offensive, I suggest you revise your thoughts regarding the prevalence of psychological problems in academia.
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1954 | Young Padawan discussion
I would like to discuss the comments to https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/54888/958.
I am a bit puzzled by the way the discussion has evolved. In my view, aeismail's comment is sloppy, since it just claims that this is not "correct usage", without backing up the claim with a reference. It is basically equivalent to writing "you are wrong". This is not how a polite discussion should start.
TheDoctor's answer, albeit sarcastic, aims to point this out this in a playful way: what does "correct" mean? Who are you to be able to say what is correct and what is not? I don't find it out line at all (no more than the first comment, anyway). In fact, when confronted with a real argument against his suggested practice (rpattiso's comment), TheDoctor acknowledges it and answers like a sensible person.
I have some issues also with the following comment by Pete L. Clark. The first thing it does is throwing a professor title in front of TheDoctor. I find it a highly questionable behavior. Is the argument here "aeismail is correct because he is a professor"? That is the exact opposite of science, and in my view academia should frown upon these appeals to authority as a general practice. I have rarely seen people pointing out each other's title in the university world.
Then Pete L. Clark puts on a moderator hat (without being one -- I don't see a black lozenge next to his name) and threatens TheDoctor with a suspension. This puzzles me, too. We have appointed moderators; acting like one without being one promotes vigilante behavior. Pete L. Clark is a valued member of this community, as his reputation proves, but I really feel like he is the one acting out of line here.
For what it's worth, that comment with "young padawan learner" was flagged as rude or offensive twice (and not by Pete L. Clark). So apparently others find it offensive as well. (I declined the flags, because I don't.)
@ff524 - Hm, I had deleted based on yet another flag. I just undeleted pending outcome of this discussion.
@ff524: The reason for my flag is well explained by Fomite's answer.
"black lozenge"? I see an orange diamond for mods...
The link in the question probably points to the wrong place. (I guess the question has been deleted?)
@Dirk The question is the correct one, but the answer we speak about has been deleted. I guess it is still in the system, but visible only to mods and 10k+ users (which I am not at the moment).
@Fomite's answer explains my perspective very well. But let me amplify a bit:
My dealings with this user are based on a pattern of behavior beyond any one posting. I think this is only rational. When someone behaves badly enough on a forum to be censured, then comes back and starts evincing the same behavior again, it would be strange not to keep the past behavior in mind.
This user is across the board disrespectful of academia and academics. I won't try to hide that this really bothers me. In the last few days alone this user has been ridiculously dismissive of other users....and then most recently he blamed academia for the worst terrorist incident in American history. (That is way too stupid to really anger me, but when someone says something that nuttily contrarian, I think it would be irrational not to start thinking in terms of correcting the behavior or extricating them from the situation.) In another deleted answer this user made a comment saying that one of the brilliant, benevolent veteran mathematicians who frequents this site just didn't understand mathematics as deeply as he did...this was in an answer explaining that there is no such thing as "theoretical mathematics".
My memories of what this user said before his suspension are slightly vague: it is in the nature of the deletion process that the worst stuff goes away, and therefore someone who did not read and remember can have a different reaction to new content posted by a formerly problematic user than someone who did. But the bottom line is that by no means do I interpret the "young padawan" comment as being playful. I view the comment as someone who has, apparently, no experience whatsoever in peer-reviewed science articles taking a gratuitous swipe at an established scientist.
Is the argument here "aeismail is correct because he is a professor"? That is the exact opposite of science, and in my view academia should frown upon these appeals to authority as a general practice. I have rarely seen people pointing out each other's title in the university world.
No, the argument is that because aeismail is a professor, the belittling comment is manifestly inappropriate. It wouldn't be a kind thing to say to anyone you don't know personally, but if someone actually does have more expertise and seniority than someone else then they do get to call attention to that if they want to. Aeismail is correct because....well, I don't know what the "cause" is, but he manifestly is correct. I agree that his answer would be better if it were sourced, and if someone for whom I could reasonably assume good faith responded to his answer by challenging it, then I would certainly not have reacted in the same way.
I didn't threaten anyone with a suspension. As has been pointed out, I don't have the power to do that. However I told the user that he is repeating past behavior that led to a suspension before. I think it is productive and healthy for users of this site to interact with each other directly as much as possible. Moderators have some responsibility to stay "above the fray" to the extent that they may not respond as directly to individual attacks as other users. Also I think it's better for a non-moderator to come to the defense of a moderator precisely because it's less threatening.
Having said all that: I really think it's time for the moderators to have a conversation with this user. It just doesn't seem plausible that this user's future behavior will become constructive, or even not problematically negative and a big waste of everyone's time and energy, without course correction. If this seems in doubt we could discuss it in a separate meta question...but is it actually in doubt?
Added: As a sign of recognition that my comment was not ideally worded, I have deleted it. I think there's a good chance the answer itself will get deleted, so really why not...
Thanks for clarifying your point. My two issues with your comment are: (1) The use of "you have been warned" is a bit over the top for me. There is an official warning system, and community members posting comments isn't it. (2) Your comments are very public. I seem to recall reading that you don't like to use chat, but that's exactly what chat is for... having confrontational discussions in public is rarely productive.
@eykanal "you have been warned" is not my most temperate phrasing ever, I agree. I didn't say "This is an official warning" or anything like that. I will choose less ambiguous language in the future. About chat: yes, I don't like to use it, and I think that some amount of public interaction between users is productive. I don't think that confrontation is inherently negative.
Thank you. Regarding confrontation: it's not inherently negative at all, but it's usually not productive. The goal in warning someone is to effect behavior change, and public confrontation rarely has that effect.
Thanks for the explanation. I had missed TheDoctor's previous history of answers and comments, which certainly shift the perspective.
+1. I remember that I found the answer obviously arrogant and, frankly, didn't understand how anyone could see it differently. That is not what this site (the friendliest SE site I frequent) is, and should be, about. Minus a bad, unnecessary formulation, thanks for standing up to it, and for staying active as one of a handful of contributors whose answers I like to always read (even when disagreeing).
The first thing it does is throwing a professor title in front of TheDoctor. I find it a highly questionable behavior. Is the argument here "aeismail is correct because he is a professor"?
I am pretty certain, the argument here is only that Aeismail should not be called young padawan learner because he is a professor.
By the way, I think that nobody on this site should be called young padawan learner because using this term is either patronising or irony; and irony is not very well communicable over the Internet. Moreover, the term is very young in everyday conversations and has yet to find its position. Due to this, people across the world may interprete it differently and are more likely to fail to see any irony.
On the other hand, when I say that nobody should use this term, I do not consider it “outrageous”, “highly uncivil” or sufficiently offensive to flag as such – if I would, I would have to flag a lot. Also, I do not consider think that the addressee’s rank plays into this.
Then Pete L. Clark puts on a moderator hat (without being one -- I don't see a black lozenge next to his name) and threatens TheDoctor with a suspension. This puzzles me, too. We have appointed moderators; acting like one without being one promotes vigilante behavior.
Depending on how to interprete your first and, we may have the same opinion here, but let me write it with my own words: Stack Exchange lives from community moderation and in this includes that non-diamonds address borderline behaviour in a respectful way. This does not, however, include the capacity to utter officially seeming warnings (”You have been warned...again.“). Suspensions are entirely at the liberty of diamond moderators and are usually not discussed in public. Moreover, even diamond moderators are urged not to threaten with suspension or similar.
As a sidenote, I suggest to delete all three comments, as they have at the very least been made obsolete by the existing answers.
Personally, I think the right thing to do is not to delete the comments, but to delete the whole very poor quality answer, which currently has two delete votes already. The controversial comments will vanish quietly along with it...
@jakebeal: I disagree. The answer clearly is an answer; it just is wrong or bad advice. Thus, it should not be deleted by somebody other than the author. Deletion by others is reserved for NAAs and pure nonsense (which arguably is also NAA).
I appreciate your thoughtful answer, and I hope my own answer explained my perspective. Two comments: (i) In my experience on SE sites, the complaints of non-moderator users have a role to play in many suspensions. My writing "You have been warned...again." is not as precipitous an action as my writing to the moderators to complain about a user...which I have not yet done in this case. (ii) Do you really think that wrong answers should never be deleted? I think that if there is sufficiently wide agreement that an answer is sufficiently bad, deletion becomes a good option.
i) As I said, I do not disagree if “non-diamonds address borderline behaviour in a respectful way”. The problem with “You have been warned...again.” is not that it is precipitous but that it can be understood as an official warning (even if it was not intended as such). Also, I do not think that any good can come from discussing a user’s suspension publicly (unless that user explicitly wishes to do so).
ii) Do you really think that wrong answers should never be deleted? – It is general SE policy that answers that are “just” wrong should not be deleted (and I agree); see this post on Meta. Wrong answers can be handled by downvotes. Deletion is for NAAs that cannot be reasonably voted upon (e.g., a good comment posted as an answer) or utter gibberish (that is not even useful to expemplify how not to do something).
I am a bit puzzled by the way the discussion has evolved. In my view, aeismail's comment is sloppy, since it just claims that this is not "correct usage", without backing up the claim with a reference. It is basically equivalent to writing "you are wrong". This is not how a polite discussion should start.
It is, perhaps, not the best comment aeismail has ever written. There are however infinitely many ways to respond to that without being condescending. For that matter, the original answer doesn't actually have any reference either.
TheDoctor's answer, albeit sarcastic, aims to point this out this in a
playful way: what does "correct" mean? Who are you to be able to say
what is correct and what is not? I don't find it out line at all (no
more than the first comment, anyway). In fact, when confronted with a
real argument against his suggested practice (rpattiso's comment),
TheDoctor acknowledges it and answers like a sensible person.
It's well beyond sarcastic and into condescending. Asking on what basis aeismail made that argument would have been appropriate. Speaking down to them isn't.
I have some issues also with the following comment by Pete L. Clark.
The first thing it does is throwing a professor title in front of
TheDoctor. I find it a highly questionable behavior. Is the argument
here "aeismail is correct because he is a professor"? That is the
exact opposite of science, and in my view academia should frown upon
these appeals to authority as a general practice. I have rarely seen
people pointing out each other's title in the university world.
If you say "Just who do you think you are?" in a condescending tone, one should probably expect to have the person's credentials thrown back at them. If a poster doesn't want an argument by authority, they shouldn't help feed one.
As for rarely pointing out each other's title in the university world - I'd suggest your experience is not necessarily generalizable.
Then Pete L. Clark puts on a moderator hat (without being one -- I
don't see a black lozenge next to his name) and threatens TheDoctor
with a suspension. This puzzles me, too. We have appointed moderators;
acting like one without being one promotes vigilante behavior. Pete L.
Clark is a valued member of this community, as his reputation proves,
but I really feel like he is the one acting out of line here.
He threatened no such thing. He noted that last time TheDoctor posted something like this, Pete gave him a warning (not in the formal sanction sense of the word but the actual, real English sense) that he was likely treading on thin ice, and that warning proved accurate. He's giving him the same warning again, perhaps in hopes that his advice will be heeded this time. There is more to building a community than black diamonds by someone's names, and "Hey buddy, this didn't go well for you last time..." is, on occasion, part of that.
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494 | One-line answers
Here aeismail comments:
One-line answers aren't allowed per our FAQ's. You should either expand your answer, or it'll have to be converted to a comment
Is it true? I have skimmed through the FAQ, and it doesn't seem like there is such a restriction. Besides that, that answer looks ok to me - it's synthetic, to the point, and clear enough to stand as it is. Maybe we should rather change the FAQ? What is your opinion on this?
It's a bad answer because it doesn't explain why it's a good answer. The whole point of SE sites is to offer advice on a large number of topics, and to educate their visitors. Pedagogically speaking, one almost always learns more if the answer explains the thought process. Hence, the need for answers that are more than on-liners.
Good point. What about the "it's not in the FAQ" part? Should we add it?
As Charles suggests below, if it's not, it should be!
For the answer in question, I think the thought process is obvious once you see the answer, therefore I think the answer is okay.
The how to answer FAQ says nothing about one line answers in general. It only indirectly mentions one line answers in regards to links. Pure link based answers are to be discouraged for the reasons given (also they add little value for the SE search index hit rate).
The system also may prevents answers which are too short (although I cannot remember for sure). I think in general one line answers are likely to be of limited value, I don't think we need to prevent them.
For the answer in question, I think the answer speaks for itself. Explaining why unknown program members is a bad sign just seems silly. I think it is fine as a one line answer. It might have been better as a comment...
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1041 | Line height for title changes in post revisions is too small
Behold below. The problem only occurs when the title changes but not the body. Example title changes on this post, revs 2 and 5 render poorly, but title+body changes on this one, rev 3 seem fine.
Using Chrome 34 on Windows 7 SP1 x64. 100% (no) zoom.
This problem has been fixed. It will be live after our next production build.
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1453 | Should a poster disclose oneself as a Wikimedia executive?
In this recent answer, user Aubrey speaks about the use of images from Wikimedia in posters.
I think that she should disclose the fact that she is president of the Italian branch of Wikimedia; this bit of information currently appears on her profile, but not in the answer itself.
In the comments, she seems to disagree with my view, so I think I should ask for further opinions from users and moderators.
For reference: Limits for self-promotion in answers.
If the community reaches a consensus I'd be happy to comply. Please tell me if a full disclosure statement is needed.
I don't think there is any significant problem with the answer as it stands. Here is why I differentiate it from the "advertising" posts that have been problematic in the past:
Most advertising posts introduce the subject that they are advertising (e.g., "problems with students cheating on exams? why not use Cheat-Be-Gone, now with lemon scent!"). Here the OP introduced the subject, and simply drew an answer written by an expert.
I found the post mostly simply adding clarification and information, rather than advocating Wikimedia vs. other sources. This is a post that could easily have been written by anybody familiar with the resource---in fact, much of it are things that I would consider nearly "common knowledge."
That said, disclosure never hurts, and in this case would probably be nice simply in adding to the authority of the answer. For example, when I write an answer to a post about how journals work, I will often mention the service I have done as an editor simply as part of credentialing my answer. I thus think that this answer could be enhanced by disclosure, less for ethical reasons and more to make clear the expertise of the author.
You beat me to the answer, and said it better than I did.
Lemon-scented Cheat-Be-Gone? I'll take six.
@PeteL.Clark You have a problem with lemon-scented cheats? Over here, they don't tend to smell that nice.
I would like to make some clarifications.
my name is Andrea, but I'm a man :-) (not a big deal, but let's set things straight)
I'm no Wikimedia executive. I'm a volunteer in Wikimedia projects, and I'm also a volunteer in the no profit association called Wikimedia Italia. I actually wrote it in my comment.
The Wikimedia movement is a complex thing, but what is probably necessary to know is that being the President of Wikimedia Italia it's not my "job".
My paid job is being a "digital librarian": in the past, I also worked for the University of Bologna in their open access journals library service.
Of course, and that is probably the thing we want to discuss, I am biased towards open access and open knowledge. I'm an advocate (someone would consider me an activist), and I understand my answer is not neutral, because I'm not.
I alsways try to ground my answers and comments with reason and facts, but I do have a strong opinion regarding certain topics. I cannot help it :-)
I just want to take a second and welcome you to AC.SE. In no way should you take this discussion to be an attack on you or your answer. I think your answer is great and I bet your experiences can be really valuable for our community. Your answer has simply brought up an issue with how the community wants to manage AC.SE going forward.
Thank you @StrongBad, your comment is really appreciated. I felt very welcomed here in ac.se, and, really, I hold no grudges whatsoever. I understand how the community wants to preserve itself from self/promotion (I'm from Wikimedia communities, and I know how much this problem can hurt a project like yours). I just want to clarify my position as a passionate, biased volunteer :-)
Sorry for the gender mismatch - I was misled by the username. :)
It always happens. I'm periodically invited to Gender Gap initiatives by female wikipedians :-D
Good news and bad news about names: Bad --- People have assumed that the s at the end of my first name is a typo and that I am (therefore) female. Good --- This double error has become less frequent in recent decades. Maybe in another few decades, people will stop making the (single) error about Italian "Andrea".
What I find amazing is that Andrea comes from Greek "aner, andros", which means "man, warrior". We'll wait for another decade for people to realize that.
I don't think there's a huge conflict of interest here, as the user in question is not in a position to profit directly or indirectly from increased Wikimedia Commons usage.
That said, it certainly doesn't hurt to provide that information upfront when one is talking about something that could appear to be a conflict. However, I would be careful about making more requirements. I think the existing rules are sufficient.
I do not understand why you and other posters use the presence of profit as a criterion to judge neutrality and appropriateness; it is a much broader issue. A better criterion is the one used by Wikipedia (no sarcasm intended): when advancing outside interests is more important to an editor than advancing the aims of Wikipedia, that editor stands in a conflict of interest., and further down If you edit articles while involved with campaigns that engage in advocacy in the same area, you may have a conflict of interest.
As an addendum to other answers, my perspective is that once the conflict of interest is fuzzy enough, there is a benefit to leaving it out: people don't care too much, and would rather spend their time reading something else. As an analogy, academic talks also often omit details in proofs to maximize the information/time tradeoff. Those details are relevant, but not worth people's time.
My opinion is that full disclosure of this potential conflict of interest is necessary in the answer itself.
The question is "would use of Wikimedia images be considered unprofessional"; it is a subjective question, and it is clear that being president of a national Wikimedia branch affects significantly her view on this topic. The fact that she is not paid for this position is irrelevant.
Disclosure of this fact in her profile is not sufficient: first of all it is information that should not be one click away from the answer, and more importantly profiles (unlike answers) can be changed at any time without notice.
Her answer is (unnecessarily) apologetic of Wikimedia images in several passages:
it is possible to find great images in Commons
There are great pictures on Commons.
There are many professionals who use their free time to provide Commons (and hence Wikipedia articles) with illustrative, clear graphics.
It should be made clear that this is not the opinion of an independent academic user, but the one of a person who is significantly involved in the project.
"Should I always disclose my opinions beforehand?" -- this looks like a straw man from her part.
I have nothing against her, Wikimedia or her answer, and I welcome her contributions to this site, but I think that an user should disclose this kind of information whenever they reference explicitly an organization in which they are actively involved. We have had some cases of advertising of one's own projects on this site, and it is always better to err on the side of transparency.
(full disclosure: I have contributed to Wikipedia by editing a few pages in the past.) :)
I would hate to see answers include comprehensive full disclosure statements. I am not really sure how it even works on a CC licensed piece of work.
@StrongBad I do not understand what the problem is with the answers being a CC-licensed piece of work.
What happens to the disclosure if I edit your answer? Do I leave it, delete it, or add another line?
@StrongBad: You leave it. Any edit that would change the answer in a way that this disclosure is not necessary anymore would be a too strong edit in my opinion.
If necessary, I can put a full disclosure statement expliciting my volunteer activity, and even my bias towards open knowledge/OA. Really, it's no big deal. I just wonder if this would mean to ask kinda everyone to state their bias in all answers. I've read many Q&A where there were opinions and interpretations, and not just neutral expositions of facts.
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689 | No closing reason for "nothing to do with academia"?
I wanted to vote to close Creating an central multi-purpose dictionary / database, but under "off-topic" I only find the following pre-canned motivations:
cannot be generalized to apply to others in similar situations
about problems facing undergraduate students
belongs on another SE site
other (insert your own).
In particular, there is nothing along the lines of "this is off-topic because it has little to do with academia", or "it is a boat-programming question", or even "off-topic question is off-topic".
Is this deliberate?
This is probably a SE-level limitation; we don't have control over how the "close" reasons are populated. However, there are limits for the number of default choices available. Therefore, this might fall into one of those cases where there aren't enough options available to list every reasonable option.
However, the "other" box is always there if needed.
I think it is deliberate, so that people motivate their choice of the question as off-topic. It might, in some case, seem evident, but it's always better to write it down (at least for the OP's sake) using the “other” box.
What about a boat-programming answer among the default reasons? Seems common enough, and it's something that needs to be adequately explained.
How can this be a SE-level limitation? The existing reasons are clearly already tailored to academia.se, not default ones. There must have been a human writing them with academia.se as the only target at some point. Maybe it's a beta limitation that moderators do not have the power to change them without interacting with the SE staff?
What I meant is that there is a limit on the number of different options that can be offered.
For your information, MathOverflow has "This question does not appear to be about research level mathematics within the scope defined in the help center [link omitted]." as a closing reason, and meta.academia.se has "This question does not appear to be about Academia Stack Exchange or the software that powers the Stack Exchange network within the scope defined in the help center. [links omitted]". I don't have vote-to-close powers in any other SE site to add more data points.
Is this really true? I remember seeing a discussion on what custom-close reasons to choose on Biology-SE. Also see http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2013/06/the-war-of-the-closes/ which describe the new close reasons in general and custom close reasons of individual sites.
Other boards have similar issues. It should probably be a SE-wide thing to add a "not related to [subject area]" in this, but it's definitely not something that's currently available on the board.
This is deliberate… because it's not very helpful to the author who wrote the post or those trying to figure what the heck is going on. If you read War of the Closes, it talks about redesigning the closure system to be more helpful to the author — and everyone who would accuse you of being unhelpful … about why the question might not be a good fit for the site.
It is exceedingly unlikely the author simply mistook this site as a place to ask about "bats" or "breakfast cereals", so when you say [not about Academia], it comes across a overly dismissive and unhelpful. What is it that isn't a good fit for this site?
When the moderators added some of the more-common Adademia-specific close reasons to that dialog, it removed the catch-all, generic close reason entirely. It simply becomes too easy to reach for that generic "off topic" close reason, so it becomes the most overused path of least resistance.
If one of the standard close reasons doesn't fit the concerns you have about the post, it is better to spend a few seconds to explain why you're voting to close rather than simply clicking on the functional equivalent of "didn't you read the FAQ?"
Incidentally, academia does get bat and breakfast cereal questions (for example, we recently got "Do people often blow out the air from their lungs a lot when living in the cold condition to keep their lungs warm?"). As far as I can tell, the reason for these questions is that the author read nothing about the site beyond the single word "academia" and assumed it's a catch-all site intended for any obscure topic someone working in academia might conceivably study. You're right that it's best not to reply too dismissively, but sometimes "didn't you read the FAQ?" is a valuable message.
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3939 | When should answers be deleted
The help center provides some guidance about deleting answers
Answers that do not fundamentally answer the question may be removed. This includes answers that are:
commentary on the question or other answers
asking another, different question
“thanks!” or “me too!” responses
exact duplicates of other answers
barely more than a link to an external site
not even a partial answer to the actual question
One issue is that many low quality answers still have net positive scores preventing high-rep users from casting delete vote. This is particularly true of questions that make the Hot Network Question (HNQ) list. This results in users flagging low quality answers, but often these flags are cast on answers that do not fall clearly into the help center description of why some answers are deleted.
Once the answer is flagged, it goes through a community review process. Every once in a while the review process is inconclusive leading to an auto generated flag for moderator attention where a moderator needs to decide if the answer should be deleted. There have been complaints in the past about moderators reacting to these flags by deleting the answer (e.g., deleting). The only discussion I can find on deleting answers in general is this old question with a short answer and not a lot of visibility.
How do we want moderators to handle flags on answers that have net positive scores that seem to be poorly researched (i.e., worthy of down votes) and not obviously more than a partial answer to the actual question that have resulted in an inconclusive review?
Note that "low quality" flags also put a post into the review queue, where regular users can vote to delete. I prefer to just leave those flags alone (not delete the answer or dismiss the flag) until the review task is completed.
As a mod, when I do not feel a post deserves to be deleted unilaterally, my preference is to leave "not an answer" and "low quality post" flags active - that is, not mark the flag as helpful nor dismiss it. The reason is that these flags put posts into the "Low quality posts" review queue, where other users then vote on them. (Marking the flag as helpful or dismissing the flag would remove the post from the review queue prematurely.)
Once the review is completed, one of three things will happen:
the post will have been deleted by the community from the review queue. (Or, it was deleted by the owner, or it was fixed, in response to comments from the review queue.)
people have weighed in via review, indicating that most find the post worth keeping. In this case I will not delete the post, and I will mark the flag as helpful (if it was a reasonable flag).
people have weighed in via review with votes to delete, but not enough to actually remove the post (e.g. it gets five votes to delete, but it needs six). In this case I might add an additional "delete" vote so that the post is deleted, if I feel it's warranted. I will then mark the flag as helpful (if it was a reasonable flag).
I edited the question to focus on the 3rd case, because I think that is the case where people get upset. When we cast that extra (or even two or three extra) delete vote, it prevents users from voting to undelete the answer.
As a mod, I only unilaterally delete posts if they are:
spam or nonsense,
ask a question,
are Thanks!-type comments, or
are blatantly rude or abusive.
Absent that, I would prefer to wait for flags and reviews, as ff524 suggests in her comment.
+1. Only addition - I also use the "convert answer to comment" frequently for posts that should be comments on the original question (or other answers). That does delete the post as well.
Of course. I was just referring to cases where the content is gone, not moved.
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3293 | Question predicated on the OP being a well known contemporary person
I have flagged this question and voted it for closure. It purports to be about an older incarcerated felon asking tips for how to get into law school. My issue with the question is that the OP identifies himself as O.J. Simpson and all the specific details of the question are clearly modelled on Mr. Simpson's situation, including the felony record and likely parole date. I hope we can agree that with overwhelming probability the OP is not actually O.J. Simpson.
I voted for closure as "off-topic because not asked in good faith," but the majority of votes to close the question were as an exact duplicate. (Because of the way the SE platform works, I am listed as someone who voted to close the question as a duplicate. This is just not true, and the blithely counterfactual nature of it is a bit annoying.) There are currently two votes to reopen.
I feel that any question on this site in which a user impersonates a real person and includes key details about that person's life as part of the premise of the question is clearly not being asked in good faith and is inappropriate here. I feel that the question should certainly stay closed and not for the reason that it is an exact duplicate (it isn't). Perhaps the question should even be deleted.
The user who gave the currently accepted answer has a comment indicating he understands the impersonation but I wonder how many of the other voting users have fully grasped what is going on. Is it possible that this question is viewed as appropriate by experienced users of the site who are fully apprised? I find that a bit surprising, but please discuss.
Wait - that wasn't O.J.? :)
I can't see the deleted question. But would the question be ok, had it been written in third person (as a hypothetical) rather than in first person?
It is a troll. I have deleted the question. While there may be an interesting question in there, I would prefer a non troll to ask it than trying to heavily edit the question to make it fit.
If it happens again, you can flag it as offensive to feed the troll detection algorithm. See this META.SE question for the difference between spam and offensive flags.
If the guy was geniune then he would have used his real name because he said that he wanted to be honest .I was going to answer his question but I smelt a rat .
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805 | Is deleting comments a form of censorship?
Fellow Users of Academia.SE,
Recently on academia.SE and meta.academia.SE, I wrote that I was unwilling to have longterm participation in a site for which content -- specifically comments, although my own perspective is more of a blanket one -- which is on-topic for the site are being deleted. My feeling is that this is a mild form of academic censorship. I am very passionately against the encroachment of academic censorship, however mild, and I think the SE model is in some ways a credible threat to making inroads on this.
Although the moderator who deleted my comment apologized very nicely, two moderators found a statement of mine similar to the above "unconstructive", "vacuous" and "distasteful". When I pointed out that comments are treated the way I want them on mathoverflow.net and math.SE, the response was that this site is very different from those sites. [Added: The original comment was "Suffice to state, Math.SE is run far differently than any other SE site, this one included." I believe this comment to be inaccurate, which is why I did not repeat it exactly. If it is seriously intended that experience built-up on math.SE and mathotherflow is somehow a priori inapplicable here, someone should certainly speak to that.] That seems to be true, but also this site is in the "beta phase" because there is not enough involvement, so questions about what future course the site could take seem maximally on-point.
In other words: maybe academics don't like participating in a site which has such a highly gamified / follow-the-rules approach to what is largely volunteer work / networking on their part. This is certainly not a hypothetical question: this was the main tension in the decision of whether to move mathoverflow.net to the SE2.0 model. This was finally done only after many concessions from the SE developers, and the whole thing happened at least a year after the "negotiations" were first started: in the end the SE people agreed to several things which at the beginning they were adamant would not be possible.
Also a colleague of mine tried to start a math-education stack exchange site. I told her that this could be a good idea but also warned her that there were a lot of strange-looking (to us) rules and hoops to jump through, especially at the early stages. She tried it anyway, and the site didn't make it past Area 51: the cultural disconnect between interested math educators and people who like and enforce the SE platform was a little too high. More recently she -- assisted by my PhD student -- made an independent site which is similar to the SE platform but adapted to be less gamified and rigid: this is the Mathematics Teaching Community.
I am very interested to know whether other academics feel that there any cultural mismatch between the mainstream SE model and the goal of getting academics involved in such a question and answer site. Please let me know how you feel about the censorship question above and/or also this broader issue. I would appreciate answers from users who identify themselves with their real name and academic affiliations (past or present), although that is certainly not required.
Added: I remember now that I did once before raise the issue of censorship with respect to comments here. The practice I was talking about was different but, in my opinion, less severe than deletion.
Added on November 27, 2014: 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. At the present time I will take a break from this site to reflect on these issues.
Actually, to make sure the record is accurately reflected, it was said that Math.SE is run in a very different manner than all other SE sites, not that Academia.SE is run differently from Math.SE.
True, that's what's said, although these comments repeatedly ignored mathoverflow. Aren't the two sites math.SE and mathoverflow run in very similar ways with respect to the present issue? Or am I missing something?
No, they're not. Math.SE is notorious for being unruly in a way no other SE site is—including both Academia.SE and mathoverflow. I haven't seen enough of mathoverflow to have an informed opinion about how they moderate things.
If you don't know how they moderate things on MO, how do you know that it is different from the way they moderate things on math.SE?!? Anyway, we were not discussing "unruliness", we were talking about the attitude towards comments. It was claimed that this attitude is unique to math.SE; I say that the attitude is similar (and probably more extreme) on MO. It seems to me that this makes the claim in question factually inaccurate, which is why I didn't repeat it in that precise form. If it is important to you to make this claim, maybe you should, and we can talk about whether it's true.
Observational experience from the dozen or so SE sites I've moderated, used, or visited suggests that Math.SE operates on a very different model in general. However, my goal was only to make clear that one of your statements didn't reflect the actual record of what was said.
Please reread your first comment above (don't delete it!). There is a universal quantifier there. I think you know what that means.
I know what an absolute qualifier is. I am also saying that you're twisting what was said—the original comment said that Math.SE was the outlier; you're making it seem as if Academia.SE was the one that was being singled out, which it wasn't.
Your lack of expertise with MO is somewhat disappointing to me by the way, since in terms of the clientele, MO is much more similar to academia.SE than other SE sites: namely, most of the people answering the questions are or have been graduate students, postdocs and professors. My understanding is that on other SE sites with a similar clientele (e.g. theoretical physics), the moderation style is similar to MO. Can you speak to that?
Now you're worrying me a little bit: an absolute qualifier is not the same thing as a universal quantifier. But this seems not to the be point: I was paraphrasing your words to try to make what you said more factually correct. But of course I support your right to your own words (!!), so I have edited in a direct quote. Is the proposed exceptionalism of math.SE (which I disagree with) actually important here, or is it just a distraction?
I'm an engineer, not a mathematician; the distinctions between the two aren't large enough for me to worry about. And my comment was meant as a correction, which you have now provided. If you want feedback on moderation on other sites, F'x can provide more useful comparisons, since he actually moderates another SE site.
"I believe this comment to be inaccurate, which is why I did not repeat it exactly." Your disagreeing with a statement is reason to misquote it?!? You're an academic! What type of academic integrity is this?
@eykanal: I didn't quote the comment; I paraphrased it, assuming that the inaccuracy was minor and unintentional. In this case the matter is not serious since it is trivial for anyone interested to see exactly what was written. But I take the point nevertheless; even before your comment I had edited in the precise quote.
@PeteL.Clark I think your most recent edit is probably a different enough issue to be raised in its own post - see this post
The Mathematics Teaching Community is down. Is this temporary or does it not exist any more?
First, thanks for raising this issue… though I do not exactly like the choice of words in your title and some of your post, it is an interesting issue of site policy, and something we should indeed discuss as a community.
I'll add a short answer here, as moderator of two other sites somewhat related to Academia SE (similar clientele): Chemistry SE (which I currently moderate) and French Language & Usage (of which I was a moderator for a year).
The “comment moderation” on both sites is somewhat more strict that it is here, and certainly not like MathOverflow at all. The policy, on both sites, is as follows:
Comments should be used to comment on a question or answer, and in the longer term, all information in these comments should be integrated into posts: integrate new information into the question, improve the existing answers, or provide an expanded point of view as a new answer. The only comments viable in the longer term are short ones, which do not necessarily warrant full new answer.
(it's not an actual quote, but since it concerns other sites, I wanted to clearly mark it as such and used the “quote” formatting).
As others have said, there are plenty of places to discuss about academia in general: forums, discussion boards, mailing-lists, chat rooms (including StackExchange's own chat server)… but the SE sites were not designed for that purpose. That's factual. That's what the SO and SE designers tried to avoid.
Now, whether this situation should be changed is a matter of discussion. In my opinion, it shouldn't. We shouldn't have SE sites become mainly discussion-based, because their different nature plays a big part of their success. I love the community here, I chat sometimes on the chat room, but if the site were to turn into something closer to a discussion board, I would not invest time in it any more.
PS: yes, part of moderation (not only by diamond moderators, but by all power users on SE sites) is censorship in its broader definition. I believe that your question would be more appropriately titled “What should the community's standard censorship/deletion of comments be?”.
F'x: Have you looked at the Mathematics Teaching website that I linked to in my website? It is much more chill about the distinction between "discussions" and "questions and answers", and yet it still seems to function quite well under essentially the same purpose as the SE model. Do you think that an analogous site for academics would be plausible, or do you think that having a "stricter SE standard model" is beneficial in the end? These are honest questions...
@PeteL.Clark I've looked at the linked site, yes, and it seems to have little traffic (few comments & answers per post, for example)… I think if it had the traffic we currently have on Ac.SE (or more), it wouldn't work as well. In fact, it would probably be a noisy chatroom, with little structure and no long-term curation of information, and I probably wouldn't participate in such a site. In my opinion, the current Q&A model of Academia is simply the one that scales the best, which is why I like it over existing discussion media.
Again, thanks for your answer. You may well be right...
@PeteL.Clark I hope I am, because our traffic is increasing quite rapidly :)
I'll repost here as standalone post (not a good practice in general, but we're on Meta!) a comment I left earlier when Pete asked “is the site doing just fine?”.
By all the metrics we have, yes… growing user back, growing number of frequent flyers, very good self-evaluations, me being very happy. Like all metrics, these should be take with a grain of salt (e.g., the last one), but I generally consider this site quite successful — though we should still strive for improvement! In fact, the site has been ready for graduation for a few months now, and is held up (along with a few others) because there's a queue at the “site design” stage.
I was wondering why it hadn't transitioned out of beta yet.
Every site that allows contributions from the community has to remove content occasionally if that content violates the rules of the site. The only difference is how many rules the site has and how strictly they are enforced. Never removing any content from contributors under any circumstance is not a viable strategy, you need the ability to deal with spam, offensive content and abusive behaviour at the very least.
Stack Exchange is a more rigid format than most comparable community-run sites like forums. A significant part of the value of the Q&A format is due to this rigidity and the rather strict rules attached to it, but it is certainly also a source of frustration if you use SE sites for something that does not fit well to the SE model.
The Q&A format is simply not possible without what you consider "censorship". Non-answers for example are routinely deleted, and the sites would be worse if we didn't do that. The attitude towards comments varies a lot between SE sites, MSE and MO are on one extreme of the spectrum here.
But I'd like to use MO as an example, because they actually do a significant amount of what I'd count as "censorship" under your view. They don't remove comments like other SE sites, but they are very strict with non research-level questions and with crank posts. As a mathematics professor you're very unlikely to be censored on MO, but someone posting "too easy" math on MO is very likely to have their contributions deleted quickly.
There is still a lot of room between the extremes in terms of comment deletions, and this is something that each community can discuss and come to their own conclusions and policies. I'm personally very strict in removing any comments that are likely to escalate or that attack other users personally, as a Skeptics moderator where we tend to deal with controversial topics this is simply necessary to keep the peace on the site. And dealing with those often causes collateral damage as the least problematic action is very often to remove all comments on a post. I'm far less strict with unproblematic, but also not that useful comments.
There are many valid postions between the extremes in terms of retaining or deleting comments, but I'd also like to add that I consider the MSE extreme to be harmful to a certain extent. I think this changed somewhat, or maybe it is simply more quiet on MSE now, but there were many very heated discussions on MSE meta including personal attacks in the past that were not deleted or only deleted much later. This lead to a rather hostile atmosphere there which is something I consider much more harmful than the removal of all those comments would have been.
There's a crucial difference between what commonly goes on on MO and what Pete is complaining about here: lots of non-research-level questions are closed, but not deleted.
@MarkMeckes The questions are also deleted, I can't provide any numbers as you need to be a mod on MO to see those, but I'm pretty sure that there is a very large number of deleted non-research-level questions on MO.
@MarkMeckes I found some data in this MSO post, Math Overflow has around 1000 posts deleted by the community or the moderators, around 4500 deleted automatically (mostly closed, unanswered questions)
The MO data is partly skewed by the transition to join the network, which led to a very large amount of automatic deletions. There was also a much larger amount of community deletions on MO before the transition because there was no automatic deletion mechanism then.
I will also add that a lot of the deleted posts on MO were not good faith posts (there's one person who writes a lot of rants about aliens, frogs in a well and when we're going to send his salary).
To be clear, I am not saying that one should never delete "posts". I don't know any SE site that runs this way or could run this way. I am talking about deletion of content: i.e., what people agree is on-topic for the site at large but choose to delete for other reasons. The line is sometimes subtle, and in case of subtlety people should be more careful about deletion...as is certainly the case on the two math sites I mentioned.
Keeping up the level on an academic site, as MO does for example, has nothing to do with censorship. It is their right to keep up a high level!
I have always found the active comment deleting policy at many SE sites rubs me the wrong way. I understand that it's the usual policy so I don't usually complain about it, but I do think it's misguided. In particular, I don't like that comments can be deleted with essentially no record that they were ever there and no way for high rep users to evaluate whether the moderator was behaving reasonably.
Part of this may be mathematician culture, where it's natural to think of answers and comments as being at different levels of formality and so comments play a more crucial role. Part of it is also that as an academic I'm used to having more control over my speech than one would have in industry.
One thing MO does, is that when comments are deleted from the main page, a record of them is kept and linked at the meta site (well actually at tea.MO, but a thread on the meta site with an answer for each time this happens would work just as well).
I'd be very curious to hear from anyone who knows about cstheory.SE. My guess would be that since they're academics they have a similar policy to MO on comments, but I'm not sure. If it turns out that all the academic sites (MO, cstheory, the late theoreticalphysics) have a different policy from all the non-academic sites then it might be worth academia considering having a policy environment more similar to the academic sites than the non-academic ones.
There are other academic sites: physics, chemistry, biology, linguistics, … At least those cited follow the “general model” for comments, not the “MO model”.
@F'x: Those sites are like m.SE and on all of them academics are a small minority of the site users.
@CharlesMorisset: Of course on MO they don't actually do that for junk comments, just for things that might be controversial.
@Noah: Your second-to-last comment is key. Do you understand why people here seem to slide away from this distinction that we are trying to make (apparently through a true lack of perception rather than a willful evasion)? I am getting very confused about this.
@CharlesMorisset: Fair enough, except that the main argument I've seen for deleting comments is "that's how it's done on SO."
"Let's change the policy because people here wants to change it, not because that's the way it's done on MO." Let's consider changing the policy if that's what the majority of people here want and if we feel that it would attract a larger portion of the target audience of the site. Again, I keep mentioning this and getting nothing in response. My feeling is that the site has significantly less participation from actual academics than it could or should have. Most of the participants here (including me!) are rather those who were attracted from some other SE site.
I'm very confused (and a mod on cstheory). First of all, why would comments ever be deleted unless they're obnoxious ? as a mod, the only time I've ever deleted a comment was when someone was crossing the line into really bad behavior.
But I don't see a serious harm in leaving comments as they are. It's not that often that comment threads get baroque (except this one :)). And frankly, even though I'm a mod and probably should care, I care two hoots about "SE policy" compared to my community standards.
@Suresh we have many examples of “comment threads” with 20+ comments on the main site… a few comments replying to each other is usually OK, but large numbers make the information hard to find
I don't think it's the same as off-topic questions, since questions are much more visible on the site. I have the same point of view as Suresh, and also find it a bit annoying sometimes to find that comments have been deleted, when an edit in the question or other comments refer to it. Of course, the author of the commented could have deleted it himself, so this is not only about moderating. In addition, I don't find that many comments make the "real" information hard to find, since they are collapsed to only show the most highly voted comments by default, when you open a questions page.
In addition I sometimes find the discussion in the comments more interesting than the answer, even though it may be only tangentially related to the question or answer. I don't see the point in removing such comments only because they are off-topic (not with respect to the scope of the site, but with regard to the question or answer).
@CharlesMorisset that's a valid point. But that still doesn't require anyone to delete comments. Merely nudge users to convert comments to answers: we even have a template for this on cstheory.
As Charles mentions in his answer, comments are not considered the equal of questions and answers. If somebody stumbled across the discussion two weeks from now and marked it as off-topic and recommended deletion, it probably would have been deleted, and that would have been the end of the matter. As I've said before, the goal is preserving the questions and answers for future users. If a comment has served its purpose, it can (and should) be deleted.
Ultimately, it's a matter of utility. While some commentary and feedback related to the question is always useful, off-topic feedback left as comments don't help users. Moreover, your helpful information is going to get lost, since it's not indexed and not searchable. So unless it's in an appropriate venue for the topic, it's going to get lost in the ether. Without the other question, nobody would know to look in the question on excluding authors to see your comments about the best math journals. You can put it there—but why would you want to have it stuck there where it's going to be almost guaranteed to go unobserved?
"You can put it there—but why would you want to have it stuck there where it's going to be almost guaranteed to go unobserved?" Great. That's what I want: that I can put it there. To aver opposite, you seem to be claiming that you know better than I do what is in my own best interest. Some of your answers seem to implicitly claim that, but I presume that is not your intent.
As for unobserved: my comment was going to be observed at least by its intended recipient. It is obvious that deleting a comment makes it less observed rather than more. As I have already said: if someone wants to suggest that I move my content elsewhere, that's more than okay. If you suggest that I move my content and I am unresponsive to that, then maybe at some point deletion is in order. But deleting the content first -- and remember, that from my perspective deletion is permanent -- is incredibly disrespectful. You are literally wasting my time, and that's not collegial behavior.
My job and my intent is to uphold SE and site guidelines. Your issue is with SE guidelines: any user with enough reputation can flag a comment as off-topic, and moderators are empowered to remove off-topic comments. I agree with you that deletion of comments shouldn't happen immediately—but you shouldn't expect off-topic comments to remain indefinitely, either.
"My job and my intent is to uphold SE and site guidelines. Your issue is with SE guidelines: any user with enough reputation can flag a comment as off-topic, and moderators are empowered to remove off-topic comments." Your task is to enforce the consensus will of the site users and of SE employees. You describe not a guideline a(n unsurprising) site mechanic: moderators have the power to delete site content. They are not empowered to remove off-topic comments: they are empowered to remove all comments.
I don't believe I ever said that I expect any comments to remain indefinitely. There is almost nothing that I expect to remain indefinitely: that doesn't mean that I am necessarily okay with nearly unilateral decisions to remove those things without any warning. The bottom line is this: when you remove my work without informing me that you are going to do it, you devalue my work and waste my time in the most severe possible way. That is not the way that professionals treat each other. It may be the way SE wants us to treat each other: those are not one and the same thing.
I don't really know why we're still arguing here. I've already made the argument that it's wrong to delete informative comments from ongoing discussions. After a certain amount of time, though, it no longer serves any functional purpose. You agreed to my viewpoint.
All I'm arguing is that content need not be permanently archive-worthy in order for it to be only polite and collegial to ask the author about it before deleting it. According to the SE party line, asking the author before deleting comments should not be necessary. According to me, doing so is impolite. If we can agree on that, then we indeed agree on everything of importance.
@Charles: deletion of comments occurs without any automatic notice to the user whose comments are deleted, and the comments of mine that Jeff Atwood deleted were done without any comment about the deletion. That is maximally disruptive. Are you saying that whenever a moderator deletes my comments, s/he will inform me that this has been done? That would be a big improvement...but I suspect that that's as much or more work as just asking me to delete my own content or justify its relevance.
For people not aware, there's a history here were Jeff Atwood behaved very poorly on m.SE in deleting stuff of Pete's. It is also worth pointing out to Pete that the behavior we're discussing here is just not in the same ballpark as what Jeff did and that perhaps you're overreacting here due to your experience there. I think what happened here was totally within the normal range of moderator error and even though I disagree with it, I don't think it's a huge deal.
@Charles: Yes, the behavior by the moderators here is much, much better than what was done by the cofounder of the entire system. (The reason I bring it up at all as that many of the "standard", though odious to me, ideas about content are due to Atwood.) It is not even totally clear that the moderators made a mistake in the case at hand, although there was a gracious apology which I appreciated. I am sorry that my response is being viewed as making trouble. I am rather trying to probe deeper on what I honestly think is an issue that could be preventing many people from using the site.
Ok, so here's the disclaimer: I am not really up-to-date on the discussion at hand so take my answer with a pinch of salt. I am giving my $0.02 to the question: "Is deleting comments a form of censorship?"
TL;DR:
Yes, it is... just as removal of any spoken/written communication would be censorship.
And, no it is not a deal-breaker for communication exchange. It might not suit everyone but it works in the bigger picture, evidently.
SE sites have a very specific structure and they attempt to reinforce a community moderation in a very specific manner.
I recall the first time I decided to ask a question on SO I was very frustrated with all the expectations that were put on a new user all of a sudden. It is also very hard to not take immediate and strict moderation personally.
But, if you can pass beyond that SE sites are amazing, in the sense that they connect people that would not, in a million years, be able to find one another and exchange ideas. In my day-to-day work, I am never scared of technical (i.e. programming) problems as I trust in my skills of searching, and reaching out to others with significantly greater expertise in the matter at hand; whether that is the proper use of a library, programming language or algorithm. That's is both a lifesaver at times and a miracle of the modern internet, in its own right.
However, much like all awesome things in life, internet has its downsides. Trolling is one for instance. Another one being people going off-track. There will always be clutter on the interwebs, and without moderation of weeding out things it would be a complete jungle out there. At SE sites, there is community moderation, meaning other users get to tag, retag, edit and even remove questions, answers and comments. It's not a water-proof way of doing things, but it is a valid way of keeping it tidy. If you feel that you have been unjustly treated, you take up your case with others in the community in meta (which is exactly what we are doing right now), and I have yet to meet a moderator that has been utterly and completely unreasonable.
Sometimes the structure imposed on a SE site might hinder the progress of the site, or your own participation in it. A relevant example I can give from my own experience is Sports.SE. I was thrilled when it started, and was very active for a while. Later on I had some disagreements with the way things are done there (with respect to scope, subjectivity and discussions) which I took up on meta, and the community did not have a clear opinion on the matter on way or another. So things were kept as they are, and I just realized that I did not have much to gain in sticking around. I check the site occasionally to see if there is anything that tickles my interest but more often than not I do not spend beyond 15-20 mins a week on Sports.SE.
So the take take-home message: if the community moderation principles do not work for you, then noone is forcing you to participate. It would be sad to lose users based on personal issues however it is also inevitable to some degree when so many people are communicating purely through textual messages (i.e. all other "cues" like body language, intonation etc are missing).
One advice, if I may, is to see to discourse here on SE sites as if you'd have a serious conversation with peers in real life. Nobody likes ever-branching discussions, and have the subject trailing off to other subjects when the matter at hand is yet to be answered.
Again, I am not sure what got you so frustrated but I hope you don't take it personally and choose to stay around for a while longer anyways. :)
I honestly can't tell from your answer whether you are aware that I have been one of the most active users on MO and math.SE over a period of about four years. I had a hand in creating the contemporary culture of these sites. I know for a fact that many academic mathematicians would not be interested in participation in MO if it were run in the more standard SE way. There is a big cultural difference between sports.SE and MO: people have different needs and expect to be treated in different ways. I suspect that many potential users of academia.SE feel similarly to those at MO.
@PeteL.Clark No, I wasn't aware, and I don't see why I should be... I took the question and the OP as I would with any other user. I don't see why anyone's opinion is worth more than others. I do however agree that experienced users usually have better formulated opinions that have developed over time. At any rate, I am not a part of MO or Math.SE thus I cannot comment on what they have got going on there is good/bad/better/more fair/... What I can say however is that you are getting worked up about a relatively small thing. It's not worth getting frustrated over
It's not a question of "should": I thought (but wasn't sure) that in your answer you were trying to give friendly advice to a new SE user. That's not the perspective I'm coming from, so I wanted to give you information about my perspective. I am not personally agitated at all anymore (but only mildly dismayed that some people do not seem to want to see that there are legitimate things being discussed here): the action that was taken against me was reversed, and I got a very nice apology.
The question is: is it worth getting "worked up" over a site about academia that in its mechanisms and administration is inherently unappealing to many academics? Your answer is still valid: only to a degree. Thanks for your advice; I did read it and take it seriously.
@Charles: If I look through the samples of serious users (say with rep greater than N for some agreed upon value of N; N = 500 would probably be sufficient) of MO and academia.SE and count how many of them identify as tenure-track faculty or postdocs, I suspect that we will find that there are at least three times as many on MO as on academia.SE. Saying "please give data" is easy and gathering data is less so: do you actually want me to do this?
I think though that your intended meaning is that mathematicians represent a relatively small percentage of all academics, which is certainly true. Areas which are very far away from mathematics / engineering / cs are very poorly represented on this site. It would be a much larger production to poll the larger academic populace and find out whether and under what circumstances they would participate in a SE-type Q&A site. That could be a very valuable thing to do, though. Are you interested?
Also, I gave an example where a colleague and a student of mine literally did create a Q&A site roughly along the lines of the SE model but much less fussy about the issues in question, which proved to be an impediment to getting a SE site up and running. Every person who participates on that site and not on SE is a kind of datum. May I ask: did you look at my colleague's site?
@PeteL.Clark two quick points; i) I think that it's a legitimate concern you took up, one that was not discussed as much before (AFAIK) and I don't think anyone has been trying to dust the subject under the rug. So, no need to be dismayed. ii) I am not sure your statement regarding the site being inherently unappealing is sufficiently supported. I'm not asking you go acquire data, but rather acknowledge that there is a growing community here as well. The fact that the format here may or maynot fit mathematicians is irrelevant since there are two sites for mathematics anyways.
@PeteL.Clark As for academics in general, I'm really not sure how you came up with the conclusion that the current format of moderation is inherently unappealing to the masses. I agree to several different limitations of the format, but I suggest to work around them instead of running at them head-on. For instance I, for one, am very interested in being able to discuss the subjective matters which isn't really a good fit with the Q/A format, thus I proposed: http://meta.academia.stackexchange.com/questions/532/better-use-of-the-chat-room-discussion-groups-proposal
@Charles: The quality of the content is dependent on the clientele. To be entirely honest, I think that the site currently represents "people who are interested in academia and are active on other SE sites" rather than "academics". Your use of the word "hunch" is strange: I'm not primarily asserting whether something is true; I'm asking whether people feel that it's true. Have you noticed that several users and one moderator have replied by answering that they feel that it's true?
Also, you asked me to supply data, and then I talked about it, and then you said you were not interested. I pointed out that I had already supplied a link to another site which may be relevant data and asked you whether you visited that site. You have not responded. You say that you are not interested in gathering data but call my provisional statements "hunches". You are coming off as rather intransigent. Are you saying that you are in principle not open to changing your moderation policies in the face of users asking for it?
To answer posdef: there is currently no other SE site which regards questions about academic life -- even math-specific academic life -- as being unambiguously on topic. To the best of my knowledge there is not (as there is for math education) a site which functions as an alternative to SE but with a roughly similar Q&A model. Perhaps it is time to consider creating such a site...
Let me also say (and this may allay some worries): I have never been interested in moderating a SE site, although I have been nominated several times, and honestly I think it's pretty clear that I would have been elected had I accepted the nomination. This decision is not exactly a noble one: I need to limit my involvement in these sites relative to my other professional life and my personal life. However, I would certainly not campaign to be a moderator in order to butt heads with other moderators. I've seen how that works: not well.
@Charles: I agree with most of what you just wrote; good. I would only say that in my opinion a moderator should do their best to figure out what the majority of the community wants, or at least to listen for that.
Moreover, here is why I think the word "hunch" is off: a hunch is an assumption. You seem to think that I'm assuming that the site should be run in a certain way, and at first your answers were categorically denying that it would even be conceivable to run the site in that way. (That was frustrating.) Rather, I know that a small number of people would prefer the site to be run at least slightly differently, and I'm asking how many people feel the same way. I think that's a "hypothesis", not a hunch.
And again, I really do not like the idea of site moderation where moderators compete with each other on the basic philosophies of the site. That happened on math.SE and it worked out very badly. Rather, the basic philosophies of the site should be made clear by the users, and ideally the moderators will do their best to enforce them.
Anyway I guarantee that I will not become a moderator if there is the reasonable expectation of conflict with other moderators. I have a PhD student with substantial programming experience who made a SE-like site for my colleague. At this point it would be easier for me to ask him to create a similar site for me. In fact, I think I might have hit upon something here. If done in the right spirit -- i.e., not a Cartmanesque "...you guys, I'm going home!" but to see what actually works out the best for various people, then that sounds like an ideal experiment.
"Censorship" is a loaded word. It's not like anyone is stopping you from expressing the thoughts you expressed which were deleted here in some other forum.
But that said, I agree that deletion of comments should be VERY limited. If someone posts a comment that is clearly totally irrelevant to the purpose of the site -- "I make $10,000 a week working at home" or some such -- sure, that should be deleted.
But moderators on many of these StackExchange sites are way more aggressive than that. They talk a lot about "this isn't a discussion board, we are trying to build a database of quality questions and answers that can serve as a reference". Well sorry, but that's never in a million years going to happen.
The whole structure of the site is that questions are posted by random visitors. So there is no pattern or organization to the set of questions. This is not a well-organized FAQ carefully put together by a team of experts. The moderators do not create the questions and do only limited work to organize them.
The rules say that questions should not be general reference. That is, if you can find the answer by searching a dictionary or Wikipedia then you should not post it here.
So we have a stated goal: We are trying to build a database of general reference questions. Then we have a rule: No general reference questions allowed. Hmm.
Questions are then answered by random visitors, not by a team of certified experts. This practically guarantees that there will be contradictory answers, or at least answers that run at tangents to each other. i.e. there will be discussion in some sense.
So again, we have a stated goal: No discussion, no controversial opinions, just straightforward answers. Then we have a format that only makes sense if we expect contradictory answers.
So is this site for posting of alternative answers to questions, i.e. to discussion and debate ... or not?
As a moderator I would like to point out that while we are the only users who can delete comments, we generally only delete comments after they have been flagged (potentially multiple times) by other users. The one exception is when the community bot detections lots of comments and gives us the option of moving them to chat. As the comments only get moved, and not deleted, we generally do this when it seems like a discussion is occurring.
"The rules say that questions should not be general reference" - where is this rule? I am not aware of it. We have lots of general reference questions here. We also do not have any rules or stated goals regarding contradictory answers - they are allowed and encouraged. The only relevant rule I'm aware of is about engaging in extended discussion in comments. Extended discussion is allowed in chat.
Honestly, I think this is an answer to a question which is rather outdated. It has been almost two years since I posted this question, and my feelings on the matter now are: the core users of this site (including the moderators) have gotten to know each other better and to understand and respect each others' point of view. I have had such a small number of negative reactions to moderator actions in the last year -- for sure I am happy with more than 99% of what they do. The fact that if I strolled into some random other SE site I would not like it as well is not lost on me.
@PeteL.Clark that is nice to hear. The question is still useful. I think comment deletion and migration is something that we as a site need to continually think about.
@StrongBad Maybe a new question should be opened about it, then?
I have a very hard time taking this seriously.
We have here a user who has only been really active in our community for about two weeks who was upset about comment deletion. He posted as such, a meta thread was made discussing the point; the community had agreed that the comments should have been deleted at a later date instead of immediately, apologies were made, and the matter should have ended.
However, instead of accepting the community's approach, this user posted a long, grandstanding thread about censorship, and started questioning whether the community—which the user had just joined two weeks prior—was well-run. Never mind that, by all measures, this community seems to be doing just fine; never mind that the bit of moderating in question is performed numerous times daily; never mind that the moderators of this site have been pretty willing to engage the community when taking moderator action.
This all seems to be the grandstanding of a new user who is unused to the way our community is run and doesn't like what he is finding. While we are still in beta and the community can change, we've just passed the two year mark; this community has definitely matured significantly since inception. I fail to see any direct, convincing arguments being put forth in favor of change.
Not taking people's concerns serious is certainly not going to help. And what does it matter if someone has been very active only recently? On the contrary, it may hint at issues that deter people from contributing to the site.
I don't understand why you feel this is not serious; that's disappointing. Concerning my membership: I'm not sure why it's relevant, but I have been a member of this site for almost two years. I have been much more active recently, to the extent that after two weeks of activity I have one of the highest reputations on the site. That's a sign of SE site which has relatively little activity (although it also means I suppose that my answers are relatively highly upvoted).
I am especially disappointed that you view my asking the community to explain its feelings about an important issue as "grandstanding". (I was also asked to start a new question by a moderator.) Isn't that the core purpose of the meta site? Whether you find the arguments convincing seems much less important than whether the majority of the community agrees with them or not. That you don't seem to fully agree with this is also distressing.
And also: is the site doing just fine? After about two years it is still in beta, with provisional moderators. Many of the questions come from very confused students who are not talking to their advisors. The site would benefit from an increased presence of academic professionals. In my question I explained concerns about why the site administration may be turning off such people, including giving examples in which this has definitely happened on other related sites. I am sorry if you are not willing to engage in these issues; I think there is something here.
It's understandable for anyone (moderator or not) to be upset when they feel they've been unreasonably criticized, and I understand where you're coming from here since your experience is with sites where this is settled policy. That said, part of having a diamond is that you're promising to stay above the fray and not say petty mean things like this answer.
@Charles: I strongly disagree with your last comment, essentially from start to finish. First, I am not trolling: what I am doing is motivated by a desire to improve the site. Second, my question is motivated by something that happened to me personally, but is much broader than that. Finally, we are having a discussion and seeking involvement from community members. We are getting such discussion and involvement. That's a positive thing. I am sorry if you don't want to be involved in such a basic discussion about the future of the site, but it is certainly your choice.
I'll just short add a comment about “is the site doing just fine?” — by all the metrics we have, yes… growing user back, growing number of frequent flyers, very good self-evaluations, me being very happy. Like all metrics, these should be take with a grain of salt (e.g., the last one), but I generally consider this site quite successful — though we should still strive for improvement! In fact, the site has been ready for graduation for a few months now, and is held up (along with a few others) because there's a queue at the “site design” stage.
@NoahSnyder - While I disagree with your "stay above the fray" comment—as mods are by definition the ones wading into the fray—I understand your viewpoint. I apologize if this came across as petty. I'll delete this answer after the discussion is over, as it doesn't seem to add anything to the discussion.
@CharlesMorisset: And I'm letting you know that it isn't. That seems like the most important part of a conversation: if you doubt that I am proceeding in good faith, we are not succeeding in communicating at all. I have not argued against everything that has been said, and I do think that the conversation has had its constructive aspects. One thing that I find it strange is that no moderators have addressed the issue of whether site-specific features may be specifically antithetical to the academic culture, although three users have upvoted Noah Snyder's comment along these lines....
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2082 | POLL: Should we participate in the 2015 “Winter Bash” Holiday hats promotion?
In 2015, 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).
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)
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, we chose to participate.
To decide whether we will participate in the Winter Bash 2015 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 Tuesday December 8.
Yes, Academia.SE should participate in Winter Bash 2015
No, Academia.SE should not participate in Winter Bash 2015
Do I get a hat for participating in this poll?
At the time of the poll closing the vote is 54 to 12 in favor of hats. Our students shall not worry, we will have warm ears this winter.
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459 | Workplace.SE and boat-programming questions
The question "Is it more difficult for teetotalers to develop academic contacts?" has a couple of close votes suggesting it should be migrated to workplace.se. It appears the question is a boat programming question in that it is a workplace issue with academic tacked on.
Are questions about the academic workplace, but which may not be specific to the academic workplace, on topic? It seems to me that they should be as part of both "Life" and "Inner workings" from our FAQ. I think I feel a question can be on topic at a number of sites and it is up to the user to decide where he/she will get the best answer.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.760230 | 2013-04-04T11:01:10 | {
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405 | Are questions about taught graduate programs designed for professionals on topic
I personally think that there are three types of graduate programs in the world (with suitable gray areas between them). Traditional taught/research based programs, taught graduate programs designed for industry professionals, and diploma mills. Any question about a diploma mill is off topic in my mind, even if it could theoretically fall under the "life as a graduate student" category. Industry certifications as program entrance requirements? made me think about if taught graduate programs designed for professionals are on topic. These types of questions, as they are not research based at all, do not fall under the "Transitioning from undergraduate to graduate researcher" category, but they might fall under the "life as" category.
What are peoples thoughts on the scope of AC.SE? Are questions about graduate programs designed for industry professionals on topic?
Graduate-level programs are typically considered on-topic, so long as they would otherwise fit into the theme of the group. (In other words, no questions about individual programs.)
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421 | Move comments to chat?
This question:
Professorship without PhD in the United States has a number of comments about what would happen if a person without a PhD proved the Riemann hypothesis. I think the comments are probably better in chat and might make an interesting chat discussion.
I flagged one of them, but wanted to pitch the idea here.
I agree with you in theory, but unfortunately SE chat is used by only a fraction of users. That said, I'll post a notice there suggesting further discussion take place in chat.
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486 | What makes a question a "poll" and are they ever okay
This question stems from a comment by F'x on this question of mine. He said
in its current wording, this is a poll question (“how do people
manage…”)
I fully agree with his comment, but I think I disagree with the idea that all poll type question are "off-topic". To me a poll question like "which software should I use to do X" is a poll question that likely will generate a big list of answers of software specifically designed for a task and are unlikely to have a "correct" answer.
I feel many questions on AC.SE, including the one in question, are "how do I manage X" where there are not any/many canned solutions. So while the questions are in essence performing a poll, I don't think they are big list type questions and may actually have a "correct" answer. Are these questions on topic?
I'll explain in a bit more detail what I meant by my comment. All questions ask for answers, and many questions asks for solutions, procedures, software, etc. These are fine questions to have. To me, a question becomes a poll question when it asks people what they are doing, to measure popularity of various solutions. Then, you'll have one “I use git” answer, with 12 “+1” comments, one “I use svn” answer, with 7 “+1”, one “I use a flat directory structure with date-based file naming” answer, etc.
It's not only about software, mind you. “What process do you use to do X” is also a poll question. It's asking for people's own usage, which is highly subjective. I believe it would be much better to frame such questions as “Here's how I am currently doing that thing, what are the pros and cons of my method and what modifications can you suggest?”.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.760484 | 2013-04-23T12:02:02 | {
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157 | Providing qualifications with answers
In this answer, the user has decided to provide a evidence for what makes him qualified for answering the question. While I can see it as potentially useful, I am not sure it is needed or desirable. Has the practice of prefacing answers with qualifications been discussed?
My concern is that providing qualifications could intimidate junior people. It seems like such statements are saying "I am so important that my answers should be given extra weight". I think our site rep (and past question/answers) should give the indication of the type of person who submitted the answer and how much extra weight the answer should be given (if any).
As a person who has answered many questions in the past ... (ok I'm kidding)
But seriously I think this example seems perfectly fine. Many of the questions on academia.se are the kind where there's no right answer per se, but there are answers that differ based on experience. So explaining the nature of that experience is helpful. It's much like how we often clarify which area we have experience in when we answer a question. This is different from questions on technical sites like cs.se where the answer usually can be evaluated and discussed independent of the credentials of the participants.
As a somewhat junior person (PhD student), I am not intimidated, but encouraged by the observation that senior scientists participate in this website. For a forum like this one, it really does make an important difference who answers the question. I've found myself several times clicking on peoples' nametags to see if they provide any relevant background information there.
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752 | Link to free pirated papers or official versions behind paywalls
In this question the OP links to a nature paper that s/he is interested in re-typesetting. The link appears to be to an illegal copy of a non-open access paper that is available (presumably behind a paywall). Should we allow links to pirated papers or force people to link to the non-free version?
For some questions you might need to be able to see the paper in order to answer the question, but in other (e.g., this case) you might not need to see the paper to answer the question. Does this affect or decision?
Before removing such a link, do a quick search to see if the author/their university host a copy or if it has been submitted to a reputable pre-print archive. Those shouldn't be considered pirated.
We shouldn't be posting unauthorized links, if at all possible to avoid doing so. I don't want to say "absolutely not," because it can serve a useful purpose under limited circumstances. But "probably not" is eminently reasonable.
quoting a long paragraph or (if it's math and figures) posting a snapshot of the relevant section, might be OK if it is needed to answer the question. But I agree we want to avoid illegal links if at all possible.
I think we should allow links, regardless of the legal status of the content they link to.
As a general rule for the Internet, I would prefer to keep as little self-censorship as possible.
Moreover, having too strong policy on removing alleged links to piracy will result in removing some links that are legal (e.g. self-archiving that is legal).
EDIT:
While I think that it is a good practice to use an official link (preferably arXivID (http://arxiv.org/abs/...), DOI (http://dx.doi.org/...), or another id-based link), the direct access is important (without it some questions, or answer, may be incomplete).
So how about using an official link plus (if it is not open access) another link (not synonymous with illegal!)? If it might be illegal, still - IMHO it should be on the conscience of the person who has uploaded it, posted the link or entered the link.
(Again, on the Internet, I prefer under-policing to over-policing.)
I think this brings up a good point. I don't like the idea of removing an unofficial link when there is no official link to replace it with. I just don't see the issue with replacing a legitimate link (i.e., a self-archive) with another legitimate link. Maybe we should encourage the person posting the link to say something about why they think the link is legitimate.
@DanielE.Shub replacing a legitimate link with another legitimate link, where the second is behind a paywall and the first wasn't, effectively removes access to the paper to anybody who isn't at a university!
@Flyto no it doesn't (at least generally), it just makes it a little more difficult.
@DanielE.Shub I would disagree with that. Even if the open version is easily googleable and the reader is comfortable with looking for free versions when they hit a paywall (both nontrivial assumptions), I would fear there's a big chance the potential reader will simply not bother. (After all, there's a risk in going fishing for free versions, as you never know how long the search might take.) Even with easily-googleable papers, the replacement quite drastically reduces the usefulness of the link.
Regarding posts that contain links to freely-available versions that are not obviously pirated: I don't see the point to removing links to content. While there is indeed an argument for the permanence of the journal version (though this is only valid if it's a DOI link!), I don't see why both types of link can't coexist.
If a post already has an ostensibly legitimate link, add the journal (DOI!) version instead of replacing the eprint.
Good point re DOIs. Ideally, from a permanence point of view, people wouldn't use any other link.
I agree with others that we shouldn't host links to copyright-infringing copies of papers. However, since different journals permit reproduction of different stages of the publication process in different circumstances (e.g. some allow authors to put a copy on their personal website), it isn't necessarily straightforward to determine what is a copyright-infringing copy.
Therefore, I think that we should refrain from flagging this unless it's very clear that the version being linked infringes, and perhaps add something to the Help for the site pointing out that we don't want dodgy links.
If we always link to the official journal version, then we know it is a legal version. In some cases this will make it a little harder to answer the question or understand the answer, but I think we need to be good citizens and support copyright even if we don't agree with it
So (to take an example) if I am the author of a paper, and I have a legitimate copy that I am allowed to share on my website, you feel that I should not be allowed to link to that, but should link to a paywalled version instead?
It might be best to ask this as a separate meta question because I can see arguments for both sides. I see two benefits and one drawback from linking to the paywalled version. The first benefit is it makes it easier for mod/editors to make sure we are not prompting piracy. The second is the paywalled version is likely more permanent then a link on you personal webpage. The drawback is that it will take a little more effort from users to get to the free version. The benefits to me outweigh the costs.
@DanielE.Shub hmm, fair point about permanence. I think that if it were me, I would perhaps provide both links. My general feeling otherwise is that we don't take it upon ourselves, as a community, to check the copyright status of everything that anybody links to on Stackexchange - so why should academic papers be different? While we certainly should not encourage copyright infringement - and might even want something in the site help about not linking to infringing versions - there's no reason to try to police every paper that somebody links.
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1694 | Possible CW question
The possibility of converting European Ph.D. student salary range web site to a community wiki has been raised. What do people think?
I am personally against the community wiki (although as a mod, I will do what people vote for). My reasoning is that there is variation with countries, universities and schools, making "correct" answers difficult. Verification of the data will also be difficult. Further, the salaries will change over time which means each answer will need to be consistently update so as not to fall out of date.
I do not agree. a little and verity information is better than nothing :) isn't?
@alex maybe, you can make a case for it as an answer here. CW questions are "exceptions" to what is usually appropriate for SE. I personally think that we should only make exceptions for things that are exceptionally good/important. This question doesn't seem to qualify in my personal opinion.
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1696 | Are we migrating away too many questions?
Recently, it seems that a number of questions are being flagged for migration because they are a better fit someplace else. My personal view on migration is it should only be used for questions that are off topic here. In other words, if a question is on topic here, it should stay even if it might be a better fit someplace else. What do people think about migration?
I am not sure what is up with the migrated search, but of the 10 questions I see there...
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/41557/how-much-of-your-p-value-do-you-report-in-a-publication
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/43331/link-to-article-using-a-download-or-view-online-symbol
Although maybe better fits someplace else, seem on topic here.
If the question is on-topic, and the OP chose to post here, I believe we should keep the question here, even if it is a better fit somewhere else.
The one exception I can see is if the OP requests migration after becoming aware of that option.
I second this. In particular I do not consider “is off-topic because it is better fit for X” a valid close reason.
I think that as a community we are a bit fast on the trigger for migration, and basically agree with earthling's post. I would add that the distinction I find useful is whether the question's answers will need to be highly technical vs. more about custom and practice.
Thus, for example, in the two examples that you give, I think the "p-value" question is definitely right to migrate, because the answer is deeply technical in statistics, whereas the "link to article" question could have stayed (though it might have ended up on hold anyway as opinion-based).
Mostly, though, I think we're migrating a bunch of questions because a lot of people turn up confused about the scope of this site, apparently feeling that "I encountered this in academia" means "I should ask about this on Academia.SE." Looking at some of the other sites on the network, though, I think our frequency of migration is pretty normal.
I don't think we're necessarily migrating too many questions - because Stack Exchange is a network, I don't think there's particularly harm in seeing a question moved, and indeed the initial asker can benefit a lot from a prompt to go to a more appropriate venue for their question, and future questions like it.
I'll admit that I'm particularly pro-migration for questions that fit better on CrossValidated (the p-value question), because this isn't a question specific to academia, and is specifically a question in a technical area that has a SE site. I'd feel the same about questions about code, even if it was for a thesis (SO) or say a specific biology question.
In my opinion, whether or not a question is on-topic on Academia SE (or on any other SE site) is a bad measurement for the decision whether or not to migrate it away.
The more important factor, I think, is where the question is most on-topic. That is for the simple reason that similar questions turn up over time, and only if we have each question flow toward the one site where it is "most at home", there is a chance that the various variants of one question are eventually merged.
I say this based on the following personal beliefs of mine (here expressed in a somewhat drastical way):
Duplicate questions are a vicious evil to fight, even though it will be an eternal struggle and they can never completely be eradicated. When looking for some specific information, I vastly prefer one question with lots of different answers over having to open a dozen browser tabs, each of which contains what might or might not be another duplicate of the same question I am trying to solve.
Reviving even old, seemingly inactive questions is nothing to be criticized for; if you know something to contribute to a question or answer, do it, no matter whether the respective post was added a minute or a decade ago.
In short: I prefer increasing chances of merging duplicate questions across the whole SE network, rather than have each SE site amass a pile of borderline questions that have already been, or will also be answered elsewhere.
I see a problem that migration is a hard action and we can't readily flag as duplicate across sites. Few questions will reasonably live on more than a couple of sites, so I think cross-site duplication is not a big problem.
@jakebeal: Indeed, flagging as duplicates across sites is impossible, which is one of the primary reasons why I argue strongly in favour of much migration. I agree Academia SE may have less of a problem in this respect, I rather encounter the issue on the programming sites, where I feel a considerable amount of questions is suitable for sets of sites such as StackExchange, Programmers SE, User Experience SE, Game Development SE. As it is a cross-site issue, I'd prefer if all sites used the same policy in this case, though.
I find a lot of Meta conversations along these lines kind of make an assumption that everyone is going to behave rationally...when really pretty much no one does. I think most people are doing their best but may come to SE via a search engine and in desperation for an answer. We COULD spend a lot of time massaging everything back into "perfect" shape but the law of large numbers means that most questions are more-or-less where they belong. IMHO.
@DaveKaye: I'm not sure I get the connection between the beginning of your comment and its end. If indeed the law of large numbers successfully achieves that most questions are more-or-less where they belong, doesn't that confirm that more-or-less everyone did behave rationally? And if that is the case, wouldn't that also provide good reasons to trust that the law of large numbers will also lead to most migrations successfully placing somewhat misplaced questions where they belong even better?
Ha, interesting point...I guess I didn't see it that way or perhaps that wasn't the best way to explain it. All I meant was that things are basically OK. Look, for instance, at how many "closed" questions will have been upvoted in to the triple digits...and the moderators never come back!
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1616 | Why is proper formating of statistics off topic?
I was surprised that we closed https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/41557/how-much-of-your-p-value-do-you-report-in-a-publication
It seems to be asking about formating a particular number and not about statistics itself. As a formating question it seems similar in nature to this non exhaustive list:
APA style for program used in a study
How should I cite a screenshot in APA style for my student paper?
In text listing style - how to use? Any downsides?
I disagree with the assertion that this is a "style" question. The precision of numbers and measurements is a vital part of the practice of statistics, and really belongs on a site like Cross Validated rather than on Academia.
I strongly agree, and was another of the close-voters.
I fully agree. This isn't about style, but about what precision one needs to report in which case, and as such is either a discipline-specific question or a statistics question, both of which are out of scope here.
I too am in agreement - this is a question about statistics, not actually about formatting.
I agree with the migration (and perhaps I was involved in it? I couldn't easily see tell the voters were on our end by looking at the question in its new destination). A few points:
1) Migrating a question from one SE site to another should probably not be viewed as equivalent to other types of closing. It is an attempt to give a question more activity, not less.
2) Similarly, I don't think migrating a question from site A to site B implies that the question is off-topic for site A so much as that it is much more on-topic for site B. We want questions to be recorded in places where they are most relevant, where they have the largest possible community to answer them, where they can be compared to other relevant questions, and so forth.
3) The question in question is one about statistical practice. By good fortune, we have an entire site for that. Let me remark that the Cross Validated site is not only or primarily for academic statisticians. It is a general site for questions and answers both about the academic field of statistics and its application in a variety of endeavors. (In other words, if I am not mistaken it is more like math.SE than mathoverflow.) It's better for questions like this to be asked on Cross Validated, in which the leading answerers are all statistical experts and in which the community as a whole is statistically savvy enough to up and downvote accordingly. In a similar way a question which required mathematical expertise -- rather than expertise with the mathematical community or profession -- to answer would be better asked on math.SE than here, even though there are mathematical questions which are of interest to academia as a whole.
Totally agree with 1 and 3, it is your 2nd point I am not sure about.
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353 | Being nice when down voting
I think we down vote too often here. SE has some reasonable guidelines about when to down vote.
Use your downvotes whenever you encounter an egregiously sloppy,
no-effort-expended post, or an answer that is clearly and perhaps
dangerously incorrect.
Our answers and questions often are a little on the subjective side, but nowhere in the guidelines does it suggest down voting just because you disagree (which I think is why many down votes get cast).
I would really like to see more explanations as to why things are getting down voted. This would allow people to fix the problems instead of just slapping them in the face. I understand this will make the down vote not anonymous, but I think it is a nicer way to go.
I see this as more of a problem when down voting answers. I can provide examples from my own answers which have received down votes. I am using my own answers since I can easily find ones with down votes and not because I need justification or want the down votes reversed.
Why should the scientific community avoid double submissions?
Is it ethical to use another university's journal subscription if yours doesn't have access?
What are the various designations/stages in the academic career of the person
I also have a question with what seems a spurious down vote:
Are abstracts confidential during the review process?
Again, I am not complaining about these down votes, it is the fact that it happens to new people also.
@F'x see my edit
Your downvoted question does have a comment by someone describing the question as "not useful".
Okay, I first thought you were thinking about “heavily downvoted newcomer questions”. I asked for specific examples because I think, overall, Academia is doing quite well in leaving nice and helpful comments below newcomers' posts to help them improve.
Regarding your examples, it does happen to all of us: while we can remind people to leave comments explaining downvotes, in the end it's up to them to use downvotes to mark questions they deem invalid, and more importantly answers they deem wrong. It's a subjective call, and that's part of what makes SE a democracy and not a technocracy; i.e. you're not guaranteed that upvoted answers are correct, but only that people think they are correct (and similarly for downvoted). Which means: there will always be some noise, and we shouldn't care too much (I'm sure that –1 vote on a +12 answer does not make you sad at night!).
And, coming to your point, I think new people will also see it as it is. If they have a good upvoted answer with an unexplained downvote, they won't care too much. If the answer was borderline between “meh” and “bad”, they will maybe get a –1. We should continue to ask people to comment when they downvote, but there's nothing more we can (or should) do.
Academia.SE has one of the most active voting userbase among all the SE sites, based on discussions with site-wide mods. Many questions which I find pretty trivial receive 5+ votes easily, sometimes many more. As far as I'm concerned, that's great.
One side effect of this may be a more active downvoting population as well, which I'm also not too concerned about. Without looking at specifics, the site generally manages its voting well. The only "bad form" downvoting I've seen is that some questions which have already been closed continue to garner downvotes, which I view as hitting someone once they're down; no need to downvote, the question is closed. However, the questions you point to all have one downvote, which you should safely ignore; many agree, one disagrees, consider it an overall win.
For what it's worth, I just checked the mod tools and it doesn't look like there's one person "out to get you". Just shrug it off.
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1290 | Potentially conflicting answers across two questions
I am not sure if this question is appropriate for the main site or not. A while back I asked about the Value of light-to-none peer reviewed pay-to-publish articles when evaluating a potential PhD student. The answers all suggest I should treat them as any other non-peer reviewed article (which is essentially the same thing you do with peer reviewed articles). This recent question by a PhD applicant asks Should I list my papers which are published in less known journals in my CV? and the answers seem to suggest that if the "less known" journals are predatory that you should avoid listing them on your CV. This seems in contradiction to the answers I got. Is there a contradiction, or am I missing something?
Pay to publish ≠ Lesser known journals
There are thousands of perfectly legitimate but low-impact journals. Publishing in those is by no means a negative reflection on one's character, skill, or whatever. There are also thousands of predatory, pay-to-publish journals. Publishing in those is almost always a bad idea, and may reflect negatively on an individual.
Aside from whether this is a contradiction or not, I think it is ambitious to assume that the answers given here are necessarily internally consistent. Different persons answer different questions, and the underlying assumptions etc. are not necessarily the same. That is, I am pretty sure that one would be able to find two related questions where the most upvoted / accepted answers are indeed contradictory, but I see absolutely no way to prevent this.
I don't think it's necessarily a contradiction.
Presumably, listing an article you published in a predatory journal shows a lack of experience or understanding of the publication process.
The advice to you, as the person evaluating these CVs, is not to punish the student for this lack of understanding. The answers there suggest giving the student the benefit of the doubt, since he/she may have had an inadequate advisor who didn't train them in this aspect of academia.
But students can't count on everyone who evaluates their CV to be so understanding of their naïveté. Thus, the advice not to list it on the CV - since the reader's negative impression of those who publish in predatory journals can outweigh any favorable impact the content of the paper may have.
It seems this is what happened, so not really a conflict. It's like saying "be responsible, keep your commitments" but also saying "hey, if that person didn't keep their commitments, consider forgiving them." One point is about what you should do, the other point is about how you should judge others. While you do not know how others will judge you, you should be safe (don't list on your CV). However, that does not mean you should judge others by the same standard - do your own research (read the articles) to see what the truth is.
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1297 | Should we name names when talking about bad publishers and researchers?
In this question: My paper was withdrawn from predatory journal after publication, what should I do? the OP is considering naming the publisher and a high rep user has recommended them to do this. I personally do not think naming the publisher adds any value and I do not want AC.SE to be a place to list bad publishers and researchers. If naming the publisher, journal, or researcher adds value to a question or answer, then I think it is important to name names. In cases where naming names is simply to shame publishers/people, I think it is a bad idea.
This question may help: What is the website policy on naming brands in questions/answers?
Another note is that we have no guarantee that the information is accurate. A few weeks ago on Stack Overflow, I got a review where the person's first post said he had personally worked with the author cited in the question and called him an idiot. We can't determine intent or truth in a question. If a person is doing wrong, then official channels are the ones that will ultimately solve the problem.
Dear Mods: I am so pleased with your moderation of Academia.SE. You are all very professional, prompt, and diplomatic. Now there's the fact that 3/4 of you participated in this proactive discussion, which puts you over the top in my books. Keep up the excellent work :).
I think that, while naming people is inappropriate and not constructive (example: grad student complaining about their supervisor Prof. Doe to be a mean, mean person), publishers are another story.
As commercial operations, they accept to be public entities and it's practical to the community to be able to discuss about a specific company (see for example this: Do Springer, IEEE, Elsevier charge a fee for non-open-access journals?), the same way we discuss the pros and cons of, say, a reference manager software. For example, there are several questions about Elsevier's editorial website (example: How can co-authors check the status of a submitted manuscript in Elsevier Editorial System?).
The same holds for universities. Why put universities under scrutiny (What is the status/reputation of the University of South Africa (UNISA)?) but not publishers?
Additionally, if a scholar is wondering about a given publisher, chances are the query will be more along the line of: Is Lambert Academic Publishing a reputable company? or Is MDPI a reputable Academic Publisher? than 'What is the process to evaluate the shadyness of a given publisher'.
There are also multiple comments and answers that are critical about the business model of established publishers and I think it's very well, but we should also be able to openly criticize the smaller, less experienced, and especially the dishonest ones.
There are appropriate resources for public "shaming." People can be directed to those sites as warranted.
Like http://retractionwatch.com/.
I agree that there is no benefit to naming names, and it can be detrimental to do so.
Besides, if a question requires the name of the publisher in order to be answered, it's probably too localized, anyways (as per our help center guidelines). A better approach is to give details that characterize the publisher (as Kurt did quite well). This ensures that the question and answers will be applicable not just in this one situation, but also others like it.
Should a question like this one: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/2513/10643 be deleted or flagged?
@CapeCode I think in that case naming the publisher is critical to the question. As for whether it is a good question for the site the up votes suggest the community likes it and I tend to agree, although I would not want to see essentially duplicate questions for every publisher and /or journal. I think size of the publisher plays a role and the fact that its reputation is a little murky.
I don't think that a question about a single named publisher is necessarily too localized. For example, Elsevier publish a mindblowingly huge number of journals, so are relevant to almost all academics in almost all fields. If somebody has a question that is specific to Elsevier, why not just name Elsevier instead of beating around the bush.
The naming procedure itself is quite subjective and is not persistent, since the publisher/person might change and the question would be out of sync with real information. A rather more interesting question issued would be asking for guidance to identify the properties of a dodgy publisher/person. At this instance, giving out examples on naming a publisher/person doing (or not) a particular action would help on explanation.
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1418 | Should the comments on this question be deleted?
Given some of our recent discussions on meta, it seems the community is particularly sensitive to moderator deleting comments that are related to moderator behaviour. This question has a "not constructive" flag raised against one of the comments, which has brought it to my attention. It seems to me that all the comments form a discussion that is not relevant to the question, but may be the basis of a useful chat/meta discussion, unfortunately the only options available to moderators is to leave the comments or delete the comments. Should the comments be deleted?
These without a doubt meet the criteria for deleting comments:
they offer nothing of value to either the author of the post or to future readers.
These are meta-comments about the potential closure of the question. The only vote to close the question has long since aged away. There is no ongoing debate over closing the question (and the question never even came close to bring closed, by moderators or anyone else). The entire conversation is almost two years old. The person who posted those comments was invited to bring the concerns to meta, and declined to do so.
Given the current vote counts on this question which was about a much more borderline case, I don't think there's any reason to believe that the community majority would want to keep those comments around.
I didn't notice that it was 2 years old ...
Here is a second shot at posting what really is an answer to the question. That answer had a feature which proved to be distracting and controversial, so I am trying again without it.
Moving comments to meta is much less potentially objectionable than deleting them outright. It would be easy enough to keep one or more meta questions open for the purpose of transferring comments that pertain to moderation (and/or other meta issues).
The point of the meta site is to provide a platform for discussions of site mechanics. It is natural that many discussions of site issue begin on the site itself, and I don't like to see discussions which begin there deleted outright. However, "I have moved this discussion of site issues to the dedicated place for site issues" ought not to be problematic to anyone.
Note also that moving such discussions seems easier and faster than wondering whether or not to delete them and especially to having discussions about the suitability of deleting questions.
I do not myself see much of value in the present comments, and deleting comments that are more than a year old and have not been acted upon is not a problem to me. But I think that the general practice of moving comments to meta rather than (or technically speaking, along with) deleting them is a good one. I hope it does not take much more work for moderators to do this. If it does, a streamlined way to move comments to the meta site seems like a eminently reasonable feature request.
Since there is currently no tool for moderators to move comments, I object to this suggestion on the grounds that it would be a hassle for moderators. If this suggestion is ever implemented more broadly, I would gladly use it in place of deletion when warranted.
@ff524 - "...would be a hassle for everyone", not just moderators.
@ff524: Oded's answer to the question you link to says that this feature has been implemented in some form. Is the implementation not suitable for this purpose? (I would prefer moving comments to meta -- as a veteran SE user, I tend to view the chatrooms as being an afterthought to the entire SE experience, but I'd get over it: somewhere is a lot better than nowhere).
@PeteL.Clark no the tool Oded talks about is not suitable. It only kicks in if the post is automatically flagged as "having too many comments", which doesn't happen that often on AC.SE.
What @StrongBad said. By "implemented more broadly" I meant "available on demand" or "available whenever a user has raised a flag." Right now, it's not available often, and when it is, it's almost always in situations where comments shouldn't be moved.
One of the comments there alluded to the fact that moderators can trigger the tool by goosing the number of comments. I agree that that is not an ideal implementation. If you say that it makes it impractical...OK, I believe you.
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3280 | How do we feel about gender specific terms?
In my mind, this comment
is suggesting that gender specific terms should be avoided. I do not know how the community feels. The comment itself was flagged by a user as offensive (which seems extreme to me). Are terms like "man-hours" acceptable, or should we be holding ourselves to a higher standard?
I wouldn't call that comment "offensive" but it's certainly "not constructive".
@JonathanReez in that case it seems like you would classify many members of humankind as crazy.
It's absolutely trivial to say "work-hours", "worker-hours", "person-hours", or to make up any other obviously equivalent non-gendered term. So, do that.
I am in favor of encouraging clarity above all else, and leaving other matters of language and style up to the author of the post.
As long as the language of the post is clear and it is consistent with the be nice policy, we should let authors express themselves as they prefer. If you don't like gender-specific terms or pronouns, don't use them in your own posts, but don't insist that others refrain from using them.
I think using many gender specific terms like "man-hours" is fine.
We should strive to use the more gender neutral ones where we can (e.g., "firefighter" over "fireman"), but I don't think we need to explicitly avoid words that are well understood and are normally not considered to be offensive.
Exactly. Changing clear and well established structures of the language just for the sake of overemphasizing PC for the heck of it, is not useful. I strongly disagree with certain trents in that direction that can be observed in particular in the English speaking world ...
Just leaving a comment to record my disagreement with @Dilaton's assessment, which he (or she?) is perfectly entitled to. (I'm not entering into debate; this comment is just here for anyone who also disagrees, since comments can only be voted up and cannot be voted down)
"man-hours" is not actually gender specifc. "man" is synonymous to "person", "worker" here.
Think about "mankind". That's everybody.
Imagine a female firefighter saying "I'm not a fireman!" as if it were an insult. Half her colleagues will feel slightly insulted. Fat lot of good that'll do for gender equality.
It's even worse in languages like French or German, where the "feminists" put a female form with gender-specific article next to the old one with a male grammatical gender. Now no macho captain has to suffer that a female can carry the same title, because she's not a "Kapitän", she's a "Kapitänin"!
Congratulations, you've made it easy for people to be sexist.
How can I, as a male, stand up for women's equality, say that it doesn't matter in professional life, when all the time people come up with new vocabulary that cements differences? Honestly, I'm rather fed up with it.
Putting language usage to one side: is it not consistent to stand up for women's equality and say that it currently does matter in professional life? (descriptive rather than normative)
@YemonChoi That is not what I said.
OK, then could you clarify the last para sllightly? Sollen kein rather than es gibt kein, perhaps?
No, sorry. That sentence is perfectly clear, unless someone had a sexist predjudice about my intent. Present excluded, of course.
@djechlin Hofstadter. :-/ Cargo-cult scientist when he steps outside of physics. Reasoning by analogy, he's insulting everybody who is not buying into this unfounded theory of genderised language to be not only a sexist but also a racist. This is exactly what i meant with being "fed up". I will not team up with such people, however worthy the case is.
@djechlin You're welcome. And thanks for trying to insult me with that website. I'm afraid the finger is pointing back at you.
I like your first two paragraphs. If you edit the rest out I'll vote this one up.
Given the increasing acceptance of "singular they," there are very few places where using a gendered term is actually necessary. Furthermore, I do think that avoiding them is good practice for an inclusive community, as otherwise we are contributing with no good reason to the still-quite-strong "men are the default" environment.
Of course, when one is talking about a specific person where the gender is known, it's always appropriate to use that person's preferred pronoun.
As for how to approach is as a community: I would recommend treating unnecessary gendering just like we do blatant grammatical errors. If you notice it, edit to fix; no special criticism necessary.
Thus, if you run into a sentence like:
Somebody can told me figuring how many man-hours project need?
just change it to a better one like:
Can somebody tell me how to figure out how many person-hours a project needs?
to fix it and move on.
@djechlin Not if this meta-question ends up going in this direction...
I like this idea, but it does go down a rabbit hole. For example, if the question is focused on women, I am not sure we want an edit that changes "women" to "womyn". My guess is we also would have a number of users who would object to the singular usage of they and their.
@djechlin the point of this meta discussion it to determine if the community feels an edit of "he" to "they" or "women" to "womyn" is an acceptable edit.
@StrongBad I don't think we need to go down that road. "Women" is still the widely accepted term there, and that doesn't seem to be changing any time soon. If you saw somebody write "she" in an answer about a man or "he" in an answer about a woman, you'd probably correct it to the opposite term, right? Likewise, if I see somebody assume "he" about a person of unknown gender, I think it's appropriate to correct it to "they" or "he or she." Personally, I prefer "they" since it's less clunky.
A general note: person-time is the standard way to refer to this in epidemiology.
The singular-they is very akward and and grammatically not even wrong.
What the heck is the purpose of "womyn"? It is not a real legitimate word. This looks like nonsense.
@Dilaton see for example: https://msu.edu/~womyn/alternative.html
@Dilaton I'm afraid you're going to have to pick a fight with everyone from Chaucer through Shakespeare and Austen over "not even wrong". Singular they is perfectly good English and always has been.
@Andrew I know about the majestic plural that was used in the old days, it existed in the German language too... ;-).
Imposing your own style on others when what is written isn't blatantly offensive is vigilante justice I disapprove of. I wouldn't use man-hours (common language usage has changed much over my lifetime, and words that used to ring right, just don't anymore). However, let people speak in their own words. I would much prefer if you leave a comment, pointing objections you have out with maybe a suggested alternative spelling, encouraging action by the user. However, in the case at hand "person-hours" is simply ugly, and I loath this fairly beautiful language turning into bureaucrat-speak.
@gnometorule: "person-hours" is ridiculous, but "man-hours" is a very weak term. The right thing to do is express the type of practitioner whose time must be spent, and that ordinarily comes out gender neutral by default. For example, in my workplace, schedules are often based on "engineer-hours". A university department's QI project might require both faculty hours and student hours, and lumping these together in a single figure is counter-productive, regardless of whether the unit is phrased as man/woman/person/human/lifeform-hours.
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3251 | Do questions need to be about "actual problems that you face"
This question is potentially related to Should seemingly hard-to-answer questions be downvoted (and closed)?
Our help center don't ask section includes some generic text that is used SE wide:
You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face.
In a pervious question: Are realistic hypothetical situation based questions permitted? it seems clear that the community thinks that to an extent hypothetical questions are okay.
A number of the reference-request questions do not provide the practical problem that the requested information is needed to solve. In some cases the applicability is obvious, but in other it is not clear.
Should reference-request questions that are merely asking for a reference, and not asking a bigger question, be off topic?
Up-votes here mean "yes" to the question in the title?
@CapeCode man, I knew I was going to screw it up. I am going to flip the question in the body now ...
I think that the "practical answerable questions" line should be interpreted quite permissively. I think that its real value is to permit closing of questions that are basically silly wastes of time because they aren't even vaguely close to the real world, e.g.,
What would happen if PhD programs required students to switch what professor they were working for every two weeks, and you couldn't go back to a professor?
Would a scientific paper still count on your C.V. if it got published, but then the journal was shut down by the government and you could only get copies of the paper through WikiLeaks?
Likewise, sometimes a question is unanswerable because it depends on too many particulars that can't be filled in since the situation doesn't actually exist.
There will not be a clear black and white about which hypotheticals are OK and which are not, but I think that we should be fairly permissive, since many hypotheticals are close enough to real situations to be readily answerable.
I think the issue that comes up with many reference-request questions is not about being hypothetical, but rather is often some sort of XY problem, in which the asker has refined down to a request for a highly specific piece of research that has probably not been carried out, when a slightly less precisely targeted question would likely have been readily answerable.
I think the part about the XY issue is pretty close, but I am not sure it is a refinement issue. Rather, I think the asker may be interested in a reference for theoretical reasons and the only question that the reference may answer is some sort of hyper-refined XY problem.
I don't think that line in the help center applies to reference-request questions.
In most cases, if you really had to, it is trivial to connect those questions to an actual problem.
For example, the most recent reference-request is How random is the graduate admission process in the United States?. This question corresponds to the actual, real problem (for example):
"I am interested in reducing the randomness of the graduate admissions process in computer science PhD programs, but in order to convince anyone to act, I need some reliable, verifiable data to show how bad the problem really is."
In other cases, such as my reference-request question What is the origin of the “underwater basket weaving” meme in Academia?, where it is very difficult to connect the question to an actual problem, the community didn't seem to mind. (That question currently has 79 upvotes and 0 downvotes.)
So, it seems that a question does not necessarily need to be explicitly attached to a problem. I think reference-request questions that are clear, specific, and relevant to the topics in the help center are on topic here. (As evidenced, perhaps, by my being a top answerer and one of the top askers in that tag.)
I interpret
You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face.
mainly to exclude hypotheticals that lack context, where the answer depends very much on the specific circumstance.
To take your question Can I teach in the nude? as an example (I hope you don't mind), I commented there
Also, per the help center: "You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face." This does not seem to qualify. – ff524♦ Jul 14 '15 at 16:54
and further clarified that I find the question problematic because it is a hypothetical given without context:
I don't think it would be a bad question if it was given in the context of a specific scenario, like this one. As a general question, I still think it's terrible. – ff524♦ Jul 14 '15 at 17:06
That's the kind of question I think is excluded by "practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face."
In regards to the first example, I think that might be an xy problem. In regards to my teaching in the nude question, I am not really sure what I was thinking.
@StrongBad I don't think it's necessarily an XY problem. An XY problem is one where you really care about X, and don't care about Y except inasmuch as it helps you with X. Here, we care about the answer to Y even if it turns out not to help with X.
Good answer (+1), but, also considering your commentary here, I think @StrongBad is still pointing to an faq formulation that doesn't quite fit the modus operandi here. Should one consider to change the faq to something like "...actual or hypothetical problems that you face, or one might face in academia." (Not this exact formulation, but something more elegant to its sort)
@gnometorule The "What types of questions should I avoid asking?" page in the help center is the same across all SE sites. It isn't customizable.
@ff524: Thanks for letting me know. That's a bit unfortunate, in my eyes.
@gnometorule while we cannot change it, the SE team presumably can. Other sites are discussing changing the text: http://meta.law.stackexchange.com/questions/373/actual-problems-that-you-face
I think hypothetical questions to better understand common rules/policies of universities should be accepted. For example, while one could ask for a reference to better understand "what is the NIH policy on _______", it can be much more natural and illuminating to ask the hypothetical "If a PI submits a paper with ________, but _________, is the PI following policy?". Sometimes this could be acceptable even if the applicability is unclear if the question helps one understand what the policies actually mean.
A potential policy: "Stack exchange is not a suitable tool for literature search. Questions solely requesting literature search are off-topic."
I asked in the SE wide super secret mod room and it sounds like most sites do not like them. Some of the academic sites allow them, but there I think it is more "I read this idea, what is the original source". Not really sure how I feel still.
The issue is that sometimes an OP may want answers supported by some facts, not just guesses or personal experiences.
@FranckDernoncourt that does not seem to be "solely requesting literature search" ...
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2196 | Should we ask Stack Exchange for membership/support someplace?
Stack Exchange supports its communities in a number of ways. They periodically give branded swag to high rep users. They make donations on behalf of moderators to charities/causes during the holiday season. They also, at least for TeX.SE, have corporate membership in a relevant society.
I think there may be a relevant society that Stack Exchange might join that would help promote our site and provide benefits to out members. Should we ask Stack Exchange for such support, and if so where?
Some, likely not very good, ideas are:
National Postdoctoral Association
American Association of University Professors
Society of Women Engineers
PLoS
ArXiv
Unlike the TeX example, I don't think there's any organization that represents/supports a significant majority of users on this site.
On the other hand there may be organisations, whose membership may grant us benefits.
@ff524 while that may be true, there may be organizations that represent/support a large number of users (even if it is only a fraction of our total users).
The first three are rather specific in terms of focusing on a particular geography or gender. PLoS and arXiv are a bit more inclusive, but still rather focused on the sciences - plus, I don't see them offering institutional memberships.
What type of collaboration are you envisioning? Simply listing us as a preferred resource? Having people on the organization commit to answering questions on their topics?
@eykanal I was thinking of SE paying for coroprate membership to help suppprt a society that we want to suppprt. SE/AC.SE would have their name listed with corporate members to give us a little advertisng.
@strongbad - If SE isn't already doing this for the computer/programming societies (e.g., IEEE Software), it'll probably be difficult to convince them we should do this for the SE sub-sites such as ours. OTOH, the main SO site doesn't need the advertising, whereas ours does, so...
You want to give more money to PLOS?
It looks like the consensus here is "no," for a few different reasons, so I'm considering this "no-action-needed" for now. Feel free to ping if the situation changes.
@Pops I think that is a fair summary. Do you have any insight as to what SE would look for in evaluating a request?
For one thing, it would have to be something that represents the entire (or vast majority of) the community, as ff524 suggested. I wouldn't be too optimistic here... TeX/TUG has a community built around a "thing" with specific applications, whereas this site has formed around more of an abstract concept. I'm having a hard time imagining there being a society that helps people "academic better" (although, to be fair, I do know someone whose job description is more or less exactly that).
Honestly, I don't think so.
As @ff524 has said, there's no unifying society that defines all members of this site. Even if you were talking about multiple memberships in several different societies, I don't think you'd overlap a sufficient spread of the user base to have a useful pool.
Further, I don't know that it would be useful. Consider the following benefits the TeX site has from its membership:
Get a subscription to the journal TUGboat
Receive the TeX Collection software
Get access to the TUG member area and to TUG books online
Get discounted conference fees
Given the broad base of users (plus institutional subscriptions etc.) I can't see how many of these would be sufficiently beneficial to the user base as a whole to justify the expense.
If anything, if Stack Exchange came to me and said "We've got money burning a hole in our pocket, what should we do with it?" I'd suggest either more swag, or marketing/sponsorship at conferences to increase the userbase over member benefits like an institutional membership.
That seems resonable. Mainly, I wanted to make users aware of the possibility and see if someone had a good idea.
Another possibility: banner ads at some journal sites that run ads, like PLoS ONE.
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1160 | What does the offensive flag mean to you
There was an answer (only viewable to 10k+ users) that uses both expletives and suggests a pretty extreme form of student teacher interaction. This answer has been flagged a number of times as being offensive. The flags require the diamond mods to make a decision. We can do nothing, delete the answer, or warn/suspend the user.
Expletives are not appreciated on SE, and may be against the rules: Are expletives (cursing, swear words or vulgar language) allowed on SE sites?. Do we want a no nonsense you curse you get warned policy or do we want to be a little more relaxed?
Are extreme views that do not single out individuals or groups offensive and warrant the deletion of an answer?
As a sidenote, that question has not exactly brought out the best of this site. Until now, I did not even realize how many terrible answers this question has attracted by now.
@xLeitix that is because my answer is so good why would anyone read any further :)
@xLeitix - We definitely get our share of bad answers. The community tends to flag them pretty quickly, though, so the truly inappropriate ones get removed fairly quickly.
@xLeitix I agree that this question is very bad. Full of pseudo-psychological gibberish, horrible advice and opinions. I wonder if the mods shouldn't kill it with fire.
@Jigg with 45 up votes and a single down vote and no votes to close, I would hope that none of the mods would act unilaterally and close the question.
@StrongBad I know, my question was more rhetorical. I guess I'm just not in phase with this community as much as I thought. If this kind of content becomes the norm, I will leave (not that anyone cares off course).
@Jigg - While I definitely agree with StrongBad that we would never remove a question like that, sometimes I do wonder who all these people are who upvote questions like the linked one.
Can you clarify whether the answer you refer to is still publicly visible?
@episanty it has since been deleted. I am hesitant to repost the offensive material since I do not think there is anything specific in it, but rather I am interested in the general issues raise in my question.
I understand that. But in the interest of clarity you should either post a screenshot of that post, or clarify in your question that it is now unavailable to <10k. (please.)
Thanks for asking this question. I was about to open up a meta thread on the same topic. I flagged the cited answer as offensive, and I commented:
I have flagged this answer as "offensive / abusive". I did not do this because of the use of words like "damn" and "asshole": these do not offend me (and do not offend most adults I know). Rather it is because the answer explicitly advocates that a teacher hate a student. As a former student and current teacher, I am certainly offended by this, and I hope others agree.
Professor Ismail responded with the following comment:
@PeteL.Clark: The correct way to express violent disagreement with an answer is to downvote it, not to flag it as offensive. I also find the thoughts expressed repugnant, but I am quite sure you can find many faculty members who are cavalier to the whole concept of mentoring.
This confuses me. As indicated, I did find the answer offensive. The text for this flag reads:
it is offensive, abusive, or hate speech This answer contains content that a reasonable person would deem inappropriate for respectful discourse.
This is a faithful description of my feelings about the answer. (I am making the implicit assumption that I am "a reasonable person". If I am mistaken in that, please do let me know!) This leaves me confused at the transaction. It might be that the moderator in question simply does not agree that the answer is offensive -- reasonable people can, and do, disagree -- in which case I understand why the flag was declined but not the comment: just because a flag is declined does not make it not "correct". However, the comment also expresses repugnance. It is my understanding that "repugnant" is a synonym for "offensive", so given that Prof. Ismail feels this way, I am confused not only by his explanation but by his declining of the flag.
Added: As one might have guessed from the comments above: no, I do not feel the need for a "no nonsense you curse you get warned policy". No academic I know includes "curse words" in their writing without a good reason. But some academics do include curse words in their writing (I have done it on occasion). The syllogism ends: we have good reasons for doing so. An outright ban thus seems "unacademic" to me.
I'll state in an answer what I suggested in a comment; if you see expletives, simply edit them out. They do not belong in any answer, and the same point can invariably be made without the cursing. If, after editing, the answer is still offensive, then it's time for the flag.
In this case, as Pete points out in his answer, even after removing expletives the answer is still advocates that it is appropriate for a teacher to hate a student. That's pretty offensive, bring out the flags and it will be dealt with.
Answers that merely run against general sensibilities should not be flagged as abusive or offensive. The correct way to handle such questions is to downvote them. However, questions and answers that clearly are hostile to a particular individual or group of people can be marked as abusive or offensive.
As for the matter of cursing, I think having a somewhat flexible policy is OK. It may be appropriate to have a mild profanity in context. (If people are squeamish about using them, they can always obfuscate.) However, "hard" curses and profanities should not be allowed, and should be subject to a warning.
I downvoted this because it runs against general sensibilities. ;-)
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1071 | What is this question asking about
I found this question. The titular question is "How should a student act towards a prejudiced instructor?" This seems like a great question for us. Looking at the question itself, the OP seems to be suggesting that there was sexual discrimination because the professor is a feminist. Again, that is a perfectly fine topic. The issue I see is that I don't see any evidence of sexual discrimination. The professor's response to discussing grades with a 200-pound 6'3" professional boxer was that she felt intimidated. A question about how to deal with a professor who feels intimated by you is on topic. To me the two issues (dealing with sexual discrimination and a professor who feels intimidated by you) are so unrelated that I wanted the question clarified especially since claims of sexual discrimination often seem like acts of sexual discrimination. Is it possible to clarify the question?
What would constitute "evidence" here? Surely anything written on this site is purely hearsay. The way I interpreted the OP's post is that, in his opinion, the professor had no cause to be intimidated by him other than his appearance. Certainly he could be exaggerating/lying but is it not also feasible that he is correct? I don't see evidence either way. Furthermore, I don't think think the OP's logic was "Femanism implies discrimination against males." His logic sounds more like "I suspect I am being discriminated against and my professor's reputation as an extremist supports my claim."
I edited your question to remove the "reverse" in front of discrimination. Reverse discrimination is a term with hidden nuances that "OKs" the discrimination because the person is usually discriminating on the offending party, which taken quite literally means that you think that I usually am sexist, therefor anyone displaying sexist behavior towards me would be displaying reverse discrimination. You should educate yourself on discrimination and how the media and certain groups push for wording just like yours to downplay real discrimination.
I think you went overboard with your moderation on this post. The situation as it is described by the OP is a perfectly valid one and if you needed clarification or the question needed editing, you should ask so. Also, closing a question which already had been upvoted is something I have never encountered in a SE site.
Another issue with your moderation is that it was very fast. If any question is a not a good one, waiting for an hour or so is usually enough for any SE community to judge its merit. Closing sooner than that, especially in grey area questions is something that should be generally avoided.
I fully agree with both of these points. Closing down a question with mod-powers that does not have a single close vote from the community, and which even had a bit of discussion going on when it was closed, seems not right to me.
"closing a question which already had been upvoted is something I have never encountered in a SE site" - it happens all the time on other sites. Though I'm not saying that should necessarily carry over here; each site has slightly different norms for when questions should be closed and how votes are used.
If you don't see evidence of reverse sexual discrimination in this scenario, you can write as much in your answer. We often answer questions here where people have misread the situation they are in.
The question is "What should I do, given I think I was the victim of prejudice in this situation?" and that question is answerable even if the OP has misunderstood the situation.
I agree with this one - "I think you may be reading this wrong" is still answerable.
Thanks for opening this meta question.
I have to say that the quick closing of this question was a surprise to me. Yes, the question seemed relatively biased and had a bit of an anti-feminist touch to it. However, this kind of questions ("My advisor / professor did something unfair. How should I react?") are almost always biased, fragmented, confusing, and (I would assume) oftentimes not factually correct as written. We usually do not close down these questions, but point out what inconsistencies we see, and what we think the OP should do based on the given information. StrongBad seemed to hold this question to much higher standards than comparable earlier questions.
In my opinion, I would prefer if the mods would use their power to unilaterally put a question on hold only for more clear-cut cases. A good example was a question put on hold by ff524 today, but I can't find it anymore. This question was about 15 fundamental questions in one, so it was entirely clear that it will be put on hold. blankip's question was much less obvious.
Why did the question seemed biased? I was just trying to give facts of question and honestly don't understand the bias I conveyed. I think if I would have left out the context people would wonder why the dept head pulled me from the two classes after one quick discussion. I have no biases towards women or even this person. The punk college kid in me at the time was like, "Sweet, don't have to go to two classes for the next 2 months!" It was so shocking to me at the time I didn't know how to react. I didn't understand what my adviser was warning me about either.
@blankip "(...) she just would not talk to me based on how I looked." ... "(...) had a reputation for being an extreme feminist." ... "My adviser who was female, basically said 'sorry about this'". ... it is of course possible that everything was exactly as you said, but I was certainly a bit sceptical whether you are telling the entire story here. Hence my statement that the question seemed (not "is definitely"!) biased.
Reputation for being extreme feminist was just repeating what was said to me... and she told me it was based on how I looked and she even told dept head... I know you get some bad questions on here but I wouldn't jump to the "OP must not being telling us something" for everything. I was just passing on what I was told or saw in the question.
Any ideology can be taken too far. It sounds to me like OP displays a bias against extremism, not feminism itself. I share in this bias and I suspect most people do too.
Well it was directly related. I wanted people to answer based on the facts as I heard them at the time and not be influenced by later revelations. At the end of the semester the department head told me that she has had numerous issues with males in her classes and that he was looking into it with the Dean.
He also said that she said that she was intimidated by me because I was a big male and he even confirmed with other students that I was never aggressive around her. He apologized. I got my papers back. He told me that I would have gotten A's on them. Said I would receive P's on report card.
She left the school for undisclosed reasons after the spring semester as a tenured professor.
The question is more about how I should have handled it in that situation. She was sexist. There was an outcome. But I didn't state those in the question because it would taint the responses/answers.
Also as far as your mod powers to close a question you need to lay off. I find it abusive that you don't like a sentence so you close a question. I don't have to write my question for your personal PC views. No offense because you could be a great mod and great person but I feel this sort of censorship is the opposite of SE philosophy.
I didn't say I had this "feminist bitch teacher". No I just represented facts. There was no opinion in my whole question. I am sorry that if you hear the word feminist and all of a sudden it conveys horrible things to you. That is something you need to keep under control if you are going to be a mod.
I would personally like to hear how you would reword the sentence that offended you.
+1 for "I don't have to write my question for your personal PC views" and more or less I agree with you. On the other hand, you are also a bit harsh on this answer and toning it down, especially in "That is something you need to keep under control if you are going to be a mod" would be appreciated. We are all friends here.
I was way more sympathetic toward your situation and your post before I read this.
I know this is old, but this corresponds to all mods on all stacks: Moderation should be done ONLY in line with your stacks policies, not your personal views or political leanings.
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1066 | Question about changing university policy
As it currently stands this question is off topic and not a good fit for our site since it is mainly about legal issues. That said, it sounds like the Indian university system has some issues. I think a great question for us would be one that focuses on how to go about changing a fundamental university policy that is controversial.
Does anyone else think this question is salvageable?
I don't think that particular question is salvageable for this site. However, how to challenge an unfair institutional policy from within would be a reasonable question for this community.
I think one way to salvage the question is to ask how other universities have dealt with similar situations. Answers might comment on the history of affirmative action programs in the U.S., intended to redress the lack of minorities in higher education.
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749 | Big list questions
We have talked about big list type questions in the past. This question is now on the front page again: Software to draw illustrative figures in papers
I don't particularly like big list questions, but if we are going to have them, then we should make some rules. I think at a minimum they should be tagged big-list and made community wiki. I also think that when possible the question should be required to include a template answer so that all the answers look roughly the same.
Community wiki, yes. The others, not so much. But so long as they're particularly useful and rare, such questions are OK by me.
Unfortunately, the reason we dislike those questions are because they're big, clunky, and hard to standardize. That question happens to be a very old one. Regarding your specific suggestions:
It should be community wiki, and I just made that change.
Generally, we discourage "meta-tagging" such as what you suggest.
The template idea, while a good suggestion, would be (in my opinion) almost impossible to enforce without way to much work by the volunteer community, and would provide only minimal benefit.
These questions are rare and usually closed before they get too large. I don't think that policysetting is necessary for them.
As for the meta tagging, we also discourage big list questions...
@RobertHarvey - We do have a policy; it's that we don't like them, just as the answer says.
@RobertHarvey - Meta is pretty laid back here. If someone has a question, they ask it. If one answer gets enough popular vote, we call that "policy". If it gets pretty much ignored (like this answer), we call it policy anyways. If someone really cares enough to challenge existing policy—i.e., if someone doesn't like an old Meta answer—they're free to start a new discussion and see if opinions have changed or if they can get more people to chime in to the discussion this time around. This system seems to work well for us, people don't tend to abuse it.
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823 | Minor edits of other people's questions
I am confused by the instructions about editing
Edits are expected to be substantial and to leave the post better than you found it. Common reasons for edits include: To fix grammar and spelling mistakes ...
This seems to be a little contradictory to me. Is correcting a couple of typo like misspellings "substantial". In particularly, I am curious because of the edits made to https://academia.stackexchange.com/posts/16976/revisions. The first edit was by a high rep user and fixed a single typo in the question title by adding a character. The second edit was by a new user and changed an American English spelling to British English and fixed two typos by changing a single letter in each case.
How do we fell about seemingly minor edits of these types?
Not all typos and misspellings are created equal.
Typos in question titles should always be fixed, in my opinion, as they're what a user initially interacts with. Lots of typos makes the site look less professional.
Beyond that, however, "small" corrections should be avoided unless the typo corrects the meaning of a sentence by replacing an incorrect word with the correct word. Otherwise, the changes should be more than just fixing one or two words.
I agree. The biggest downside to minor (inessential) corrections to the question body is that it bumps up the question again on the main page. Especially for older questions this is annoying, imho.
I really wish there was a "Minor edit" checkbox a'la Wikipedia that would not bump the question up.
Note that when someone with high reputation edits a post, it is instant (I call it being a demi-mod). When someone with low or mid reputation, it blocks further edits, until it is resolved (by a mod, or maybe also a demi-mod).
I guess the rationale behind not making too small changes is:
not blocking a question (you've spotted spoted, while someone else has spotted that the title is unrelated to the question's content),
not wasting time over trivial things (though, personally, I think that is someone wants to change an annoying typo, we should not block her/him); and if (s)he is a (demi-)mod, I don't see any reason for discouraging making this site better.
At Academia SE, the level of English proficiency varies a great deal. I've noticed that participants here are quite tolerant of non-standard English in all types of posts, but especially in questions. I see this as a good thing, because it encourages international participation.
On the other hand, sometimes I find myself scratching my head a bit to understand what the poster is trying to convey, and once I've figured it out, I edit for clarity, so that other participants can capture the poster's intended meaning more quickly.
I also tend to edit for mistakes like "it's" when it should be "its" because I'm happier working with clean text. This is a person idiosyncracy of my own (although over at ELU it's not an unusual one).
I can see @PieterNaaijkens' point that this type of editing can clutter up the Active list. If this is a significant problem, I guess we should put in RoboKaren's proposal as a feature request (a "Minor edit" checkbox à la Wikipedia that would not bump the question up).
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950 | Nomination data does not match profile data
I just nominated myself for the moderator election and under my nomination it says
review history
meta questions: 27 / +105
meta answers: 57 / +140
helpful flags: 114
but my profile on the main site lists 115 helpful flags and I have 9 helpful flags on meta. Why don't the numbers match?
caching. it's always caching.
I believe this is caching. Going to check on it again in about 24 hours.
My last helpful flag was raise over a month ago... so I am going with zero based indexing.
Thanks for nominating !
@TimPost any ideas?
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879 | Reviewing flags
I have had been going through the flag review queue when it pops up. Most of the flags I have seen in the review queue are for things that are blatantly wrong (e.g., spam). In a few cases, however, the flags seem questionable to me or truly incorrect. In 3 of these "questionable" cases, which is a larger percentage of the questionable cases I have reviewed, I have had my flags declined or disputed by a moderator. This leads me to my question of how am I supposed to review flags in a way that makes the moderator's job easier?
As an example, in the two cases that my flags were disputed the original flag that I was reviewing was clearly wrong. The original flag was "closed without comment" from the community user, but there was a comment to the question (potentially added after the flag was raised). I disagreed with the original flag and chose "invalid flag". Should I have skipped these flags?
In the other case the original flag was "not an answer". The answer has since been deleted with a score of -6 so it seems the flag was not unreasonable. Normally, I would not flag answers as not an answer and instead down vote and vote to delete. In reviewing flags I have the choice of agree, disagree, or skip. In this case I decided to agree, but I could imagine someone else disagreeing and flagging it as an invalid flag. I don't see how skipping the flag is useful.
If this is a user interface problem with the flag reviewing system (either on the high-rep user side or the mod side) can it be improved?
To help track down what is happening. The posts in question are
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/18769/getting-a-masters-in-psychology-after-a-bachelors-in-cs
How do Academic Journals protect against empirical results given by bugs?
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17638/what-are-the-options-after-grad-school-besides-a-phd
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1404 | Content dispute regarding singling out a moderator in an answer
The content in this meta answer is being disputed. The dispute revolves around an individual being singled out in the answer. The sentence in question, without the individual named is:
There is simply no need to close questions (e.g. as in potential duplicates) unilaterally; any moderator can leave a comment, suggest the potential duplicate and leave the community to decide.
As it is a moderator who is being named, I think it is important to let the community voice be heard. Despite the titular question, I would like to keep the discussion/answers focused on the content of the particular answer so that we can reach a resolution and unlock the valuable answer. I would be happy to see a more general discussion in another meta question, but as this is a moderation or moderator issue, we need a resolution.
What I need to know before unlocking the question is: Does including the name of the individual who is being "accused" of closing questions too frequently add value to the question
I am confused by this question. Are you asking about the general practice of naming moderators, the appropriateness of that particular post, or the subject of that post (moderators closing questions)? Please edit to clarify
@ff524 does that help?
I like the close vote.
I consider it perfectly acceptable to make meta posts about the behaviour of specific moderators while naming them. Calling out regular users is problematic, but I think moderators can deal with some additional scrutiny.
There is a very closely related issue of how constructive the complaint about a moderator is written. Posts like "Moderator xzy is a fascist because he removed my post" tend not to result in anything constructive, the language often becomes a distraction and the real issue is not actually discussed. In my experience, complaints about moderation get much better results if they're written reasonably neutral, and don't assume malice. And often this means that not even naming the specific moderator, but simply the actual issue is a good idea (unless there is a recurring pattern with a specific moderator).
As a moderator on two other SE sites, I personally tend to allow even very non-constructive criticism of the mods on meta sites, and I answer them calmly with some facts and an explanation of the relevant policies. The way a user complains reflect more on them than on me as the moderator, and I won't prevent clearly unreasonable users from demonstrating that fact.
I like this idea, and I would definitely implement this here (if this answer keeps getting upvotes). In practice, mods are different, and part of being a mod may just be the need to have thick skin and put up with being singled out.
I don't think there is any reason for someone other than the OP to remove a moderator's name from a meta post, as long as it's (a) civil in tone, and (b) related to the moderator's activities on the site. In this case, both conditions are met.
I agree with Mad Scientist on the subject of whether someone should name a moderator in their own post. Sometimes it's useful, sometimes it isn't.
I did not find that particular post useful, for reasons having nothing to do with being named. I asked a specific question about moderating comments; the post was about moderating questions. It's hard to interpret the downvotes on that post, because I can't tell whether they signify "I disagree with this post" or "This doesn't answer the question." It would be much more useful to bring up the issue of moderating questions in a new post, to resolve this ambiguity and so that we can discuss it properly. But if the OP believes for some reason that his post adds something to the thread about moderating comments, I have no problem with that.
A huge plus 1 to this answer. It is exactly right. I don't understand how we got into a situation in which this was not obvious.
Naming a moderator when it is relevant should be encouraged. If a person doesn't know why something has occurred, and isn't allowed to ask why a moderator action was performed, he will likely continue the activity.
That being said, moderator issues should be dedicated their own question, so that they can be resolved separately. An answer like the one presented would be "Not an Answer" and the member needs to be informed as such.
The following examples from StackOverflow demonstrate that questioning moderation helps to improve member/moderator relations, establish an understanding (may not be mutual), and reach a resolution.
Exhibit A and Exhibit B
On SO especially, I do recall several examples of moderators actually revealing the name of the moderator who performed the action and pinging them to resolve the dispute. If people are unwilling to ask for clarification, we'll continue to have moderation disputes indefinitely.
I don't believe editing of a user's post on meta in such that it alters the intent is appropriate, regardless of whether it is an answer or not, though. Some of us here have the requisite 2k rep to be able to edit instantly. However, edits that are made typically should follow this rule, which is seen in the Suggested Edits queue: This edit deviates from the original intent of the post. Even edits that must make drastic changes should strive to preserve the goals of the post's owner. If the intent of the user is to name a user, removing that name is technically altering the intent.
Flagging as "Not an answer" just dumps the issue in the moderators' laps. How would you say they (we) should deal with this? Should we delete this post if it's flagged as "not an answer"?
@ff524 Sorry, I meant "in a general sense." In meta, the user should be informed that their answer is not an answer and should be moved to a question, or chat, or another place where it can be addressed.
First of all, let me say I have nothing about ff524 or any other moderator. In fact, I have recently added a praising comment about ff524's excellent answer in Protocol for writing a recommendation letter for someone you only know on a personal basis. And I am not buddies with PeteLClark since I have never met him in my life. I have multiple times agreed, disagreed and downvoted by or upvoted by multiple power users such as ff524, JeffE and Pete. On all these times, I was civil and respected their different opinions. I expect the same courtesy from moderators.
This too much moderation is something that I have also mentioned in the past (Comments deletion in Academia SE and What is this question asking about). Since both my questions and answers were highly upvoted, this is also an interesting issue for the entire community and one that the moderators should take into account. On my answer to What is this question asking about, I think @StrongBad was convinced that the SE Academia does not really need moderator protection against controversial questions and that the community would quickly "shoot down in flames" any troll.
But what you moderators have done in my answer in Should moderators delete comments that are about moderation, once they become obsolete with respect to the question they're posted on? is not nice at all. I have expressed my civil opinion about moderation of a specific individual. If I do not like this individual's style of moderation I must be allowed to freely and publicly express my opinion. I can do that for any government official in any public news blog and SE academia moderators are somehow beyond any criticism? This is wrong by any SE policy or in any democracy.
And then getting my answer edited by another moderator (who BTW has only posted one answer in the last 5 months and only ghost-appeared for this edit) is plain rude. I could appreciate a comment, such as "could you please remove the personal name of the moderator" and I would gladly do it. But doing it "just because we can do that" is wrong. And even when Pete and me rollbacked again, then @strongbad locked the post AFTER keeping the version he prefers. Why? Was this really necessary? For whom?
You do not like my answer. I get it. Downvote. But changing the answer without consulting the original OP and changing its actual content is considered extra rude in any SE community. @StrongBad's answer to the same question refers to Pete. What if I removed the content referring to Peter, because he "targets the specific user". Would that be normal behavior? No, it won't. That is why, I do not do it and I never edit answers of those I disagree with. Especially those I disagree with. And so should moderators.
Explain the downvote please?
I removed the name because I thought it was nicer to not single out a user while we resolved the dispute. To me personally, the only reason having the name might be acceptable is that the user is a moderator.
@StrongBad so could you please remove the name of Pete from your answer since he is not a moderator?
@CharlesMorisset Are you StrongBad's representative? Should I talk to you when I refer to StrongBad's answers and moderation?
@Alexandros thank you, you are right adding specific names didn't add anything to my answer. I have edited it.
@CharlesMorisset I know how collaborative editing websites work. But common courtesy requires first to suggest the change to the original OP and then intervene.
@Alexandros I disagree. I would much rather let someone else do the work for me :) If you see an obvious way to improve an answer, edit it. If the OP, or anyone else, doesn't like it, they can roll it back.
@StrongBad I did rollback.
Improving someone else's answer collaboratively makes sense to a degree when on the SE sites themselves. It makes very little sense on the meta site where the purpose is to express someone's opinion. Minor formatting improvements of other people's answers, if contributed helpfully, are nice. The idea that you can improve upon someone else's opinion is terribly obnoxious. It is strange to have to explain things like this, especially since the parties involved seemed to understand this quite well except when (including their own) moderation is being criticized.
The ideas expressed by CharlesMorisset and Strongbad mirror my own, and I have nothing more to add.
The original question:
Should moderators delete comments that are about moderation, once they become obsolete?
The contentious part of the answer that was edited out:
Of all the 4 moderators, I also think that @ff524 moderates a little too much. There is simply no need to close questions (e.g. as in potential duplicates) unilaterally
This was off-topic and out in left field; it had little to do with the original question. More importantly, a reasonable explanation was given:
that is a fine topic for discussion in a separate post, but not as an answer on this question
Those who have made exaggerated allegations of misguided censorship, demanded apologies, and engaged in a childish rollback war could have simply opened a new meta post about the issue of unilateral closures by moderators. Both discussions would have stayed more on-topic, and less barbs would have been thrown.
Rumors of moderators overusing their powers have been greatly exaggerated. This has nothing to do with a crumbling of democracy; rather, a couple people felt slighted and irate because a few of their words got removed from a discussion. Too bad cooler heads didn't prevail.
This meta question:
Does including the name of the individual who is being "accused" of closing questions too frequently add value to the question?
Because the context of the remark was closing questions – not deleting comments – I believe the moderator acted appropriately by toning down the answer, and inviting those involved in the debate to open a separate discussion on meta.
I agree that the post was off topic (in the context of the question it was posted on), but I don't really see how removing a moderator's name addresses that.
@ff524 - This wasn't a mere removal of one name – the edit constructively massaged a couple sentences to make the paragraph less of a jab at one specific moderator, and more of a general mention of a related issue. I believe the edit was an improvement, because, in this particular instance, the name didn't add value to that discussion. It was an unrelated gripe, and the edit attempted to keep the discussion more civil and focused. (Unfortunately, that seems to have backfired...)
(Your characterization of the events conflates various people's actions.) You cannot improve someone's opinion by changing it against their wishes. Nor does editing someone's opinion contribute to the civility of a discussion: very much on the contrary. More than a "couple of people" agree with this. I find your characterization of a defense of basic principles of free speech as "childish" is distressing and itself inflammatory. I could improve your answer by changing the language...but of course I won't. I am childish enough to respect your right to free speech.
Also, you don't mention that the deleted comment which directly prompted the question concerned moderator deletion of questions. So your characterization of this part of the answer as "off topic and out in left field" is misinformed. The idea that if X causes Y then in a discussion about Y referring to X gets deleted and gets your answer locked is a really unhealthy way to run things. I don't know of any SE site that is administrated in this way. Why is everyone being so defensive? Does anyone really think "ff524 moderates a little too much" is a stinging comment? Just let it go.
Just let it go seems like good advice – especially for someone who has already posted 17 commments to go along with a 2300-word answer.
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1360 | Why does AC.SE exclude undergraduate students?
It seems SE users that are not particularly involved in AC.SE are often confused that while questions pertaining to undergraduate students, classes and degrees are relevant to academia, we generally consider them off topic at AC.SE. I was hoping that we could develop a nice summary statement that explains why our help center says:
please do not ask questions about undergraduate-specific issues that could not apply to graduate or post-graduate academicians
Potentially, this could be added to Welcome to Academia.SE!, but at this time, I am not sure what to say.
What exactly is the reasoning behind no-UG-specific content, and what is the alternative place to ask undergraduate-related questions?
Do we have data showing the number of questions that are actually closed because they are undergrad-specific? I stopped voting to close on this ground because it attracted lengthy protests every time (apparently grad school is kindergarten in some places on the globe).
My take, from what I've seen so far, is that most things to do with classes and general struggles with learning seem to apply equally well to graduate and undergraduate. I suppose that 'undergraduate-only' is a good filter for not having to deal with questions about undergraduate admissions, or about all of the folderol that is often very important for undergraduate life and has virtually nothing to do with academics (sports, underage drinking, living in dorms, being able to make your own choices for the first time, etc.).
My feeling, then, is that it's a good policy to maintain, but that it's reasonable to be pretty inclusive about what might still be pertinent to graduate and post-graduate life.
I agree with this sentiment. I would love to see a statement(s) that could be added to the FAQ and make our help center text clearer.
These items are "college life" rather than academics of college: sports, underage drinking, living in dorms. Making your own choices is something that happens at every age, including being in a grad program for the first time.
Where do we put these questions instead of Academia.SE?
@laptou At present, there is no dedicated undergraduate site, though many undergrad-focused questions would fit well into sites like Interpersonal Skills or Personal Finance & Money
@jakebeal But neither of those seems to be a good fit for questions about undergraduate applications...
I actually like that there's a no undergraduate-only rule, despite often protesting it's (imo) misapplication. My reasoning, such as it is:
There are some thing that, while generally applying to undergraduates, are very specific to undergraduates, and don't so much apply to the rest of the academic landscape. Because of the nature of most academic systems, one would suspect there are many more of these questions than there are questions about graduate programs and professorships. I think there's some value in keeping the scope of the site somewhat limited, as you can see in some other SE sites that "expert" questions are quickly overrun by non-expert questions. The Biology site comes to mind immediately. I think there are ample resources for undergraduates elsewhere.
Allowing "undergraduate questions" is something of an "Is this on-topic" hydra, because more than other parts of academia, undergraduate education is this odd fusion of academic and social issues. Are roommate issues on topic? The sundry issues of administration? Student loans? "Only some bits of undergrad" is likely as hard and ambiguous to enforce.
That being said, I do often vote against "You have typed the word undergraduate, and now you shall be closed!" for questions where there's a pretty clear answer to the question if you pretended for a moment that the questioner was a new graduate student - most often it seems authorship questions.
My impression nowadays is that we don't really need the undergraduate closing reason as such. Most questions that are closed for being "undergraduate-only" could also fall under the "too specific" label.
See this question for previous discussion; this is exactly what we said back then. The undergraduate questions are almost always answerable bu just looking at college admission websites.
While I agree that most of the undergraduate-only questions we see can be closed for other reasons, potentially this is because the help center steers those types of users away.
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450 | Question on converting grades
Similiar in scheme to this question How to convert from one grading scheme to another?
Do we need/want a big list question with an answer for each country explaining the dominant grading system used. While I think that one cannot directly convert grades, I think it is useful to roughly know what different grades mean. I think the universal converter is something like percentage of the class that gets a particular grade.
I don't know if there really is a "universal conversion" available.
Besides, there is also this Wikipedia reference on grading schemes in different nations. I don't think we need to reinvent the wheel.
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467 | Academia Community Polls
Welcome to the academia.SE Community Poll thread! (shamelessly stolen from TeX.SX)
This thread is used for opinion and usage polls around Academia and academia.SE. The poll questions are added as "answers" to this "question". Their answers have been added as comments below them. To participate simply up-vote the comments which apply for you. If there is no suitable answer yet simply add it as comment by yourself. You can't up-vote your own comments but the comment author will be counted manually. Please do not add any other comments to these posts. General comments can be added to this "question".
Rules
Rules
Community poll questions are placed as "answer" posts below. Feel free to add your own1.
Answers to these poll questions are placed as "comments" below them. Because this is also an opinion poll subjective questions are welcome.
Please do not ask too specific questions and allow for multiple choices and votes, e.g. instead of something like "My absolute favorite for X is .." use something like "For X I often use ...".
To participate up-vote the comments which apply for you.
If required add a new answer as a comment.
If applicable hyperlink the entry to allow other users to learn more about it. Feel free to flag comments for moderator attention if they should be modified for some valid reason (wrong/missing hyperlink, etc.)
Feel free to up-vote the poll questions ("answer" posts) as well to indicate that you liked the question. This will push the most favorite questions to the top.
Do not post any other answer posts or comments. Please provide feedback and critic on the corresponding discussion thread instead.
Some things they learned over at TeX.SX
Edits to polls after they started should not change the meaning
Subjective topics are okay
Yes/No question are okay
1 Should you be affected by the "Trivial answer converted to comment" feature simply post a longer dummy text and then edit it down to the correct content.
Discussion on this post should take place in its dedicated thread.
which of the following "roles" describes you best?
A professor (tenured or not)
A Phd Student .
A master's Student
Undergraduate student
A Post doctoral researcher
None of the above
Non-professor permanent research position
A librarian (academic or not)
Researcher in industry.
Are you currently working in Academia (i.e., employed by a university with a primary duty of performing research)?
Yes
No
Comments on this answer made me curious on our demographics. Which countries have academic systems you are familiar with?
United States of America
United Kingdom (GB)
Sweden (Litet språkexempel)
France
Germany (Deutschland)
New Zealand (Aotearoa =] )
Netherlands (Nederland)
Czech Republic .
Slovak Republic (Slovakia)
India(Bharat Ganrajya)
Australia......
Denmark--------
Philippines....
Switzerland (Schweiz/Suisse/Svizzera/Svizra)
Croatia (Hrvatska)
Japan (Nihon, Nippon)
Italy (Italia )
Vietnam (Việt Nam)
Finland (Torilla tavataan)
Austria (Oesterreich)
Singapore (Singapore)
Mexico---------
Latin America in general
Norway (Norge, Noreg)
Ireland (Eire, Republic of)
Spain (España )
Brazil (Brasil)
Portugal ------
Is English your mother tongue?
Yes
No
Comments on this answer made me curious on our demographics. What fields would you consider yourself part of?
Electrical Engineering
Biomedical Engineering
Psychology (all areas)
Neuroscience research
Earth Science ()
Chemistry
Chemical engineering/materials science
Mathematics ( )
Business management
Mechanical Engineering
Education
Civil Engineering
Theoretical Physics
Bioinformatics/Systems Biology
Geosciences ( )
Social science .
Philosophy ()()
(Human uses of non-food) Energy
Physics _______
History (Humanities, NOT a "social science")
Biology [in general]
Applied Physics
Aerospace Engineering
Computational Science
Statistics (applied or theoretical).
Public Health/Epidemiology
interdisciplinary
political science
Library and information science
What is your gender?
Please feel free to add the term you feel most comfortable with.
Male...........
Female..........
Transgender....
None of the above / Non-binary.
How many publications in peer-reviewed journals have you made in your career?
None.
1 to 5.
6 to 10.
11 to 20.
21 to 30.
30 to 50.
51 to 100.
100+
Are/were you happy in your PhD program?
Yes, and I graduated
Yes, and I quit
No, and I graduated
No, and I quit.
I've never entered a PhD program.
Yes (current PhD student)
No (current PhD student)
If you are not currently working in Academia, do you have one or more advanced degrees?
(My reasoning behind this poll is whether there are people like me who have been in grad school or worked in academia and are interested in it)
Yes, master's degree.
Yes, Ph.D, MD, JD, etc.
Currently enrolled in an advanced degree program.
No advanced degree.
Yes, ABD (all but dissertation)
If you received an email from an author of a new paper, whom you'd had no contact with previously, bringing their new paper to your attention, letting you know that they'd cited one or more of your papers in it, and thanking you for your work, what would be your reaction?
This hasn't happened to me, but I think I'd be pleased.
This has happened to me, and I was grateful for the email.
This hasn't happened to me, but I think I'd be (mildly) annoyed.
This has happened to me, and I was (mildly) annoyed.
So many people cite me, that if they all emailed me it would be an email avalanche.
Did you do a part of PhD studies at another institute (for instance to learn a new method), if so for how long?
No; I never thought of that
No; I did not want to, everything was great at my institute
No; I wanted to but wasn't allowed to
Yes; for a couple of weeks (1-4 weeks)
Yes; for a couple of months (1-3 months)
Yes; in a long-term exchange program (3 months or more)
Yes, by taking courses at that institute
No; not yet but I would like to
What software do you use to manage papers?
Zotero
Mendeley
Docear
Just folders in my file system
JabRef reference manager
Bibdesk (reference manager)
Homegrown solution
Seeing as we have more "senior"s than students here on AC.SE (at least according to the poll), and also considering that many nationalities are represented here, I would like to know how important academics think of their titles. In other words, how important do you think it is that people address you with your title at work/uni?
Not important at all, I don't care
It is somewhat important, but not a demand/expectation
It is important, I would expect my students/post-docs to refer to me as Prof/Doctor X
It is important, I expect the undergrad students to call me with my title, but in research environment it doesn't matter
It is important, I want everyone to acknowledge my titles
It is important that people ignore my title and address me by name.
Which time zone (UTC +/-?) are you in primarily?
UTC+8 (Asia pacific)
UTC-7 (Mountain Time/US)
UTC+1 (Central European Time)
UTC-5 hours (Eastern Standard Time)
UTC+0
UTC+7 (in Asia)
UTC-5 (Central Daylight Time/US)
UTC+5:30(India)
UTC+3(Djibouti, Africa)
UTC-6 (Mountain Daylight time, Canada)
UTC-8 (Pacific Time/US)
UTC-3 (Brazil) ...
What continent do you currently reside in?
North America (includes U.S., Canada, Mexico)
Latin America + Central America (includes Caribbean)
Europe --------
Africa --------
Asia ----------
Australia (but if you prefer to be included in Asia, please register your objection and I will delete this one)
No one resides in Antarctica?
@AriBrodsky I don't believe that no-one in Antarctica wants to waste time on the internet
How many professional societies are you a member of? (Motivation: this question.)
Two............
Zero............
Four............
(at what point do we make an "answer" that is "X or more"?)
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468 | Discussion about Academia Community Polls
Please discuss any ideas and issues about Academia Community Polls in this thread to keep it tidy.
I have been told in direct response to my poll that only demographic questions are appropriate in this community poll. Is this the intention of the Academia Community Poll ? Can someone please clarify this in the rules section.
Two recent poll questions have been added by @user8005.
Do you agree that evolution is the best explanation for the origin of human life on earth? and Do you think there's a purpose of life?.
I am not sure what the purpose of the poll questions are, but these seem so far off topic that I think they should be deleted.
@DanielEShub I don't check meta very often. I would not answer user8005's question on the main site and chat room if I had seen this comment earlier. Obviously, he is not someone I would like to be talking to. Thanks for alerting it.
The phrasing in "Are you currently working in Academia (i.e., employed by a university with a primary duty of performing research)?" is overly narrow in excluding anyone whose primary duty isn't research. This amounts to saying many faculty members aren't academics at all, for example those in liberal arts colleges, teaching-focused comprehensive universities, community colleges, etc., as well as many adjuncts or teaching faculty in research universities.
I'm not sure how to fix this, given that we don't know whether the answers so far are based on the narrow interpretation or not, but it's worth keeping in mind in the future to avoid causing offense to academics who aren't primarily researchers.
Regarding the question "Are you currently working in Academia (i.e., employed by a university with a primary duty of performing research)?"
I'm not sure how a student should answer this one.
If s/he gets the salary form the university? If s/he is on fellowship?
I think all students would answer yes, independent of their funding.
Didn't think about this. I agree with @Daniel, I would definitely say "yes"; your primary duty is research. This also implies that non-research masters students (i.e., professional masters) would answer "no".
I would expect all students to answer "no" because they are students foremost. That is, I read the question in a way that "working" did not include students. Perhaps this is because I did not think of myself as "working" even when I had a graduate assistantship ...
The polling format does not let people change their answers when their status changes.
The following questions for example have answers that vary in time:
Which of the following "roles" describes you best?
How many publications in peer-reviewed journals have you made in your career?
Are you currently working in Academia
This one, without going into the details of how "happy" is an ill-defined descriptor, probably has an answer that varies frequently:
Are/were you happy in your PhD program?
People can up-vote another answer, duplicating entry, but not cancel their previous votes.
Given the limitations of the SO platform for this kind of pollings, should we be really interested in their results, we can think of resetting the results once a year.
Well, since we are a site of academians here is my curmudgeonly take on polls like these. Feel free to upvote/downvote or discuss.
Problems with interpreting polls like these
It isn't a random sample of the population of academics, so inferences about the distribution of responses for Academics in general can not be made, under any reasonable circumstances.
Even questions that focus specifically on the population that participate here on the Academia site, it isn't a representative sample, so inferences to even the characteristics of individuals who use the site are very questionable.
It is fairly simple to illustrate the problematic aspects. Those more active on the sight are more likely to participate in meta. Thus non-response in polls is not a random sample of the individuals on the site. Some might argue this is a good thing (if you are more active you should be given more weight), but to suggest this results in any reasonable inference is tantamount to saying two wrongs make a right.
This doesn't even cover other problematic aspects of voting on the comments that may prejudice the results, such as comments that are placed first have higher exposure, and after accumulation of so many comments some are collapsed from the view. Both these circumstances will be likely to bias polls to already up-voted answers, making long term collection of the polls potentially even more sytematically biased.
I don't deny such poll questions can be fun and intriging, but lets be serious about what useful information that can be gleaned from such things. Potentially more useful ways to carry out some of the analysis that motivated the poll question are to utilize the Stack Exchange data explorer (when we get out of beta), or to just scrape info. from user pages. I realize some of the questions are not possible from here, but that isn't a reason to pretend like comment polls are a reasonable solution.
For instance, in regards to whether we are CS centric, it wouldn't be trivial to scrape the data, but if you just go to user pages you could look at the reputation on other sites. You could then look at the distribution of users here to determine if people from either of the computer science sites post a disproportionate number of the questions/answers here. In terms of location data that would be pretty simple when we are out of beta (see a similar question and answers on the stats site).
(For fairness these are both problematic as well, for people don't need to connect there accounts and people don't need to supply location information, but again, problems with these approaches don't justify innapropriate polling!)
To place the distinction between these polls and generally interpreting upvotes/downvotes anywhere on the StackExchange sites, the (typical) goal is to ask a question and receive an answer. Votes (and checking as answered) are generally taken as tokens of the correctness/usefulness of the answer to the original question to outsiders.
While upvotes/downvotes on any question are similarly suspect to critiques of making inferences, any answer can be evaluated in absentia other context by a reader and determine its usefulness. That is, the poll of up and down voting is not the goal of asking a question, and if the site blinded them tomorrow the questions and answers currently on the site would not suffer from it.
The question that these polls attempt to measure is merely what proportions of the community conform to certain categories. Usefulness, should (I hope) be measured in how accurate an estimate they provide. Here, the upvotes and downvotes are the answer, and I've already provided reasoning as to why they aren't likely to be a very good answer to the question.
In regards to population. The comments I was concerned about where "are the people who vote to close questions US/CS centric". So I think a meta poll probably samples the correct population. I don't know enough about the comment sort order to know how it affects bias, but I am sure it does.
There sure are many biases, but I think: 1. it's better than nothing (data and user page scraping has many (more?) issues); 2. it gives a good feeling of the equilibrium of the heavily involved part of the community… if we keep that in mind, it is a useful tool.
@F'x I don't see how data and user pages has more issues. I can understand the sentiment that it is better than nothing, but lets interpret for what it is. Polling en masse will not be a reasonable tool to make inferences about the population, and can potentially be misleading. Scraping data from user pages has a direct advantage in that you can tie it to actual responses. For example, Jeffe's vote can only count once in a user poll - but he answers so many questions that any question asking about user contribution to the site would be interested in such info.
@DanielE.Shub - I don't even see how your meta question addresses that question - you ask for everyones field and academic systems you are familiar with. People voting on these aren't necessarily the people voting to close questions! All of these polls are merely an guess that they capture some reasonable information from the population.
I don't understand. Are you arguing that the poll is biased because it's not a uniform sample (so my votes count too much), or that it isn't weighted by response frequency (so my votes count too little)? Are you perhaps mistaking a poll on a web site for a scientific instrument?
@JeffE, it is a bit of cognitive dissonance to admit the poll isn't a reasonable instrument to measure user characteristics of the site and then forge ahead anyway pretending it has some other utility. I don't view answering questions on here any differently than I do giving colleagues or clients advice. I sure wouldn't condone such a poll in any other circumstance, so why should I pretend like it is ok here?
The time zone poll got a bit confused, because it appears that some people answered based on daylight saving time (summer time) for their time zone, whereas others answered based on standard time.
Doing little clean up of the poll page. There was a question regarding this comment/answer
Academia Community Polls
Which adds a non-binary gender type. I think it is covered at http://gender.wikia.com/wiki/Non-binary
I think the gender question should just be deleted altogether instead of trying very hard to make it politically correct. It's completely irrelevant anyways.
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518 | Should comparison questions that cannot be answered be left open
We have had a number of questions asking for comparisons between X and Y. This question is the latest. As a couple of people alluded to in the comments, there is often too much variability in academia between universities/departments/disciplines to ever be able to provide a comparison that isn't way too localized.
To me it is obvious that questions about comparison that are too localized should be closed. In other words, I think question like is department X at school A "better" than department Y at school B, should be closed.
In the questions I am concerned about, the questions seem to have broad appeal and are asking about things that seemingly would have a definitive answer. It seems to me that closing them as "not a real question" or "not constructive" seems unfair. I can think of a couple of ways forward.
Continue closing them as not real/constructive with a comment about why an answer is difficult
Leave them open and unanswered with a comment about why an answer is
difficult
Leave them open and answer them with a comment about why an answer
is difficult
Add something to our FAQ saying why they questions are "off-topic"
I think closing them and even leaving them unanswered sends the wrong message to people. Adding something to our FAQ would at least tell people we are not interested in these types of questions.
Such questions should be closed and then deleted.
The FAQ should state that such questions are not suitable for this site. The FAQ doesn't need to state that they are off-topic, because that's not the problem with them. The problem is that they're not constructive; and they are not real, objectively-answerable questions; and the FAQ should state that.
I am still against the concept of deleting all questions that are closed. If the "bad" questions are all deleted, there is no way a new user might figure out what questions are salvageable and when it's beyond all repair.
Many questions on this site have ambiguous answers. We would need to formulate the question in a way to discourage questions like this from ones where a definitive answer isn't possible. If you have a good (and simple) formulation for how to do this, we can take it into consideration.
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509 | Are country poll answers a good fit
This question essentially asks: In my country we do things like X, how do they do them in your country. That seems like the definition of a big list question to me. I have wanted to ask a similar type question, and I asked for input in chat.
To me it seems that these "country poll" questions are not a good fit for academia.se.
Do you think we should keep these type of questions open?
This question turned into a big list of "In my field we do X, what is done in your field?"
The question I linked has become a Community Wiki. There are four such community wiki questions at Academia.SE now. For at least three of them, the answers for each instance in the big list are important to the individuals in that category, and having the list in one place seems to benefit the community. The question I linked shows up as the first Google hit for a related search "First authorship by discipline". In these community wikis, where there is no single correct answer, the big list in aggregate is the definitive answer.
The post linked in the question could become a similar community wiki. The addressing of individuals with doctoral degrees (especially research vs. professional) is confusing, especially in France. However, in researching this answer, I stumbled on a Wikipedia page which essentially answers the question in the original post, meaning that question may not be suitable.
I think criteria for keeping big list questions should be:
Will the big list in aggregate form the definitive answer to the question?
Is this a big list that does not exist elsewhere (or is not easy to find if it does exist)?
Will a reasonable Google search for one part of the list find the question?
This view seems to go against how SE thinks of CW. At a minimum these types of questions should not be CW, but instead have a single CW answer.
I agree. One answer containing the big list in a logical (e.g. alphabetic) order would be preferred. It is not how the big list questions are being answered right now. A big list question which has a single collaboratively edited answer containing the big list would side-step the whole issue.
I think there is a difference between traditional big list questions and these country/field questions. If the question is what software should I use for X, the idea is for each item to be an answer so they can be voted on individually. In these country/field questions, it is not clear what an up voted answer means ... The bigger issue, is that I don't believe these list question are a good fit.
No, they are not a good fit. There is no single objective answer to such questions, and so they're a really bad fit. They're big-list questions.
Closure as NARQ or Not Constructive, followed by deletion, is the appropriate solution.
Thanks to the link in Ben Norris's answer, it's easy to find a list of similar questions for voting to close & delete.
Someone may want to salvage some of the content of those answers for tag-wikis, which is the one place where this sort of content could find an appropriate home on StackExchange.
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657 | Are these open-ended, hypothetical questions
User All has been asking a lot of questions. I am starting to get the feeling that they fall under the
you are asking an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______
happened?”
part of don't ask. In particular I am thinking about this question
Who should recommend applicants for administrative positions?
While I think the topics in general are okay, the questions just seem to be a little bit off. I think the question would be a lot better quality if the person who asked it was actually applying to be a Dean.
Do we want to do anything to discourage the asking of question like this? Do we want to encourage All to ask different questions?
They don't quite fall under that category—yet. However, if you start to feel that way, the solution is to downvote those questions and vote to close them.
I am starting to feel that way, but I am not sure what my problem with them is or if it is just me.
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754 | Undergraduate questions
I think we have discussed undergraduate questions a couple of times on meta, but I cannot find anything that looks relevant. I think we are closing questions by undergraduate too quickly.
The following seem on topic to me:
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15713/struggling-as-an-undergraduate-international-student is a question by an undergraduate about improving a CV for getting into grad school.
Will going to an university in UK be profitable for me in the future? is a question by a US high school student about whether doing an international undergraduate degree would prepare someone for US graduate school.
Preparing a curriculum vitae for an undergraduate internship about an undergraduate writing a CV for a research internship
As a contrast, these closed question seem off topic to me:
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15576/is-a-second-undergraduate-degree-worthwhile about getting a second undergraduate degree to prepare for a job industry
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15430/standardized-tests-for-international-students-for-entry-in-top-us-uk-colleges which is about undergraduate admissions without any concern for graduate admissions
Thanks for posting this.
The general rule is that questions should be generalizable to non-undergraduates, or at the very least be related to the conduct of research. I agree that the first two questions you posted as "on topic" should be open—and I reopened the first one. (The second one remains open.)
I agree that the third question is on-topic, but I disagree about opening it, because it should have been closed under the "too specific" rubric, rather than the "undergraduate" option.
The last two are definitely off-topic.
If you think that a question should be reopened, the best way to go about this is to put a reopen vote; then it will begin to show up under the "review" tag, so that people with appropriate levels of reputation can vote accordingly.
I agree that my 3rd example question probably should be left closed as too localized. I just want to make sure that we don't use "undergrad" as a reason to close too liberally.
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1218 | Flagging etiquette
This is a follow on to What's the difference between down-vote, vote to close and flag ? and a recent issue about moderator action: Answer that *is* an answer deleted by mod because "it does not provide an answer"?. I think flags should almost always be accompanied by down votes, comments, and when appropriate a vote to close.
The issue moderators face when dealing with flags is that the flags are not publicly visible. This means that if content is flagged multiple times moderators can see that the community wants action to be taken, but when they do that action it looks like a unilateral decision.
I do not think that duplicates which do not happen because of laziness but bad searchability should be downvoted.
@Wrzlprmft I agree that down voting a duplicate is not needed, but a vote to close and a comment are still important. Further, I don't think duplicates should generally be flagged for moderator attention since the community tends to take care of them pretty quickly.
Well, flagging is what users with less than 3k reputation can do about duplicate questions (which then sends them to the usual review queue for closing questions, if I am not mistaken).
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1120 | New custom close reason
There seems to be a strong consensus that we need a new custom close reason to ban “I want to do X, Here's My Life Story…” questions. See the meta discussion here.
User Emrakul proposed the following:
This question appears to be off-topic because it is not answerable by the Academia community; you may need to ask someone specific to your situation, as the general public cannot completely answer this question.
I am not too keen on referring the the academia community as the "general public" and was hoping to get some feedback on the exact wording.
Why not "Academia community"? Or just remove "as the..."
How about:
This question appears to be off-topic because it is not answerable by
the Academia community; you may need to ask someone with specific
knowledge of your situation, as it may involve internal policy,
institutional norms or other information that is not widely known.
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1137 | Should we create some community wiki questions on meta to help new "power users"
As users gain reputation new "privileges" become available to them including flagging posts (reputation of 15), editing CWs (reputation of 100), creating tags (reputation of 300), and editing questions and answers (reputation of 2000). An active new user can gain these privileges in a month or two. While the help center provides a general overview of the privileges, it doesn't provide any site specific instructions. Do we want to create some how-to question and answers on meta addressing these, or any other privileges, to help new users? We could tag them with something like howto-privileges to make them easier to find.
For example, I think Lack of a tag related to social media on Academia is a great example of how to propose a new tag. I asked a question a while back about editing and there is a nice question from Charles about flagging and down voting, but none of these are really how-tos about privileges.
I agree with Charles—but this is needs to be a community project, not a mod project!
I think the Frequently Asked Questions on Academia is not active. Such instructions could be viewed on similar FAQ pages too. For instance: "How should a new Tag proposed and then created?" and the answer comes next.
I think a good example of your suggestion is something like this which is on Met.TeX on StackExchange: I've just been asked to write a minimal example, what is that? They have a faq tag for such questions and answers. Also look at this question: When is (and isn't) it acceptable to edit?
FYI, if and when these questions get created, you and the other mods can make them look all official by adding the special [faq] tag that regular users can't use.
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584 | How to flag/close because a question belongs someplace else
I wanted to either vote to close or flag https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11360/form-get-method-prints-viewstate-value-in-addressbar as suitable for SO.SE, but I could only suggest it belongs on ac.meta.se (which it doesn't). If something belongs on another SE site how do I vote to close for that reason?
It is quite counter-intuitive, but here is how it should be done:
As you noted, the “belongs on another SE site” only lists a few pre-determined sites (which we can ask the moderators to complement if we wish). Everything else is “other”.
As a mod, I'd rather you not take this approach; for us mods, the third option—"this questin belongs on another site in the Stack Exchange network"—contains a text box which we can use to send the question to any site on the SE network. Flag it and we'll take care of it.
@eykanal okay… it's a bit sad that this has to go through flagging, while the whole infrastructure for closing is otherwise quite streamlined
I hear ya, and I definitely agree. I posted this request to Meta a long time ago, but The Powers That Be feel that it would enable too many frivolous migrations. *shrug* Whatever.
Mods have the option to send it to any other site. Flag it and we'll send it there.
Presumably you mean flag it as " it needs ♦ moderator attention" since if I flag it as "it doesn't belong here, or it is a duplicate" I just get to the same place as if I am trying to close it.
Yeah, that's probably right. I don't use the flagging system that much, as I'm more often on the other end of it :)
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165 | Adding a tag synonym
In a comment to this question the OP asked for a "reviewing" tag. Charles correctly pointed out that we already have a "peer-review" tag. It seems like "reviewing", however, could be a tag synonym for "peer review". I thought I would give creating a tag synonym a go as I recently got that magic power. I read the stack overflow instructions about how to make a tag synonym. It seems the tag needs to be in the system already. So do I tag the relevant question "reviewing", and then create a synonym?
@CharlesMorisset that was my plan, but the question is how to do it.
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174 | Are questions on software on topic
Are questions on software on topic?
This question on writing software seems almost identical to questions on poster, illustration, notebook, citation, and data analysis software. The citation and data analysis questions were closed. All but the data analysis questions are highly voted.
As I stated here, I think software questions are definitely on-topic. I think it would fall under the rubric of "Life as a graduate student, postdoctoral researcher, university professor", which is on-topic as per our FAQ.
I wasn't referring to all software questions, but rather ones that are likely to produce a long list as an answer with each being equally valid.
@Daniel - Such questions are already discouraged here. That being said, I personally judge these questions individually; if it's well-written and useful, go ahead, says I.
Software is of great interest. The correct answer should be modified to indicate this answer.
Across StackExchanges, asking for recommendations for products is strongly discouraged.
As are long-list questions.
As are questions where there is no one right answer.
These software questions hit all three of those. Let's close them all.
Agree with you on that product recommendations should be discouraged. But specific questions with specific needs should be addressed. For example, http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3054/openoffice-vs-libreoffice-vs-msoffice-for-academic-writing/3058 asks for specific comparison of 3 products for a specific need. If the answers start to go beyond what the OP asks/needs, those answers should be moderated.
So in general all software related questions should be handled, separately on case-by-case basis. Should not be banned all the way.
The problem is that I am not sure it is the question, or how we answer them. There is a big difference between using LaTeX and MS Word to write a paper or make a poster. See my CW answer: http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/1894/929
I think according to the rules software list questions are off topic since the are not "practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face"
That said, I think other sites (e.g., tex.se) have a history of allowing long list type questions.
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50 | Questions involving lists
I think that some question involving list are actually good this site (not that the baseline level of objectiveness is shifted with respect to e.g. SO), as:
objective,
useful,
of general interest,
not chatty.
For example, I consider this question:
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/36/what-citation-manager-should-i-use (perhaps up to the wording like "use" vs "list of")
much better than
Is it worth to switch from Bibsonomy to Mendeley?.
Moreover, discouraging questions of the first type will generate a lot of questions of the second type (roughly $n(n-1)/2$, where $n$ is number of apps).
In case of doubts - look at the answer the question generates.
Do you agree with such point?
List-based questions can serve as a useful tool, so long as they encourage answers that are explanatory. A simple collection of web links should not be our goal; curation and explanation fo why links are useful will go a lot further.
As you said, list questions can replace the large number of "Should I do X or Y"-type questions, and in that sense can be valuable, especially if the question is likely to come up anyways.
We should be vigilant to make sure that list-based questions contribute value, rather than just lead to sprawling lists of links.
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631 | Rejected edits history
I rejected an edit suggestion to that post: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/12489/49.
However, just after my click I realized that I should keep some parts of the edit, as they improve the answer (my quick reject was based on edit on a quoted material).
Does comment justifying the rejection reaches the editor? (If it does not, it would discourage an eager editor...)
Is it possible to lookup the history of rejected edits (for a particular post, or globally)?
No, users are not currently notified when their suggested edits are rejected. There's an ongoing feature request for that on meta.SO.
It's possible to look up a user's edit suggestion history by going to the "activity" tab on their profile and selecting "suggestions". Clicking a particular edit will then show whether it was approved or rejected, and will also show any reasons supplied for rejecting it.
Conversely, if you want to see a list of edit suggestions you've reviewed recently, those can be found under "reviews" on the "activity" tab on your profile. Alternatively, if you've just reviewed an edit and realize that you want to take another look at it, you may simply use your browser's back button to return to the review page. It won't let you change your review, but it will let you see the edit and any other reviews of it, just as if you looked it up through your activity history.
If the edit suggestion was approved in any form (either as it is, or improved upon by reviewers), it will also be listed in the edit history of the post (question, answer, tag wiki, etc.) being edited. However, edit suggestions that are simply rejected don't show up in the edit history (to normal users, anyway; they might be visible to ♦ mods).
I don't think so—I think rejected edits don't get tracked. On the other hand, if your edits are simply "rolled back," then that should be saved in the revision history.
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7 | Vote early and often!
I belive we shold follow the advice of Scott Morrison: vote early, vote often. This is a way to express which questions are on- or off-topic, and the site needs high rep users.
It's worth explicitly stating why we should vote early and vote often - upvote the stuff with merit; downvote the bad stuff. Both questions and answers. I've copied the material from abatkai's link, below, for ease of reference.
As Scott Morrison wrote over on meta.Tex.SE:
Every Stack Exchange site will eventually end up with a different "base level" of voting --- that is, the expected number of upvotes for a question of a given level of excellence. (This effect occurs because people see a good question, but already with a certain number of votes, and think "oh, I would have upvoted this, but it already has enough".)
It's easy for us to affect this "base level" by encouraging high levels of upvoting now. We're setting the standards, and this really will have an effect.
(On MathOverflow, we were very active about this early on, specifically encouraging all the initial round of users to vote early and often. You can compare statistics, and see that the average vote total for a MathOverflow question is much higher than on any of the other SE 1.0 sites.)
In case it's not obvious: the rationale for wanting this base level to be high is that it provides better positive feedback to good contributors.
A good rule of thumb: if you can be bother answering the question, it's good enough to upvote! Also, be kind, and upvote any good competing answers that exist when you give your answer.
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541 | Let's get critical: Jun 2013 Site Self-Evaluation
We all love Academia Stack Exchange, but there is a whole world of people out there who need answers to their questions and don't even know that this site exists. When they arrive from Google, what will their first impression be? Let's try to look at this site through the eyes of someone who's never seen it before, and see how we stack up against the rest of the 'Net.
The Site Self-Evaluation review queue is open and populated with 10 questions that were asked and answered in the last quarter. Run a few Google searches to see how easy they are to find and compare the answers we have with the information available on other sites.
Rating the questions is only a part of the puzzle, though. Do you see a pattern of questions that should have been closed but are not? Questions or answers that could use an edit? Anything that's going really well? Post an answer below to share your thoughts and discuss these questions and the site's health with your fellow users!
Normally there are 10 questions but I only had 9, just curious how come?
Final Results
Very few research groups: continue doing PhD in this area?
Net Score: 5 (Excellent: 8, Satisfactory: 13, Needs Improvement: 3)
How do I make sure I get strong recommendation letters for faculty positions?
Net Score: 18 (Excellent: 18, Satisfactory: 5, Needs Improvement: 0)
Scholarships in general and Ontario Trillium Scholarship in particular
Net Score: 11 (Excellent: 11, Satisfactory: 11, Needs Improvement: 0)
Why do universities support faculty writing textbooks?
Net Score: 16 (Excellent: 16, Satisfactory: 6, Needs Improvement: 0)
Do I have a MSc degree if I did the work but did not pay tuition?
Net Score: 14 (Excellent: 14, Satisfactory: 7, Needs Improvement: 0)
How much effort does it take to record video courses?
Net Score: 6 (Excellent: 9, Satisfactory: 8, Needs Improvement: 3)
Difficulty in admission to online software engineering graduate programs
Net Score: 1 (Excellent: 5, Satisfactory: 10, Needs Improvement: 4)
What are the advantages of putting your dissertation on Facebook?
Net Score: 11 (Excellent: 11, Satisfactory: 8, Needs Improvement: 0)
How to tell my advisor I don't want to stay in academia
Net Score: 17 (Excellent: 17, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 0)
What should be included in a departmental email policy?
Net Score: 8 (Excellent: 9, Satisfactory: 9, Needs Improvement: 1)
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626 | Let's get critical: Sep 2013 Site Self-Evaluation
We all love Academia Stack Exchange, but there is a whole world of people out there who need answers to their questions and don't even know that this site exists. When they arrive from Google, what will their first impression be? Let's try to look at this site through the eyes of someone who's never seen it before, and see how we stack up against the rest of the 'Net.
The Site Self-Evaluation review queue is open and populated with 10 questions that were asked and answered in the last quarter. Run a few Google searches to see how easy they are to find and compare the answers we have with the information available on other sites.
Rating the questions is only a part of the puzzle, though. Do you see a pattern of questions that should have been closed but are not? Questions or answers that could use an edit? Anything that's going really well? Post an answer below to share your thoughts and discuss these questions and the site's health with your fellow users!
Final Results
What does a plus sign mean in journal abbreviations?
Net Score: 8 (Excellent: 8, Satisfactory: 6, Needs Improvement: 0)
How much vacation time is typical during a PhD in the United States?
Net Score: 10 (Excellent: 10, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 0)
Advisor dies suddenly, advice needed for research students
Net Score: 10 (Excellent: 10, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 0)
How long is reasonable to wait for reply from an editor?
Net Score: 3 (Excellent: 5, Satisfactory: 5, Needs Improvement: 2)
How strict are listed minimum requirements for admission to a graduate degree program?
Net Score: 8 (Excellent: 8, Satisfactory: 4, Needs Improvement: 0)
How do PhD admissions committees view double majors?
Net Score: 6 (Excellent: 6, Satisfactory: 6, Needs Improvement: 0)
How does one go about starting a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)?
Net Score: 0 (Excellent: 5, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 5)
Repositories of funded research projects in different countries?
Net Score: 1 (Excellent: 3, Satisfactory: 7, Needs Improvement: 2)
Are tuition subsidies taxables for research staff?
Net Score: 3 (Excellent: 3, Satisfactory: 8, Needs Improvement: 0)
MOOC / video integration into classroom schedule
Net Score: 4 (Excellent: 4, Satisfactory: 6, Needs Improvement: 0)
I think it's time the site came out of beta ! it's a very healthy and thriving community.
I'm not usually favorable to pushing toward graduation… but the stats do indicate that we are taking off (in terms of overall traffic, questions asked, etc.)
I'll also add a fresh plot of Academia traffic (red symbols) as a function of time:
Notice how a 7th order polynomial fit (in blue) to the recent data highlights that the site is literally taking off.
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702 | Let's get critical: Dec 2013 Site Self-Evaluation
We all love Academia Stack Exchange, but there is a whole world of people out there who need answers to their questions and don't even know that this site exists. When they arrive from Google, what will their first impression be? Let's try to look at this site through the eyes of someone who's never seen it before, and see how we stack up against the rest of the 'Net.
The Site Self-Evaluation review queue is open and populated with 10 questions that were asked and answered in the last quarter. Run a few Google searches to see how easy they are to find and compare the answers we have with the information available on other sites.
Rating the questions is only a part of the puzzle, though. Do you see a pattern of questions that should have been closed but are not? Questions or answers that could use an edit? Anything that's going really well? Post an answer below to share your thoughts and discuss these questions and the site's health with your fellow users!
Final Results
Who to address on the cover letter?
Net Score: 16 (Excellent: 17, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 1)
Should you request graduate school recommendation letters only from those that know you as a researcher?
Net Score: 13 (Excellent: 13, Satisfactory: 6, Needs Improvement: 0)
Cite a developed version of an algorithm (citation chain)?
Net Score: 12 (Excellent: 12, Satisfactory: 5, Needs Improvement: 0)
Professor only teaches what is already in textbook. Should I quit going to the lectures?
Net Score: 11 (Excellent: 13, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 2)
Complaining about an ISI journal's unreasonable behavior
Net Score: 11 (Excellent: 11, Satisfactory: 6, Needs Improvement: 0)
What do you wish you knew as a student before you became a researcher?
Net Score: 10 (Excellent: 12, Satisfactory: 4, Needs Improvement: 2)
How to better prepare myself for the application to masters degree programs in the U.S.?
Net Score: 10 (Excellent: 10, Satisfactory: 7, Needs Improvement: 0)
What are the pros and cons of choosing my own research topic?
Net Score: 5 (Excellent: 6, Satisfactory: 9, Needs Improvement: 1)
Will the bad grade in a proposed studied subject be a red flag in my application?
Net Score: 4 (Excellent: 6, Satisfactory: 10, Needs Improvement: 2)
Which recommender should I go for getting a LOR for graduate school admission?
Net Score: 4 (Excellent: 5, Satisfactory: 10, Needs Improvement: 1)
So what does it mean? I have very little context for these scores. My interpretation: Since the net scores are positive and equal to the Excellent score minus the Needs Improvement score, and there are very small scores where they exist for Needs Improvement, the users of Academia Stack Exchange should be very optimistic about the future of the site. Am I correct?
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822 | Let's get critical: Mar 2014 Site Self-Evaluation
We all love Academia Stack Exchange, but there is a whole world of people out there who need answers to their questions and don't even know that this site exists. When they arrive from Google, what will their first impression be? Let's try to look at this site through the eyes of someone who's never seen it before, and see how we stack up against the rest of the 'Net.
The Site Self-Evaluation review queue is open and populated with 10 questions that were asked and answered in the last quarter.
Run a few Google searches to see how easy they are to find and compare the answers we have with the information available on other sites.
Rating the questions is only a part of the puzzle, though. Do you see a pattern of questions that should have been closed but are not? Questions or answers that could use an edit? Anything that's going really well? Post an answer below to share your thoughts and discuss these questions and the site's health with your fellow users!
Final Results
Potential Post-Doc supervisor visit: should I give a talk or just have a meeting?
Net Score: 19 (Excellent: 19, Satisfactory: 7, Needs Improvement: 0)
Retrieving the references in a publication automatically
Net Score: 16 (Excellent: 16, Satisfactory: 10, Needs Improvement: 0)
Could I change part of my paper after acceptance
Net Score: 13 (Excellent: 14, Satisfactory: 11, Needs Improvement: 1)
Should each chapter in an extensive paper start with an overview of the chapter's contents?
Net Score: 13 (Excellent: 13, Satisfactory: 12, Needs Improvement: 0)
Can a literature review be a "master's thesis"?
Net Score: 9 (Excellent: 10, Satisfactory: 16, Needs Improvement: 1)
Travel grant for summer conference between PhD and first job?
Net Score: 3 (Excellent: 6, Satisfactory: 15, Needs Improvement: 3)
What options does college dropout with great grades, research projects and CV have to return to university (or thinktanks)?
Net Score: -1 (Excellent: 7, Satisfactory: 11, Needs Improvement: 8)
Online tool for receiving student files
Net Score: -1 (Excellent: 3, Satisfactory: 18, Needs Improvement: 4)
Are professional body certificates any helpful in getting into academia (if I don't have any undergraduate education)?
Net Score: -2 (Excellent: 7, Satisfactory: 10, Needs Improvement: 9)
Best ways to obtain a scholarship for a Masters in financial mathematics/ quantitative finance
Net Score: -9 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 12, Needs Improvement: 10)
In general, I like shape of Academia.SE. And I am still being surprised, that with so many subjective questions, this site is a nice resource.
However, in my personal opinion:
Too much of life-story/life-choices/coaching/etc
often associated with personal-advice) - just please, no (I understand that newcomers may treat SE as a forum, but it is our job to help them shaping their issues into questions which work well in SE system)
quote: In this site I have seen questions that sound like "what should I do with my career" with little or no "question-ness". (@Thanatos)
examples:
Should a Ph.D. be done with a low h-indexed professor (typical, not particularly bad)
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17775/going-to-gap-a-year-before-reapplying-for-cs-phd-any-advice (a typical bad one)
why it is a problem?
hard to generalize,
hard to answer (as there are many treads, which is the one most important to the OP?),
hard to compare answers,
not much re-use value,
even hard to read the original question,
it is harder to find answer (as someone can ask question with the same title, but different - background)
Too much of soft answers
I mean, if someone asks a question about chances of being admitted
somewhere (or anything else) I think that we, as the community,
should put more value on at least trying to use any data, objective
references, links to other materials, etc. Sure, sometimes answer is
"yes" (or "no"), which is obvious for any insider; but it many cases
it isn't.
example:
Is it more difficult to score a Tenure Track position in the US when applying from outside? (answer is fine, but without any data or third-party insight it may be "calming, yet uninformative")
IMHO we should have much stricter comments and moderation for questions:
capturing one's life story,
asking a few questions at the same time,
too long (IMHO they can be as long as one wishes, but the question, or the overview, should in in the first paragraphs).
And for answers (just comment-bugging may suffice), when:
it seems that some data, research papers or essays can be linked,
the answer seems to be specific for a given region or discipline.
(And less strict for the comments :).)
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933 | 2014 Community Moderator Election
The 2014 Community Moderator Election is now underway!
Community moderator elections have three phases:
Nomination phase
Primary phase
Election phase
Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends on how many candidates there are.
Please visit the official election page at
https://academia.stackexchange.com/election
for more detail, and to participate!
If you have general questions about the election process, or questions for moderator candidates, feel free to ask them here on meta -- just make sure your questions are tagged election.
It seems like we have four winners ! Congratulations to aeismail, eykanal, ff524 and StrongBad (if I ran the correct algorithm for determining the results)
For those who are interested, here is a visualization of the raw votes:
(Thanks to our friends over at Stats.SE)
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438 | We should introduce a set of field tags - e.g., medicine, mathematics, economics
Let's get real here. Academics in mathematics ARE different from acedemics in medicine. We should embrace the real world !
This is not to prevent general questions.
For example a general tag of tenure promotion could have multiple questions in different fields. Just like on StackOverflow questions about X-Path could be asked specifically to various languages (Java, C, Perl).
Could you give some examples of issues that would necessitate separate tags?
Why are there close votes. This is a really useful discussion.
I now see that the close votes are because it is a duplicate... and am now voting to close.
The question of field explicit vs. generalized questions on this site seems to be a great divide.
I can see that some aspects of certain fields are just that, field specific. At the same time, I have seen many good questions, which when given a general answer, turns out to have been written in an implicit understanding they are very specific. The general answer then gets lots of comments about "not applying" to this and that and in addition, the question gets changed to become narrow and more specific.
Ok, so a specific question is probably better than a general one since it can be answer very specifically. But then we end up with many similar questions each specifically targetting a narrow field (duplicates?). In addition we close questions that are too narrow. So it seems to me that being general is what we are looking for and acccepting answers that apply to the question in the general sense.
The problem as I see it is to make new users aware of the fact that answers may be more general than what they expect.
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36 | What are existing online forums where academics congregate that would welcome being informed about this site?
In order to promote the site, it would be good to post a notification on some of the existing online forums where academics congregate.
What online forums exist?
As side points
What community does the forum contain? How big is the community?
What rules exist regarding promoting other site in the community?
By way of example:
http://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicPsychology/ contains almost 2000 subscribers; Reddit permits posting links; links that the community likes get upvoted and then receive greater exposure.
Physics Forums. Check the Academic Guidance forum. Even people in other fields (like chemistry) end up going there.
Reddits like AskAcademia and the private subreddit known as ScienceLounge (you have to be a panelist in /r/AskScience to get in, but being a panelist isn't difficult at all).
The Grad Cafe
PhysicsGRE.com
Quora (the Academia and Graduate School sections)
PhDComics used to have a Proceedings forum but now it's gone
The Graduate School subforum of College Confidential
The Chronicle (though the forums there are more for faculty members)
FWIW we hit a lot of roadblocks trying to "advertise" Physics Stack Exchange on Physics Forums. So if anyone makes any headway with them, I'd be very interested to hear how it goes.
I think it might be worthwhile to advertise on the Metas of existing academic or close-to-academic SEs. A partial list of ones I am familiar and see academics active on:
cstheory.SE
cogsci.SE
linguistics.SE
math.SE and MathOverflow
scicomp.SE
I think it is alright to mention SE sites on the metas, but this will only come to the attention of the 'regulars' who tend to be pretty abreast with new SE sites anyways, so it might not get that many new academics.
Academia.edu - social networking for people in Academia. I think they're claiming to have just passed 1 million users.
I wonder how we could promote cogsci.se to relevant users of academia.edu?
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123 | Academia self-evaluation: let's get critical!
You love your site and we love your site, but there is a whole world of people out there who might not even know it exists. When they do find it, their first impression will either scare them away or keep them around. Given this, let's take a hard look at the questions and answers here and make sure newcomers see the site at its best!
Below you'll find ten questions randomly selected from this site. What do you think about each of them and their answers? Are they the best they can be or can they be improved? Would they look interesting and inviting to an outsider or are they a little embarrassing?
Upvote the corresponding post here on meta when we're awesome. Downvote when our content just isn't quite up to par.
Oh, and do comment to let everyone know your thoughts and take part in this conversation. :)
How important are citations when applying for jobs or promotions?
What do you think about this question and its answers? Vote and comment to let everyone know.
Well-written question, solid answers, not easily google-able.
The answer must start "it varies", and it invites discussion rather than a single right objective answer. In short, not suited to the StackExchange format.
@EnergyNumbers - The "SE format" you refer to varies from site to site, and this community has reached a general consensus that these types of question and answers are acceptable here. I wouldn't compare Stack Overflow's closing criterion to this site.
@EnergyNumbers: For any reasonable question about academia, the correct answer begins "It varies". By your standard, we should close the site entirely.
What do principal investigators (PIs) look for in prospective post docs?
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Good question, solid answers. +1.
At what point do you decide to jump into research?
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This question is a good question, and the answers–though somewhat opinion-based–are good advice.
Subjective, the answer must start "it varies", and it invites discussion rather than a single right objective answer. In short, not suited to the StackExchange format.
See previous comments.
A major journal in my field is published by Elsevier. How can we move the field to a less objectionable, more open publisher?
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I'm on the fence about this one. It's a political question, which might not be the best to showcase our site, but the question and answers are comprehensive and solid.
@CharlesMorisset: OP's are allowed, and sometimes encouraged, to answer their own questions!
I don't understand the downvotes here, given the large number of upvotes (and no downvotes) on the original post. (Yes, it's a political question, but politics is an unavoidable aspect of academia.)
It invites discussion rather than a single right objective answer. In short, not suited to the StackExchange format.
How should students approach quals?
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Priority of application materials for admission decision
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The title isn't even a question - that's a pretty bad start
Data publication basics - where, why, how, and when should I publish my unpublished data?
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Can a researcher get his full salary from a European Project?
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Very helpful. These kind of rules are very often buried deep in 100s of pages of documentation. A nice concise answer like this one is really helpful.
+1 Finally, a question that actually has an objectively correct answer
Interview strategies for faculty positions - to focus on their research or your own?
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Considerations when negotiating a promotion from postdoc to researcher?
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Good answer, but the question highlights the difficulty here with differences in practice across disciplines.
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1078 | Possible reputation bug?
I downvoted an answer, and was surprised to see it show up in my own reputation history. I don't think I've ever noticed this happening on other Stack Exchange sites. The 1 point isn't important to me, but I thought it might be a bug. I didn't think up/downvotes affected the person doing the voting, or showed up in the voter's reputation history.
Or maybe my downvote was downvoted because I didn't add a comment with a reason. (Other people had already done so, and I didn't have anything else to add.)
Downvoting questions doesn't cost any rep, but downvoting answers costs a single rep point. The point of this almost-negligible penalty is to give people pause before going on downvote sprees. I wouldn't worry about it.
Also worth noting is that while the rep change shows up in your history, it only shows up in it when you look at it yourself, so others cannot use this to see who downvoted them.
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3342 | Why cannot I post this question?
I don't understand why I cannot post this question: "How can a student protect his or her intellectual work when sending a research proposal to an unknown professor?".
The website informs that it doesn't respect quality standards but, since I cannot get what is wrong with this question, my impression is that some users put some restrictions to me. May it be and is it fair, regardless from the content of the question?
PS. Furthermore, the website doesn't give any indication regarding what is wrong and how to improve it.
Is that the entirety of your question? Usually there is more information about context and circumstance in a question, and the system might be flagging it as "too short" and therefore likely to be closed.
I continue not to understand this community. What I should tell more? What kind of context should be added? There isn't any circumstance. That is the question and it is a clear question. Moreover, if clarity is present, as in this case, brevity should be appreciated.
Some things that I would want to know in order to answer such a question: What type of intellectual work are you concerned about: manuscripts, ideas, datasets, something else? Why are you sending it to the professor: are you looking for help, trying to get admitted to a PhD program, something else? Why this particular professor: did somebody refer you to them, did you just Google some keywords, is your work based on their work? These sorts of things will strongly affect the answer to the question.
@Alwayslearning: If the system is not letting you post the question, that's a different matter than the community closing a question. We don't have any real input on the backend software, so we can't help when the system balks at or complains about a question.
Without further detail, the question you are trying to ask sounds like a duplicate of When applying for a new job or fellowship, how to protect your ideas from being stolen by the lab you are applying to? anyways
and on the above referenced question, a related question is answered about 'intellectual theft': http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27472/is-there-any-research-on-the-prevalence-of-academic-theft
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1936 | Should top Stack Exchange Academia threads get DOIs and be permanently archived?
Josh from The Winnower (thewinnower.com) here. I wanted to reach out and see if users of Stack Exchange Academia would be interested in permanently archiving and assigning Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) to top threads with The Winnower. We’ve begun to offer DOIs and permanent archival to blogs, scholarly reddit AMAs, and we think various Stack Exchange is equally deserving of such services, services that are typically only afforded to traditional scholarly publishers. In short we’d love to make these great Q&As citable in the scholarly literature and count on users CVs for credit in the workplace/academia. But of course, we’d like your feedback before we do anything. We’ve met with some great people at the Stack Exchange offices and based upon your feedback they are willing to help. So…
Do you think top threads in Academia should be assigned a DOI and archived permanently via The Winnower?
If so, what threshold would you set
If not, why?
For background here is some more info on why we are offering DOIs to new media and how we’re doing it.
What is a DOI?
http://www.crossref.org/01company/16fastfacts.html
Why we assign DOIs and archive scholarly reddit AMAs
https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3finu8/doi_assignments_for_science_amas/
And for those curious we archive content via Portico, the same method used for many leading scholarly journals.
Thanks!
Josh, founder of The Winnower ([email protected])
It might be worth noting that some SE sites (e.g. Physics.SE) allow to download BibTeX citations of questions and answers.
@MassimoOrtolano - that's great, but it doesn't solve the same issue as having a DOI. (of course, just having a DOI doesn't solve the issue of formatting either :) )
There is an issue of contributorship here which I think the DOI, but more specifically ORCIDs are necessary for. There are many ways to contribute to academia, beyond the usual "write a paper, get $$$". Answering a question, mentoring young researchers, ensuring quality in the community - all of these are contributions. The badge system is a fantastic way to show this. Having SE badges (or others) in an ORCID would be what I'm looking for.
Also brought up on the whole-network meta at http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/266307/should-academic-threads-on-stack-exchange-get-dois-and-be-permanently-archived
While this seems like a nice idea, I think this is something that needs to be addressed across the full Stack Exchange network. I could see that multiple sites (particularly some of the hard science sites) being interested, and thus it would be useful to have the central Stack Exchange employees make the decision if it can be made available across the network to sites that want it.
We met with Stack Exchange employees last week and they are willing to work with us so long as the community is interested (we are asking the same Q at various site metas). It would be good to get some kind of consensus at each site to know which sites would receive DOIs (if we go ahead and do it). If we can show interest they will make sure it can get done and put resources towards it.
I hope Stack Exchange is very careful about this. I would not be happy if the network as a whole seemed to be endorsing this system.
Can you clarify how this would be an endorsement? I believe that is not a correct representation of what we are proposing.
In short we’d love to make these great Q&As citable in the scholarly literature and count on users CVs for credit in the workplace/academia.
Assigning DOIs does absolutely nothing of the sort. Questions and answers here can already be cited with no need for DOIs. (Many documents people cite don't have DOIs, and that doesn't stop anyone.) And the idea that this will make them count for credit on CVs is ridiculous. I can't imagine any university department saying "We didn't think participating in Q&A online should count for anything, but now that your contributions have been assigned DOIs by The Winnower, that make them Genuine Scholarly Contributions™ worthy of respect and credit."
Under the Creative Commons license used on this site, nobody can stop The Winnower from archiving whatever they'd like, as long as they comply with the license terms. However, I do not believe the site should officially endorse these activities:
It comes uncomfortably close to endorsing The Winnower overall. So far, I see nothing to indicate that it's a service I'd like to endorse.
It feeds into the DOI fetish, which I think is something we should strongly oppose. (There's nothing wrong with DOIs, and they are a useful organizational tool, but they should not be presented as a symbol of scholarly legitimacy, and the question here already does that)
The other aspect of this is archiving via Portico. That's not bad, but I don't think it's necessary for this site. (If The Winnower decides to do it anyway, I can't stop them and wouldn't want to, but I don't think it's worth an endorsement.)
Thanks for the response. We are trying to encourage and reward discussions on Stack Exchange with something that is given to all scholarly publications at the minimum. I did not mean to give the impression that all you need is a DOI for academic credit and if I did, I apologize for that. To date, however, DOIs are the gold standard in scholarly referencing and are used by many online publishing tools/services. Why shouldn't new forms of media be given it? Last, we are proposing only the best content receive DOIs and archival as judged by the community.
I am missing though how this comes off as an endorsement of The Winnower. We are offering a service to new scholarly communication for free. We think the content that the community produces on SE is valuable--we'd like to help preserve it.
PS we will only proceed if the community wants it.
Questions and answers here can already be cited with no need for DOIs. — And have been!
Regarding endorsement, I just mean it in the sense that whenever anyone publicly uses a service, it amounts to an implicit endorsement.
Unfortunately I can imagine, but luckily have not experienced, a university giving credit based on a "peer-reviewed, edited, archived, and indexed" publication like an SE answer.
How does one even archive a dynamic site like SE? If I write an answer/question and it gets deleted, do you issue a retraction? Do you issuse a new DOI/ update the archive everytime an edit is made?
Maybe it is naive, but to the extent I value my contributions here, I trust how SE is archiving the data. If they go bankrupt I think they will provide the data for a bit. I find URLs, almost as easy as DOIs and again trust SE not to break links too badly.
Archival would work basically work as snapshots. When DOI is issued all content that is present is archived. Could issue "versioned" DOIs after major edits or some other defined threshold is reached. As for archival, I think it is more about the community and preserving these great interactions for the next 50 or 100 years. Today most of the worlds discussion, intellectual and not, occurs online. We should utilize what academics have come up with to make sure the good stuff is preserved. Anyways, it seems as if the community is not interested so I don't think it will happen.
@Josh Please don't attempt to try to munge together DOIs and version control. This just sounds like a disaster on its way to occur.
What would be the purpose? I suppose it is rare that a StackExchange thread (and even rarer that an Academia StackExchange thread) reaches the level of a significant academic production that one would like to cite it. No desire to cite a thread would equate to no need for a DOI.
In any case, it would be useful to have empirical evidence that having a DOI would be useful.
I think there are few reasons we should assign DOIs to SE threads. If we limit DOIs to only the top posts, this may incentivize better answers/questions from a wider audience. Also, we are offering permanent archival via Portico, so high quality threads will be preserved for many decades to come, even if The Winnower or Stack Exchange were to cease to exist.
Related to your other point it seems as if some people are already citing various threads. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,33&q=stackexchange.com
I am currently working on a paper that will cite two CrossValidated threads. I had two questions that I couldn't figure out myself. The answers were helpful and not trivial but would certainly not have merited a "traditional" publication by themselves. I strongly believe citing them is the right thing to do. This may, of course, differ by discipline - I also doubt many people (maybe social scientists?) will want to cite Academia.
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4115 | Love this site? I think, too much.
"Love this site?" is too wide, it appears.
OS: Windows 7
Browser: Chrome Version 66.0.3359.139
Could you provide some more details? Browser, OS, etc.
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4309 | Selective deleting of comments
Often a question that hits the hot network questions list or otherwise becomes controversial, attracts a lot of low-quality comments. I understand that this puts the moderators in a difficult position, but what I'd like to propose is that once it becomes clear that removing large numbers of comments is needed (beyond one or two problematic commenters), the moderators do so in bulk rather than selectively.
That is, either we should put the Controversial Post mechanic into effect, or there shouldn't be wholesale deletion of relatively normal comments.
I had a highly upvoted and on-topic comment on this answer deleted ostensibly because "it mostly reinforced the answer and being prone to misunderstandings." This is a very weak reason for deleting comments, and I think it should be quite obvious that many other comments on that page have not been deleted even though they too "mostly [reinforce] the answer and [are] prone to misunderstandings."
I'm all in favor of moderators acting aggressively on comments (which aren't a core part of the Q&A format) on controversial questions. I just don't think it makes sense to be really aggressive in deleting some comments but not others. So I'd like to propose that on questions that are protected the moderators go ahead and delete all discussion-y comments.
I'd say that of all the stacks I participate in, Academia tends to handle comments more reasonably than any other. That doesn't mean there couldn't be improvements to the process, but it's hard to find a good balance, and controversial/HNQ posts are particularly difficult. The weak reason you refer to is in fact a valid comment deletion reason in the SE format.
There is surely selective deleting of comments.
In general
what I'd like to propose is that once it becomes clear that removing large numbers of comments is needed (beyond one or two problematic commenters), the moderators do so in bulk rather than selectively.
As elaborated here, one of the main points of deleting comment or moving them to chat is to make important comments visible instead of being drowned in long discussions, monologues, or similar. If we deleted all comments or moved them to chat, there is little gain in comparison to leaving them all standing (except offensive ones).
This specific post
Before your comment was deleted, comments were deleted on said answer as follows:
Five comments that were posted by a single user were deleted by me because they violated the code of conduct.
Two comments were deleted by their authors.
Four comments were deleted by me because they replied to the above comments and were obsolete after their deletion.
Note that this was not a typical move-to-chat situation. All of the comment deletions were independent of the total amount of comments on the post.
After this, the only comment left standing was yours, which read:
Reading “I couldn’t resist her” made me get pretty angry with OP, and I didn’t sleep with him! Yes you could have, you didn’t want to. Take some ownership and responsibility for your actions. This answer is good.
This comment is basically:
Good answer, in particular the eighth paragraph.
It does do a little bit more, but that’s mostly taking a harsher tone. It does not fulfil any of the criteria for worthwhile comments outlined here. If there are not many other comments on a post, I usually leave such a comment standing because highlighting the highlight of an answer has some value. However, otherwise I would delete it or move it to chat without hesitation. I first left your comment standing because it was the only one.
Then your comment attracted strong criticism in further comments and in chat. One reason I see for this is that the part of “Take some ownership and responsibility for your actions” could be interpreted as referring to the blackmail – if taken out of context.
I therefore deleted this comment (and the comments in response to it) with the rationale you quoted. From another point of view, I found myself debating about the offensiveness and intentions of a comment that was in the greyzone for deletion anyway. Hence, to avoid further debate, I deleted your comment.
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485 | A proposal for Open Data SE
I would like to announce that on Area 51 there is a proposal new Stack Exchange site - Open Data.
Open Data
Proposed Q&A site for developers and researchers interested in open data.
Currently it is in commitment phase - so i.e. gathering a critical mass of participants. If you are interested, go there and click "commit".
(I am posting it here, as Open Data is a topic which has a big intersection with academic issues, especially related to Open Science.)
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423 | Dealing with "What should I do?" questions
There is a lot of questions asking for life advice, e.g. describing a problem with their PhD advisor (or the head of the department). It's very common that there is a list of possible decisions and the asking person wants to pool what do people advise?
On one hand side, they are not good questions in the SE sense - as they are subjective, mixing a lot of questions in one, and somewhat localized.
On the other hand - very often they raise important problems, or contain questions that could be extracted.
More than often such questions remain open.
EDIT:
My main point is not to set criteria for closing questions, but to ask what should we do is a question is "asking for a general life advice, given the described situation"?
Close first, ask later?
Suggest to focus on one topic or split into subquestions?
Leave it as it is, because it captures important issues?
Bear in mind that such question come mostly for people who are not yet familiar with SE, and may be not aware that open-ended subjective questions (and even worse - invitations to discussions) are not welcome here.
But at the same time they might be eager to rephrase the question.
This is a good question, and it has been raised before in a number of different contexts (e.g., here, here, and here). I don't think we've yet arrived at a consensus on dealing with these questions.
@eykanal I know that it is an ongoing problem; however, the linked (meta) questions were about answers. Here my main point is "what to do?" (not exactly on closing criteria, but rather whether to suggest reformulation, or leave is it is, etc).
Yeah, I see that. I upvoted gerrit's answer, as I think that's closest to both what we should do and what we currently do, but I'd love to hear from the community if they have other ideas.
@eykanal My main concern is not which close or not, but whether "first close, then ask" or do it in a more civilized manner (especially as most of askers (of such questions) are newcomers to the SE universe and, once instructed, may be able and willing to rephrase questions).
Ah, I didn't get that from your question. Can you edit that in to make it more explicit? I can answer that one below.
@eykanal Thanks, done.
I think an important aspect for such questions is: is the answer likely to ever help a 3rd party?
For example, Sex worker/student offering her (legal) services is a good what-should-I-do question; it's quite possible that other people — now or in the future — face the same problem.
On the other hand, many what-should-I-do questions should simply be closed as too localised.
This question is subjective, but also well abstracted, so for me it is OK (even if not 70+ votes OK ;)). My main concern are questions asking for life advice, instead on an advice to a particular problem.
Questions on this board will necessarily be more subjective than on other SE boards, but I think that the topic that we're covering is by definition more subjective, since most of what we're dealing with is interpersonal relationships.
So, I think the standard is to ask, as gerrit suggests, if the question can help someone else. I don't really get the sense that that many questions are very localized. However, whenever I see one that is, I try to "abstract" the question and make the answer of greater general validity.
I'm strongly in favor of using comments to suggest improvements (option 2 above). Premature closing will necessarily lead to alienating new users, as that conveys a very mod-heavy community culture, which we don't want. Leaving the question open leads to a cluttered forum. Following the "teach a man to fish" idea, if we subtly convey via comments that a given question could be improved by splitting it up/clarifying the question/removing ad hominem or other inappropriate content, we can not only enlarge the community, but we can gain positively contributing community members, which are the best kind.
I would not try to judge such questions on their "objective" merit. I rather see this site as a place for providing useful answers to relevant questions people have. We can't say what people find useful over time (perhaps it can be measured by view count over time, links how did they arrive here, etc.). My concern rather is to ensure that even when we have a speculative question, we should make sure that
the question is broad enough to possibly help 3rd parties;
the question is worded, tagged and answered in such a way that it will be likely found by people having a similar problem in the future.
My stance derives from observing myself often typing into a search engine a vague question in the hope to get something what either a) speaks about my problem and provides a useful perspective; or b) advances my search for my own answer further. Clearly, if a question is speculative, answers to it often can advance somebody's search for help and I would say that is good enough achievement for a Q&A site like ours is.
I've just browsed the recent questions and they are very heavy on the "what should I do"/life advice side of things. While I don't see localization as a big issue, many of the questions only apply to the very specific situation of the person who asks the question and aren't of particular interest to anyone else - and they're not even necessarily "academic" questions. E.g. "shall I move away to a good university or shall I stay here and go to a not so good university" (edit: especially given the answers this type of question seems to attact) is life advice and has not much to do with academia.
I was hoping that academia SE would be of general interest to researchers/academics, but it seems to become more of a place for confused grad students to ask for life advice. (Disclaimer: I'm a grad student.)
So I would prefer a stricter policy of closing questions that are very specific and personal, in favour of quality.
Even in that very specific question though, the answers elucidate general principles ("don't make decisions out of fear", "don't listen to Imposter syndrome") that apply across many situations in academics and in life. Doesn't that mitigate the specific nature of the question ?
Hm maybe I'm just missing the point of this SE category then - I thought it would be about less personal questions relating to academia (publishing, career progress, ...) rather than life advice. I suppose the FAQ say "Life as a graduate student, postdoctoral researcher, university professor" which could be interpreted as life advice as well.
general interest to researchers/academics, but it seems to become more of a place for confused grad students to ask for life advice — I'm sorry, but I honestly don't understand the difference. Academic life is simultaneously procedural, political, and intensely personal. We cannot ignore personal issues if we want to be useful.
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3347 | Should we have a Deferral tag?
I am currently in a situation were I would like to defer a PhD admissions offer, and I am searching for other users' deferral experience and questions. However there is no deferral Tag. Should we create one?
Or is there an existing tag that serves this purpose?
I think this might be a situation where a new tag is appropriate. Deferral of offers is not just specific to admissions, but can also apply to postdoc and faculty job offers.
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3803 | Should unneeded provocative content be removed from answers
A couple of flags have been raised on this answer that suggests that the OP's example title is not appropriate. I have edited the title which I think conveys the same information, but in a more appropriate way. The OP has rolled my revision back.
Which way do we want the answer?
I think the original title overestimates the universality of the author's sense of humour, and is in a certain technical sense gratuitous. If the same point can be made with a title that does not risk either causing offence or derailing, then why go for a title that does have such risks, unless one is desperate to burnish one's Lenny Bruce credentials?
@LeonMeier You were using a lurid title, which arguably cheapens actual real-world events by referring to them in a monumentally shallow and glib fashion, and one which suggests you have not actually thought seriously about the context & specifics of the events you refer to. Either you are arguing in bad faith, or you lack the wit to imagine who you might be offending; either way, as a result of your comment, I am not inclined to any further discussion with you on this.
As with @YemonChoi, I found the title to be entirely unnecessary, and a distraction from the content of the answer itself. While I'm all for humorous example titles, it's trivial to make one not involving an inflammatory topic.
When it comes down to it, I don't think the fake title added anything, did feel like it was baiting a bit, and I was entirely comfortable with its removal. The further edits by the OP don't do much to make me think I'm wrong.
Please read the question Who has the final authority in an edit war? OP or a moderator? on Meta Stack Exchange
and one of the answer says
What is a moderator? Someone who is trusted to know the site rules and enforce them. Either elected by the site users themselves, or by Stack Exchange staff (or SE staff member on their own), a moderator has the final say in everything, and got tools to enforce their decisions
@LeonMeier if you didn't like my edit, you could have changed it. I thought the reason for the edit was pretty obvious, but apparently you may not have understood the reason. I invited you to ask on meta/chat and you declined. As it escalated, I brought it here.
@scaahu no question mods have final authority, but I wanted to make sure I was interpreting what the community wanted. From the voting, it seems like I did.
@StrongBad My answer was aiming to Leon, not you. The comment space under his answer (now deleted) was cluttered, so I used the answer space to let him know that please respect the Mod's decision. However, I would like to say something about this issue. If I were the mod, I would delete his answer when I received abusive/offensive flags.
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4128 | Forced authorship questions
This question:
What a PhD student should do when their supervisor orders them to have a name on their paper just because of grant purposes?
seems very related to
What should PhD students do when they are told to add authors who did not contribute to the paper (e.g., head of school, international funders)?
and
My advisor wants me to include a name of someone who has no contribution to the paper
We also have the question asked from the other side of the table
How to explain to a student that it is common to include a supervisor as a co-author
I also asked something in a more canonical sense (I think)
What are the minimum contributions required for co-authorship
but it misses the interpersonal aspects of what can happen if a junior person refuses the request/demand of a senior person. Do we want a canonical question to cover these topics that would include a list of links to authorship guidelines for different fields/journals and a summary of those statements as well as a summary of the repercussions that can arise out of saying no and a strategy for dealing with the whole situation?
I think it might be better to include a list of "related questions" in the body of the respective questions. Otherwise, too much existing work will need to be merged (a very messy operation, given that all the questions are slightly different).
This sounds like a situation calling out for a tag creation! Perhaps "forced-authorship"?
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3933 | Why did Leon Meier get suspended for a year for "voting irregularities"?
I know this user was argumentative and seemed to be not-so-subtly trolling the site in many ways but his profile says he was suspended for "voting irregularities". What does that mean? Does that mean he created sock puppet accounts and upvoted himself? Or perhaps it means that he serially downvoted particularly uses. Or both? Kind of curious what's going on here and how one can avoid a similar fate. Thanks!
@MarkMcGregor: No, they're not. I don't think I'm violating any confidentiality to say that.
@MarkMcGregor No, I only use this account. This may come as a shock to some of you, but I am a real person with a real name. :) The reason why I was so vocal is that I find Leon Meier's past contributions to this website somewhat useful, I have no idea why he was banned, and I am curious to find out more. But if he did something like this crap that is going on recently with multiple accounts popping up from nowhere, it looks like the mods did perfectly well when they banned him. Question answered (and thanks to the mods for having handled all this.)
As a rule, suspensions are a private matter between the user that is suspended, the moderators, and the SE team. We don't give out information to other users, other than the brief canned message shown on the profile page of the suspended user. (And I wouldn't bother reading too much into that canned message; there are only a few and not all suspensions fit neatly into one of them.)
In general, one avoids "voting irregularities" by voting for posts, not targeting specific people. That means:
Don't take any action to specifically vote in favor of yourself or any other user. (For example, the following behavior is not allowed: Paula is friends with Katherine. They don't vote much on SE but they make sure to vote up one another's posts when they see them and like them, to help out a friend.)
Don't take any action to specifically vote against any user. (For example, the following behavior is not allowed: Joe is convinced that Alex downvoted his post. Joe visits Alex's profile page, looks through it until he finds a post he doesn't like, and downvotes it.)
Don't take any steps to give yourself more than one vote per post, or other votes that you wouldn't normally be entitled to. (For example, the following behavior is not allowed: Pat creates a second account to post an embarrassing question that she doesn't want to have linked to her main account. Pat then visits the question from her main account and votes it up, even though normally you can't vote on your own post.)
Also see: What is serial voting and how does it affect me? and When should sockpuppets be considered a problem?
The list above is not exhaustive. If you're not sure about a particular behavior, please start a new meta post to ask about it.
If you need to ask if a particular behavior is OK, chances are it’s not such a good idea.
Have you considered the possibility that OP is the banned user himself asking for a more detailed explanation? Maybe you have already ruled it out because of personal communications, but if that may be the case then a more detailed answer would be helpful to OP.
Also, when you write "as a rule", you mean that it is an indication from the Stack Exchange network, or a personal guideline that you moderators have given yourselves?
@FedericoPoloni Obviously the mods cannot discuss the ban story of Leon Meier in public on the weak suspicion that he may be the OP asking for it, and hence implicitly agreeing to public discussion.
@Federico this rule is indicated by the SE network in their (not public) guidance to moderators.
@xLeitix From my personal experience in moderating other sites, this seems a strong suspicion rather than a weak one. Why would a third person create an anonymous account (with that username) just to discuss this matter? Also, from what I understand (I have never used this moderation system nor been banned), creating an anonymous account may be Leon Meyer's only option to contact the mods. If I understand correctly, there is a baroque system in place that allows him only one private answer to the moderators in reply to its ban, and creating a new account while disclosing his identity (cont)
would be another infraction that may make his ban longer.
Reference to the 'baroque system': https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/293444/243091: "Note you can only reply once, so make it count."
@FedericoPoloni Fair enough, but ... well, doesn't that leave only two options? Either OP isn't Leon and then ff524 is supposed to not discuss his case in public, or OP is Leon and then ff524 isn't supposed to get into a lengthy (and public) discussion about the ban either (otherwise, why would there be rules about how often banned people can answer the mods etc.)?
Also, if OP is Leon himself and self-assesses that he "seemed to be not-so-subtly trolling the site in many ways", then the reason why he was banned should be fairly clear to him.
@xLeitix The SE team does not prohibit people from discussing their ban in public in meta, also with the moderators, if they wish. Reference: end of this post.
@Federico Note the "Obviously, you can't do this during your suspension" there. A user is welcome to use Academia meta to ask further questions about his suspension after it ends, if he so wishes.
The second (of the three) behaviors mentioned above involves a motive that could not be known to the moderators ("Joe is convinced that Alex downvoted his post"). I'm surprised and concerned to hear that SE rules involve making judgments based on imagined motives. Obviously in practice the determination to ban must be made on some quantitative measures rather than guessing a motive; it would be nice if this were stated explicitly. Probably, the sentence in question should just be removed from that paragraph.
The first behavior also seems to involve something the moderators would not know; namely, which users are friends. If the users are not friends, is it okay to engage in this behavior? For instance, if one of them is paying the other? The answer is obviously "no", so could you please replace what is written above with what evidence you actually base a decision on?
@David I'm afraid I can't get into the details of how moderators detect vote fraud here. This post is meant to describe some types of voting fraud that users should avoid, and one example (certainly not the only example) of each - that's all. (Not necessarily things that moderators look for.)
@DavidKetcheson another meta post on MSE that explains on how to not get suspended for voting irregularities.
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4008 | 2018 Moderator Election Q&A - Question Collection
Academia is scheduled for an election next week, March 5th. In connection with that, we will be holding a Q&A with the candidates. This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation. Participation is completely voluntary.
The purpose of this thread was to collect questions for the questionnaire. The questionnaire is now live, and you may find it here.
Unlike last time, we're hosting the question collection a week in advance, so that not only can folks start prepping questions in advance, but also potential candidates can think about nominating themselves and seeing the questions they'll have an opening to answer.
Here's how it'll work:
Until the nomination phase, (so, until Monday, March 5th at 20:00:00Z UTC, or 3:00 pm EST on the same day, give or take time to arrive for closure, I think this is my last sweet day to use EST), this question will be open to collect potential questions from the users of the site. Post answers to this question containing any questions you would like to ask the candidates. Please only post one question per answer.
We, the Community Team, will be providing a small selection of generic questions. The first two will be guaranteed to be included, the latter ones are if the community doesn't supply enough questions. This will be done in a single post, unlike the prior instruction.
If your question contains a link, please use the syntax of [text](link), as that will make it easier for transcribing for the finished questionnaire.
This is a perfect opportunity to voice questions that are specific to your community and issues that you are running into at currently.
At the start of the nomination phase, the Community Team will select up to 8 of the top voted questions submitted by the community provided in this thread, to use in addition to the aforementioned 2 guaranteed questions.
Once questions have been selected, a new question will be opened to host the actual questionnaire for the candidates, typically containing 10 questions in total.
This is not the only option that users have for gathering information on candidates. As a community, you are still free to, for example, hold a live chat session with your candidates to ask further questions, or perhaps clarifications from what is provided in the Q&A.
If you have any questions or feedback about this process, feel free to post as a comment here.
As a moderator, I find that comments are a tricky thing to deal with. Under what circumstances will you delete comments?
Personally, as a non-moderator, I had no idea how many comment flags were raised. I would answer this question very differently now as a mod, having seen that!
A user posts something you consider off-topic/not-an-answer/offensive and you close/delete/migrate the post. The user takes the issue to Meta and the question as well as answers supporting and opposing your decision get a lot of upvotes. How do you decide what to do next?
This is essentially this question from the last election.
What activities on the site suggest that you would be a good moderator? How have you used the moderation tools available to you at your current reputation level?
Here is a set of general questions, gathered as very common questions asked every election. As mentioned in the instructions, the first two questions are guaranteed to show up in the Q&A, while the others are if there aren't enough questions (or, if you like one enough, you may split it off as a separate answer for review within the community's 8).
How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?
How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?
In your opinion, what do moderators do?
A diamond will be attached to everything you say and have said in the past, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you will do will be seen under a different light. How do you feel about that?
In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?
Why didn't you simply post the bottom three as separate questions that we can up- or downvote individually?
Mostly because the intersection of "Sites with enough submissions to warrant culling" and "Sites who actually want one or more of those three questions" is few in number, and splitting them off absent of that intersection is pretty much just clutter. Either it makes the submission list look padded if it's otherwise empty, or it just adds undesired extra space. This method allows them to only share space if they're actually wanted and the split off becomes necessary.
What question or answer of yours on meta best exemplifies your philosophy on moderation? Why do you feel this is the best example?
What is your field?
I think it's important to have moderators that aren't just mathematicians or experimental scientists (for example)
Why do you think that the scientific field matter for moderator activities?
@Wrzlprmft well, off the top of my head, it would let them better engage with new folks from that field and help them improve their question if it's off topic or something
Yes, but that’s not a typical (diamond) moderator activity. Everybody can do this and there are no moderator privileges that help with this. (The ability to comment and edit a question without review help, but they are available to everybody with 2 k reputation.)
@Wrzlprmft Okay, well, don't worry about it when you go to vote, then.
It’s not only about considering this in the vote, but also about making your question clear to the candidates and getting a good answer from them. If you elaborate why you consider it important that moderators should be diverse in respect to their field, a candidate can answer to your underlying concern, otherwise they can only bluntly answer with their field or guess.
I think that "diversity of field" is potentially important for moderators - and beyond that, I wouldn't mind the humanizing question or two.
The site has a large number of answers, and partial answers, in comments. As a moderator, what is your stance towards these?
Do you know that you are a bit late to the show? The questionnaire has already been compiled.
Yeah, I just noticed.
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663 | What happened in the question on sexism in academia?
This question is locked, with the message "This post has been locked while disputes about its content are being resolved. For more info visit meta." However, when I click on 'visit meta' (which is a link), it just takes me to the main meta page. Is there actually any publicly visible 'dispute' going on here?
Well, now we have a discussion area for this. . . .
A user was attempting to delete and repost answers as "new" to avoid the downvotes associated with it. His justification for this was that the downvotes prevented new users from seeing the answer as readily as the non-downvoted answers.
When informed he could not do so, and instead had to edit the answer in place, he persisted and repeated the process, getting flagged each time. The question has been temporarily locked to prevent "sock-puppetry" from taking place.
Thanks for the clarification. It was just a bit confusing to be directed to meta and then not be able to find anything relevant here.
That's a blanket statement added by Stack Exchange.
Maybe ban the user instead of locking the question?
@DavidKetcheson - That wouldn't prevent the user from coming back on using another IP address to cause more mayhem. Unfortunately, "protecting" pages is one of the few recourses against uncivil behavior on here.
Appropriate disciplinary actions were taken, and, as I mentioned, the lock is meant as a temporary "cooling down" period. (I've never seen so many flags issued over a single question.)
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2191 | How do I seek advice for the following question?
My question was closed as a duplicate and I was told that it's too personalized to be a helpful question to the community. Where can I find an answer to my question? Does it not belong on SE at all? If so, that is fine, just want to be clear/
Is it possible to overcome poor undergrad performance with a masters at a much lower ranked institution?
The trick to getting duplicate questions reopened (in my opinion) is to edit away all the detail that might obscure the fundamental difference between your question and the existing questions. Otherwise, it can come across as "I know my situation is really similar to existing questions, but I just want highly individualized advice" (which is off-topic per the help center - see "Can I ask about my specific situation"). What you really want to convey is "Here is a general question that may help many others, that isn't addressed by the current questions and answers on this site."
So, if you believe that answers to existing questions on the site do not apply to your situation, you should edit your question to focus on what is different about your situation, and to reflect what you've learned from reading related questions. Then, it might be reopened.
This means not just adding a paragraph to the end explaining why you believe your question is different, but really editing the entire question to focus on the part of your situation that is different and remove the part that is already addressed in existing answers.
If your question did remain open in its current state, you would probably just get more answers telling you what you already know (that recent performance counts more than past performance), because the title and most of the body of your post is about that issue.
My suggestion would be to rewrite your question as follows:
I have browsed extensively on academia.se and generally understand from similar questions (e.g. Doing bad in undergraduate but good in a masters program and How does the admissions process work for Ph.D. programs in the US, particularly for weak or borderline students?) that Ph.D. admissions committees care most about an applicant's most recent performance.
Is this still true even if the poor undergraduate grades were at a highly ranked university, and the good masters grades were at a much less competitive program?
I am interested in applying to top statistics PhD programs, but I have very poor undergraduate grades (2.8 GPA, 3.3 major GPA in math/stats) from a top 15 department. My grades in the masters program are good (>3.9 GPA), but at a state university that is not so highly ranked.
If the grades from the less competitive masters aren't enough to overcome the poor undergraduate grades, is the quality of my masters thesis likely to help me secure admissions to a top PhD program?
This version is concise, still captures the essence of your situation (I think), but distills it in a way that makes it helpful to others as well. It also emphasizes that you have a real, new, question and you're not just looking for more reassurance that recent performance matters more than youthful mistakes.
The question title "Another poor undergrad grades strong MS grades applying to phd next year question" suggests that even you think it is a duplicate of existing questions. Perhaps an edit to the title is in order, too. How about:
Is it possible to overcome poor undergrad performance with a masters at a much lower ranked institution?
Note that these edits will automatically push the question into a review queue where users of the site can vote to reopen. (You're probably familiar with this if you're an avid user of other SE sites.)
Nice explanation, but I'm not sure even the proposed edits will be enough to get the question reopened, since I still don't understand how we could say anything in answer other than "Maybe, it depends."
thanks your edits are clear and concise, I will change it in that manner.
@jakebeal I am hoping some people will have more insight into this situation. For example one user already said that he does see this happening in my current situation.
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600 | What is wrong with my question on arXiv?
I am unable to understand the comments and the down-votes on this question of mine.
[The question is deleted now, original text reproduced below]
I realize we do not have a definitive answer/guideline on the purpose of pre-print archives. I guess it will be useful for our users who are new to academia.
I would like to see details in terms of:
What is the purpose of archives for electronic pre-prints of scientific papers, such arXiv, vixra, SSRN etc.?
Why are they needed when conferences/journals already exist to publish papers?
Can a published work (i.e., post-print) also go to arXiv?
Will my paper accepted by arXiv count as a 'publication' for me?
Is it such a bad idea, say, if we make it a community wiki with one pre-print/e-print service per answer? This is one way of improving it which strikes me. Can others point out the flaws and give inputs on improvement?
Why the downvote? I think it is great that users want to improve their questions.
@CharlesMorisset fair enough. I just wanted to make sure pnp didn't think we were out to get him/her.
It such a bad idea, say, if we make it a community wiki with one
pre-print/e-print service per answer?
Yes, it is a bad idea. I think the SO blog post on the subject sums it up nicely:
Most of the time, you should be asking yourself “How can I improve
this post so that community wiki isn’t needed?”
Changing the question to community wiki does not improve it. As for how to improve it, the "question" had 4 bullet point questions. Each one of those seems to me to be independent of the others so that the question could be broken into 4 more manageable chunks. In breaking it up, I think you would then see the discussion oriented nature of some of the parts and the duplication of other parts.
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491 | Taking care of argumentative discussions
In my opinion, this question and its answer here are inviting speculations, comments without proper backing of evidence, and argumentative discussion over an Institute being good or mediocre (again, based on the opinions of users and not facts). So...
Does the community agree with me over these? If 'NO', then kindly point where I am wrong.
I don't have the reputation to vote-to-close, so someone else needs to, if required.
In general, how should our community look upon such questions-answers which are inviting more opinions than facts.
I disagree that the question and corresponding answer is argumentative, but I do agree that it is not a good question.
Argumentative questions typically* take one of two forms:
A rant (thinly) disguised as a question, and
A question on a topic that is by nature opinion-based and argumentative.
We have a few of the first type here; see here and here, first versions of questions that were subsequently edited to be appropriate for the forum. We have much fewer of the second type here, but it happens all the time on the other Stack Exchange sites; do a search for "what language is best?" in Programmers.SE and you'll see dozens.
The question at hand is neither of those. The poster is legitimately confused as to how to interpret a CV from an Indian university, and is seeking assistance.
The problem is that this is highly subjective. Everyone interprets scores differently according to the culture of their institution. This is reflected in the comments on the answer; something was posted, but someone disagrees with his assessment.
That being said, the answer does address the question in a sufficiently general way that it's useful to the general public (i.e., someone coming here with a similar question would benefit from the answer and ensuing comments). For that reason, I would not close this.
Regarding your general question of opinion-based answers, we have had a lot of discussion on this meta on that topic. I would point you to this question for starters, and check out some of the related questions for more on that topic. Briefly, we allow more leeway on opinion-based answers than other SE sites.
Thanks... The question you linked towards the end and your last statement were what I was looking for.
@eykanal we have plenty of what I would call “good subjective” questions on the site… things like “given these facts, how do I improve my chances of graduate admission?” are inherently subjective. Yet, they are answerable and useful. It is true that “everyone interprets scores differently according to the culture of their institution”, but it is still relevant to ask for points of comparison, or keys to reading such scores… I'm not asking people to make a decision for me ;-)
@F'x - I completely agree, and if you have any links to some good ones (such as the one you mentioned), go ahead and post them.
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927 | On-topic, within scope but subjective question that is likely to generate discussion (likely insightful)
I was checking out the recent questions and came across this one, which is essentially an opinion poll regarding the role/attitude teachers should have in class.
As I wrote on my comment, I do like what the question is going after but I can't help thinking that it is essentially not a good fit based on how we (and other SE sites) normally operate. As it stands, there is no right answer to this question. Consider this hypothetical answer:
"yes, I think the teacher is also responsible for the catching students attention by entertainment, if necessary. I tried this in class X for n semesters and it works like a charm...
I don't think anyone of us can claim that the answer is wrong by any merit. We can disagree on to what extent we agree, but essentially any semi-serious (no spam, or one-liner) answer would be a valid answer to the question. Am I mistaken?
Would it be too harsh to vote/flag this kind of question?
This is something I've struggled with, because outside of the occasional "Philosophy of Data Analysis" questions that crop up on CrossValidated, there's usually a way to critically evaluate answers, and I think Programmers deals with things...a little too harshly. Especially given we're a new site, I'd like to see a slight bias towards helpfulness and traffic.
I think it's probably most useful to flag and comment such questions if they can be tuned towards more specific answers - for example, "What are some of the pitfalls of X method" instead of just "Should I use X?"
If they can't? I think there's a valid question about whether or not to keep useful but inherently subjective questions open. They seem like prime candidates for something like Community Wiki and, like Charles, I'd seriously encourage folks to vote for the answers that have grounding behind them.
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1020 | Questions on fairness: opinionated/subjective or not?
This question here is practically asking whether or not a particular scheme used at his/her school is fair/ethical. Specifically the heart of the question says (emphasis mine):
Do you think this is ethical? Is this a wise way to deal with cheating?
Not so surprisingly the answers are opinionated, and sometimes not even answering the question at hand but instead providing different perspective (i.e. "at our institution we do...").
This answer, just as an example, focuses on how it's done in France, and has very little reference to it is fair or ethical, or wise for that matter.
I like the question, per se, but as I understand the scope and modus operandi here on SE sites, this type of question is a bad fit. I have raised similar concerns before, but haven't really gotten a whole lot of feedback. As I don't want to go on a downvote spree based on a hunch I would like to get some feedback/discussion on the matter.
Opinions?
Academia.SE deals, at a very fundamental level, with interpersonal relationships and human behavior. Opinionated and subjective are very necessary parts of answering the vast majority of questions related to ethical conduct, personality conflicts, and similar issues.
So I would say that such subjective questions are fine, so long as they otherwise fit the content of the board.
"So I would say that such subjective questions are fine, so long as they otherwise fit the content of the board." based on this would you say it's fine to ask a question like: "Is it worth the hassle to try to publish at a high-impact journal, if it means a lot of more work?"; it is definitely within the scope of Ac.SE and relevant to many people but at the same extremely subjective. (PS: I do not mean to argue against you but just to note that there is a pretty big grey zone, and at times even double standard, when it comes to being subjective.
I'd cast the question as: "what are the pros and cons," because that makes it less subjective. Your example is not a good fit, because we're guessing at the poster's needs and abilities and goals.
I do think it is very easy for questions such as the one you mention to attract answers that say "My personal opinion is that this is stupid/unfair/wonderful." I don't think those kinds of answers are in the spirit of Q&A.
However, these questions can also attract answers like:
Here is an example of a policy that claims this is fair/unfair, and how this policy plays out in practice. (This is an objective statement of a policy, not the personal subjective opinion of the person answering.) For example, in this question I asked for answers based on experience with a certain kind of policy, and the accepted answer gave me just that.
Here is an idea you hadn't considered that affects the subjective determination you are trying to make. For example, in this answer I brought up the issue of variation of student's confidence in their knowledge as a consideration in deciding whether to forbid guessing.
Here is some research that further illuminates the issue. For example, in this answer, I linked to several studies on bias in academia.
These kinds of answers are very much in the spirit of Q&A (as per the help center text on subjective questions).
So, I don't think the questions are bad if they encourage the latter kind of answer.
I can't help feel that subjective questions will encourage both, and it will be hard to weed out the "good" from the "bad". Then there is the perspective of useful insight, despite being a personal opinion versus useless objective and factual information. I do not have a problem with opinion-based questions (as I mentioned) but I think it will eventually result in misleading and alienating some users in the long run, as well as a heavy load on moderators.
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2017 | Specific vs general question: where does the line go?
A recent question of mine was apparently put on-hold with the following motivation:
"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. (See this discussion for more info.)" – Nate Eldredge, Wrzlprmft, gman, Fomite, scaaahu
Quite frankly I think that's nonsense; there are thousands of people who go through the same graduate education as I did and the companies I was referring to are multinational giants that employ in the tens of thousands (if not more) globally.
The importance of GPA in application processes has been up and debated my many here over the past years, not the least by JeffE with his famous example from his own career. So the two main components of the question are clearly relevant to many others than myself, these 53 pages full of hits certainly say so..
So if the reason my question is off-topic due to being too specific, then I ask where do we draw the line? I, for instance, don't feel like I'd ask dumb questions in seminars/conferences, study/work in an American university where I would question the use of funds for sports, nor have I had an overly ambitious student thinking highly of him/her-self, and thankfully I have never had to deal with sexual advances from students.
Should I flag these questions off-topic because we cannot know the intricate details of the situation the people asking these questions? Because surely the answer depends on each and every specific case which may not apply to the general audience?
I liked this question and have voted to reopen --- but then, you might have guessed that since I answered it.
@jakebeal cheers.. I genuinely think the question would have been useful to a wider audience, and thus a good addition to the cumulative knowledge we gather here. Was surprised to see it closed/put on-hold to be eventually deleted..
@posdef: As long as nobody votes down the answer, your question is not risking deletion.
@Wrzlprmft I am pretty sure that I read on some meta.SE that the only two potential end states for questions that are close/on-hold were either re-opening or deletion. I think it was by Shog9 but I can't remember exactly and couldn't find it within a couple of minutes. :/
@posdef: What you probably read was that most closed questions should eventually be deleted or reopened. But it’s not inherent to the system. If the linked meta question does not convince you, here is a question that was closed almost four years ago.
I draw the line for this close reason as follows:
Can answers to this question be expected to significantly go beyond saying “it depends” or “ask your supervisor, university, employer, etc.”? If no, vote to close.
For example:
If somebody asks about how to write a certain aspect of a thesis, the best answers should almost always include “ask your supervisor and check your university’s regulations”, but often we can give general advice on how to choose if those source do not dictate a choice. If we can’t, then the question should be closed.
The highest voted answer on How to ask dumb questions essentially says “it depends”, but it details how it depends. Such answers being conceivable makes the question on-topic.
The answers to Why do American colleges and universities have sports teams? do not list the motivation of each individual university to have a sports team, but give general motivations that can be expected to cover the motivations of most, if not all, such universities. If the motivations were indeed vastly inhomogeneous across universities, the question would be closeworthy with the above close reason.
I voted to close your question because I could not conceive an answer going significantly beyond “ask the employer“. And in fact a comment and the first sentence in the answer you received (in the grace period after closing) say exactly this.
While the answer’s second paragraph does add something beyond this, it does not feel like what the question has been looking for to me (I guess you could have thought of that yourself). The answer’s third paragraph is rather a comment on the question and would not make for a standalone answer.
I understand your point of view, thanks for taking the time to reply here. However I find "I voted to close your question because I could not conceive an answer going significantly beyond 'ask the employer'." to be an extremely poor excuse, to be honest. It points towards your incapability of conceiving such an answer rather than nonexistence of a useful answer. With the same rationale I'd say half of the questions here on Academia.SE would fall into the same category as the answers essentially boil down to "talk to your supervisor"
@posdef: Most, if not all, close reasons involve what answers we expect a question to get. For example, we close ambiguous questions as unclear because we expect that answers will significantly differ in their interpretation of the question and we close questions as too broad because we cannot conceive reasonably sized answers. Waiting whether certain answers would appear or problems would actually occur would refute the purpose of closing. Hence, we have to resort to our expectations.
With the same rationale I'd say half of the questions here on Academia.SE would fall into the same category as the answers essentially boil down to "talk to your supervisor" – Such questions are one of the reasons, I support this close reasons. As I wrote: If I think that a question can only (or almost only) be answered with “talk to your supervisor”, I have no problems with voting to close.
As with Wrzlprmft, given I was one of the people who voted to close the question, it's probably worth be talking about why I voted that way. And essentially, it's because the answer I'd write in my head is either "It depends" or "Ask them".
A couple factors that influence this:
Is there a screening criteria based on GPA, or is this just because someone without a PhD did up the form. Will putting something like '99' cause my application to be round-filed? Is there a threshold GPA I need?
Is your "Pass/Fail" GPA convertible to a numeric GPA? For example, I have been at an institution that did have a conversion system for this, and one that didn't. Does the employer have such a system?
These are things we can't necessarily answer. I vote to close questions (among other reasons) if I don't think there's the possibility of giving an answer besides "Well did you ask?" where the answerer can be comfortable of the utility of their answer absent other information.
I'll note that in my mind, jakebeal's answer falls in this category - it essentially boils down to "Ask, and go from there", which while perfectly correct is both very broad and not particularly actionable.
To address a comment you made in one of the other answers, since this one largely mirrors it:
With the same rationale I'd say half of the questions here on Academia.SE would fall into the same category as the answers essentially boil down to "talk to your supervisor"
Somewhat (but only somewhat) flippantly, if I had infinite power over Stack Exchange, "Have You Asked Your Supervisor?" would be a mandatory popup before submitting a question on Academia.
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415 | What's the policy regarding localized (read: country specific) questions?
I noticed this question which made me wonder what the policy here is regarding localized questions. There seems to have been a discussion of "too localized" questions based on research area specific questions, but only meta question regarding country specific questions is about whether or not US-specific questions are on-topic?
Does the current state of the "rules" approve of country specific question, if so to what extend?
Few hours ago this question was deleted. Even though not the best question ever, I think it offers some good perspective. It's localized to country? Yes. Are the answers specific to a particular discipline? No. Now how about this question? Or this, this, this and this?
I think, we should be very careful not to make out of this site a US-centric place with otherwise some valuable discussion about general academic topic. In my opinion questions about admissions to universities around the world are appropriate here.
It has nothing to do with US versus Germany. I would have voted to close even if it was about the US. The country part didn't play a role in my decision.
@DanielE.Shub: that is a fair decision of course. However, it seems to me that too often we get US-specific questions upvoted quickly, while similarly localised questions specific to other countries get closed/deleted as too localised.
@walkmanyi I agree with your answer and comment.. It's important to make sure we do not limit our target group.
As I said in a comment to Are US-specific questions OK? I am not sure questions are really ever country specific. I believe your example question What is a "TV-L 13" position? is pretty localized, but not so much because of the German nature of it. I think the question is potentially useful for anyone in Germany, anyone applying for a German job, or anyone considering hiring someone currently working in Germany. It also has limited use for people trying to understand the employment status of graduate students across different countries.
I believe some questions are very much country-specific. For example, there are quite some differences between the usual PhD programmes in the US and the UK and I have spent some time trying to think of an answer before somehow inferring that the question refers to something I wouldn't know about.
I don't see this as a problem as such (after all, academia is very international and people move between continents all the time), but I would like to have a way of pointing out to the reader whether the question is (potentially) country-specific or not. Otherwise there will/might be answers that don't apply to the question at all, and readers can happily skip the ones that they won't be able to answer.
I think there should be a tag/tags or at least a convention for questions to point out the country in the same way as people generally point out their particular discipline.
Any opinions on that?
having tags for each country would be an overkill, I think. Otherwise I agree with your points that it would be good to point-out whether or not what's asked is country/culture/language-specific.
Yes I suppose you're right about the tags. Maybe it would be helpful to add a line to the FAQ "please indicate your country and specific discipline" (since some people might not know that they're question is country-specific). It would definitely help readers identify whether they can answer the question adequately.
I second this proposal. Introduce country tags!
What about a general tag: "country-specific"
I want to support the comment by spbail about adding country and discipline. At the same time I think such restrictions should not prevent answers from being more generally applicable if they provide new insights or provide a different perspective. I have experienced answering a question that seemed general but later turned out to be changed to country specific. The answer then seemed a bit out of place but I still would maintain that a wider spectrum of answrers is a positive.
I think many who pose questions do not realize they are in an international arena, hence the many "too localized" and other forms of narrow questions. So finding a way to be constructive both in the specific and in the general would be a beneficial as I see it.
So should then answers also be "labelled"? and will the site members support wider ranges of answers to narrow questions for the benefit of everyone? those are some of the question which I keep thinking about.
I would suggest editing the question to make it clearer that it is relevant for a wider range of neat altitudes.
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683 | The application tag
In the post What does the “application” tag mean (and what should it mean)? a brief exchange indicates that the application tag should concern applications for, for example, jobs (as opposed to applying something). The tag at the time of writing this has been applied to 89 posts. A relatively new tag has appeared, faculty-application (currently on four posts). I can see that there are two ways to go here, to either use the application tag as a base and adding tags such as research, faculty and graduate-school to narrow down the scope of application or to accept "hybrid" tags such as faculty-application. I would opt for the former but what would be preferable. With only four tagged posts it would be easy to make the change.
I see this also reflecting on how the tags are built and used in general.
A single tag should have one primary purpose. However, there are enough similarities between different kinds of applications that it seems to me unwise to have completely separate tags for each different kind of application.
What I would recommend is "linking" the subsidiary tags as "synonyms" of the application tags.
I think and have previously proposed that application should be a synonym of graduate-admissions. This has no up votes on the synonyms page, so maybe other disagree, but then again it has no down votes either. I also think that faculty-application is a synonym of job-search.
I think that there are many formal and style issues that overlap between different types of applications and therefore think that a general 'application' tag has a purpose.
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586 | Should country specific questions prevent general answers
Following on the question What's the policy regarding localized (read: country specific) questions? and Are US-specific questions OK? My own opinion is that country specific questions are fine. But, I think that even if the OP is asking about their home turf, there should be space to provide general answers. Since this site is inclusive I think the Q-A should be made general if there are general interest in the question as such.
An example: the post How much vacation time is typical during a PhD( in the United States)? (the parenthesis indicates an addition edit to the original question indicates a problem. As indicated the post was a general question applicable everywhere although it was clear from the question body that US conditions were at the heart of the OP. The question was later edited to show its US identity.
The edit now makes the question very narrow and opens up for questions about vacation in each and every country. This is really not constructive and what we want. On the other hand I can see that a non-country-specific question would open up for answers from each country, in other words wiki-type posts. However, when somebody looks for a question on vacation having the question, in my opinion unnecessarily, limited makes little sense. I think that providing a wide spread of answers to a more general question is the better way. I realize this is probably not easy to resolve but as I see it: should we try to be very specific and excluding or try to be general and including in the these types of posts?
You seem to have linked to the same question four times. Can you fix the links?
Fixed the double link
Two of them are still the same.
To riff off of Einstein, "SE questions should be as specific as possible, but no more specific!"
We don't want to make hard and fast rules that "no country-specific questions," or "all questions should be localized." Questions where the geographic specification becomes critical should be permitted; where it doesn't influence the answer, then it can be neglected.
In the linked question, for instance, the lack of uniform labor laws in the US makes the localization of the question appropriate.
I prefer a general question over a very specific but overly-localized question, any day. Mostly because I live and work within one particular system/country. Chances of a particularly localized question being of use to me (or anyone really) is slim, thus the question is not really relevant for many people, beyond to satisfy any possible curiosity. General questions allow for wider audience and thereby broader relevance.
That being said, one could argue that scientists based in the US are overly represented (don't know if this is actually true, but wouldn't be surprised if it is) and thus, in cold hard numbers, US-specific questions might be more relevant than one might think. To that argument, my answer would be that allowing US-specific questions to take dominance here would risk the interest of users from elsewhere. I would personally not be very interested in checking the site as often, if US-specific questions start to proliferate any faster than they already do.
Along with the lines in Daniel E. Shub's answer, I think polling questions such as "how does X work in Y?", are not a good fit to start with. Such questions are typically proxies for something more interesting and relevant which the OP consciously or unconsciously omits.
For instance, the example with vacation time, I suspect that the OP was concerned with the number of vacation days available to him/her and whether or not taking a certain number of vacation days to satisfy his/her needs (for family or whatever else they may be) would likely cause a problem with his/her supervisor.
That would have been a much better question, which would have allowed for generalized answer to a better extend and would be relevant for a wider range of people.
Despite the large number of upvotes, I do not think How much vacation time is typical during a PhD in the United States? is a particularly good question. The better question in my mind is why should/should not academics take vacation. I think in general questions that are appear country/field specific are probably missing the truly interesting question.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.780703 | 2013-07-24T12:36:49 | {
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647 | (bug) Closing a question that should be on another .SE site
I voted to close this question on programming, and wanted to vote to send it to StackOverflow, but noticed that I couldn't choose to do that:
Notice that I cannot click "Vote to Close" on the second screen unless I select the meta site, which is not the appropriate site for this question. Is there a way to add either a list of .SE sites, or be able to type in a site, or at least leave it blank so it can reflect that it should be on another site?
An alternate solution is to leave the proposed migration site as a comment, and allow the mods to do the migration (we can always do this, regardless of status).
That question would have gotten closed on Stack Overflow.
It is a bad question - OP is asking people to do his work for him and would have gotten shot down rather quickly.
That is orthogonal to your question though - there are up to 5 slots for migration on every Stack Exchange site - sites still in beta only have a migration path to their child-meta (for obvious reasons), but no others.
Why is that?
Because it is not clear when a site starts what the best 4 other options should be - this takes time to find out as off-topic questions accumulate and people want to migrate them.
Now, for this site, I doubt that Stack Overflow should take one of these slots - how often would programming come up here? Not often, I suspect.
It is better to use these slots for sites that will actually make a good migration path - for topics that come up fairly often here but are not in the site scope but are in another site scope.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.781046 | 2013-09-20T08:15:59 | {
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539 | Just noticed a proposed "Education" .SE site
As we get a number of off-topic questions about education (e.g, https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10414/books-on-gifted-education), I think support for an Education-related .SE is in many of our best interests here at Academia.SE:
Education.SE beta
I thought I'd mention it here in case others wanted to follow/support it.
@Martin Didn't know that tag was available -- thanks!
I second yours.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.781213 | 2013-06-03T05:06:48 | {
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2004 | Wording of close reason off-topic as "problems facing undergraduate students" seems not ideal
I realize that there is always an 'Other' option, allowing to specify why one believes a question should be closed. However, there is a reason why boilerplate suggestions are used - to streamline the process and keep it less subjective. Looking at this obviously off-topic question, it seems that the intent is to choose off-topic reason 1 whose implied meaning appears to be "the question is not about graduate studies." However, the text states that questions about undergraduate studies are off-topic. Wouldn't it be more useful and precise to change the wording to what it, I think, stands for - questions not about graduate level education are off-topic?
In the current infrastructure, what is this site's suggested closing reason here and in similar cases? I realize the question is certainly also opinion-based; but that appears to be secondary.
questions not about graduate level education are off-topic
That's not really accurate. Questions about research that happens outside of graduate education is also on topic, among other topics listed in the help center.
The intent of the "undergraduate" close reason is to exclude questions on
the folderol that is often very important for undergraduate life and has virtually nothing to do with academics (sports, underage drinking, living in dorms, being able to make your own choices for the first time, etc.)
(see source).
It's not meant to apply to questions like the one you cite in your post, which just has nothing to do with universities or academia at all. There is no specific close reason for questions like this - that's what the "Other" option is for. Note that when you close a question as "Other," the text in the "put on hold as off-topic" box says
This question does not appear to be about academics within the scope defined in the help center.
which is precisely the reason the question is closed.
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2019 | After voting to close a question and retracting vote, cannot vote to close again: status-by-design, or bug?
In regard to this question, I voted to close using a custom close reason. When I had finished typing and submitted, another user had done the same, but I liked his formulation of the, in intent, same custom reason better. I retracted my vote, intending to vote to close again by joining the reason given by the other user.
While my vote is not recorded (the question stands, as I type this, at 1 close vote), I cannot vote again, and am given the system-response "You already voted to close this question." If this is status-by-design, it's a bit misleading (the backwardness of my actions notwithstanding).
It appears to be by design. It's the subject of this feature request on Meta SE, which is marked status-completed now, but only because you can now cast a new close vote after 14 days.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.781434 | 2015-11-09T16:59:44 | {
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413 | Migration request: 'What are the aspects associated with working in a 'liberal arts environment'?'
I would like to request that this question be moved back to the academic stack exchange. This is a question related to an academic job search, and I really would like to hear from people in academia, not from professionals working at private companies. I am unclear why it was moved in the first place since I have asked a lot of job-related questions at the academia stack exchange before with very good results.
I am happy to alter the question so as to better fit the academic stack exchange.
https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/9927/what-are-the-aspects-associated-with-working-in-a-liberal-arts-environment
Sorry if you think it was a bad migration. This question has nothing in it that indicates the individual is applying for a job in a school, or anything similar to that, other than working in a "liberal arts environment". This has nothing to do with a university of any sort; Apple Inc. is famous for their pushing of a liberal arts culture. As such, I interpreted this as a generic job search question, which is completely off-topic here. It didn't even occur to me that you were referring to working in a university.
If you wish to edit the question, feel free. I'm still not sure that it would be on-topic here, even with editing, as this site focuses mostly on research, but I'll leave that to you.
Thanks for clarifying this, I honestly had no idea the phrase was so broad. I have clarified the question, please let me know if the narrower scope of the question warrants a re-migration. Thanks again.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.781529 | 2013-02-26T17:47:12 | {
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373 | Why were the comments from this post deleted?
This question had certain comments by 2 users( JeffE , and scaaahu ) which although were not strictly on-topic, but nonetheless added to the discussion by providing a different viewpoint. Why were they removed ?
As the one responsible for deleting those comments, the comments were flagged as no longer relevant to the discussion. Having reviewed the changes made to the text of the question, and the texts of the comments, I believed the flags had merit, and deleted them.
I'll take a little less of a hard-line stance than EnergyNumbers; comments often add a lot to the discussion, but oftentimes users request that off-topic flags be deleted to make the answers cleaner. I suggest the following:
If you have something to say which directly related to the question and is not a request for clarification or more information, post it as an answer.
If you want to add something to an answer, you can either add that point as a comment, or if it's appropriate, edit it in!
If you want to clarify a point related to to an answer, add as a comment.
If you want to discuss an answer, bring it up in chat, and feel free to add a link to the chat discussion in the comments so others can join the discussion.
Comments are ephemeral and disposable across most Stack Exchange sites (math.se and MathOverflow.se are notable exceptions). If there's anything useful that comes out of a comment that applies to the post it's commenting on, then the post should be edited to reflect the comment accordingly.
Your statement is factually wrong. Comments are not viewed this way on either MathOverflow or math.SE. Moderator deletion of comments especially on the former site is done very sparingly. Moreover, on these other sites editing another user's non-community wiki answer is usually not done without their explicit permission. On a site about academia, the idea that you do not alter someone else's words without their permission seems equally useful.
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551 | Do we welcome questions written (partially) in languages other than English?
There's only been one such question so far, but, depending on weather this question is accepted as a good one or not, it could set up future standards for the site, so I feel it is important:
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10735/en-shs-comment-participer-a-la-grande-conversation-scientifique-sans-renoncer-a
There is a small part of the question in English, which actually sounds partially interesting to me. But then, there's a big chunk of French!
I sometimes come to this site to read up on life in Academia and inform myself about how things work where I'm not. I do participate a little, but much, much more, I read the questions and answers that seem interesting.
Seeing this question, I couldn't help but feel just a little bit disappointed. There's this question, that might be nice, but I'm missing half of it. Seeing what Google Translate does to it just makes it more disappointing.
And then, there's this two interesting answers, on which I do not want to vote, because I do not know if they are relevant.
As it could determine a future standard (accept or not questions in other languages), I think it is important that there's an discussion within the community.
I fully agree with your assessment and concern.
@posdef yup, but it looks like I should have dug deeper (actually, I didn't dig at all) before asking the question as there is an answer for a few years already. Still, I feel kind of sorry for the (possibly) good answers.
This question has been answered by Jeff Atwood on the Stack Exchange blog a few years ago, and the short answer is that English is the language of the Stack Exchange community.
...with the exception of questions being specifically intended to be in that other language, e.g. the many language learner sites like http://french.stackexchange.com/. Anyway, apart from these, most attempts à la "StackOverflow in French" have so far failed to launch from Area 51 - and at least IMHO it's a good thing that the potentially good answers of polyglots don't get scattered too much
... so if you come across a non-English question in a language you speak, and the question is a good one, then edit and translate it.
This is a site for academics, and academics should be able to read a little bit of French.
(That's not to say that this particular question was wrongly closed. It's not a SE-style focused question, and there's more than a little bit of French. But I don't think we should just assume that language policies appropriate for programmers are appropriate for academics.)
I know a lot of excellent academics from my field in Czech Republic. Would you then advise me to learn enough Czech to communicate about science, especially since there exists a possibility that I might go for an exchange there at some point?
I don't think academics should be expected to have a conversational knowledge of French, just to be comfortable reading a little bit of it. This is why Ph.D. programs have (written) language exams, because there's a lot of academic literature in French. (Not so much in Czech.)
I did my PhD programme in France, and I never had any sort of a language exam, written or otherwise, as a part of my PhD programme. And I would assume there is a lot of academic literature written in any language with a large number of speakers and a strong "research record"; maybe not so much in Czech since it is a small country in comparison, but I'm sure there's a lot of academic literature in German as well for example.
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834 | People denying the situation in the questions instead of answering
I have recently noticed a trend in the answers on academia.se to question the situation about which OP is asking because not every single detail is provided, instead of answering what is being asked.
Most recent examples from a few days ago include:
Should professors intervene if a student is wearing offensive clothing in their classroom?
The question asks what to do about clearly offensive clothing worn to class as a TA or other person of authority
Some answers, instead of answering, argue that the OP is easily offended, or that what was offending to her is not offending in general
Is it ethical to apply different criteria for graduate admissions based on country of undergraduate study?
The question is asking if it is ethical to design admission criteria according to a certain statistics their research revealed (it is a bit of a controversial admission criteria). (example)
Instead of answering, some answers were suggesting that the statistics and the research they did must have been wrong and the results are not valid. (example)
These are just two more recent examples. I know when I was asking a question lately, I was sure to cover all my bases (e.g. explicating that everything was done ethically and in good will) to avoid answers questioning my motives and methods, since I saw this kind of non-answers prevail and even be the most-upvoted answers often.
I understand that questions asking clearly unethical things, such as How do I best cheat on the admission process, or something similar, should not be answered, but this is not the case I am talking about.
One other thing is that people say "if you do not want to disclose the details, there is something wrong or unethical in your methodology, because you don't want to disclose the details." I understand the need for anonymity, or the wish to generalize, so I don't think this is a good trend
While some of the opinions might be valid in case the OP really made a mistake, those kind of answers still do not answer the question actually asked, and it is not our place to question the facts presented.
Yet, the community seems not to be condemning those kind of answers very strong: neither of the examples I linked to has negative score (one has a positive one!), even thou, (and, please, correct me if I'm wrong), they do not actually answer the question.
Do we really want to collect such answers?
And, as a secondary questions, what do we want to do with such answers that already exist? Should we flag-delete them? We could wait for the down-votes to push them sufficiently down, but especially on a bit controversial questions, those answers seem to get support from part of the community because of their attitude towards the controversial issue in question, and not because they actually offer an answer.
I noticed the problem on the offensive-clothing question and upvoted your question but I am not sure the statistics-by-origin question is really similar. It's difficult to separate the validity of the approach and the ethics of using it. If you really think there is a major flaw, how could it be ethical to select students based on that? And how could you seriously discuss the ethics aspect while glossing over the issue?
Sort-of follow-up: Providing explicit examples in potentially subjective cases.
I agree with you, this is something I've noticed as well in various threads around here (can't give specific examples right now). It often happens that instead of taking the information in the question as an assumption and answering accordingly, people are suggesting their own interpretations of the situation, which contradict the interpretation given by the OP. (EDIT: I've only now realised it's an old thread. It was linked to in the sidebar...)
A fundamental rule of flags is: flags are NOT to be used to delete incorrect or bad answers.
That is, if there is an actual attempt to engage the question, you cannot ask the mods to delete the question just because you think it is inaccurate, gives bad advice, or challenges the assumptions in the question instead of accepting them as fact.
The correct way to express your displeasure with such a question is to downvote it.
I guess you meant "displeasure with such an answer". I know about the flagging "rule", but these cases seem borderline, why I asked on meta. An exaggerated example would be a question "As a PhD student, I'm facing such and such problem", somebody answered "I don't believe you're a PhD so I'm gonna answer as if you were a permanent" which is clearly not an answer. If somebody says "it was clearly offensive" and somebody answers with "I think it was only offensive to you, and in such case you should...", it is not so clear. I could probably find more such question-answer examples than two above.
@penelope on the two questions referenced, the posts that really did not address the question at all were (appropriately) flagged as "not an answer" and deleted. The other "bad" answers in those examples at least address some part of the question.
As one of my answers was pulled out as an example, I think I should chime in here. Let me start by saying I think this is an important question and needs to be discussed. Further, to be clear, I do not feel attacked, singled out, or defensive. I think that the highlighted answer is a good example of the issue.
The issues with these types of answers is that the person writing the answer may be convinced that they are not denying the situation and think they are providing a helpful answer. The votes on answers like these are not particularly meaningful. As you say,
those answers seem to get support from part of the community because of their attitude towards the controversial issue in question
but I would also claim they get down votes because of the controversial issue in the question. Flagging the question doesn't generally work since most answerers will not see the flag. It also doesn't provide a place for discussion and puts mods/high rep users in a difficult situation. It seems to me that the comments to the answer and/or chat (and possibly meta) is the place to discuss and figure out what is going on. It might be informative to go back to my answer to see how I thought about it.
The title of the question is:
Is it ethical to apply different criteria for graduate admissions based on country of undergraduate study?
The only statement within the body of the original question (and current version) with a question mark is
Is it fair to apply different criteria to students from different countries in admissions decisions?
I think that the number of up votes on the question suggest it is an important question for our site. Despite my up vote for the question, I don't think the question is a particularly good fit for the SE format since the question "is X ethical/fair" is essentially a yes/no question and providing an evidence based answer is difficult. I think this is confirmed by the number and variety of answers as well as the up votes and down votes of the answers.
Moving on to my answer and the "charge" levied against it:
Instead of answering, some answers were suggesting that the statistics and the research they did must have been wrong and the results are not valid.
We need to first decide if I answered the question. My first sentence could (and probably should) be reworded to be
I would argue that you are using the results in an unethical and discriminatory way because you are interpreting your data incorrectly
That seems to me to be a pretty clear answering of the question. I answered "No, it is not ethical". I then tried to provide reasoning for why I answered the way I did. My answer is not particularly great in that there is little evidence to support my claim. I don't want to clarify/defend my answer here as it is too far removed from the answer itself, but I am happy to continue to clarify/defend my answer in either the comments to the answer or in chat. At the heart of my reasoning is that based on the original question, the edits to the question, the comments, and my chat discussion with the OP suggests that the classic mistake of interpreting correlation as causation is being made. I tried very hard in my answer to not claim that the statistics were wrong, but purely focused on the interpretation. In summary, I disagree with both claims about my answer (not answering the question and denying the situation).
Currently the answer has 3 down votes and three people made "negative" comments prior to the last down vote being cast. From the negative comments it is clear that my answer is confusing to people and could use an edit. The up votes (and one positive comment) suggest to me that some people see the value in my answer. Based on the mixed feedback, I would normally edit my answer to try and improve it. In this case, I feel it is better to leave it be at least for a while so that this discussion about the issue of answers that miss/deny the point can be addressed.
I agree that your answer did address the question, since it went on to say that you considered it unethical to use the results of the study, and so it would not have been appropriate to flag+delete it. (An edit would help clarify that you aren't denying the situation of the question, since as currently written it does give that impression.)
I think commenting and downvoting are probably the best options here. I suspect flags will be ignored for the reasons @aeismail mentions. The problem is that the "community" (defined as readers who vote) appear to have conflicting views on the matter, and what you're asking about is a form of minority protection that SE doesn't really have a mechanism for.
But I know that I read comments very carefully, and that I'd be influenced by comments pointing out that the answer is not answering the question as stated. I tend to be less likely to downvote (and I'm not sure why), and maybe that's part of the problem.
The behaviours you are seeing of questioning the question is due to the enormous prevalence of X-Y questions in the original StackOverflow and other STEM StackExchange sites. Questions where the thread is "how do I do X", but experienced users see that the OP has a more fundamental misunderstanding, and should really be doing Y. The SO model is so popular because follow-up comments let us determine the true nature of the OPs intent, get to the bottom of the question, and answers can either target the question-as-asked, or the OPs fundamental issue if it deviates. This is a good thing. Answering all questions at face-value is not helpful -- otherwise why was the OJ Simpson thread closed?
And yet that attitude can lead to what I see as a pervasive problem on SO/SE, which I think this question relates to a specific example of: somebody asks "Given X, how do I Y?" and gets a load of responses saying "Don't do X" - often in a belittling way. While on some occasions this may be constructive, as you note, often it is based on assumptions from a limited understanding of the original problem and is unhelpful, while coming across as arrogant and aggressive. I know a number of people who've been driven away from SE by such responses, which they see as "nerds showing off".
I can appreciate that, but I think the alternative is not no arrogance but rather no nerds. Some of the most helpful places on the net, mainly IRC, is also some of the most hostile to new comers asking how to do X and getting criticized for ever wanting to do X in the first place. I literally can't count the number of times i've thought to myself "god, what a jackass this guy is, telling me to choose a different database schema when all I need to do is query X. So high and mighty..." -- only to find out either seconds or days later that I really do need a different schema, not a better query.
In the cases where i've wanted to do something unusual and actually the recommended solution was wrong (for example, I often use exec() in my python code for performance reasons, and i'm constantly called out for it) -- usually I just have to explain why i'm being a special flower, and everyone benefits. I agree it can be frustrating, but there is no utility in answering bad questions without mentioning there's a better way -- which usually requires more information to determine.
You see "hostile yet helpful", many just see hostile, aggressive, arrogant, entitled, etc. What one person (most often white and male) sees as "tough love", another may see as "you have no right to be here, you are too ignorant and/or Not Like Us".
I have no idea what white-male, entitlement, or human-rights have to do with this discussion at all. All i'm saying is that in the vast majority of circumstances where something feels amiss - something is amiss.
Answers questioning the question are ultimately non-constructive.
Such things should be dealt with on of the following, instead of posting answer:
comments under question if someone asks for more details,
down votes,
close votes.
One of powers of StackExchange is that is is not a forum.
However, I remember some questions when the correct answer was that someone is interpreting situation incorrectly. (But it is rather an exception than rule.)
And what we should do with such answers?
If it is "not even an answer" then should comment suggesting posting it as a comment to question (and delete the answer).
If it has parts of an answer (just plays down the importance of issue, or anything) - do as with any other answer we think that adds negative net value: downvote (it's better to stay democratic here).
(A separate issue, perhaps worth a different question on meta, is whenever to provide direct examples. In some cases, for example the "clearly offensive clothing" it might cut some idle discussion (though, I would advice to use different example of a similar calibre, for the sake of anonymousness). For example in question What to do if assignment is against student's religion? an example helps in avoiding "guessing game".)
Judging from the question about the offensive material, it seems like providing an example would not be possible, as any example of a similar calibre would likely be edited out (see the answer by HdS). Though of course, one could then add one and edit it out and point to the edit history for those who want to see it.
@TobiasKildetoft In such case I prefer concrete texts, even if written in a descriptive way (in above, "equates one of mainstream religious figures with a vulgar word for private parts"). For me, word offensive is very vague (and sometimes it is related to one's taste, in other - it is clear violation of law; different cases may allow different actions; e.g. from wearing military-related outfit, to being dressed in full Nazi uniform). In any case, it is material for a new question on meta. Or maybe even two.
That is actually a very good way to provide a more concrete example without presenting possibly offensive material yourself.
Well, I think the OPs sentence "The item of clothing in question contained a slogan and image that is indubitably demeaning and hostile towards women." defines the problem fairly well. But, while I agree with what you said, it still doesn't suggest how to deal with such answers that are already posted. Should we flag-delete them, or is something else appropriate?
@penelope Edited (for "what to do with such answers"). From the mentioned question it is way better than general "offensive t-shirt", but still, gives me a lot of room for interpretation (and I as saw, for other as well). Only after reading further comments, I realized that it is rather serious thing. Things like, for example, "states that women should not pursue professional career" or "advertises physical violence" would, IMHO, shorten discussion.
I felt that details would only engender further discussion and doubt: for example, "states that women should not pursue professional career" -> "Maybe the shirt only said something like 'I love my stay-at-home mom'?" There really is no end to this kind of thing...
I think my classification of the slogan as "indubitably demeaning and hostile towards women" was specific enough to answer the question, and that more information would not be constructive.
@ff524 Maybe you are right and more information wouldn't help (and even would stir even more discussion whether something is "offensive enough"). In any case, it is different topic, so I move it to: http://meta.academia.stackexchange.com/questions/842/providing-explicit-examples-in-potentially-subjective-cases.
I think you have to be careful to not eliminate the best possible response to some questions. Many times the best response to a question is simply not an answer (or JUST an answer). For example, if someone asks for the best way for a high school freshman to break into math research, the best response must at least include some sort of serious challenge to the OP (whether or not it gives the most plausible way for the freshman to break into research). This is an extreme example, but in general many responses should challenge the assumptions of the OP, while also giving an answer. Because these are often human matters that are extremely emotionally charged, it is important to challenge the OP if they are in false dichotomous thinking, for example. But in almost every case I think this should be accompanied by an ANSWER, GIVEN THE ASSUMPTIONS OF THE OP.
IMO, this is a species of a more general problem on discussion forums. Members too often want to contribute when they don't have anything to contribute. Those members often write posts that either,
tell the OP that they should not give too much thought to their concern,
tell the OP that they should go about things an entirely different way that happens to render the question moot,
tell the OP that they're wrong about a subjective matter, or
question the OP's reasons for wanting to do what they want to do.
In any case, these replies suck. We should ban them.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.782149 | 2014-03-06T10:34:18 | {
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1322 | Highest voted questions not shown while not logged in
I was trying to show Academia.SE to a friend yesterday, and let him browse a bit. As we were using his computer, not mine, I obviously wasn't logged into my account.
I was surprised that even after 10 minutes, I couldn't find any link to the highest voted (answered) questions. When I am logged in, I would click on questions and then I would get link-options: newest, featured, frequent, votes, active, unanswered and I'd chose the votes to get to this content. However, when accessing the site anonymously, the only sub-link I can access is newest.
I also tried all other link-options I had, thinking it might just be slightly different when not logged in, but no luck finding it.
I am hoping this is a bug: I would assume that it is in the community interest to show those questions. After all, those are the best questions and answers this site has produced, excellent for new potential users to get interested and/or familiar with the website.
So, if this is really a bug, then this is the bug report. If it was done on purpose, I would be really interested in the reasons for not making our best questions easily accessible to new users.
This is SE-network-wide behavior. It has been brought up on MSE and is by design. The answer to why is "performance reasons" (specifically, to deal with a denial of service attack):
Requests from anonymous users to some of these routes were causing an unacceptably large performance hit a few days ago, potentially hurting the experience for many other users.
As a result, they were disabled for anonymous users. They may be re-enabled at some point when we have had time to implement a less drastic solution.
(Source)
Hey, thnx for the fast reply. I just read through those posts on MSE. However, what I'm reporting is slightly different: it's not while browsing a specific tag, just browsing general questions. Also, unlike the current behavior described there, when I am logged out and go to http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes I actually do get the questions sorted by votes (it is not disabled like it says on MSE)
I'm just clarifying the situation, since if this is by design, then this might be a bug in the by-design behavior (something I can not access by visible links, but the link still works if typed directly)
@penelope The issue was first reported for tags, so the explanation was posted on the question on tag sort; the later question on general sort order is marked as a duplicate of that one, i.e. it's for the same reason.
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295 | Migrate question
I asked to migrate a question from Philosophy to Academia. However, the links to my account have been removed from my comments, although I have Academia account. I think this might be a potential bug.
I'm not exactly sure what can be done about this—or if this is a bug. . . . I guess it just depends on when you got the account.
Comments don't get “back-attributed” to you if you got the account after the question was migrated (authoritative reference). This could be done, but it's not worth the extra work:
Since comments don't impact reputation or do any other things a post does, they're not as important in the migration process.
We won't (at this point anyway) be going so far as to hook up comments to their owner when they register for the site the question was migrated to if they didn't exist at the time of migration.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.783776 | 2012-11-15T23:42:34 | {
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1568 | Adding a new humanities tag
I added a new humanities tag.
I was about to retag a few questions every day so I don't bump-flood the landing page, which I dimly remembered to be accepted practice - when it occurred to me to look at what accepted practice actually is. And I learned that I should submit a list of the questions I'd retag for community discussion and subsequent all-at-once retagging.
So, these are the questions I already tagged humanities:
More co-authored than solo papers in the Humanities
What tense to use in arts and humanities papers?
How does an engineering undergraduate apply for master in humanities?
And here are the other candidates I'd retag:
What computations of the Lotka function exist for publications in humanities meta-disciplines?
What is the equivalent of the laboratory notebook in the humanities?
How to pursue graduate admissions in mathematics seven years after a humanities undergrad degree?
What are the main factors that mean Humanities PhDs get published as books?
Fast academic publishing
Post tenure job search a waste of time?
Why Are Linguistics and Law “Sciences”?
Is it good practice to let students consult their text materials during exams?
What is the best way to go about doing research as an undergrad (pointed question inside)?
How to make academic life bearable under stressing circumstances?
The other hits from my search did not seem to warrant retagging.
So, let's discuss. How about I mass-retag all these in two days, unless vocal opposition arises? (Or perhaps mods have tools to do this?)
Any other questions that could benefit from this retag would also be helpful. For instance, as you see, I only searched for "humanities", not the specific humanities.
EDIT: I looked through our tags and didn't find anything else that looked like it needed retagging humanities. For now, I edited the tag wiki as per @ff524's suggestion. I'll do the retagging when I find the time - hopefully on the weekend, otherwise on Monday morning.
I think you might be the first person to try this proposal, so lets see how it goes.
I don't see a problem with this proposal, or the list of questions to be tagged.
This looks like a good idea.
I like the idea of having this new tag on Academia website. Thank you for proposing it.
I like the tag. I would like to see more representation from the humanities on Academia.SE and a tag is a nice way of showing how welcome this would be.
I have a few comments about its implementation.
About the tag wiki excerpt: The other 'displine' tags typically say,
On standards or conventions specific to X as an academic discipline, and programs that lead to a degree in this field.
I like this convention, partly because it clarifies what questions are on topic. People say, "I should be able to ask this math question here, because there's a mathematics tag" and it's nice to be able to show them that the tag is for questions "On standards or conventions specific to mathematics as an academic discipline, and programs that lead to a degree in this field." not questions on mathematics.
All of that was a long way of saying that maybe the tag wiki excerpt should say
On standards or conventions specific to the humanities, i.e. the academic disciplines that study human culture, and programs that lead to a degree in these fields. Examples include ancient and modern languages, literature, philosophy, religion, and visual and performing arts such as music and theatre.
I also have some comments about a few of the proposed retags. Not that I think any of them are wrong, but I think a few of them could do without the humanities tag for various reasons. Also, for a few of them, I would suggest making the most of the edit/bump by also fixing some other things (specifics as follows).
How to pursue graduate admissions in mathematics seven years after a humanities undergrad degree?
When tagging changing-fields questions, lately I've been leaving out the 'original field' tag and only using the 'destination field' tag. The reason for this is twofold: 1) these questions tend to already have many tags, so sometimes there isn't room for both tags, and even in cases where there is room I don't like that we can't consistently tag with both fields. 2) These questions are really about standards and conventions in the destination field, not the original field, i.e. they need expertise from someone in the destination field, expertise in the conventions of the original field is not really required. Others may disagree with me on this...
On How to get my humanities paper published in the short timeframe before admissions deadline?, I would suggest making the most of the edit/bump by also editing the title to be more representative of the actual question: "How to get my humanities paper published in the short timeframe before admissions deadline?" (and also add the deadlines tag)
I don't think Why are linguistics and law "sciences"? needs a humanities tag - it's more about what's considered science. (The only reason it turned up in a search for 'humanities' is because the OP wrote "humanities" instead of what he really meant to say, "humanity's".) It does need the law and linguistics tags, whether or not humanities is also added :)
In Post tenure job search in the humantities: a waste of time?, I would suggest also editing the title to be explicit about the field ("Post tenure job search in the humanities...")
I don't think How to make academic life bearable under stressing circumstances? is specific to humanities. As far as I can tell, the question and answers apply broadly. (It could use the academic-life tag, though)
Lots of good points, thanks - I will do so.
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