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5068 | Should there be a mandatory explanation for why a question should be reopened if there were no changes made to the question after closing?
Quite often, questions in the "reopen" review queue have no explanation at all as to why they should be reopened. Sometimes, it is possible to find a comment along the lines of "voting to reopen because XX" (but finding these comments is tedious), but often there is not even that. If there is no explanation, I most often vote "keep closed" or skip the question, because it is unclear to me why the question should be reopened. I could imagine that I am not the only one doing so. This dynamic doesn't help in (sometimes probably completely justified) efforts of trying to get a question reopened.
So I think it would improve the "reopen" review experience tremendously, if there would be a mandatory field explaining why the question should be reopened. This would enable reviewers to quickly get a grasp of what is going on.
Additional Info for more clarity: I am talking about the "reopen" questions without a substantial edit. As a reviewer, edits to the question are highlighted and thus visible. If there are edits, I can see how some one tried to change the question into a question that better fits in with this site. But about 1/3 of the questions in the reopen queue (a wild guess) do not have info why the question should be reopened nor any edit made to the question. I am talking about these.
All reopen questions should (IMHO) have either
substantial edits to make clear why they should be reopened
an explanation about why the (unchanged) question should be reopened
Worse yet, The system asks you why it should be "Leave Closed" if you choose that.
I'm not exactly an expert in the review queues, but it seems most likely to me that the question(s) you're thinking about are in the review queue after a "substantial edit". Are you asking for substantial edits to be paired with a comment supporting reopening? Generally, questions should be reopened when the reasons for closure are resolved.
@BryanKrause no, I am not talking about the substantially edited "reopen" questions. Those I get: someone has reacted to the reason why the question was closed in the first place and tried to alleviate those shortcomings by editing (which I, as a reviewer can see, because the changes are highlighted). I am talking especially about those reopen questions that have not been edited at all (I would say about one third of the reopen questions have no edit).
@Sursula Got it; if someone votes to reopen a question that hasn't had any edits, then I suppose they're primarily contesting the previous close reason and implying "this question shouldn't have been closed for this close reason". Yes, sometimes they explain the reasoning, too, but it's hard enough to collect reopen votes as it is without adding another barrier.
Who would see these comments? Where in the UI would they appear?
On the face of it, I don't think I'd approve, though it might depend on the format. We have a lot of users, but only a few are needed to close a question. True, you need a bit of experience here to vote, but we also have some controversial questions.
I think that most of my reopen votes are when I disagree that the question should have been closed in the first place, meaning that I don't think an edit is needed.
But, my worry is that for some questions battles might arise between those wanting a question closed (perhaps they disagree with the premise) and those wanting it reopened. That would be distracting at best and temperature raising at worst.
A standard list (choose from the following...) might be ok, just as we have a list for closing. But open ended reasons might be problematic.
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4917 | Should veteran (that is high-reputation) users take a back seat with easy to answer questions, allowing newer users to answer them?
I am fairly new to Academia SE and have found it to be a great resource and a nice and respectful community.
My issue is the following:
I have noticed that a lot of questions get answered very fast (within an hour of posting the question) by what I would call veteran users with high and very high reputation, often resulting in them having the highest voted or even only answer — because some questions require only one answer and subsequent users will not want to post an identical one, or I guess also, because the earlier an answer is posted, the more people will read it in the end.
This is especially true for "easy to answer" questions, that is answers that a lot of people might be able to answer, simply because it isn't related to a specialty or to the inner workings of a specific institution or country.
These questions might be answered competently by quite a few users (also new ones), and I wonder if it would not be fair for veteran users (who don't really need the reputation boost that a well received answer might bring anymore) to wait a bit longer when answering those kind of questions that are easier to contribute to, to give newer users (who might not visit the site as frequently) the chance to answer first and in turn earn reputation that will enable them to act and interact more with the site, growing the community.
This question is by no means intended to offend those veteran users or to disrespect their often brilliant and helpful insight.
This is linked to a more general problem known as the Fastest Gun in the West. See also this post.
A separate, but related, issue on SE more broadly is that highly-difficult questions generally receive fewer views, so answering such questions is more work for less recognition. There have been many suggestions to introduce difficulty ratings, but so far nothing has been adopted (except for the bounty system).
I won't call any out, but I have seen high-rep users post highly similar answers to other answers that then surpass the lower-rep-user answers (here, I'm hypothesizing that's because of their high rep). There are places where I wish these high-rep users would just let those answers stand.
I kind of get where this is coming from. However, in many (most?) cases those 'high-rep' users gained their high reputation by being generous with their time and answering lots and lots of questions over a long period. It's not that high-rep users are hogging the easy questions; it's that the users who have the time and inclination to address easy questions quickly are the ones that accumulate the highest rep.
It's not always the case, avid. There is a particular user, who will remain unnamed, who has, in more than one SE, specifically targeted HNQ questions and answered without regards to community standards or practices, simply to achieve 20k+ rep, in less than half a year, in every SE where he is a regular. Who then does as is intimated here by the OP. Yes, I realize this is an (unsubstantiated) claim beyond what this OP is discussing, but I just wanted to point out the other extreme.
Being one of the chief "offenders" here, let me comment. I'm grateful to the OP for not singling me out, but, yes, I answer a lot of questions and do so fairly quickly, but that is just a consequence of how I use the computer generally, as well as how I used the net to teach my classes before I retired.
But I see the purpose of this site as providing help to those who ask questions, not building up rep for those who answer. Some of the questions reveal desperate needs of the writers and I want to provide help when I can. In those situations, at least, waiting seems like the wrong result.
Being very old and having held a wide variety of positions I have a lot of experience in some things. Thus, there are a few "lanes" that I occupy on this site. I'm happy, of course, when I get positive feedback for some of my answers and also happy when some of them cause controversy.
I also suffered some of the same setbacks that people ask about here as my career wasn't always especially smooth, requiring compromises.
However, I rarely answer questions to repeat what others have said unless there is a still-missing point that I think should be made. Nor will I down vote a post simply because I disagree with what is said - unless I think dangerous advice is given.
"Nor will I down vote a post simply because I disagree with what is said" If you want to provide help and you see a wrong answer, the helpful thing to do is to downvote the answer and upvote a comment that says why it is wrong.
@AnonymousPhysicist Disagreement doesn't necessarily imply wrongness. E.g. I see answers I disagree with for cultural reasons, but I don't down vote them because I understand that they are just a different point of view due to different culture, age whatever. I down vote when I see answers that are wrong in the sense of being harmful or because they give information that according to my experience is plainly wrong, or not sufficiently contextualized.
@MassimoOrtolano Yes, I think your approach makes more sense than Buffy's. Perhaps Buffy just didn't explain it with as much nuance.
TL;DR. It is true that we want to continue to build up a large and diverse community rather than relying only on a small number of power users. At the same time, our priority is in producing good answers; if the power users provide timely, high-quality answers, I would certainly not want to tell them to stop. So, it is really for individual members to decide how they can best leverage their valuable, limited time.
More thoughts....
I'm not sure I agree with "some questions require only one answer and subsequent users will not want to post an identical one." It's true that we disallow essentially-identical answers, but most questions can still benefit from multiple answers. Even answers that essentially agree might differ in their justification, presentation, or emphasis.
High-rep here is only loosely correlated with high academic rank. High rep users are not necessarily qualified to answer difficult questions. Further, if we disallow/discourage veterans from answering easy questions, there is no guarantee they will start answering harder questions.
This is a network-wide issue; there is nothing really unique to Academia.SE about this. As such, perhaps this discussion belongs on the main SE.
Enforcement could be pretty much impossible. Even if we as Academia.SE thought of a brilliant metric and everyone agreed to it, we could not technically implement it, and I don't think we could enforce it with sanctions or by deleting answers either. And it only takes a few veterans to flaunt the best practice before all the others (rationally) decide there is no point in them following it, either.
Suggestions for new(er) users who feel as you do:
Go to the home page rather than relying on hot network questions. The newest questions tend to have no highly-upvoted answers, so there is still time to get an answer that is noticed.
Consider formatting your answer. This answer, for example, has bold text and bullets. Such answers are a lot more readable than a wall of text, and will get more attention even if they are not the first answer.
Consider the backlog -- we have over 1000 questions with no upvoted answers at all! Many of these are asking for specialized information that most users will not have, but there may be some that you can answer. The SE network explicitly encourages answering old questions; I would love to see us clear our backlog.
Think more broadly about what you can contribute to answered questions. While we don't want duplicates, we are very happy to see additional answers with a different point of view, even if the key points and conclusion are the same.
to give newer users the chance to answer first and in turn earn reputation
You only need one reputation point to post questions and answers. The other "privileges" you can earn are really not worth seeking out. I just checked the list and most of the privileges I have are ones I did not know I had and will never use.
A substantial portion of the "easy to answer" questions are really duplicates. Another substantial portion attract a few terrible answers.
If, for some reason, you really want to earn reputation, I suggest asking high quality questions. This also gives you the first shot at answering your own question if you check the "answer your own question" checkbox.
So you are ok with not posting comments on other people’s posts? Or not being able to use chat.SE? Or not being able to flag a terrible post (i.e someone spamming “dingalingalingaling”)?
@TheEmptyStringPhotographer I totally refuse to use chat. It's the opposite of the point of this site. Comments are a little useful. Flagging is less useful.
Without flagging, lots of spam posts would stay on this site for a long time!
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4876 | Are questions requesting reviews of flaws in exams on-topic?
I recently sat a statistical/machine learning exam where, I believe, the instructions and questions were clearly flawed (to the point of being logically incoherent). The problems with the instructions and questions are such that the flaws are not heavily/fundamentally mathematical/statistical in nature (although, they are related to instructions about the use of the provided data), and they should (in my opinion) be clear from the written language itself. Furthermore, the flaws are systemic in nature, in that they affect the entire exam. Is it on-topic for me to post parts of the exam instructions and questions (with accompanying context/explanation, of course) on academia.stackexchange and ask whether they are problematic or whether I am misunderstanding something on my end? (This was an online exam, so students are free to download the material.)
Just because the exam is online, that doesn't mean students are entitled to download and repost the material. It's a copyright violation, and unauthorized sharing of course material is specifically against my university's honesty policy
and ask whether [the test questions] are problematic or whether I am misunderstanding something on my end?
A question requesting as assessment of your exam will indeed be off-topic, as answers will only apply to the exam in question.
the instructions and questions were clearly flawed (to the point of being logically incoherent)
I suspect there are several variations of your question that would be on-topic (though these variations may or may not be what you want to know). For example:
A question that assumes that the test is flawed and asks for advice moving forward.
A question asking whether a specific question type (which might appear on different exams) is misleading or sub-optimal
Technical questions about the course content, while off-topic here, might be on topic in the relevant stacks (in this case, data science or statistics)
In any of these cases, giving some brief examples and linking to the full exam should be fine.
Thanks for the answer. As I mentioned, the flaws aren't really technical in nature, and so it would be off-topic for stats.stackexchange. If I ask a question assuming that the test is flawed and ask for advice moving forward, and someone comments (either in their answer or in the comments section) regarding the legitimacy of my concerns, then that would still be fine, right? But would I be allowed to post images/details with this type of question (say, as providing context)?
Adding details/context is usually a good thing, though I would encourage you to concisely lay out the question, and add the more detailed version separately (for example, with bullets). Very long posts tend not to be received so well.
@ThePointer My caution when adding detail/context would be to make sure you don't drift into rant territory - too many details can feel like an airing of grievances rather than genuine support for the question.
Thanks for asking! I would move to close such a question as "too specific to individual circumstances". Asking that question would not benefit others in a similar situation, as they wouldn't ever find themselves in that specific a similar situation.
Putting aside appropriateness for this forum, though, I would also suggest that posting here wouldn't be useful, as we have no control over that site. Consider the scenario where everyone here agrees that, yes, the question is unfair. Now what? You're no closer to getting the situation fixed, and having agreement about unfairness in an online forum doesn't really do much to help your case. I'd suggest that you take your complaint/recommendation to the owners of the site/exam directly.
Thanks for the answer. I will indeed be taking it further with the university. The reason I wanted to post it to academia.stackexchange was to get some outside opinions; but if posting to academia.stackexchange would be off-topic, then I guess I won't do that.
Your question is yet young; I'd give it at least until the end of the day to see whether anyone else posts any other opinions. Diamond or not, I'm just another guy on this forum with an opinion :)
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5123 | Two very similar are asked. Which one shall be closed?
The first question was asked, with all possible tags, but received no long answers.
A few months later, the second question was asked without address the first one. However, the second one received long answers.
Should any of them be closed?
When I ask any question, I always spend a long time researching similar questions, looking for any duplications. If there are any duplication, I won't ask my question.
The authoritative guidance on Stackexchange says something like:
Usually a recent question will be closed as a duplicate of an older question, but this isn't an absolute rule. The general rule is to keep the better content.
However, in my humble opinion, I believe that the second question shall not be closed after it received many good answers; it might be helpful to tag it in the first place before it was answered.
I was very curious about this topic because in academia or the scientific research communities, usually the first publication will not be "closed" or tagged as "duplication".
Though I, personally, do agree that the second question or answer, if it is much better worded, is more valuable: the rule of SE is much better than the general rule in academia.
Not sure I understand your last paragraph. Are you saying that Academia.SE has a different practice that SE generally? (wasn't aware of this....). Or are you making a comparison to published articles, and how a better-written article is of little value of the main findings have already been published?
@cag51 Your second meaning. The better-written article could have a huge value but still less than the first article.
Closing duplicates is mostly for a goal of consolidating the location of answers to one place.
Ideally, when a question is asked that is similar to another, people recognize it right away, the old question has good answers, and the new one gets closed as a duplicate of the old.
Sometimes, the newer question may be written better, tagged better, etc; still, if the old question has good answers, the new one should get closed as a duplicate. The old question can still be improved by editing it, adding tags, etc.
Sometimes, an older question doesn't get answered, but a new question does; the old one might then get marked as a duplicate of the new. That's okay, too; closure as duplicate in that case still serves the same purpose.
See also How should duplicate questions be handled?
Usually a recent question will be closed as a duplicate of an older question, but this isn't an absolute rule. The general rule is to keep the question with the best collection of answers, and close the other one as a duplicate
In the scenario you describe, it seems like closing the older question as a duplicate of the newer one makes sense. It's possible for moderators to merge answers into one question but this is fairly rare, can get quite messy, and is usually avoided. If the newer question can be improved with edits including appropriate tags, clear language, etc, then editing it is a good choice for anyone.
There is no penalty for having a question closed as a duplicate. Duplicate questions are okay in the system - they may help people searching for answers (the target audience of StackExchange Q&A) find the answers they need using different search terms, and that's a good thing, we just want to try to funnel people to the same place when possible.
Many thanks for your help!
I was very curious because in academia, usually the first publication will not be "closed" or tagged as "duplication". Though I do agree with you that the second question or answer, if it is much better worded, is more valuable: the rule of SE is much better than the general rule in academia.
After doing some research, it is clearly that marking as duplication is clearly a punishment. One of the Devs of this site, ᔕᖺᘎᕊ, says: "Yes, duplicates are taken into account in the automatic-ban". By closing the first question, we are punishing the first asker and rewarding the second asker's lack of research efforts.
@HighGPA Marking a duplicate question is not a punishment, and we keep closed duplicates around as useful contributions to the site. Very low-effort questions that are duplicates of others may attract other things like downvotes that do have an aspect of punishment. To get into question-ban territory would require many many poor posts; it should not be of any concern to people asking normally and putting in effort towards their questions.
Hi Bryan. I agree with you that marking a duplicate should not be a punishment. It is also clear that this system penalizes askers with closed duplicated questions. I understand that this punishment might be small, but small punishment is still punishment, black and white. It is not the point that I or anyone is worrying about q-banning. I put this up only to question the fairness of the system: the action of closing a duplicate question, even if the question was asked first and well-received, cause harm to the asker.
@HighGPA The details of the question-ban system are intentionally opaque but from my experience with the system it seems most likely to me that a well-received (that is, upvoted) question that is closed as a duplicate of another is still going to be a net positive for the user. I do not believe there is any penalty for an upvoted question to be closed as a duplicate. There may be additional penalty for a negatively received question that is also closed as a duplicate. I would strongly suggest not worrying about this at all, there are plenty of better things to focus attention on.
I was just intent to have more people recognize the possible unfairness of the system. Thanks for letting me know that there are better things to focus on. Probably you are correct that trying to expose the unfairness and promote fairness in the system is a waste of effort because it will unlikely be noticed by the devs.
@HighGPA FYI, ᔕᖺᘎᕊ was and is not a dev, but just a regular user like us.
@AndrewT. I think he wrote many scripts and codes for this site, so he has access to some of the codes. Please correct me if I am wrong.
@HighGPA Userscripts only modify the HTML pages delivered to users; everyone has access to that code because that code is necessary to tell your browser what to display and is shared with everyone who views any web site.
@HighGPA I thought you mistook him with shog9, who was an ex-CM and had access to some of the codes. But ᔕᖺᘎᕊ is just a regular user. He might have written some userscripts, but so do other regular users.
@AndrewT. On the same question, Shog9 also says that Closing is a signal in q-banning, albeit being weak.
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5148 | Created [supplementary-information] tag then discovered [supporting-information] (it didn't show up in the autocomplete). What next? Synonymization?
I created a supplementary-information tag and attached it to this question. I then discovered that there is a supporting-information tag with 29 questions already.
The earlier tag did not show up in autocomplete quickly enough when I started typing "supple..." for some reason.
Should I change the tag on the new question or leave it in case that helps to make them synonyms? I have never quite figured out how synonymization works.
If it's the only instance of the tag being used I would just edit to remove it and use the other.
@BryanKrause the problem I've pointed out here is that the terms "supplementary" and "supporting" are used somewhat interchangeably and yet when I started typing "supplemen..." the synonymous term did not appear in the autocomplete. This is why I have asked about synonymization. Why don't you think that's a good idea?
Changing the tag on your question would destroy the newly created tag (in the daily clean-up) and thus solve any issues you created.
However, I concur that this is a standard case for a synonym. As I don’t see any potential controversy, I created the synonym and added supplement and appendix as further synonyms for good measure.
I have never quite figured out how synonymization works.
There is a user-initiated process for it, but it’s so impractical that you might as well ignore it and have the mods do it (by asking a question on Meta like you did).
"Mods are great, mods are good, let us thank them for our tags, amen." Thanks for you help!
@uhoh: Do I sense a hint of irony there? Or is this Poe’s law inverted?
Oh just the opposite! Anybody who can understand things I can't is at least a minor deity to me. It's sort-of an extension of Arthur C. Clarke's third law. I'm elated that SE is so well moderated and works so well.
@uhoh: Mind that this has little to do with understanding, but privileges granted by the system.
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5385 | We have no [press], [press-release], [popular-press], [public-relations], [publicity] tags even though these are regularly leveraged by universities
Major universities frequently have departments and staff and web pages for press releases related to notable ("hot") publications by faculty. They make sure that the popular press has the news in a pre-digested press-release form, a bit of biographical info on their faculty and a link to the actual publication. When paywalled there are often specially licensed links to viewable but not downloadable pdfs.
Interaction with the popular press is now an academic activity, benefitting both faculty and the university, and in an indirect way, funding agencies, i.e. 'this is your tax dollars hard at work'.
I searched for tags like [press], [press-release], [popular-press], [public-relations], and [publicity] for my new question How popular scientific news & Google get doi links leading to zombie pages when first release, but later, do link to the intended scientific paper? but couldn't find anything.
Is it time to recognize the publicity aspect of academic research by including some kind of tag? Is there one already but I just failed to find it perhaps due to lack of sufficient synonymization?
Here are some examples of questions that relate to press-releases, writing about academic research in the popular press, and citing the popular press.
@Anyon points out that the self-promotion tag exists (35 instances since 2012), and I think a lot of these questions deserve that tag but don't currently have it.
But I think this quickly assembled partial list suggests there is a body of questions related to the popular press and press releases.
If there's some agreement of some kind of "press" tag, then a retagging effort might be considered for it (and for the underutilized self-promotion. I've participated in several, you do it in small batches over time so as not to overwhelm the active question queue.
How to get covered in non-academic media
Should you include press interviews and articles about your work in your CV?
Do my articles published in local newspapers count as publications?
How to contact journalists for a press release in the UK?
What’s included in a press kit for a research project?
Where can I publish summaries of my research?
How to write a scholarship press release?
Are technical news websites acceptable as references in the introduction or motivation section?
Referencing someone else's Appendix with news articles URLs, or putting the links in my own appendix?
Can my institute use my figure and put their name on it for press releases, etc.?
APA citation of a published interview
Should I cite the interviewer or the interviewee when citing a news article?
Does social media and mainstream presence, through interviews and publishing in the "trade press", help one's chances at tenure?
Should you include press interviews and articles about your work in your CV?
Measuring the Effect of Public Relations on Scientific Journals Impact Factor?
Are (academic) job chances improved by extra-academic activities (Podcast, Popular Science Books)?
Citing a popular science magazine article
Does Pop-Science involvement hurt one's reputation?
Can you find a substantial number of existing questions that would be appropriately labeled with a given tag that would help organize them together for a person who has a specific interest in that area of academia? If so, I'd present that list and suggest creation of the tag. Otherwise it seems we don't need it, even if it could plausibly be useful.
Some such questions have been classified under [tag:self-promotion].
@BryanKrause Sure, I have extensive experience with that kind of search (e.g. 1, 2) and ok I'll do it here. But it takes a day or so to do well. I will point out that lack of the tag may discourage questions, so there may be some bias involved.
@Anyon that's actually worthy of being an answer post in order to alert folks of its existence. It's not a perfect fit (since the promotion machinery of a university goes beyond self-promotion of one's own research) but it's in the right direction.
I doubt lack of tag affects whether questions are asked. Tag selection seems an afterthought to most posters. They are more important on SO since the site is so massive.
@BryanKrause we only know how we ask our own questions, we have no insight into what goes on in other people's minds, though we might imagine we do. I am probably a much more active question-asker than you and I always pay attention to available tags as a hint to what may or may not fly as on-topic in a site, especially if it's a site I'm less active on.
@uhoh Your extensive experience asking questions on the site makes you quite unusual - most askers are relatively new and ask few questions. I'm basing my thoughts not on my own posting but the design of the ask a question page and the quality of tagging that people do.
@BryanKrause the metric that counts is not the number of users, but the number of questions posted where tags were referred to as part of the process, so I get a multiplier that makes my questions less unusual than me. But point well taken.
@BryanKrause Done! I've added at least a partial list. As an aside it seems many folks did indeed fail to notice the self-promotion tag which has been there since 2012, further confirming that I'm not normal :-)
The tag self-promotion is applicable to some such questions, perhaps not ones pertaining to institutional or organizational perspectives, but at least ones pertaining to an academic drafting a press release on their own work. A small number of relevant questions have received this tag, for example
How to write a scholarship press release?
How to get published research covered by science magazines so as to promote the research among the community?
However, some are simply tagged publications
How to get covered in non-academic media
How to contact journalists for a press release in the UK?
@uhoh encouraged turning my comment into an answer, so here it is.
Thanks for the answer post! Note: I'm finding many examples, many of which could use the self-promotion tag but didnt, and I'll add them to my question soon. I guess we need to promote the self-promotion tag better :-)
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4063 | Should we create questions that ask to cover some educational system of a country comprehensively?
A recent question that, in a sense, relied crucially on some details of the general Dutch educations system, got me thinking:
Wouldn't it be nice if this community knew more about the Dutch education system, not only on universities, but as a whole?
The advantage of a 'full cover' means that we know what expectations new university students carry, from their previous experience with education so far. I think this is valuable for members of this community from all over the world. I can think of the following reasons this may be of use:
"This Dutch student that applies for a PhD position seems capable, but acts kinda weird. Is this just a cultural thing?"
"I'm going to take a PhD in the Netherlands. What should I expect my fellow students to be like and what would my advisor generally expect of me."
"I'm willing to answer a questions on Academia.SE tagged netherlands, but I'm not sure if what sort of institution the OP is in and what is considered normal procedure in that country"
... (Feel free to add your own examples!)
Then, I thought even more and I realized I might as well replace 'The Netherlands', with literally any country in the world! Of course, I don't have the expertise to write on that, but I would be very much interested in, say, education systems in Germany, Belgium and/or France. (Most of my knowledge is ... 'apocryphal' at best)
So, for my question: do you think this is a good initiative? Would you like to try and cover the education system from your own country?
I might be a nice idea to make a faq-like list of such questions, is that a good idea?
Note that this isn't a question for what I should do. I will soon create a question asking for a brief explanation of the Dutch education system and self-answer (unless someone can convince me this is a very bad idea, but I think I'll still just post and wait for the close votes in that case. No harm in asking questions people very likely genuinely have.)
Neither of your two suggested questions are really answerable - they depend too much on the particular people and particular situations they find themselves in. Heck, asking what an advisor in one particular department in one particular university expects of students is not answerable unless the number of professors in the department is equal to one (or zero I guess).
@JonCuster Well, then I guess I know what you will do when I make my question.
Apparently you believe you can read minds!
@JonCuster Maybe? Is making an educated guess wrong? Or do you object to my examples only and not my general intentions? The vote seems to say you don't.
I agree with @Discretelizard we should do this.
Strongly related: Do we need a “borderline admissions” question for countries other than the US?
Such a question and answer might be useful, but I'm afraid that comprehensively describing the educational system of a country would take more than a Stack Exchange answer. I'm pretty sure that a question such as "How does the education system work in country X?" would get closed as "Too broad".
@ArnaudD. Ah well, at least I can try. Let's continue this discussion when I've actually written something.
I might be a nice idea to make a faq-like list of such questions, is that a good idea?
In theory, the collected set of questions asked by people on this site is expected to evolve into such a collection over time. Thus, if you search netherlands, it should effectively give you a FAQ.
"Let's talk about education in the Netherlands" is an unanswerable open-ended discussion question that belongs more on Wikipedia than here.
If there are specific questions and answers that you think are interesting, however, it is always OK to open those up yourself as ordinary questions and answers. For example, from my own experience with the Dutch system, I might be interested in "Why do Dutch institutions make PhD examiners from industry wear a special funny suit rather than their normal academic regalia or a normal suit?"
Well, given that someone self-answered a chart which tends to explain things...
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3759 | Shouldn't the deleted questions always be visible to their authors, regardless of the author's reputation?
I have a question about my Academia Stack Exchange post: Circumventing the funding limitations of my potential supervising faculty for Master's project
I'm used to IRC & various other discussion forums, but relatively new to Academia Stack Exchange.
So apparently I had a slightly odd question or maybe the way I framed it was so convoluted. Later, I read the community guidelines for framing a good question.
Meanwhile, my first question was gaining down-votes and was put on hold by community members. So I decided to frame the question more precisely on a later stage when I can find more relevant context.
Therefore my question gained some delete votes/ automatically deleted by the community apparently and was hidden from the posts.
My question here is that (according to community help centre),
What happens when a post is deleted?
Once a post has been deleted, it will disappear for all users except developers, moderators, and users with over 10,000 reputation. Deleted questions will also always be visible to their authors, regardless of the author's reputation. However, deleted posts can be undeleted by casting undelete votes. Once a post has 3 undelete votes, it will no longer be deleted.
Self-deleted posts can be viewed, edited, and undeleted by their original authors.
Please note that deleted questions do not appear in search results, so if you wish to later undelete a question that you've deleted you must have saved the URL somewhere.
I was able to recover my question's URL through Google's cached preview. But shouldn't there be a better way of archived access to new or naive users, who might not be good with searching for archived contents?
Because I wasn't aware that I can't review a deleted post if there's no manual URL save to the same.
Thank you.
Does it show up on your profile page: https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/74495/radex-μical-cradox?tab=questions
No it doesn't. That's why I brought up this issue, here in meta, in the first place.
However, I was able to access through recent inbox messages linking to the closed question.
And of course, through manual URL access as well, as mentioned above.
Thank you for pitching in @StrongBad
You should be able to still see recent deleted questions, regardless of reputation: https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/recently-deleted-questions/74495 (there is a "deleted recent questions" link in your profile)
@ff524 Thank you for the link.
But I already have a bookmark to the same. Also, believe me, there's no such link on my profile page or anywhere else for that matter. I double cross verified before posting this comment to be exact. I'll check again though, but I can't find any such.
@ff524 Okay, I found this interesting simple bug (I would rather mark it as a design negligence, but nothing serious enough though) relating to this topic. I've included screenshots of the same to make things more clear. Check this out.
![Valid XHTML] (https://goo.gl/o7ovig)
![Valid XHTML] (https://goo.gl/e4asmi)
The screenshots are my profile view of my questions on both AC.SE & AC-Meta.
As there's no question asked yet, other than my first question on AC.SE the link doesn't show up, whereas that's not the case with AC-Meta.
I'm able to access recently deleted questions on AC-Meta though that, though I don't have any deleted questions on that community.
This has essentialy been asked on the main meta Show all of my question/answers to me even if they are deleted
With 765 up votes on the question and 365 on the top answer, I think the answer is that the community feels that they should be visible. That said, the question is status-declined so apparently the SE team feels otherwise. It sounds like it is a design choice and not a technical limitation.
Thank you for letting me know.
It's a shame though that SE team thoughts contradicts with that of it's community users.
I thought of searching for the same question on main meta. But apparently, went ahead with asking it myself, here on this meta.
Thank you @StrongBad
And apologies for not upvoting. [As you can see, I don't have enough reputation score to reflect the same.]
@RadexμIcalCradoxR it is a little more complicated. It sounds like they have tried it in the past with bad results. Basically the issue is if you have a question with lots of up votes that gets deleted, this makes users mad. To constantly remind them of it everyone they look at their profile is worse, or so the argument goes. Not sure if I believe it.
@RadexμIcalCradoxR also, welcome to AC.SE. Don't worry so much about getting a question closed, it doesn't mean your next one won't be better.
Thank you @StrongBad
And I'm not sure either if I can believe that as well LOL!
And moreover, shouldn't the access privilege to such things be limited to the profile's owner and not simply to anyone who visits their profile. I mean it's already visible to developers, moderators, and users with over 10,000 reputation. So I guess it shouldn't be a problem with other's seeing that as well unless the question is too localized or individual-centric, which is not recommended for this platform I guess.
It was declined by Jeff Atwood, who posted an answer saying: Generally when things get deleted, it's for a good reason, and we don't want users to be undeleting them -- there's a reason we require 10k rep to "see" deleted items at all, and only moderators can see deletions in a user's profile. He got +42 and -238 so far for this answer, so in general community does not agree with him.
@fedorqui Couldn't agree more with the community's reaction towards that answer. Guess that could have also been the potential candidate for most down-votes on a single answer, LOL!
@RadexμIcalCradox I think this answer of Atwoods probably has more down votes, but at least that one is [tag:status-completed].
@StrongBad Apparently, this guy has got a forte for getting on community's nerve. Nothing offensive though. And yeah, that's why I marked it as a potential candidate, you never know who might pop up with such calibre.
Maybe it's his niche. After all, he was part of the SE development associates. Now that he left SE, he still can continue being stringent as a moderator. Every community needs a nostalgic warden after all, LOL!
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4718 | Answering trivial questions with trivial answers in comments. Bad habit?
I may have fallen into a bad habit. A few questions get asked that don't require much thought or analysis to answer. Often the answer is "ask your advisor" or "contact that journal". The OP needs some help but the question is anything but earth-shattering.
I've been "answering" quite a few of these in comments lately and would like advice on the validity. A one sentence "formal answer" to such questions seems like overkill.
Here is an example of such a question, though this one may be a the limit of where a real "answer" could be given.
Some of the questions of this kind are personal and may have little value for a future reader. Not all are like that. And many of these sorts of questions seem to be coming from new users.
So, assuming that there isn't really much to say and the "answer" is very short, is it really fine to answer in comments for such things. The alternative might be to just ignore the question or close it, leaving the OP unsatisfied and needy.
Moreover, there doesn't seem to be a really appropriate listed "reason to close" for many of these.
Perhaps a bad habit, but also a sign of burnout over bad questions. Oh, wait, what did I just do???
https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4604/63475 I made an argument here that these short answer comments should be kept, but the voting from the community on it was pretty much even plus/minus. I had in mind the situation when a question should also be closed, as I mentioned in a comment, and maybe the answer would have been better received if I had - in that case I think of such comment as explaining a close vote (eg, "I'm voting to close this question because it's too dependent on your individual circumstances, this is a question you should direct to your advisor.")
Moreover, there doesn't seem to be a really appropriate listed "reason to close" for many of these.
The questions you describe are exactly what the close reason strongly depends on individual factors is made for. One of the reasons we have this close reason is because we got tired of one-line answers like you describe. Another is that we do not want somebody to come along who think that they can answer this question, which may be misleading. To quote from the new usage guideline:
Answers to this question […] would primarily consist of: “It depends on X.”
I do not think that closing such questions is not at odds with helping the asker. If a question gets closed with that reason, the asker already gets guidance nudging them in the right direction, but of course this is somewhat broad. I see no harm in leaving a specific comment along the lines of:
Sorry, but we cannot possibly answer that question. You have to ask your advisor or somebody who knows them very well.
This was one of the cases were we agreed that answers in comments are okay.
Regarding the specific example, you posted, I am somewhat undecided whether it falls into this category. We have some information to make an educated guess here (as opposed to just a guess), but then it is still a guess.
The example question might appear to "strongly depend on individual factors" if you're unfamiliar with UK hiring practices. But I think most likely someone who knows how UK hiring will work will realize this is standard in the UK. Asker didn't realize it's a regional custom.
Unfortunately, even though you've seen that question a million times, the user is asking for the first time. The overly brief "don't walk, run" style comments, while cute and good for upvotes, frequently don't give the context needed by the OP. I agree with Jon that this is probably a sign of burnout. Take some time off from those questions and focus on the meatier ones.
This is assuming the user is posting in good faith; if they're not, all bets are off.
Unfortunately, if new users don't get some feedback they get frustrated. It doesn't seem very welcoming.
Not sure why you say that. We have a pretty good answer rate; good questions will likely get responses. You just don't have to be the one to provide it.
If a question has a short, trivial answer, the question makes sense, and the question is on topic, then I strongly encourage you to post a short, trivial answer.
There are a great many answers on this site which include lots of irrelevant details. Your short, trivial answer is better than those answers.
No harm is caused by answering off-topic questions, or by answering questions that have little value. It does not matter if you post these answers as comments or answers.
I disagree with the last paragraph. Answering questions that should be closed sets precedence and my escalate through the broken-window effect. As for low-quality questions that should not be closed, I see no reason to answer them in the comments.
"Answering questions that should be closed sets precedence" @Wrzlprmft I don't understand. I vote to close questions that already have answers all the time. Shopping questions are often in that category. The answers have zero effect on my close vote.
"As for low-quality questions that should not be closed, I see no reason to answer them in the comments" I agree.
Of course, I previously said that I didn't think moderators needed to spend their time deleting answers posted as comments. If you are a moderator and spend a lot of time doing that, you might feel it's a big waste to post things as comments. if you're me and don't think that deleting those comments is worthwhile, then it's a small issue.
The answers have zero effect on my close vote. – As long as you refer to the existence of answers (and do not ignore them completely as they may potentially solve unclarities, etc.), I do not dispute that. It’s inevitable that questions that should be closed get answers. However, it’s quite different to recommend answering closeworthy questions when you identify them as such. The same applies for posting comment answers to low-quality questions.
@Wrzlprmft I do not recommend either of those things. I think we agree.
I do not recommend either of those things. – But that’s how at least I understand your last sentence.
@Wrzlprmft I do not see how "it does not matter" can possibly be interpreted as a recommendation instead of ambivalence.
There is little difference. Before we discuss semantics, imagine a reader who wants to figure out how to act. If they go by your post, there is little difference between you ambivalently recommending comments and answers or saying “it does not matter”. By not advising against the bad™ alternative, you are practically encouraging it. Also, “it does not matter” contrasts with you agreeing (as far as I can tell) that there are negative aspects to one of the alternatives.
@Wrzlprmft "By not advising against the bad™ alternative, you are practically encouraging it." This is a preposterous claim. I'm sure you can think of ludicrous implications. "contrasts with you agreeing (as far as I can tell) that there are negative aspects" You imagined that. Most things on this stack exchange have neither postive nor negative aspects, and I neither encourage nor discourage them.
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5076 | On discouraging "let me repeat that" answers
I've noticed several instances lately, though I suspect it has always been the case, that someone will give a new answer that adds nothing new. The worst cases are when someone just gives a subset of the recommendations of an earlier answer. The new answer is just a bit of noise. Sometimes it will be ideas from several answers, but still, nothing new.
I wonder if it is desirable and possible to "discourage" such posts without seeming too heavy handed.
One possibility would just be some advice in the help pages. Not every new user seems to get the point that this site isn't just a bunch of discussion threads. That may be related.
We have mechanisms already in voting and comments for people to express agreement with the advice in an existing answer.
Here is an example of this. Another user posted while I was writing. This has happened a couple of times. (Rep needed to see my deleted answer.)
Near duplicate of https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/160071/what-to-do-when-plagiarism-is-discovered
I downvote answers as "not helpful" if they are nothing but a superficial repeat of existing answers, especially when they are particularly low-effort. However, it's worth taking care that sometimes there are multiple ways to say the same thing, and some of those ways can be better than others. That can include answers that are brief and direct, even when other answers provide more context and detail. Synthesizing multiple other answers into one answer can also be useful. I've frequently added my own answer to a question that's more or less the same as other answers but I feel needs to be more clear on a key point.
Mods can "protect" questions to prevent no-rep users from answering; often HNQ-featured questions get this protection (though it isn't supposed to be a reason to protect by itself, HNQ tends to go hand-in-hand with the reasons a question should be protected) which helps avoid these answers. High rep users can also protect questions (with a couple limiting criteria), and I think you can be fairly loose with this option when it is available to you and you're seeing people chime in with non-answer answers.
If an answer consists of "I agree with Buffy's answer, but (wanted to make a side comment or contribute to discussion)", you can flag as "not an answer" and it will likely be converted to a comment or removed. Answers should stand on their own, and while it's fine to reference other answers in your own answer, it shouldn't be necessary to read other answers to get to a complete one. Feel free to flag outright plagiarism of other answers, as well (better to use a custom flag for that so a moderator knows what to look for); these can be machine-automated attempts at gathering rep to use for spam or other nefarious purposes.
How about "let me repeat that" as a descriptive?
@Buffy Sounds good to me. I don't think the original was wrong, either, just didn't want it to lead to confusion. I had trouble searching MSE for broader guidance on this issue because it's interlocked with the other one there.
I generally limit downvotes to posts I think are actually harmful if the advice is taken. I've been (a bit) tempted to comment on the "repeat.." answers asking "why bother", but feel it is a bit too negative. But somewhat experienced users also do this on occasion.
One possibility would just be some advice in the help pages
The best help page to give this piece of advice would probably be in How do I write a good answer? However, this page is the same network-wide and not customizable by site moderators. Within the pages that are customizable, I don't see a good place for that addition. Furthermore, help pages are likely only read after someone points out issues with a post.
About what to do, I agree with Bryan's answer, but let me stress that flagging could be particularly useful in case of repeated instances from the same user, so that in case we can advise them with a moderator message.
Notice how in the last paragraph I'm doing exactly what the OP wants to discourage :-p
Actually, I often do something similar when I think an answer has many good points but needs additional advice. As you do here, I link to the question I want to extend rather than just phrasing it as "an earlier answer" or similar. But, also as you do here, there was a new element. On at least one occasion I got more rep than the answer I pointed to, but that wasn't the intention. In fact, such linking can, I hope, boost the answer linked as well as making it obvious and easy to find. So, this isn't what I really mean. It is answers that really don't add anything.
Pointing to a help page after the fact might actually be a benefit, even if not the main page. Better than a personal complaint to a writer, I think.
@MassimoOrtolano For what it's worth, the general guidance is that for this sort of thing Meta should be treated differently than main sites, so you're forgiven this time :)
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5499 | Why has the listing and visibility of questions changed?
The "Questions" link in the sidebar no longer lists All Questions, along with their authors but "Newest Questions" without their original authors, but the most recent editors.
Moreover, some questions with answers have simply disappeared from even the Top Questions page without comment, taking upvoted answers along with them, and affecting reputation. For example, I can find no link to the disappeared "sex worker" question asked this morning. I found it in my browser history marked as spam or offensive. Are we now so prudish that such things can't be mentioned? I saw no evidence of spam, but didn't look at the user's profile (now also disappeared). I thought the question and the answer (mine, and upvoted) was relevant to academia as an example of improper student-professor relationships. How is it better that it isn't discussable?
I'm finding both of these upsetting. Can they be justified? Things shouldn't disappear here so readily. Or is it a bug recently introduced?
Even this question didn't immediately appear in Meta!!!
About the issue from the title: "Newest Questions" tab showing last active user instead of the asker (on [meta.se]).
Note that this seems to be resolved by Dec. 11, 2024
The "Questions" link in the sidebar no longer lists All Questions, along with their authors but "Newest Questions" without their original authors, but the most recent editors...Even this question didn't immediately appear in Meta!!!
We as Academia.SE have no control over such things. You should ask on the main meta. As noted in the comments, the former has already been asked (no response yet). For the latter, I suspect it's just a routine networking issue with SE's hardware.
Are we now so prudish that such things can't be mentioned? ... How is it better that it isn't discussable?
Fear not, this was not deleted because sex work is a taboo subject. This should be clear because this question is also about sex work (indeed, it's very similar to the one you linked, maybe even a duplicate), and it was not deleted, but is still open and is in fact one of our most famous questions.
some questions with answers have simply disappeared
I'm not sure which "questions" you refer to. OPs can delete their question at any time if there are no upvoted answers (so if you answer and they delete before you are upvoted, that is allowed under SE's policies. You can raise a flag asking the mods to undelete, but we would override SE policy only on an exceptional basis). Further, closed questions with no upvoted answers are automatically deleted after a week or two. Again, this is SE policy; it may or may not be optimal, but SE-wide policies are not something we can change.
For the rest of this answer, I will address only the linked question. This question was closed by community vote. I admit I am not sure why the community gave "out of scope" as the close reason; I think closing it as a duplicate would have made much more sense. But either way, the question was correctly closed by community vote.
The closed question was then deleted by a moderator. This is pretty rare, but it happens. We don't generally comment on specific examples for privacy reasons. But one of the most common reasons why we delete a post is "trolling": we sometimes have reason to believe that the OP is setting us up by posing a fictitious but inflammatory question, for the purpose of laughing at us when we collectively waste hundreds of hours engaging with the post. This is an abuse of the community's goodwill, and so moderators will delete the posts and banish the users. Like I said, this happens pretty rarely, but it's important that we quickly delete such posts so that the user isn't rewarded for their efforts.
I am sorry that you spent time writing an answer that was deleted and that your reputation was affected. However, please remember that, as discussed here, users really should not answer questions that deserve to be closed. Some of the other stacks are really strict about this, even suspending users who answer manifestly close-worthy questions. We are not so strict here (in fact, my ratio of answers-on-closed-questions is nearly as high as yours), but it's an at-your-own-risk kind of thing. Once a question is closed, moderators have wide discretion to delete (either on their own initiative, or in response to requests). We usually don't delete if there are upvoted answers, but sometimes we do. Helping users to avoid this frustration is one of the reasons that the guidance exists, and so users who habitually ignore the guidance should expect to occasionally encounter the frustration.
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5389 | Do we need a canonical question on "Statement of Purpose"?
I am finding many questions on the site relating to what should be included and omitted in a Statement of Purpose (SoP) for doctoral admissions.
I think that many people are confused. They want to either brag about their past accomplishments or make excuses for past failures. Some want to talk about how their special circumstances have disadvantaged them.
My own view, frequently stated, seldom downvoted, is that the SoP should be entirely forward looking, giving goals for study and thereafter. Short statements (phrases) of how their past makes success in attaining those goals are fine, but not the basis of the statement.
I also recommend that others (letter writers) be encouraged to state those other things (overcoming failure, wild success) that are more believable (IMO) when stated by third parties than by candidates themselves. Likewise, I recommend that past accomplishments be in the CV, not the SoP.
There seem to be two different kinds of SoP, just as there are two different kinds of doctoral programs. In the US, the program usually doesn't require that the candidate come to the process with a plan for research and so the SoP is very general.
In some other places, it is expected as part of the application process, perhaps to a PI, that the candidate already have a pretty firm proposal for their research. In such places an SoP might, instead, ask specific questions such as how the candidate's background supports that research and how they intend to carry out their plan.
Should we have a canonical question giving advice on such things? If so, what should it include/exclude? There might be more than one canonical answer to this question, depending on the sort of program it applies to.
I'll wait a bit to make content suggestions in an answer.
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5219 | Should this site take an official position on answers generated by ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is a human assisted AI that can be used to generate reasonable looking answers to questions. It seems to have been used for at least one answer here (now deleted). However StackOverflow has (temporarily) banned it for answers there.
One major criticism of it is that it generates text that can be factually "questionable" since it depends on the data that was used to train it, which isn't always reliable.
Should we take a position and make policy on using it?
The possibilities are to forbid it, permit it with citation, or to permit it generally. There might be others as well.
One problem I see is that it might be difficult to "notice" its use. It might, therefore, be hard or impossible to enforce any policy.
Another problem is that humans also (present company excluded) sometimes generate faulty reasoning and unfactual "facts".
Personally, I think its use could greatly degrade the usefulness and validity of this site if it is overused. But, then, I'm generally skeptical of AI in its present form. We are, after all, trying to provide valid career guidance to our peers.
Insights into how a restrictive policy might be enforced would be welcome in answers if you believe they are appropriate. Here is some discussion about how to recognize these).
The New York Times has an article (probably paywalled) concerning ChatGPT.
BTW, a network-wide ban has been proposed but not (yet) adopted. There is also some chatter across the meta network about how such bans might be enforced.
We actually already deleted more than one AI-generated answer.
@MassimoOrtolano For my interest, how do you determine whether an answer is AI-generated? From what I have seen, ChatGPT produces text that looks substantially more coherent than many of the genuine answers, and especially questions, we get here.
@xLeitix, it is a hard problem surely. But a policy and ways to flag suspected answers (in close and flag dialogs) might reduce the problem to a minimum, assuming people obey the rules, as most do.
@xLeitix For the moment, mods are not disclosing how these kind of posts are caught. See this meta post for the reason (note that the links reported there are mod-only). Anyway, there are mods and users, especially from Stack Overflow, who are putting a lot of effort to fight this phenomenon, and some of them flagged a few of our posts.
@MassimoOrtolano I understand we cannot discuss how to figure out the posts are AI-generated. My problem is that I just saw a couple of fishy posts which I am planning to flag. On the other hand, I want to keep my flagging records super good (I hate declined flags), So, please give me some advice. Better yet, please provide a convenient way to notify the mods without hurting the users' reputations. A suggestion, mods can dispute the flags, not decline them.
@Nobody If you see fishy posts, please by all means flag them. Flagging doesn't hurt user reputation, and for this kind of stuff we'll likely consider the flag helpful even if further investigation doesn't confirm the allegation. Notice that only comment flags cannot be marked helpful without doing nothing.
Just to underline the above point: flags are generally helpful to us; we'd rather people like you err on the side of raising the flag so we can monitor a situation, even if no immediate action is required. For flags on answers or questions, we can mark the flag helpful without taking any further action (and I think all 4 of us do this often). But it's true that flags on comments do not have this option: we either have to decline the flag or delete the comment. So that may help with strategizing your flagging record, if that's important to you.
Zach at SMBC must read this site: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/themes
I have a beginner question: Can the bot ask questions?
@AnonymousPhysicist Certainly, in the prompt one can tell it to write a question. One can even provide detailed requirements or specify that the question should be a good fit for Academia SE. It remains to be seen how effective SE will be in preventing such spam.
Update: Seems like a pretty strong consensus; the resulting policy is available here.
I do not see any value in posted answers generated by ChatGPT-like services.
If the answer is bad -> the answer should be deleted.
If the answer is somewhat good -> then, ChatGPT-answer can be looked similar to search engines; thus, a user could have asked ChatGPT the question directly without asking it on Academia SE. Nobody would find posting a "screenshot" of Google search results as an answer useful.
Therefore, I completely do not see a place for ChatGPT answers, particularly at Academia SE, where, in my opinion, there is a very small percentage of questions that can be answered adequately by an AI. Thus, regardless of the decision on the network-wide ban on ChatGPT-like answers, Academia SE should adopt a strict policy against ChatGPT answers.
Please see: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/422066/why-was-my-answer-deleted-for-using-chatgpt-even-when-i-didnt?noredirect=1#comment939163_422066 Occasionally, a real human answer (hopefully written with good intentions) can be mistaken for a ChatGPT (bot) answer.
@JosephDoggie yep, this is an inevitable side-effect.
I certainly wouldn't want my writing to be called "bot" writing!
@JosephDoggie sure, I doubt anybody would want that. what's your point?
My point is: Be very careful in marking things as 'bot' unless, one is sure. Apparently, "Here's an example" could be 'bot' language -- see the meta SO question I cited and the answers. Certain people's styles could be mistaken for 'bots' which could cause hurt feelings, etc. As I pointed out on SO, we are supposed to be a welcoming site!
@JosephDoggie I am unsure how it is at all related to my post.
There were too many comments on the OP's question itself, so I commented here.
However, I would point out, your answer does say "ChatGPT-like answers" .... Therefore, I'm simply reminding readers NOT to declare everything ChatGPT, as this could be a misclassification of a human-written answer.
@JosephDoggie I think I got you this time. Edited my post to clearly communicate the thought.
I believe we should have a firm policy that things like ChatGPT are not allowed. For most of our questions, the personal experiences of humans are critical to a good answer. Some auto-generated pablum in no way is useful to the users of the site. If anything, it is more harmful than spam.
It's even worse: one can ask ChatGPT to write an answer from the perspective of a human, and even include made up personal experiences.
I see no value in making new rules before we have precise information about the difference between ChatGPT answers and human answers.
Excessive posting of bad answers should continue to be punished, via downvotes, with revocation of the ability to post questions and answers.
It's a good thing we have that information and can make new rules based on it now.
@Nij Where is that?
@AnonymousPhysicist Perhaps not precisely, but you can find lot of examples (or try them out yourself) of instances where ChatGPT provides an answer that looks plausibly correct but is actually nonsense. For humans, both the process of coming up with and detecting such text would take a decent amount of effort, but with ChatGPT one can produce them with nearly no effort, and would make it very difficult to keep up with curation. So already as a matter of practicality it makes sense to ban it, since it gives bad faith users too much power.
@GoodDeeds You said there are examples where ChatGPT produces nonsense. Sure, I expected that. But what portion of the posts are not nonsense? How can "ban it" be consistent with "its very difficult to curate?"
Here's an example of precise information: x% of ChatGPT posts have a negative score. Humans can identify ChatGPT posts with y% false positives and z% false negatives.
10% error is fine. For all I know the false positive rate might be 50%.
@AnonymousPhysicist 'How can "ban it" be consistent with "its very difficult to curate?"': because it has serious disadvantages without having any meaningful advantage, as detailed in the other two answers. As for precise information, I am sure research is ongoing on that question at the moment.
@GoodDeeds Banning is a kind of curation. You said it is difficult to curate. How is it not difficult to ban?
I'm not disputing that ChatGPT has disadvantages; I'm just saying posts with disadvantages were here before ChatGPT. Nobody has yet articulated how bad ChatGPT content is different from bad human content. (There are already rate limits, so post rate isn't a difference.)
@Araucaria-Nothereanymore. "Real people have something to lose from making unrealistic, false or disprovable claims." Why do you think that applies to this site? In my view, reputation points are worthless.
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4866 | Seeking advice on removing tags (especially new ones)
While I have no official status here, I spend a fair amount of effort on maintenance of questions, editing and such, including changing tags.
But I would like advice on the issue of removing tags under certain circumstances.
For example, I've removed some tags at their first use when they have no tag wiki and I doubt that the tag will be generally useful in the future. This leaves an orphan tag, of course.
I also just removed a tag from a post: failure that had been used once before but in a different way. There was no tag wiki for it and it seemed hard to unify the idea into a proper general classification idea. I removed it from both posts, as it seemed even less relevant to the older post than the new one. For reference, the two questions are:
Failed my 2nd Qualifying Exam in PhD. Absolutely devastated. Please help
and
Should I let a bad mark from 10 years ago discourage me from taking on a TAship?
I usually add what I think are more appropriate tags to such questions (and others).
I'd like some advice on this practice. Does it seem proper? Helpful?
My concern is about meaningless tag proliferation making searching harder, not easier. I also think the threshold for new tags at this point should be fairly high as this site is quite mature. New challenges such as the pandemic are obvious candidates for new tags, of course.
I'm using personal judgements, of course, and they may be open to disagreement.
Wait, aren't you the GOAT here at SE? Sounds pretty official to me... I agree that a tag used just twice in two different ways should be removed.
@JonCuster, GOAT is, I assure you, temporary, and not official. Mods have official (elected) stature and some formal responsibility for maintenance. I'm just an interested person.
Sure, but mods don't set the site's ethos - all us users do. From other sites I would expect that asking the tag to be removed is quite appropriate.
Doesn't "GOAT" (according to the other post) means "of all time"? So it cannot be just temporary, right?
@user111388 These sites always have a GOAT. User aeismail was GOAT for a long time. Since I first joined, I think. He may have been one of the founders of the site and was a long time mod until he gave it up in the last election. He and JakeBeal were hard to catch up with in total rep and I was only able to do so since their participation dropped. Both always give great answers when they can. There is no projection into the future. Like a runner, if you slow down, then you get passed. Maybe you can be next. I once had about 2K rep myself, of course.
Included a bunch of other tag information here in case it's helpful to you or others, but you can find a specific answer to the specific question asked in bold.
"This leaves an orphan tag, of course." - Tags that are not used on any questions are automatically cleared from the system (not immediately, but I believe this is a daily job that runs, not sure of the time). Orphans are short-lived but can be recreated in the future.
For broadly-used tags, SE refers to "burninating" as a method of removing them: What does it mean to "burninate" a tag?
If you systematically go through all questions using a tag and remove them, this will destroy the tag entirely. For a tag used on more than a few questions, it's usually best practice to ask on Meta first, and then go through editing to remove tags. For common tags this might be done over a longer time scale to avoid flooding the active questions.
For a tag used once or twice, I don't see any problem with experienced users removing them unilaterally - there's very little use in such tags, and the edits are visible to others who can raise the issue if it's a big deal. It especially makes sense if these tags are replaced with other tags that are more appropriate/in wider use.
Two other tools for dealing with tags are synonyms and blacklisting. Moderators can add synonyms (multiple users with a sufficient reputation can also do so, but unless the mods here prefer otherwise it's typically simpler to have them do it). The best way to address tag synonyms is to raise the issue on meta, like:
Should [coauthors] be a synonym of [authorship]? (suggests a synonym)
Please vote for synonym suggestions (asks for users with sufficient rep to vote on proposed tag synonyms, letting the community rather than mods handle this)
Please undo the synonymisation of the tag disability with health-issues (suggests removing a synonym)
Tags that shouldn't exist but yet keep being applied can be blacklisted but this requires staff intervention: How do tag blacklists work?
This is very helpful. I'm often at a loss for finding such information.
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4984 | Shopping question vs Resource request
Some questions, like this one get closed as Shopping Questions. But the OP, here, was asking how to get something done, not for a list of things. So, my view is that isn't really a shopping question at all.
However, we don't have (as some others do) a tag for resource-request, which might form a different category of acceptable question.
But one difficulty, if providing this category is considered valuable, is to make it known or to somehow "map" close requests into resource requests.
What do folks think about such questions that are "not quite" shopping but ask for ways to do things? I would, personally, like to find a way to allow them for the benefit of the OP but in a way that avoids "listy" answers.
Here is another "Listy" question that doesn't seem to be attracting "shopping" close votes. But it certainly has no "best" answer. Would a new tag "resource-request" be appropriate for such things?
Yet another question. This one is being flagged for closure, but it is about devices for doing academic work. Certainly "listy" and certainly about buying things. But not about academic programs and their comparisons.
Mind that while the title of that specific question is about how, this is absent from the body. Also, when asking about how, all the subject-specific details don’t matter.
@Wrzlprmft There have been some others recently that probably fit the pattern better, but I don't know a way to search for them effectively.
@Wrzlprmft, see my edits (last paragraph) for another example.
Your second question is opinion based as there are many valid answers.
This is a great question. On searching for the phrase "where can I find", one can find many examples of closed as well as open questions. I don't see any prominent differences between many of the questions in the two categories, so having a clear policy may be useful.
@Buffy: While we may debate whether the second example is too broad or opinionated, it is not a shopping question, as the asker cannot possibly want to “buy” the answer, i.e., make a career decision (or similar) based on it. Individual (historical) researchers are not on the list of shoppable things. (Mind that I am not picking on your examples because I want to sabotage this discussion, but experience shows that if examples are not representative, this tends to derail such questions.)
@Wrzlprmft: My current worry, then, is that "shopping question" is poorly understood in general even given this, resulting in somewhat inconsistent voting. My initial understanding (now improved, I hope) was that anything "listy" was shopping. Perhaps we just need a better way to make these distinctions.
I would suggest that programming answers in StackOverflow provide a good guideline here.
If the question can be well-formed as "How do I do X?", then while there may be many ways to do X, there will generally only be a small number of really good ways to do it, which fits the SE format nicely. In this case, the question may still fail due to being overly specific or too shopping-oriented.
Take the first example from above, which I will paraphrase:
"How do I find the names of all Asian institutions that offer post graduate programs in computational linguistics? By the way, I already know the standard answers to this question, but they aren't good enough for my purposes."
I don't think this fails as a shopping question, since it's asking for a resource. However, I believe that it does fail the "individual factors" criteria because it's asking for a resource that is too specific and unlikely to exist.
If the question really needs a list, however, then it's just a bad fit for the SE format. Taking the second example from above, which I will paraphrase:
What academic researchers published very few scientific articles (say, less than twenty) but exerted large influences on their fields of study? Also, I already know that Gauss is one of them.
If this was "Are there any...?" or "Is there a list of...?" then it would be a good fit, because a single good answer is possible.
As it is, however, it is a bad fit because there is an open-ended set of possible answers with no particular way to tell which are better than one another. I wouldn't call it a "shopping question" (since there's no choice involved), but would probable use either "needs clarity" or a custom reason.
I do not see how "is there a list of X" is, in this context, different from "could you please list X". Obviously, for a mathematician or computer scientist these are formally very different questions but the intent of the person asking the question is usually the same. Should we really be so harsh and allow option 1 but not 2?
@Louic There is a major difference because the first can be answered with a single pointer to a well-curated source, while the second is an attempt to build that source on Academia.SE, for which the site is not well-suited.
I agree that the functionality of the site does not facilitate the creation of "community edited lists". But does that mean we should not attempt to do so anyway if it can help people? (provided it is deemed reasonable/appropriate for the given question)
The consensus seems to be "only in special cases", c.f.: https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4516/big-list-question-for-reference-managers
I agree with the "only in special cases" consensus, but not with the part of your answer that states there is a fundamental difference between the two different formulations to what is (in my eyes) the same question, hence my first comment.
But the OP, here, was asking how to get something done, not for a list of things.
That is not true. It says:
How do I find the names of all...
This is clearly a request for a list, which is not permitted (I do not make the rules.) Asking for a method of getting a particular list is the same as asking for the list.
Actually, it is a request for how to generate the list. Not for the list itself.
@Buffy You seem to be viewing my edits on a delay.
Sorry, I don't understand. "delay"?
I disagree with your last sentence. One is asking how to solve a problem. The other is asking for the solution.
Intent is clearly the same.
Sorry, but this, which seems pretty official seems to contradict your assertion. In particular, not all answers would be "equally valid".
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5235 | May i know the reason of closing the question here
Someone, please tell me why this question is closed. and is the closed question appeared on the screen for others or not? how to reopen it?
The question was closed for the reasons stated at the top of your question. Specifically, it needs clarification. Go back to the question page ... here https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/192084/a-rare-case-in-academic-regarding-to-the-retraction-of-an-article . You should click the box labelled "Improve this question" and rewrite the question to make it clearer. Then close the edits.
The comments on the other question should be a guide. It is hard to give any answer with so little information.
i am new to this platform, so i now checked why my two previous questions are deleted? does anyone else have access to the edit option?
Hi and welcome to Academia SE. You can always edit your questions, whether closed or deleted. Edited closed questions will be pushed in a review queue where users can decide whether it can be reopened or not. If you instead edit a deleted question, you can then flag it for moderator attention and we mods will decide if it’s worth undeleting it. In any case, please don’t push people to reopen your question, and first edit it to fit the site rules.
@CrimsonDark, thank you so much for the guidance. I just see here "details or clarity" and "edit the question" options. do you mean to reopen it by these options?
however, thank yo so much everyone.
I don't have the power to reopen your question! That is for people who have much more reputation that I do. Have a look at the comments from @Massimo_Ortolano above. He explains what you need to do. Remember, the people here are actually trying to help, not to punish you (!) ... but it isn't easy to help when they don't have enough information to give sensible advice.
You want a specific answer to a situation for which you do not provide specific details. Until you give specific facts, such as quoting correspondence with the publisher (rather than paraphrase or report hearsay), there is really nothing to be done.
One major reason is that you haven't said why the paper was retracted, implying only that it was the supervisor's pressure. The normal reasons are plagiarism, lack of novelty, bad fit for a journal (though it would have been rejected initially for that), errors in the paper, etc.
Yes, others can see closed questions. We can't answer them, however, but can still comment.
The way to get the question reopened is to edit it so that it is possible to answer and not a rant and then flag it for the mods to deal with or just wait to see if you get votes to reopen.
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3824 | What potential duplicate targets should I know about as a reviewer?
We have a few canonical questions on this site, i.e., questions that are often used as a target of duplicate closure or were even specifically designed for this purpose. What are they? Are there any non-obvious use cases?
Also, which of those mentioned hare are good candidates for tagging with canonical-question?
Can we make this more visible to askers?
@AnonymousPhysicist: We could use these new features (which is something we should do anyway), but keep in mind that this Q&A in its current state are directed at reviewers, not at askers.
Graduate Admission and Studies
How should I deal with becoming discouraged as a graduate student?
How does the admissions process work for Ph.D. programs in Country X?
How are Ph.D. applications evaluated in the US, particularly for weak or borderline students? Am I likely to get into school X?
Graduate school admission with a degree in a different field
I've been admitted to multiple PhD programs, how should I choose between them?
How long does it usually take to hear back for academic positions? Why haven't I heard back and when should I follow up?
Career path
University rank/stature - How much does it affect one's career post-Ph.D?
Is doing two PhDs a good path?
(How) Can I switch from field X to field Y after getting my PhD?
What are the criteria for degree revocation?
Publications and Conferences
Publishing
When should a supervisor be an author?
Does one need to be affiliated with a university to publish papers?
How do you judge the quality of a journal?
What does the typical workflow of a journal look like? How should I interpret a particular submission status?
Is my paper under review (or similar) for too long and if yes, how should I react?
Can I predict the fate of my manuscript (from information other than a decision letter)?
Predatory Publishers, Conferences, and Services
Questions asking for the reputability of an individual publisher are not suited for this site due to being shopping questions.
However, instead of closing them as such, they can be closed as duplicate of one of the following, which will give the asker sufficient guidance to answer the question themselves.
How do I identify predatory and low quality journals? With Beall's List gone, how can I tell if a journal is spam?
How can I determine whether a conference is reputable?
Should I pay for a certificate showing the quality of my manuscript before I submit it to a journal?
Other
How should I phrase an important question that I need to ask a professor?
How to effectively deal with Imposter Syndrome and feelings of inadequacy: "I've somehow convinced everyone that I'm actually good at this"
How can I find an old, obscure, or otherwise inaccessible paper when the usual methods fail?
Feel free to edit this answer to improve it. Please edit this answer instead of posting another answer.
I am not sure Is it acceptable to ask how a professor would like to be addressed through email? needs to be one. Please consider putting it in Others.
@scaaahu: I wouldn’t include it. It has been used as a duplicate target once so far and it doesn’t strike me as a question we get asked frequently either.
There do seem to be a large number of questions about addressing professors....
@Dawn: Okay, but that’s not exactly what the question suggested by Scaaahu is asking. Do you think it would be a good canonical anyway; if yes why? Otherwise, what question would be? Or do we need a dedicated one?
I think the answers on this one are pretty good. https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12346/how-to-address-a-professor-in-letter Although perhaps a dedicated one could be more comprehensive as a canonical post.
@Dawn: Please create a separate Meta question for this, asking whether we should use one of the existing questions as a canonical or create a dedicated one.
Is there a good pointer for mental health issues??
@ScottSeidman: Do you have any specific issue in mind that gets reiterated frequently?
depression, anxiety, adhd, ...
@ScottSeidman: But those are broad topics themselves. For example, there certainly isn’t one anxiety question to end all anxiety questions. This FAQ is for cases we have a bunch of very similar questions that can all be answered by one canonical Q&A or where questions are not suitable for this site and a canonical Q&A helps the asker to help themselves (or similar). I am not saying that there is no potential for canonical Q&As within mental health, but right now I don’t see it.
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4444 | Why are there so many "guests"?
There seems to be a huge number of very low-rep users called "guest." Is this the same individual, or a small number of individuals, who are using "guest" as a burner account? Does this violate either the terms or community norms of ASE?
(I am not the user "guest".) I often read the posts on this site and I do like guest's posts very much: Many times, the reality in academia is not so ethical as people here say in answers. "guest" often says those things as they are - not as they "should be" as most people here. This is the advantage of being anonymous: Of course, if you registered here with your name, you can not really talk about unethical practises with happen in reality.
All the information I give here is generally available and does not come from my moderator privileges.
First of all some general information on this:
Having multiple accounts is okay, as long as they do not do something that cannot be done with a single account, which includes almost all interactions of the accounts: How should sockpuppets be handled on Stack Exchange?
Unregistered accounts are based on cookies. They cannot do certain things such as voting. See: How do unregistered accounts work? and Why should I create an account?
The default avatar of any account is an identicon based on a hash of your IP or, if provided, your e-mail address. It is extremely unlikely that two identicons coincide by chance. See: How is the default user avatar generated?
Moderators have further tools to tell if two accounts belong to the same person.
Now, some observations and conclusions on the accounts in question:
They have the same avatar, so they very likely come from the same IP or provided the same e-mail address.
The alternative is that they use the identicon image as a manual avatar (like I use a picture of a glass head), but then again, they intend to be identified with each other.
They are unregistered, which makes the most common forms of sockpuppet abuse (in particular voting) unavailable to them.
If such accounts commit sockpuppet abuse, it is usually by circumventing rate limits, question or answer bans, or suspensions.
If you see any indication for this (or some other kind of sockpuppet abuse), please flag for moderator attention.
The default avatar...is an identicon based on a hash of your IP...It is extremely unlikely that two identicons coincide by chance Users sharing the same IP (e.g., users from the same institute) would share an identicon in many cases.
@user2768: I see no contradiction. If two users share the same IP, their identicons are identical (if no e-mail is provided) due to something other than chance.
There is no contradiction, sorry, I should have been more precise: I only intended to clarify a case that is probably reasonably frequent.
@user2768: reasonably frequent – That depends on what you consider to be “reasonably frequent” of course, but while two users may share the same IP at times (usually with a temporal distance), they also have to both use unregistered accounts (without providing an e-mail).
The default-avatar thing is a bit worrisome. IPv4's got a max of 32-bits of entropy; seems like an attacker could basically dictionary-attack to reverse the hash, determining someone's IPv4 from their avatar.. or do they have some sort of safeguard against it?
Yup, looks like it's a known issue. Avatar it is!
@Wrzlprmft Now I understand! The default avatar does not coincide for users with distinct email addresses (assuming a decent hash), it may coincide for users without email that share an IP.
@user2768 It uses MD5. It is salted at least and the salt is non-public.
Only mods know if two accounts belong to the same user and we obviously cannot say anything. So without commenting on this particular user, a single user having multiple accounts is sometimes fine, but sometimes a flagrant violation. You cannot have two accounts to up vote your own content or artificially increase your reputation. If you are suspended you cannot create a new account to circumvent the punishment.
Some people create new accounts to ask (or answer) something anonymously. That is a valid use, as long as your accounts never interact. Some really high rep users want to be able to do things as a lower rep user and that is okay, more or less.
The most common case of multiple accounts is people either losing their login info or not understanding the system. If your see this, you can leave them a comment about how to merge accounts (contact us link at the bottom of every page) or flag it. (In this particular case, we are aware of the multiple accounts so please do not raise a ton of flags.)
Thanks--I would have guessed that it was something like that, except that it seems to have been going on for a while now.. I appreciate the clarification.
@ElizabethHenning We're not the only community to have so many "guests", it's happening also at Mathematics Educators, and, from the style, I'd guess that in several cases they are the same person.
Are they all coming from YoYoDyne's internet address?
@joncuster: Who is YoYoDyne?
@anewguest - an apparently too obscure Buckaroo Banzai reference... YoYoDyne Propulsion...
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5058 | What is the use of the tag [guaranteed-admissions]?
I came across the tag guaranteed-admissions. Currently, it has fourteen questions (three of which are closed), and apparently, it doesn't make sense in any of them except this one (probably the tag originated from this question).
Do we really need this tag?
Thanks for bringing this up. As you say, most of the questions are mistagged; that we should fix those goes without saying. I'll do it in stages over the next few days so we don't flood the home page. Removing the tag altogether seems like a good idea to me, but let us see what others say.
@cag51 Always happy to contribute something. I, too, feel that the tag should be deleted.
I just removed the tag from three closed questions. All of them still contain graduate-admissions. I also orphaned a couple of other, just created, tags: camera-ready and update, both on the same closed question. Replaced them with a more general tag.
@cag51, I just did the last closed question. Now six remain and are all open questions.
Of the remains six, only one (the linked question) seems really focused on guaranteed admissions. The rest could safely lose the tag with graduate-admissions remaining. The last is a special case and is problematic for other reasons, having two distinct threads in the question.
@cag51 I've reduced the number to two questions. Both of them really do pertain to guaranteed or open admissions. I also added tag wiki to clarify the meaning. Perhaps this can be marked status-completed.
Sounds good...if you still want to nuke the tag (as you suggested below), I think that's fine; if you've decided instead to let it stay with those two questions, I think that's fine too. Marking this as status-completed either way.
@cag51. No, I've changed my mind on that. Those two questions are valid for the tag. Maybe at some point "open-admissions" and this one could be synonyms, if such appears. Open admissions is somewhat common for undergrad, but less so for grad school, I think. Especially at research institutions.
Currently, the fourteen questions tagged guaranteed-admissions seem to roughly lie in one of the following categories:
"What are my chances of getting admitted to program X?" - 6 questions
"Does X matter for graduate admissions? Will focusing on X make my application stronger?" - 5 questions
Completely off-topic / unclear - 2 questions
A question about a Guaranteed Admissions Program, that likely created the tag, as you pointed out.
So I agree that the tag is inappropriate for the first three categories, since admissions are not guaranteed in those contexts. And questions like this asking "Am I guaranteed to be admitted because of X?" are (1) almost always off-topic due to depending on individual factors, (2) do not need a separate tag beyond graduate-admissions.
Regarding the fourth category, I am not very familiar with such programs, but it seems having a tag could be useful if the scope of usage is restricted and made clear. One aspect I am not sure about is that such some universities seem to have such programs for undergraduate admissions, which would be off-topic here, and so should be left out of the scope.
My vote on this is:
Remove the tag from all the questions currently tagged except the original one.
Either:
Rename the tag to guaranteed-admissions-programs with a clear and narrow scope.
Delete the tag.
Agree with you. At least #1 should be done, i.e. remove the tag from the other questions.
The long tag name you suggest is problematic, especially with the phone UI. This is really just about admissions or graduate-admissions.
My preference would be to remove the tag all-together . Make it an orphan by removing it from some questions and retagging as necessary. It seems too specialized with only one really relevant question and not much chance of getting more. Out. Out, I say.
... retag some of the questions as necessary and keep this one for things that truly apply. This has just been accomplished, I think. Perhaps "open-admissions" and this one will wind up as synonyms. See the new wiki for the tag.
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5254 | Dealing with "how long until I hear back?" questions
We frequently get questions like this one, along the lines of "I submitted an application / had an interview, but haven't heard back after X days / weeks / months. Have I been rejected? At what point can I send a follow-up e-mail?" It is understandable that askers are anxious, but of course the fact is that no one here can tell them what the status of their application is.
It seems like we do not have a consistent policy for these; they are usually left open, but occasionally closed as a duplicate or "individual factors." As I see it, there are three possible options:
Make a canonical question "What is the usual hiring timeline for academic positions in the US and Europe? Why haven't I heard back?", and the caveats about how things vary widely. This is probably the "friendliest" thing to do.
Close the questions as "depends on individual factors," since we cannot predict how long things will take or how a follow-up e-mail would be perceived.
Leave the questions open. This seems to be the most common outcome now.
I'd be inclined toward one of the first two. Thoughts?
Edit/Update: A candidate question/answer has been posted here. Please feel free to edit to improve. If more severe changes are needed, let's make a new meta post.
I'll go ahead and copy the first two bullets into answers so people can click to (dis)agree. Additional options / answers welcome.
Note that we already have a canonical question regarding the same problem with peer reviews – not that the situation is entirely comparable.
I wonder if we should disaggregate the PhD positions here…. It seems they are very different than post-doc and faculty positions, at least in the US…
The hiring process is totally different, but the advice ("you will hear something when you hear something; we cannot help you read the tea leaves") is the same, I think. If there's more we should tell the US PhD applicants, I would suggest we start by adding that to the existing answer, and then we can break it off if it becomes too unwieldy.
Make a canonical question "What is the usual hiring timeline for academic positions in the US and Europe? Why haven't I heard back?", and the caveats about how things vary widely.
I think that it's common enough as a question that it's worth having a dupe target like this; I think if we close them all as individual factors, people will still end up answering them in comments with basically the same sentiment that would be in the dupe target. Better to not duplicate the effort.
Wouldn't it be better to make this applicable to a wider variety of countries, something like How does the admissions process work for Ph.D. programs in Country X??
I would agree, but the linked post has only two entries for countries outside of Europe and North America, and I wrote both of them. :-) So, I would suggest that we make the dupe target for Europe and North America only, and if someone asks about a different country, then it won't be a duplicate.
I think either is a good solution (and better than the status quo). Looking at it from the asker's perspective, though, I think being linked to a post that says "we can't answer your question, but here's how timelines generally work, and here's what might be happening behind the scenes" seems more welcoming than just closing the question. The sort of back-and-forth clarifications with the asker that you describe sometimes work out well, but often the asker (especially new users) become hostile or make well-meaning edits that don't address the problem.
As we get these types of questions in such large numbers, I think it would be good to have a canonical question to point them to, as it might lead some people to this question before asking a similar one themselves.
Seems like this is the way to go. I'm on travel this week, but will draft a duplicate target in a week or two.
@AnonymousM: As you say, the answer is usually “This can’t be answered; take a deep breath and try not to worry”. So the point of a canonical dupe-target is precisely to give that answer in a thorough, constructive, and tactful way. The fact that the answer is in some sense a non-answer makes no difference to the advantages of writing it up well once and for all.
It feels generic instead of canonical because it has no details and so is unanswerable. The example question in this post DOES have these details. I feel like the example question in this post would make a better canonical question than what is there currently.
I'm really not sure what you mean. The text in the canonical question is longer and more detailed than the text above. The only content from above that I removed was "in the US and Europe," because the general answer (it's impossible to tell) doesn't really change. If you want to make a suggestion like "change X to Y" or "add this sentence", then I (and the rest of the community) will consider it. [Upon rereading, I did rephrase one sentence, maybe that will scratch your itch.]
Close the questions as "depends on individual factors," since we cannot predict how long things will take or how a follow-up e-mail would be perceived.
Leave the question open unless it fits the typical scenario. Some such questions actually point to special circumstances that might affect the direction of an answer.
This would avoid the canonical answer from having too much "if this-then that".
Typical scenarios are asking after a few weeks. Typical answers are "You can ask but...".
Some such questions are asking for specific guidance on uncommon scenarios.
posted for complleteness
I think the usual caveats for canonical questions would apply; i.e., if someone asks something interesting that's not yet covered by the canonical post, then it's left open. This is why we still allow plenty of questions about graduate admissions despite the canonical Q.
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5329 | Moderation Strike is Over
Subject says it all: the moderation strike announced here is over. We moderators are satisfied with the negotiation results and are back at work. Flags raised during the strike will be handled over the next few days.
One other tidbit: when the company "unfeatured" the post announcing the strike, some users engaged in "civil disobedience" to make a main-site version of the announcement. This is now the third-highest-voted question on the site.
Now that the strike is over, I expect that we will put a "historical significance lock" on the above-linked post. This will keep the post visible in perpetuity while making it clear that this is not the usual type of question that we accept. Any other strike-related meta-posts-on-the-main-site will be reviewed individually, but I suspect only the above one is needed long-term.
Update: based on the strong response to Wrzlprmft's suggestion below, and the fact that we were within hours of the deadline for doing so, we have migrated the post to meta. So, this is all set.
Yes, please. When you lock that post, can you please insert a link here so later generations know the resolution? Thank you!
I suggest to migrate that post to Meta Academia for minimum confusion potential. It’s 59 days old right now, so we have one day to do this without CM help. Of course it should still be equipped with a note to explain what was going on.
Whatever you decide, you will have no objections from me.
And @StrongBad, thanks for doing that -- a most successful way to raise awareness!
"while making it clear that this is not the usual type of question that we accept" until of course some other agenda comes along which a vocal crowd of users thinks they should be allowed to protest against in the same manner. You might as well put a historical lock on it in the main site, just to remind others what some people think they should be allowed to get away with by just saying "community wants it"
Yes, you've made your opinion clear on the linked post.
Apparently, not clear enough, as it's looking like the same problem is going to reappear in the future
Some thoughts on lessons learned:
We had a serious spam wave and at least one seriously disruptive user who caused a lot of problems. Other than those two things, the site worked pretty smoothly. While there were some problematic interactions, most of it remained localized. The community really does moderate itself.
During the strike, many duplicate questions weren't closed as duplicates. A lot of these posts got considerable engagement. We might want to consider how we handle this in future -- should we leave popular posts open for a few days before closing as duplicates? Before the strike, I would have said no. Now, I am not so sure; it was nice to see so many new users engaging with the site.
A lot of moderation is "soft power": hand-holding new users, suggesting edits and related posts, and keeping the comments sections under control. It seems like little of this happened during the strike -- probably because the non-diamonds who usually help with this were also supporting the strike. It's really hard to measure how important this stuff is. On one hand, the site seemed to work perfectly fine without people doing that stuff. But on the other hand, I certainly noticed a few posts that might have led to interesting discussions and positive outcomes for the asker if anyone had been willing to jump in.
concerning the second point - this also ties into the question if some questions should be asked again because the situation might be different than 10 years ago when a question has been asked orginally. Because people are much more unlikely to add new answers to old questions than to new ones (as the very slow trickle in the "late answers" queue supports).
As another sign of the strike end, the Charcoal team has announced that the community-run anti-spam system SmokeDetector is back to running. The presence of large numbers of spam posts has arguably been one of the most visible consequences of the moderation strike, not least on Academia. With SmokeDetector working again, hopefully that'll be much less of an issue.
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5286 | Academia.SE Moderation Strike
Effective immediately, the moderators of Academia.SE (wrzlprmft, cag51, and Bryan Krause) are on strike. This is part of the network-wide action described here, and follows an Academia moderator resignation a few days ago. We will not perform any moderation functions until this situation is resolved. Other users are welcome to join us by refusing to perform moderation functions such as voting, voting to close and editing posts (but everyone will make their own choice; please don't harass users who continue to participate normally).
Why is this happening?
We moderators have been ordered not to intervene when AI-generated content is posted to our site, except under very limited circumstances. While the exact details are not public, even the publicly-available guidance effectively allows almost all AI-generated content site-wide, and admits that "this standard would exclude most suspensions issued to date." In other words: our policy banning AI-generated answers is unenforceable; automatically-generated content cannot be treated differently than human-generated content.
It is hardly necessary to explain why this is a problem generally (and others already have). But here on Academia.SE, we are particularly concerned because many of our users are asking for advice on life-altering career decisions. In such a setting, automatically-generated content is not a mere nuisance, but can cause irreparable damage to someone's life. While we recognize that AI-generated content is increasingly difficult to detect, and there will be false positives and false negatives, the current policy (don't do anything at all) is the worst possible response.
Is this an overreaction?
Not really, this seems to be our only option short of allowing AI-generated content to run rampant over our network. Moderators network-wide have been pushing back against this policy for a week already to no avail. On the contrary, we've been told about another policy in the pipeline that will make the situation even worse. And the company has historically shown little flexibility even when they were clearly wrong**; as a result company-moderator trust is not very high.
When will this end?
Our sole demand is that any network-wide policies must allow this stack to delete the majority of automatically-generated content and message/suspend users who post it. We acknowledge that there will be false positives and false negatives, and so we are willing to take guidance. But a policy that effectively allows all automatically-generated content is unacceptable.
Alternatively, this will end when we all get fired and new moderators are elected. That's fine, we don't get paid (even the swag we were promised never arrived), and there is little point in sticking around so we can impotently preside over a hellscape where bots talk to bots. In that case....we appreciate you for having elected us; so long, and thanks for all the fish.
** For context: in 2019, a popular moderator was fired and slandered publicly; after a huge uproar, the company issued a lawyer-speak apology but refused to reinstate the moderator. Instead, their solution was to form a "moderator council" to make us feel heard, but the council never had much influence and has since disbanded. Even so, the individual community managers have been great, and we had successfully built a certain amount of trust before this incident destroyed everything again.
One of the StackOverflow moderators posted a good "how did we get here" post over on their Meta: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/424979/7233542
Jon Ericson, former SE moderator and former SE employee (CM), also has a series of blog posts commenting on the situation at https://jlericson.com/
Very well written, thanks. Let me also add that here we've been particularly careful in not suspending unnecessarily for AI-generated content, and that we suspended only in blatantly abusive cases.
@Philippe, why did you remove the featured tag?
@henning I guess either to support the strike and help get the word out or in a misguided effort because they are embarrassed.
@henning Unless he had talked with the mod team about it, he is violating his own policies by doing so.
@cag51 The company did not actually issue an apology, in the sense of admitting that the termination was unjustified.
Update 7 June: No time for a summary now, but Phillippe posted some data (from StackOverflow) that they used when crafting this policy here. It is an interesting read. I wrote an Academia.SE-specific response here.
Wow the edit is depressingly similar to my experience as a reddit mod for one of the biggest subreddits around the same time. They made their own councils after really stepping in it with the redesign, breaking a lot of features of reddit, after already tarnishing the relationship with mods by not supporting them with keeping the site sane. Now they're in the midst of their own backlash. It's very interesting watching two of the most popular websites undergoing similar turmoil.
I think this is the only valid response to such abysmal decisions. One thing I wonder, is it possible to post this message (or a shorter one) to the main page? I feel quite many (newer) users don't even know meta exists and it would be great to inform them, too.
This is featured, so it’s visible (on the desktop site at least) from the main page. I don’t think it would be appropriate to post meta content there directly (though if you did, the mods would not stop you at the moment…). If you mean a banner or something, that’s not something we can do ourselves.
@cag51 It's no longer featured. SE staff is actively unfeaturing meta posts about the strike.
Although it's not featured, it is under "hot meta posts".
Much respect and full support to @cag51, to @wrzlprmft and to @BryanKrause.
A strike song for you :-)
It's preposterous for SE Inc. to enact this policy - and this just illustrates how the mechanism of them dictating policies arbitrary is itself broken and inappropriate.
Please don't hesitate to ask me - or users in general - for concrete measures of support to the extent that you need them. And yes, that definitely includes off-site action, and even monetary support if there are legal expenses or if someone needs to take time off their day job etc.
I personally believe the strike's demands should be expanded and deepened, as I elaborated in my MSE post regarding the strike; but like I said - full support for your current demand.
Sorry, what was this all about?
SE has this page from 8 months ago https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/421831/temporary-policy-generative-ai-e-g-chatgpt-is-banned?cb=1
where they state that AI-assisted content generation is not allowed. Are they rewriting history or simply playing with the moderator?
What do you mean by rewriting history? A number of individual sites discussed and implemented generative-AI policies after the launch of chatGPT late in 2022. Late May 2023 is when Stack Exchange (the company) imposed a new policy (without disclosing crucial details to the userbase at large), effectively overruling the previous policies. The strike was in response to this policy.
Since you went back on Meta to 8 months ago, perhaps you could look around the time that this was originally posted in late May and after - SE went back on their pronouncement and changed the rules, including implementing secret mod-only rules.
As others have said, the whole point of the strike was because SE was unilaterally disallowing us from enforcing policies like the one you found. Their new policy (secret at the time, but now public) was that AI-generated comment could only be removed if the author freely admitted that it was AI generated. The strike succeeded and policies like the ones you found are still in force.
@JonCuster I have like 30secs to dedicate to browsing random stuff. The Meta I posted is one that was "promoted" on the top right box "Featured on Meta". I think this content is curated, isn't it?
I fortunately have no interest whatsoever in running all the crap SE publishes on Meta.
I still wonder how much time can one dedicate to help such malignant entity, though.
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4845 | Should we relax our policy on profanity (e.g., when quoted or used in an anecdote)?
StackExchange generally requires professional, respectful discourse. As such, profanity is generally disallowed site-wide. But, this is applied differently on different sites: as noted here, for example, Literature.SE requires that "profane" words be spelled out in full when they are being discussed.
Here on Academia.SE, we last discussed this in 2014, and the consensus was roughly:
profanity should be edited out of answers; if impossible, the answer should be deleted.
Recently, there was a kerfuffle when an answer contained an anecdote in which the following line was added to a codebase:
# For fuck's sake, stop using anal as a variable or in a name!!
This was correctly flagged and edited (to remove the "f-word") according to the existing policy, but some users (not unreasonably, IMO) felt that our policy was too strict and should be relaxed.
So: should we allow profanity when non-abusive and germane to the topic under discussion? If so, what restrictions (if any) should there be on this?
To make this answerable, I strongly suggest that replies to this question should include a suggested update to our policy, along with the rationale. Any answer that contains a clear policy suggestion, does not conflict with a higher-voted answer, earns at least a +5 net score, and earns twice as many upvotes as downvotes will be adopted. If no answer containing a clear policy recommendation reaches this threshold, we will keep our policy unchanged.
Hmmm, according to the policy you link to and the answer given there you have just broken the rule in this post. See the first paragraph: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/22233/361883
Yes, this is the SE-wide policy, but as I noted, it is enforced differently on different sites. It is possible the network will eventually "crack down" and require all sites to moderate all swear words, no exceptions. For example, the code of conduct is "non-negotiable"; all mods must agree to enforce it as written. But for now at least, we seem to have the latitude to decide how to enforce the profanity policy.
You seem, in the last paragraph, to be asking for policy recommendations, but not allowing general discussion in answers. How is that useful? Any policy needs to be applied sensibly, not mechanically. Since this isn't a policy suggestion I'll give an answer here. If the OP of the answer quoted has instead written "For God's sake, stop..." it would be deeply offensive to some people, though not including profanity at all. You are opening a minefield here. Had the offensive word been used repeatedly for emphasis as a statement of the OP rather than once in a quote it would be a problem. Not here
I asked for a proposed policy and a rationale; I am completely confident that this will lead to extensive "general discussion." Indeed, I'm not quite sure what other option there is: an answer proposes a particular course of action, the comments discuss it, and the votes judge it. An answer that does not make a clear proposal risks being so wishy-washy that everyone upvotes it but no one agrees on what it means.
Hmmm. Do I seem wishy-washy to you?
Not at all. If you want to post an answer that does not contain a policy recommendation, I will not delete it. I just caution that highly-voted answers with no clear recommendation cannot be retroactively turned into a clear policy after the fact. I have updated the post to reflect this.
And you are including a mechanical rule for changing the policy. Now we've really gone meta. Rules have unforeseen consequences as does the current rule. They require deep thought, not five upvotes.
Full of criticism today! :-). We have used this voting procedure before without ill effects; further, general policies usually leave room to be tempered by the community's judgment (in deciding what to flag) and moderators' judgment (in deciding how to respond to flags). I will also point out that in the original kerfuffle, I invited others to post on meta directly; the advantage to posting on meta oneself is that one has the freedom to pose the question as they like.
Just for better understanding, as for English isn't my mother tongue and I barely know it. Are vulgarity and profanity synonyms? Because I always thought that profanity involves religious beliefs being scored or insulted, while vulgarity not. At least it is so in a literal translation prone to faux-ami mistake.
@Alchimista You're probably confusing profanity with blasphemy.
Update: this discussion is still open, but based on the preliminary results, I have uncensored the original post that sparked all this.
@Massimo Ortolano I see, thank. Kind of faux-amis indeed.
@MassimoOrtolano: profanity still has a strong religious meaning. It was extended to vulgarity but the root is in religion (or actually being against religious things). In French the meaning is still very close to the original. It is interesting that in Italian it is much closer to the English meaning (volgarità)
@cag51: I still liked very much my second version :)
@WoJ Admittedly, also in Italian the distinction between profanità (the direct translation of profanity) and blasfemia (blasphemy) is a bit subtle. Blasfemia is related to what one says or the way one represents holy images to insult religion. Profanità is instead more related to actions, as I understand it. It's worth noticing that in certain Italian regions, especially Veneto and Tuscany, blasphemy is fairly widespread in the dialects and not uncommon in everyday conversations.
@MassimoOrtolano: we have more or less the same with "profanité" and "blasphémie" - profanié being still very close to religious aspects (but yes, the meaning moved towards vulgarity as well with time)
Funny, in German "profan" (as an adjective) is basically just the opposite of "religious" or "religiously connotated", or something like "worldly" - no offensive connotation coming with it in any way.
@Alchimista There may be some technical distinction, but in American English at least they don't mean different things, although "profanity" is only words and "vulgarity" could include actions, gestures, and images.
@Vhj I am Italian and I understand profanity as just offensive to a religion, perhaps at most and as an extension, to a otherwise respected institution, as in French. I guess Massimo just referred to the meaning in English.
As Massimo commented, in Italian profanity is a hard action (eg one can profanate a church or a grave, while blasphemy is, in short, insulting or expressing disrespectful thinking.
When will be the outcome of this poll?
@user111388 - the outcome seems clear already, so I think we can consider the relaxed policy "in effect" now. We'll probably remove this post from the "featured" list at/around the end of the month.
A French perspective on this predominantly US site, but also used by non-US users.
Our perspective on profanity and pornography is wildly different than in the US. We commonly use words such as "oh putain" (~"oh shit") in professional situations. Context matters very much - I just told my 14 years old son who was on a game chat that this is not acceptable.
Same goes for pornography. Watch the end of this gymnastics TV show of the 80's (NSFW and for puritan eyes outside of France I guess) that was broadcasted in the morning (around 10 am) on the second TV channel (out of the three we had): https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7ezxsx. What you see is from the archives of the official French institution that preserves TV programs (INA).
I was a teenager at the time and we got extremely interested in fitness, that we watched till the very end. Now, 40 years later, we enjoy the fact that we had such freedom (I am not even starting with what was at 19:45, right before the main news program of the day)
Academia is a site for grown-ups. Grown-ups know that words such as fuck exist and that people sometimes use them. When I quote General Cambronne who replied to the English "Merde!", I will not change it to "Selles!" (the medical word for excrements), or "M***e!" because everyone would laugh instead of understanding that it was a courageous act.
I am offended by some words (such as "homeopathy"). Does that mean that they should be either explained in an allegoric way ("medicine for idiots"), or shortened to "hom***" (and then be mistaken with "homophobia")?
There is a moment where an adult sees things that they do not like and the world will not bend to them. Including homeopathy.
My proposal: be strict on ad-hominem attacks, leave alone words because different people see them differently. If the words are really added for the sake of being vulgar that is something else. A comment like the one in the code was funny - there was no malice from the desperate developer who had to anal this and that.
You do not realize how the nipple-gate was seen here: as a sandbox fight between toddlers. It was not even funny, it was quite frightening that a breast seen on TV by accident raised to national issue and warranted a time shift in such broadcasts so that someone can press a button to avoid that in the future.
EDIT: I do not think that changing the rules will change much in reality.
People will still flag posts with "homeopathy" as vulgar (see, I am trying to decrease the tension here), and then what is left to the mods? To decide whether this is a really vulgar word, or a less vulgar one? Whether in that context it is acceptable? If I was a mod I would have a hard time deciding (I moderated plenty of wild places back in the 90's and was part of the Angel Team that fought with early pedo-pornography - so I have seen my fair share of dark and vulgarity). Especially on a site like Academia where real, intended vulgarity is not common.
+1, this is basically what I was going to propose. One suggestion: in the bolded part, maybe change "leave alone" to "leave alone (within reason)"? If someone writes a decent answer but puts "fucking" in front of every noun, I think we should consider forcing an edit in this case (indeed, we might get push-back from the network if we routinely had answers with this kind of "over the top" profanity).
The "within reason" part is just afterwards, with the example of my code. What is vulgarity is very, very subjective unfortunately.
And requires judgement. That is where the original change went wrong. IMO it should be restored.
@Buffy: I actually was adding my "EDIT" when you were writing that, this was an afterthought of my answer. OTOH, I like the new version very much :) - it may give some insight into the problem raised in that meta post.
Well, most policies do leave plenty of wiggle room to exercise judgment -- but the existing policies on profanity (particularly the SE one) actually didn't. The community had gone out of its way to explicitly state: "no profanity, no exceptions." You may not agree with this policy (neither do I), but I believe the original change was handled correctly under the then-current consensus. As they say, if you don't like the law, blame congress, not your lawyer.
Some context: Nipplegate
As an Italian, for whom the perspective on profanity and pornography is very similar to the French one, I absolutely agree with your point of view. As a mod, though, I see the relaxation of our policy difficult to implement, especially when questions reach the Hot Network Questions list, attracting users across the whole network.
What do you find offensive or vulgar about the term homeopathy? I think there's a difference between words that collectively are acknowledged as offensive/swear words/etc. vs a random word that one person might find vulgar for some reason.
@TylerH: while this was a joke (everyone has something that offends them, and is completely neutral for someone else), homeopathy is one of my personal crusades, together with other paranormal events that I used to actively track when I was younger. At some point I publicly stated (during a radio audition I was invited to) that I would immediately switch my PhD if someone could show me actual "paranormal activity" (because, you know, Nobel Prize). I ended without the Nobel Prize because everything I was shown was somehow not available when I was there.
@TylerH (cont'd) Between eggs flying in apartments (when I was there the "field" was unfortunately "disturbed" and I could not witness the effect), ghosts in houses (I spent quite a few nights with the ones who "normally see then every night") and other craziness there is plenty to do. Today it is mostly homeopathy because it is common in France, the country of rationality. I used to run a blog (now defunct) about these stories (some were really extraordinary).
@TylerH (...)words that collectively are acknowledged as offensive(...)" → the problem is that this collectivity wildly varies between cultures. When I say "shit" or "fuck" in the US (at work for instance), people react. When I say "putain" or "merde" in France, nobody cares (when this is a natural reaction, not something intended to be vulgar)
@WoJ People may not react in France, but I believe you recognize them as profanity/curse words, even if they are not taboo to speak in professional settings. The fact you tell your kid not to use them is evidence of that. It sounds like your issue is with the field of homeopathy and not the word itself.
@TylerH: of course I recognize them as curse words, but they are part of the language. When the coder in my original answer used "fuck" it is because he meant it. he did not mean "please", or "would you be kind enough" bur "for fuck's sake". I quoted his desperation (which was with anal and all the things you do with it, of which nobody seems to be worried about :)).
@TylerH (cont'd) The point is that hiding it behind "f--k" is so childish that it hurts. When I say "s--t" or "abor--on", or "g-d" (something I recently discovered somewhere) - is it less offensive? You do not recognize these words anymore? Or the fact that they are beeped makes them less offensive? (by "you" I do not mean you Tyler of course, it is a generic "you" or whatever it is called in English EDIT, it is actually called "Generic you", I learned something today)
@WoJ I agree with the gist of your answer, I just think the reliance on a made-up, non-offensive term halfway through serves only as a distraction to the argument.
@TylerH - I understand. The whole argument is flawed and there are no good solutions anyway.
@WoJ this is a good explanation of why many Jewish people omit the "o"; in essence it is because it is forbidden in the Torah to destroy the name of the Jewish deity, and written text is often transient.
@DavidH: this is interesting thanks. I have nothing about people beeping-out words. I find it childish (except the reason you gave for Jews and similar ones - everyone to their own) but this is my problem. What I do not want is that someone else forces that on me because they are offended.
@WoJ I don't think this is just a cultural difference, but something that varies highly within each culture as well. For example, I never hear my French or Italian colleagues swear in professional settings.
@jakebeal: it will depend on the context. I work in high tech and research for 25 years, in very large companies. When the context is right (friendly environment, usually between French) you will hear some oh putain or et merde, there is nothing vulgar in these expressions when used in the right place with the right tone.
As an Australian, I concur. The current SE policy is bloody ridiculous American puritanism. Oh, wait, am I allowed to say "bloody" on here, when it's not used that way by Americans?
@jakebeal The key is to know the context. If I'm in the lab or a meeting with just Italian colleagues, my PhD students and such, I swear a lot. If I'm at a meeting with my international colleagues I don't swear at all because I know that it's less tolerated and, moreover, English swearing is not as fun as Italian's, which has some very peculiar expressions, especially those coming from the dialects. When I had lectures in Italian with Italian students, I'd sworn occasionally, now that I have lectures in English for an international audience I don't swear.
@MassimoOrtolano English swearing is not as fun as Italian's - this is the same as in French. The (light, well placed) swearing often adds fun / humor to what you want to convey. But indeed, this works best within the language, though I like to add some when speaking English as well.
A slightly stricter option.
Proposal: Profanity should generally be edited out of posts; however, it may be retained as needed to facilitate unredacted quotes (actual or hypothetical), or discussions about language.
Rationale:
The code-of-conduct requires that language be respectful and professional. Profanity is rarely necessary, and is often perceived as unprofessional or disrespectful (even if this is not the intent). Further, new users who see profanity may assume that "anything goes." So, answers like "hell no..." should be edited to "no..."; answers that cannot be edited should be deleted. This is largely the policy now.
But, there is no reason to avoid using profanity when it is germane to the discussion and used in a reasonable manner. On this site, that includes quotes (actual or hypothetical), and discussions about academic language. So, profanity in these cases will generally no longer be removed.
The other key change is the word "generally": individual cases may be judged individually. This does not mean that exceptions will be granted to anyone who complains; rather, we will consider each post's overall tone and the degree to which removing the profanity would weaken or obfuscate the post.
Summing up: Keep the language as clean as possible, but retain profanity where necessary.
Is there a distinction between profanity and abusive language, e.g. racial slurs? The latter can be (and recently has been) also used in a quote, but I'm not sure how much quoting a racial slur adds to the discussion.
Good point. This answer only explicitly addresses profanity. Whether the second bullet should also apply to racial slurs is a question we could decide now (by adding an answer and getting it over the threshold) or we could leave it undefined and cross that bridge when we get there.
The rationale does not match the proposal. Why should quotes be different from nonquotes? Simply being a quote does not make something "germane." Also, this proposal is ludicrously convoluted.
Not necessarily equal to my personal view, but this has been addressed on MSE before:
Are expletives (cursing, swear words or vulgar language) allowed on SE sites?
Quoting from Jeff's answer:
Using expletives is not acceptable behavior on any Stack Exchange site and is a violation of the Code of Conduct, even on Meta. There are a very small handful of exceptions (such as if you were talking about the word itself on a language site), but in general you should not use expletives anywhere, under any circumstances. If you can't effectively communicate what you need to say without resorting to lowest common denominator cursing, then keep it to yourself.
I think it's fine for Academia.SE to decide how we interpret the "exceptions" and that this interpretation could be quite broad, but we should also consider the broader SE policy for context. Yes, there is almost certainly a "industry/corporate US culture" assumption built in to this policy when that culture does not describe many of the users here, but also we are on a website principally operated by a US company.
It's worth noting that the US-centric view of Stack Exchange has been repeatedly criticised along the years (this one a recent example) and maybe local "rebellions" to parts of the policies might lead to a global rethinking.
+1 The last thing we need is a complicated rule for this.
@MassimoOrtolano I don't have any problem with SE being the private plaything of a few Americans who have the delusion that it is something important. Indeed, watching them play out their fantasies can be quite amusing at times.
A subtly different suggestion from the previous proposals:
A similar take to cag51's suggestion, where profanity is permitted when it adds to the discussion, such as in a direct quote or if using a substitute would obscure the discussion significantly. However, profanity that does not contribute significantly to the question is edited out, as in general it is not helpful and breaks a good rule of thumb for clarity: not to use more words than is necessary to get the point across.
I would suggest, however, that the existing policy continue to be enforced in the case where the word in question has a history of being used to oppress and dehumanise a minority group. Examples include racial slurs such as "the N-word". This reflects policies that exist elsewhere in academia such as this policy from Cambridge University English department. Quoting from the linked page:
Offensive and highly charged terms (such as the n-word) can have a detrimental impact on the ability of BAME [Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic] students to learn.
Though this site is not primarily for students, I think the sentiment can be transferred that the use of racial slurs, even in quotations, can have a significant negative impact on the ability of minority groups to have a pleasant and benificial experience on academia.stackexchange. For this reason, I don't think that the small added benefit of clarity is justified in the case of racial slurs and other charged language.
This is in line with the StackExchange code of conduct that states
When in doubt, don't use language that might offend or alienate.
I completely agree with the fact that ad-hominem attacks (and related terms) are not acceptable. My problem arose from the fact that "fuck" was edited out of a quote, where it was not only the artistic expression of a desperate dev, but also funny and not insulting for anyone. It is just a word which some population will faint on when it reaches their adult ears, and others just go on with their life. BTW I suggested in my answer of the initial question to change it if it bothers OP (and asking such a question means that it bothers them, which is enough to change even for selfish reasons)
Then I think we are in agreement; I guess this post just clarifies that certain language can constitute an "attack" in pretty much any context. I agree that, at least as far as I'm aware, the word "fuck" in your example does not risk serious harm to any group of people.
I don't understand this answer. As a hypothetical, suppose that a new user, a BAME undergraduate from the UK, posted a question regarding how to deal with the use of a racial slur by a lecturer, and included a textual quote that turned out to be essential to the discussion; the blanket ban as worded here would have a detrimental impact on this user's ability to get help from this site. (cont.)
It will (should) be extremely rare that racial slurs (and other words covered by this answer) be 'needed to facilitate quotes or discuss language', and I agree that it's more than reasonable to heighten the scrutiny when words in this class are involved, but a blanket ban without any flexibility sounds liable to undesired effects.
It is hard to state this in "policy language", but I think that such things should only be removed (other than when some abuse is involved), if they are unrelated to the "meaning and sense" of the post. If an expletive or other possibly hurtful language contributes nothing to the meaning, then it can be removed without changing the intent of the writer.
But English is, since its creation, a rather profane language. Even Shakespeare used some rather, for the day, harsh language.
But I'll also note that it doesn't have to be profane or abusive to offend people. Even a seeming innocuous phrase like "...thank God..." will be deeply offensive to possibly millions of people.
Actually, compared to Italian or possibly French, English is not in the slightest profane. But in any case, it's not clear what you propose.
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5087 | What can/should be done to improve usage of the tag [professors]?
Following up on the analogous question about the students tag.
In the linked question, we decided to deprecate the students tag, since over half the questions on this site involve students in some capacity.
The professors tag has similar issues; it is so broad as to be meaningless. Questions tagged professors range from questions about teaching by professors, to research done by professors, to becoming a professor, to communicating with professors, to misconduct by professors, and much more.
So, what should we do? I'll make my proposal as an answer, but other suggestions are welcome.
Whatever we decide, there are so many questions with this tag that we probably won't retroactively change all the historical questions, as we are doing with students. Rather, we can define what the tag should mean going forward, and we can fix non-compliant historical questions as we come across them.
For new questions in which the tag is just a bit of "noise", I've been removing it. I only remember one question in which that seemed like a bad idea, so left it in place. I'll try to spend a bit of time looking at some of the existing questions.
It might be worth starting a list (probably in an answer) of suggested replacements for which "professorship" doesn't work as described already. Where it should be removed. Possible replacements. The students tag is moving along. This one will take longer to get it right, but we can start, at least. But some suggestions would help.
@Buffy - I added some retagging guidance to my answer....though I do not feel strongly, so if you want to change the guidance, please feel free to make edits directly, no need to hash it out with me first.
Proposal: Rename professors to professorship, and change the definition to be something like:
Queries specific to professorship, as distinct from all other academic staff positions. This tag should not be used for queries that could equally apply to researchers or instructors who are not professors.
Rationale: My initial thought was to eradicate the tag completely, just as we did for students (and for the same reason). But on balance, there are some aspects of "professorship" that are distinct from other research and/or teaching positions. For example:
This question about professors being fired due to their public statements. The concept of "professorship" has a whole tradition of academic freedom not really present in other positions; thus, this question would be very different if the speakers were senior researchers at a private company.
This question, about moving from a Canadian tenured position to one in the US. This question is closely tied to "professorship" specifically; the answers would be very different if OP were a post-doc, an instructor, or an industrial researcher.
Retagging guidance as suggested by Buffy (please feel free to change or add to this list directly):
Questions about research, misconduct, ethics, advising, supervision, etc. should use the appropriate tag.
Questions about teaching by a professor should use teaching or coursework
Questions about advisors should use advisor; questions about being an advisor should use supervision.
Questions about faculty hiring can be tagged professorship; however, general questions from beginning students are probably a better fit for career-path.
Questions about being a professor that could not equally apply to non-professors should be tagged professorship. It is fine to also use other tags usually associated with professorship, such as tenure or administration, as needed.
I expect that in many cases, the question is already tagged correctly otherwise, and the only thing to do is to remove the professors tag.
There does not seem to be much dissent from this, so I will accept this answer and rename "professors" to "professorship." Like I said in the question, I do not plan to do much retroactive retagging, though I won't interfere if others want to.
This all seems about right.
@Buffy - I just noticed there is a "faculty" tag. Seems to me this should be a synonym of "professorship." I know you keep a close eye on the tags; any thoughts?
I think that merging them is a good idea, but it should take some days/weeks of prep time. Not all of the 28 questions with the faculty tag are really about professorship. Some use faculty-application as well, which is more appropriate for some. I can play with it, but don't want to affect the active list too much at once.
If you agree, I'll change the ones that use faculty where it doesn't imply professorship. Then, the rest will be updated after a merge without affecting the active list.
Concur, thanks!
I think it is time to merge the two tags. Look over the remaining faculty tagged questions, but I think they all work with professorship.
@Buffy - done!!
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4414 | Case Study: First Answer Bias
This is to share a case study about the "fastest gun in the west" issue discussed on Academia.SE here and more broadly here.
On this question, the sequence of events was:
Buffy, Guest, and I all submitted answers on literally the same minute.
Buffy's answer was immediately upvoted, and from there people piled on. Within a ~day, he was ahead by 40 votes; I think the score was something like 100-60. Our answers are very similar, so it's a bit strange that there was such a difference (I blame the dog picture...).
Then, OP accepted my answer, meaning that my answer is displayed first, despite having fewer votes. The gap quickly began to shrink, and a few days later, I am ahead by 10, 216-205.
Since neither of us over edited our answers, this is a clear illustration that the top-rated answer gets a huge bias. [For that matter, I've seen similar behavior in close voting -- hard to stop the close train once it gets rolling -- but that's a separate topic.]
Of course, I don't particularly care about my imaginary points, but it does seem like an obvious weakness:
Better answers submitted after ~10 votes are in are unlikely to be read
This affects new users who can't even comment yet
As Buffy points out, the same is true for downvotes too (though it seems like we downvote less on this SE than others), and arbitrary downvotes are a sure way to discourage new users.
We've discussed this before, but I guess my questions are:
What could we do, mechanically? Does SE support solutions like hiding the vote totals for the first few hours, or is there simply nothing that can be done without getting the powers that be to write entirely new code?
If we do have the power to make such changes, has the community already decided not to? The questions I linked seemed open to such changes, but nothing happened.
For this particular case, you can blame voters from Hot Network Questions ;) . Anyway, what is the purpose of hiding the vote totals for the first few hours? Do you mean that voters are biased to already highly-upvoted answers? Does that also include hiding it from the OP? Will that also affect the answer order, since one of the sort is by "votes"?
The point is: does it really matter?
Actually, "piling on" by voters also happens in the negative direction. I think that the more likely reason for this behavior is the inclusion of some simple phrase within the answer that people either especially like or dislike for some reason. I've seen both quick up and down voting on some of my recent answers. Some of them are hard to explain.
@MassimoOrtolano - I would advocate the perspective that it does, particularly for newbies on SE, as many/most SE privileges are rep based. Post 3k rep points, perhaps not so much. The psychological biases that people carry in voting (this post being an example) can potentially become a barrier to contributions. e.g. X saw a question that he could contribute to, something beyond the existing 5 answers, with the top answer at +40. We have a problem if X thinks "Why bother posting an answer, no one will bother reading past the top 2 answers. It will collect say 2-3 votes and will stay buried".
@MassimoOrtolano (contd.) While SE has inserted badges to denounce this reasoning, we perhaps can't deny that it does indeed happen. Even more so on the relatively softer Academia.SE, as opposed to other more technical stacks, where the validity of an answer is more objective (yes or no). In my early days on SE, I personally found this to be some sort of rich-gets-richer system, and it was pretty discouraging. What this post does is, it very interestingly brings out is a case study perspective on this issue, which totally supports the observation. I think it warrants a discussion.
Andrew - Yes, I think it's clear voters are biased to upvoted answers, and hiding vote totals for the first few hours would force people to think critically before voting. This may introduce additional complications, so I'm not necessarily advocating that particular solution just yet, but offhand it seems like a good idea.
Massimo - I think it does matter, though admittedly more for new users and downvotes than for upvotes on high-rep users, Buffy - agree, updated my post, The_Dark_Side - agree, well said, thank you.
I think hiding vote totals for a bit isn't a bad idea, but it has the downside of someone finding the question and not knowing what the community thinks the best answer is for a while. Maybe not important on this site as much, but I could see SE being reluctant to implement it on a technical site, lest someone follow really bad advice that was actually downvoted to hell but no one could see
@TheDarkSide, for the record, I will seldom post to a question with five answers if I think that, collectively, they provide a sufficient answer to the OP. For me, having a big rep only means that I'm being more useful to people than otherwise. But it also gives me the courage to occasionally say things that I'm pretty sure will be controversial. Not everyone wants to read some things that they need to read - especially on ethical issues (and copyright).
This probably belongs more on the main meta, though it's been discussed there already as well.
Here is an example of negative piling on: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/124038/75368. I say some things that (IMO) are a bit misinterpreted, but that people really don't want to hear, whether accurate or not.
@Buffy - Haha, I was thinking the same thing when I saw that thread :-) Though in that case, I was rather hoping to see some insight about why this would or would not be illegal/unethical/messy, rather than just advising to take the safe course and avoid risking any blowback (which is what I would do, since I don't want to find out "what could go wrong" the hard way)
If you attempt to solve this by hiding vote totals, you also need to randomize the order of posts seen by different viewers. Otherwise, a reasonably good answer at the top of the list will also collect "that's OK, upvote it, move on to the next thread" bias. The basic issue, IMO, is that people in general like expressing their opinion (i.e. voting) more than they like mental effort (i.e. choosing carefully what to vote for).
I think the problem might come because people only vote on the posts they read. Top posts get read, bottom posts get neglected. Especially on Academia where the answers tend to be lengthy.
It's not something we can solve as academia.SE.
As you noted, it's been a known thing for many years over at meta.stackexchange.com (Fastest Gun in the West Problem). They even have a likely solution noted there, which is what Reddit adopted some years back. I imagine there must be counterarguments as to why that isn't a great idea. But regardless, so far as I know it isn't something that Stackexchange is planning to deal with :-(
Some of this seems not to be "first answer bias".
You say that when your question became "accepted", then your answer started quickly accumulating more upvotes at a faster rate than buffy's, even though it was the other way around before. This seems to be like a "top answer bias".
I disagree with the other answer, which says that "it's not something we can solve as academia.SE". I believe this has been already fixed on Meta.SE where instead of sorting the questions by the number of votes (which I think is the default here):
the questions can be sorted by most recently active:
It's possible that MSE also has "votes" set as default and I just changed it some time long ago to "active" without noticing, but either way we could easily make "active" the default instead of "# of votes" so that the first answer (or most voted answer) doesn't get an unfairly disproportional number of upvotes. We could even make a new one called "random".
I do think these things would improve the site, because I find the "chain-reaction voting" to be a much bigger issue here than on any other site I'm active on (I have 1000+ rep on 7 sites and 150+ rep on 26 sites, and I created one site currently in Beta from scratch in Area51: so I've been on SE almost 24/7 for a while, as anyone who lead the launch of a site would be able to appreciate). I recently wrote a Meta post here about "chain-reaction voting" (on Academia.SE) too: How do people here feel about chain-reaction downvoting of posts?.
Let me conclude with my opinion about why "top answer bias" (not necessarily "first answer bias") happens:
I can at least speak from my own experience on Academia.SE: Recently I read an answer by BryanKrause for which I commented "this might be one of the best answers I've ever seen on SE, and I've saved it somewhere for me to re-read over and over again later", and I upvoted. However it was a long answer with a lot of substance, which I read slowly and nodded my head to the entire time. By the end of reading the post and reflecting so much over it, I remember being too exhausted to read all the other answers with the same amount of attention. I just double checked and it's true that I didn't upvote the 2nd or 3rd listed questions either!
Often people read the first answer they see, and they might put a decent amount of energy into processing it or commenting on it, then they move back to whatever they were working on or whatever SE site they were on before being the HNQ list drew them here. If the answers were set by default to "random" or "active" instead of "votes" or "oldest", then the "first answer bias" or "top answer bias" could be eliminated, without too much disadvantage.
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5133 | Why was the "monetary benefit for winning grants" question closed?
This question seems very straightforward to me: do professors get any financial "rewards" for winning grants? It seems like OP was wondering whether this explained why professors (who already have tenured, relatively well-paid positions) spent so much time applying for and executing grants.
Why was this closed? It looks like there were three votes for "details or clarity" and two votes for "too broad."
I don't understand the complaints about details/clarity at all; the question seems perfectly clear to me.
The "too broad" complaint makes a bit more sense, since the question does also ask if the same logic would apply to industry researchers. But this seems like a matter that can be resolved with a quick edit rather than closure.
I propose we reopen this question, and moving forward, I would encourage people to only vote to close if the question is truly unsalvageable. But maybe I am missing something -- other thoughts?
Update: Appreciate the discussion. Some good points on both sides, so we'll let the normal voting process play out rather than making a binding decision here. Five users (myself included) have now voted to reopen, so the question is open for now -- but it remains eligible to be re-closed by voting in the usual way.
I asked a number of clarifying comments trying to understand what OP meant by "monetary benefits," which I don't think is "perfectly clear" at all. I only ever got a response from Jochen, who is not the OP.
In fact, I'm not sure I'd agree with your interpretation of the Q (as written), although it could have been what OP meant.
Yes, looking at the timeline, it seems like the question was a bit less clear before revision #5, which was submitted (by the OP) about a day ago. Perhaps some of the votes-to-close were submitted before that revision.
Yes, I VTC'd on the first revision, I remember seeing the edit changing "business" to "busyness." I still think it's not clear enough to reopen - even though OP has logged in since.
@cag51 You allege that there were "some good points on both sides" and yet I do not see any points made on this page in support of opening the question, other than your own suggestion that the question might be salvageable.
Yes, the good points on the pro-reopening side that I referred to were my own. But in deference to the good points on the other side, I deliberately did not use any mod superpowers while handling this matter; the only actions I took (opening a meta question, commenting, adding a fifth reopen vote) are actions that any user with enough rep could take. As such, I do not intend to seek validation of these actions from you.
The answer depends on the funder, and potentially also on the university or individual employee's contract. Therefore, the question could be closed as either lacking details of those things, or as strongly depending on individual circumstances.
As written now, the answer should be "Yes, but the details vary." That's not a helpful answer.
The comments on a professor's behavior didn't belong in the question.
The question, even in its current form, is asking us to give insight into why somebody has made certain life choices that the OP deems inadvisable or incorrect. It invites uninformed speculation into whether or not monetary gain may explain that person's behavior. Since such choices are seen across all employment areas that I have encountered, it is not specific to academia.
Appreciate the response and insight. Personally, I disagree -- the current version says "Do research professors earn additional money from externally funded projects apart from the salary from the universities?" This seems like a very neutral, academia-specific query to me. But, from your response and Azor's, it seems like the voting system is working as it should.
@cag51 - remove the first two paragraphs, as well as the last, and there is a simple question there. The first two paragraphs are decidedly non-neutral and non-academia-specific.
Well, it is far from unusual that a question would have a general, specific-to-one-person backstory coupled with a legitimate question. If we closed every question that had (arguably) superfluous paragraphs, there wouldn't be a whole lot left on our site. But I respect the difference of opinion.
@cag51 I do downvote for unnecessary paragraphs pretty often.
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5181 | Should we have a canonical question about changing fields after PhD?
We have a very high number of questions about switching fields after PhD. Most of these are duplicates except for the fields in question. Here are some examples (by no means a complete list, I just got tired of copying and pasting):
Change of field between PhD and Postdoc (civil engineering --> atmospheric)
How to: Change of research field after thesis (math --> math)
Is just after your PhD a good time to switch your research area?
Recent PhD graduate, can I change fields and get back into it?
Transition from PhD to postdoc with an intent to change field (theoretical physics --> theoretical physics)
Practical aspects -- how to change subfields between PhD and postdoc? (biological physics --> theoretical physics)
Physics PhD switching fields after short career break? (particle physics --> atmospheric physics)
Is it possible to change the application area of research while looking for a postdoc position after PhD? (material science --> green energy)
Switching fields in a postdoc after PhD, is that possible in psychology? (neuropsychology --> clinical psychology)
Since there are a lot of combinations between current field and target field, we could potentially have thousands of versions of this same question. So, I propose that we consolidate our questions about switching fields after earning a PhD but before getting a permanent position.
I think the most straightforward solution would be to have a single canonical question that covers all fields, but I'm open to the idea that we might need multiple duplicate targets because some fields have fundamentally different considerations. Thoughts?
Update: A candidate for this canonical question now exists here.
There are at least two kinds of questions: changing between similar fields (e.g. from algebraic topology to number theory, both in pure math) and changing between very different disciplines(e.g. from computer science to humanities). Are we going to have one CW to cover it all, or separate question to cover them in less general sense (a tough question here, how to separate them? by answers? like the question (What does it mean by first author?)
That is one of the topics to discuss here. Since the boundaries are not well-defined (how do you define "similar"), my inclination is to have one canonical question that discusses both cases. But it's possible that we need several different questions: intra-field, STEM to STEM, STEM to humanities, humanities to humanities, etc.; if this is the case, the right thing to do is probably to merge some of the existing questions so that we have clear duplicate targets going forward.
What should the main focus of the canonical question be? “Can I switch fields?”, “How do I switch fields?”, “Is it a good idea to switch fields?”, “When to switch fields?”, or all of these?
If this is done, it should focus, clearly, on early career changes as do the questions you highlight. A complication here is that changing for disinterest in the doctoral field is quite different from forced changes due to economic factors (as I had to do).
I also fear that many askers are looking for a seamless and easy way to transition.
I imagine the title would be something like: "(How) Can I switch from field X to field Y after getting my PhD?" And agree this should be limited to early career (i.e., between getting a PhD and getting tenure).
I personally got a PhD in Electrical Engineering, specifically DSP. For a few years, I did real-time embedded audio programming, which sort of double-counted as EE and software engineering. Now I do exclusively software engineering. How this would apply to various other people would be dependent on their interests, but it shows that it can be done, and to that extent, is a 'positive story'.
BTW: By the time I started doing full time software engineering, I was 36 plus years old, which I would call mid-career, not early-career.
I see that the question has been created and tagged with a new tag [tag:canonical-question]. I've tagged three other questions with this tag just now and may do more on future days. The tag is there for anyone to use, which is perhaps a mistake. It would be preferable if it were available only to mods IMO. I also created the tag wiki, which should be reviewed.
@Buffy - the new tag is being discussed here (it has not yet been "approved" and was probably created prematurely, but we'll leave it pending the resolution of that thread).
Following up on the discussion in the comments,
Is there any field-specific advice (about changing fields post-PhD) that we would want to preserve / curate / generate / leave placeholders for? Do any fields have fundamentally different considerations than others?
If so, please leave a comment on this answer explaining which field needs handled separately and why it has different considerations. If this field-specific advice already exists in an answer somewhere, please link to it.
Otherwise, my assumption is that it's possible to write one answer that addresses most/all possible switches (the advice for intra-field switches vs. switching to a remote field might be different, but we can address both in one post).
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5400 | Possible changes to professorship tag
The professorship tag is currently being overused, I think. It is used for anything from the duties of professors to questions seeking advisors, who just happen to be professors.
I'd like to add a bit to the instructions for the tag to make it more specific to questions relating to the duties of professors. It would only take a few words, I think.
Is this an appropriate change? Note that it might require retagging some questions over time. We have dealt with this tag in the past for similar reasons of overuse.
See the previous change that was made: https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5088/75368
I think the existing description is clear; for the most part, we just need to retag questions that do not apply the tag correctly. For example, this question could equally apply in any teaching situation, so it should not be tagged professorship. Similarly, this one about finding an internship has little to do with the "duties and responsibilities of professors." I don't necessarily object to the proposed rewrite; if making the change would make you feel more comfortable when retagging, then fine with me. But I suspect it will change little -- most offenders won't read to the third sentence -- and we'll continue to have to retag these as we come across them.
Suppose I just add the "duties and responsibilities" phrase to the first sentence? Other wise it seems to just give a description of professorship and not guidance in use of the tag.
Sounds good to me.
The short form of the tag might become:
Queries specific to the duties and responsibilities of professors, as distinct from all other academic staff positions. This tag should not be used for queries that could equally apply to researchers or instructors who are not professors. Nor should it be used for questions that refer to professors in an inessential way, such as questions seeking advisors or communication with faculty in general.
I think this is probably too narrow and difficult to use. I mean, professors are special, sure, but not that special, and there are special cases for everything: there are going to be researchers and instructors who are not technically professors but yet a given question still applies to, and people asking questions here often won't have the expertise to know when this tag does and doesn't apply. The last sentence makes sense to me though.
I do think it's difficult to fight the tendency that nearly every question a professor asks would tempt them to add "student" as a tag and nearly every question a student would ask would tempt them to add "professor" as a tag... (Exaggerating a bit of course)
@BryanKrause, any ideas for improvement?
it could be helpful to have some examples of questions that should not be tagged with professorship in this answer.
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5061 | Regarding the tag: submission
I suggest that the 20 questions with tag submission be retagged as necessary and the tag itself deleted. Some are properly tagged with paper-submission or other tags that already seem to be sufficient.
There doesn't seem to be any [conference-submission] tag, is it a typo in the question?
@GoodDeeds, no, just bad memory. I was looking at a lot of tags. I'll fix.
I updated the five closed or duplicate question. There are now 15 open questions.
Should we make [tag:submission] a synonym of [tag:paper-submission]?
Your call. Check all the posts first. I’m offline for the night. Maybe a few adjustments needed.
@cag51 I stripped the tag from a few questions asked more than a year ago. I'll continue to strip unless you suggest I not. I won't do too many at once to avoid messing up the queue too much. Now down to eleven, I think. tag paper-submission works for all the remains ones and is already there on many of them.
I just proposed [tag:submission] as a synonym for [tag:paper-submission]. Four votes are required. This is the first time I've tried this. See the synonym link on the latter tag if you have enough rep to vote.
Catching up on this....looks good to me, I hammered the synonym through.
@cag51 looks good. I just finished cleaning up guaranteed-admission. See if it works. Maybe I'll add a bit to the wiki about "open admissions" for grad school.
This question is probably now status-completed.
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5066 | What can/should be done to improve usage of the tag [students]?
This is a bag-o-worms I know. The tag students has been applied to nearly 500 questions, but the usage is extremely inconsistent. It doesn't seem to have any consistency at all and could be applied (as it is) to about half the questions here.
It needs a better description for a start, but is there anything else the community can do to regularize the usage? And, given the state of it, what should the description say?
Well done! That was quite the effort to get to all of them.
@BryanKrause, it took a while, but sometimes just lessened boredom when the site was slow. I've been doing a lot of other tag maintenance along the way. Now, if I could just catch a little rep...
Ah yes, always chasing the tail of the one in first place :)
Thanks for bringing this up. I suspect a few of our tags have similar issues, including professors. But let's start with this one for now. My two cents....
So first, we already have an undergraduate tag. This is for questions related to providing teaching, advising, or research mentorship to undergraduate students, and excludes questions that could also be relevant for post-graduate students.
We do not have a corresponding graduate-student tag. However, we do have a supervision tag, which in practice covers most of the academic services that faculty provide to grad students.
So, I am not sure why we need a students tag at all. Most questions "about students" (e.g., their characteristics and preferences) should use the undergraduate, supervision, or teaching tags. Questions from students should use the appropriate tag (e.g., advisor or academic-integrity or grades or whatever the issue is). If there are on-topic questions from students about issues not covered by our existing tags, we should create those tags rather than falling back to a generic "students" tag.
Sadly, the only way to implement this would be to remove the tag from all 449 questions (which will bump each of the old questions back to the front page). We could do a couple per day for the next few months, but this is a major decision; we should make sure we want to do this before we commit to it.
There are a couple of "easy" things. One is to stay vigilant about new questions and retag them as needed. The other is to retag questions that are worth bringing to the top. And improved wiki might help also. The easiest cases to judge are the closed questions, but bringing them to the top doesn't serve much purpose. FWIW, I may have just earned the tag badge for this, though the system either lost it or is slow in awarding it.
That may be a good first step -- retagging the useful questions that are worth bringing to the top. There may even be a few "useless" questions we can just delete. Then we can see where we are and decide how to proceed.
I'm currently looking at a few old (the oldest) questions, especially those that are still open, with few answers and none accepted. If they seem worthy of promotion (to me, at least), I may edit and change/remove the tag. So far just one. The numbers are daunting.
Would you think it reasonable if I flag a few questions I deem "useless"? I'd mark them for mod attention and suggest removal. Those closed as off topic and with no answers seem likely candidates. I have one in mind now. And, I notice you've retagged a few in the past few hours.
@Buffy - yupp, please do.
I've flagged all of them without answers that are closed. One, however, wasn't off topic but lacked clarity and was never edited.
I flagged one for which mine was the only answer. I'm actually trying to set some bounds here. If you reject any of these flags I'll have some guidance. But I'm getting cautious, also. Maybe we want a chat room for this "discussion".
I'd be inclined to leave this one; it got some discussion, a well-received answer, and even the decision to close it is debatable. So maybe this is the lower bound on questions we want to keep.
I think both decisions are fine. Thanks.
For some of the questions I'd like to "fix" and therefore promote have user Buffy (cough) as the only current answer. Is this ok? Some guidance would be appreciated. It's not like I need the rep, of course (cough, cough).
Haha, there are very few questions indeed that do not have an answer from user Buffy! So go ahead, my only suggestion is to do them in batches of <= 5 so we don't flood the home page.
Oh: I would also suggest that if any of the questions you fix use the professor tag incorrectly, maybe remove that as well; we can kill 2 birds with one stone. For example, if a question is about "what to do after punching my professor", this shouldn't be tagged "professor" since the essential question would be the same if the assault victim were a non-professor instructor.
I'm keeping it to one or two at a time and normally when things are either boring or there is a lot of competition. And I'm playing with professor as I notice it. I did a couple of them recently. I see you've been busy also with older questions. I've been focusing on newer ones.
Has there been a change in the UI? I just noticed a question newly tagged students and it shows with a yellow/cream background. When I remove the tag it reverts to the standard background.
Do we/should we have the concept of a "deprecated" tag that is systematically being removed? Should its wiki indicate that?
Not aware of any changes, nor of a "deprecated" concept...I looked just now and don't see anything new. Anyway: adding "DEPRECATED - DO NOT USE" or something like that to the "students" wiki seems like a good idea.
I updated the usage wiki to reflect this. Maybe it should be done, also, for [tag:professors]. And the yellow background for the question was because I now "follow" that tag as well as professors.
I suspect we need a separate discussion about what to do with the professors tag. I think there may be a legitimate use for the tag, focused narrowly on questions that apply to professors and would not apply to other researchers and teachers (perhaps renaming it “professorship” would help). I will open such a discussion one of these days (or someone else can).
Good idea. And we are down nearly 100 questions tagged students.
@Buffy - one thing that just occurred to me. If we made "students" a synonym of "teaching," that would turn all of our "students" tags into "teaching" tags. Then we could undo the synonymization, leaving us with an empty "students" tag. Would save us the trouble of having to manually do the other 300. What do you think?
I'll look at a bunch of the questions. It might be necessary to make a pass and change a few first. Students was used in a lot of ways. I'll spend some time in the next couple of days.
I looked at a bunch of them, but very few were about teaching, actually. Cheating, funding, lots of other things. I think we probably just need to keep whittling. I'm focusing on those that are open with few answers and none accepted. I think you are attacking from the other end. None of my decisions have seemed hard, though I've had to come up with a few alternatives. Mostly just dropping it has worked ok. The problem will disappear if a few months.
We are closing out the tag. My intention was to leave the closed questions alone (there are about 20 of them left). But then to raise the issue again. I've also been retagging anything with [tag:student-employee]. Only three left to do. I'll probably finish today.
Good deal. I’ve been looking at the closed ones: have deleted a few, rewritten a few, and retagged some others.
All remaining questions tagged [tag:students] (13) are closed or dups. Should we finish the job or let the rest go unless brought back to life for other reasons? My inclination at the moment is to finish, which will take a few days.
Agree, let's finish, that tag is just too enticing to leave around and expect people not to use. I'll take another look and see if any are good candidates for deletion, though I think the low-hanging fruit has already been done. (update: yeah, I think the remaining 13 should not be deleted).
And done. The last of these has just been updated. You can close out this thread if you like.
yaaayyyy!!!!!!!
It would have been better if we'd left this well enough alone. As @cag51 said in their answer, "Sadly, the only way to implement this would be to remove the tag from all 449 questions (which will bump each of the old questions back to the front page)."
So it's somewhat surprising that this was in fact the course that's been taken, for an issue that apparently only two people cared enough to speak about previously. Sure enough, the front page of SE Academia has been churned on a daily basis since then, with lots of half-decade old questions returning to the front page, and lots of clearly-confused posters writing comments and answers to questions that had already been settled years ago.
At a minimum, I recommend that very old tag-editing like this include a comment on the changed questions about why the edit in question has been made at the present time.
And I recommend that we not go through this again for other tags.
There is no intention to do anything similar with other "messy" tags such as [tag:professorship], which was improved a bit in other ways. A comment, IMO, would be worthless and even more distracting. I think that @cag51's comment was intended to refer to a one time bulk change rather than a piecemeal one. Continued...
The process of making [tag:students] obsolete will be over in another month. My current intention, unless we have another conversation about it is to leave the already closed questions as is and only deal with the still open ones. Many of them have no accepted answer. But quite a lot of the remaining questions are already closed - at least a third, though I haven't counted. More...
Another point to consider is that there is value in resurrecting old questions that might still be relevant. There is a bot that does this, in fact. Additionally, in removing students, I have also tried to add more appropriate (specific) tags when I can think of one or more, which increases the usefulness of the tagging system. More...
Moreover, a fair number of the affected questions have been answered anew with some rep earned and badges as well. And, FWIW, I try to do this in relatively "calm" periods on the site and only a few (2-3) at a time, which is less disruptive than If it were 20 or so. The last couple of weeks were pretty calm, I think, though it picked up today.
@DanielRCollins - In future, I would urge you to raise your objections when the original meta question is asked (which in this case was over two months ago). At this point, a consensus has already been reached and the work is largely finished. I, for one, have little patience for those who do not contribute to the discussion nor the labor but are keen to criticize the result.
@cag51: I object to the claim that a "consensus" was reached here and in other cases. The number of votes and interactions is far too small to claim any such thing.
@DanielR.Collins You're an established user participating to a few communities, and you should know by now that those are the typical number of votes and interactions of most Metas across the network, excluding a few huge ones like SO or Math. If users don't want to vote or write a counter-proposal at the right time, when a discussion is started, we cannot force them, but we won't look favourably to complaints written long afterwards. Note that usually, before implementing a proposal, we wait at least a couple of weeks, and there's plenty of time to comment .
Let me further add that having a few questions bumped every day for a limited period may not be so bad, because it allows us to do a bit of clean up (e.g. I deleted a few obsolete comments here and there) and it allows new users to discover old questions, and possibly add their contribution. After all, we're not a technical site, and many questions are not really "settled": if a user wants to contribute with a new perspective, even when there's already an accepted answer, they should feel welcome to do so.
To give you an example from another site, I posted this answer on Physics SE, seven years (!) after the question was posted, and the OP accepted it. And the same happened on Cross-validated SE, where I answered to a question that was four years old. So, having people posting new answers to old questions is not that bad.
@MassimoOrtolano: Knowingly giving high-quality answers to old questions: At no time have I critiqued that, it's a strawman. What the present case entails is, e.g., a rash of answers to several my questions which I've had to parse, all of which currently stand at zero or negative points. So: As far as I can tell, an increase in useless noise to the forum, with no value added.
What I specifically do not see on other SE sites in recent memory is a routinely strident claim to "consensus" from two or three people active in the meta; moderators independently deleting popular questions for "consensus" reasons of their own construction which then get re-opened by the actual community; deleting tags basic to the subject; letting the entire front page be churned for months on end; being endlessly argumentative; claiming to post answers when they don't; etc., etc. The behavior on SE Academia has very much become a regressive outlier.
@DanielR.Collins Your questions are not merely your own, as they are hopefully useful to visitors and not just the person asking them. New answers to an old question of yours might not have value to you personally now, but that doesn't mean they won't have value to the next visitor (for whom their question is current/active in their minds). You can use the "questions" tab to avoid the churn if you prefer (I do wish it was easier to set this as a default by preference, but that's an issue for the SE software not academia mods).
@BryanKrause: Seems pretty ridiculous to argue that a rash of all zero- and negative-scored answers adds value to the site.
I think I was about as cautious as I could be by stating "might" and "doesn't mean they won't" have value. No ridiculous declarations that the new answers are excellent or better than the old. I count 4 answers to your bumped questions, one with positive score (+1), two with -1 (and no other votes), one with zero votes. Yeah, perhaps not the best collection of responses to those answers, but not sure I'd call it a "rash". Mostly just seems like they haven't had much exposure, despite the bumping, as there's just a total of 3 votes across 4 answers.
@BryanKrause: You discount 3 votes as not "much exposure", and yet approximately the same number of votes here in meta gets waved around as a "consensus" for mass deletions and edits. Highly hypocritical. Moderators should first do no harm to the site.
Three votes on four separate questions seems quite different from three votes on one, and I'm seeing more than three votes on the question and first answer here. I agree that moderators should avoid causing harm, but here it doesn't seem like there is agreement that there is a net harm here.
So I guess every single moderator is going to take the opportunity to argue about this. Good use of time. Very welcoming and inclusive.
Actually, I've quite enjoyed looking at some of these old Qs and have upvoted a few.
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5070 | A (IMHO) very obvious shopping question was not closed, but heavily upvoted - why?
Why has this not been closed as a shopping question? It asks for a list/examples of people fitting a certain criterion. This is so very obvious a shopping question to me, yet, instead of closing it, it got 59 upvotes and a ton of answers. Why? Because people perceive it as a "fun" question, even more "fun" to answer?
It seems slightly unfair that this question has not been closed - I was almost tempted to vote "close" more than a year later when I stumbled upon the question today, but thought maybe there was some reason why the question is still open, a reason that I fail to see.
So - Do you agree that this question fits the scope of the site, and if not, why has it not been closed?
I don’t see how this is a shopping question. What would be the possible “buying” decision connected to the answer? Nobody would try to join the workgroup of somebody because they are named in an answer or similar. Individual people are not even remotely on the list of things that people shop for. You may still argue that the question is too broad, but calling every question asking for a list or similar a shopping question dilutes the term to the extent that it is useless, IMHO.
I would consider it a shopping question because (1) when you ask for a list of examples, there is no "best" example, so it is not "answerable", and (2) questions like this (maybe not so much this one) will go out of date as new candidates appear. These are the same reasons we disallow shopping questions. That said, I do sometimes wonder if we should narrow the definition of shopping questions.
The question had 2 upvotes and 1 downvote the day before it went on the Hot Network Questions (HNQ) at 06:00; on that day it got about 20 upvotes, though I can't say how many came before or after that 06:00 time, I'd be comfortable guessing that most came after.
It was in the close votes queue where it received Leave Open × 3 and Close × 2, which took it out of the queue. Later it attracted 4 close votes, but they were spaced out in time and didn't reach the 5 vote threshold for closure.
In summary, it seems this was perceived as a borderline question by the community, and got most of the voting support after it was on the HNQ, where people from around the network are attracted to visit and vote on a question.
Overall the question did attract a lot more close-vote activity than most well-received questions here, but it wasn't enough to close the question and a simple majority (3/5) of people in the community who voted during review chose to leave it open.
I think now it's worth considering how we should treat questions going forward, but I'm not sure what the value of closing this question now is. It's already attracted lots of answers, which is what closing is meant to prevent. We could delete it but that would cover up a lot of work people put into answers and discussion. We could give it a historical lock if it was continually being bumped or otherwise causing long-term problems, but that doesn't seem to be happening.
+1 - though I would suggest that the community didn't find the question to be "borderline" (it is clearly a shopping question), but rather they thought it was a "fun" question and didn't want to close it (something like jury nullification). This could be viewed as a failure of our community-moderating-itself system (since it is "unfair" as we normally disallow such questions), but it could also be viewed as a great success (since an interesting question was left open, and it didn't really lead to any problems). Personally, I like the latter view; I would not want to become the "fun police."
@cag51 Sure; by the community considering it "borderline" I'm thinking of the community comprising opposing viewpoints. Some may have found the question clearly off-topic, others may have found it clearly worth keeping, others may have been more in the middle. Together, they came up to a borderline consensus in that just a single person from the community changing their position would have led to a different result since ultimately close/non-close is a binary threshold phenomenon. But yes indeed, it's a bit of a (controversial) SE tradition to allow some "fun" questions.
BryanKrause and/or @cag51 Help me here, please. I don't see "leave open" as a voting option anywhere in my UI. I see reopen after a question is closed. What am I missing?
I love democracy
@Buffy It's part of the Review Queues, at https://academia.stackexchange.com/review/close/ If you're at all like me, you do the vast majority of your close voting and other curation work by directly viewing posts as they come up as active on the main page, but questions with close votes by other users or flags by users who don't yet have the rep for the close privilege enter the review queue.
@Buffy See https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/139834/what-exactly-happens-with-the-button-leave-open-previously-do-not-close for info on what "leave open" does; basically, it removes items from that queue if 3 people vote "leave open" (though they can still close vote directly from the question), and begins the "aging away" process on close votes if it hasn't started already (if a question gets fewer than 5 close votes, eventually the older votes expire one by one).
I have a problem with the whole notion of a general "shopping question" issue. I agree completely that we should not be making recommendations of specific universities and educational programs, but, while it is generally interpreted as prohibiting "listy" questions, there are formal exceptions - software recommendations for example.
That seems inconsistent to me. I've been caught once or twice recommending closure when most others disagree.
While the linked question is stated in a way to be "listy", I think the intent of the OP was really just to understand how heat index and citation count works in the real world. I don't care much about such things so didn't get involved, but I don't see that intent as improper here. The OP doesn't have an action in mind, but just understanding. We should be able to honor that.
Perhaps what we really need is to rethink the concept of "shopping" so that it is more consistent in application. The fact that this post exists points to the need to rethink it. And note that other sites don't (all) have such a restriction.
FWIW, I'm somewhat uncomfortable allowing software recommendations. Those also have an "action" component to them, not just one of understanding how academia works. But avoiding recommendations of schools/fields seems to me to be an important thing to keep.
Some seem to adhere to the principle that questions need to be amenable to a "best" answer. But the best answer for an OP may be far, far, suboptimal for others. And academia, being a human endeavor, has enough variability that "best" is elusive (at best). There are too many variables and the fit together in too many combinations for universal answers to many things. We should recognize and honor that.
I've been caught once or twice recommending closure when most others disagree. That's absolutely not a problem. People have different opinions and that's fine. SE's design keeps this into account; they have decided to make closing a threshold vote, rather than a yes/no popolarity vote. It's enough to have 5 close voters, even if they are a minority. If a closing/reopening war ensues, then the proper thing to do is discussing in meta.
@FedericoPoloni, actually, my concern is that I didn't understand what the "standard exceptions" to the rule really are. That is my issue. The thing is ill defined.
I agree with this sentiment, I am very much a newcomer to this stack exchange, but it seems to me that legitimate and useful questions are unnecessarily stifled because they have the chance of generating lists. Surely lists of current best resources can be very useful to academic researchers? The consensus currently seems to be "well it's all just opinion, ask your supervisor", what if I want a different opinion from my supervisor? Is that not legitimate?
The question should be closed. There is no need for more confusing rule exceptions.
Brian Krause's description shows the question has not been closed yet because very few people have participated in close voting.
I think that the fact that many users (e.g. those upvoting) are occasionally willing to ignore the rules is a good thing, meaning that community consensus is important. The example given isn't one of my favorites but I'm happy to leave it to others to make the judgement.
@Buffy There were only three open votes according to Brian, which is not "many users." In fact, Brian says there were twice as many close votes. I do not see the relevance of upvotes from HNQ users who are unfamiliar with Academia.
@AnonymousPhysicist In the time the post was in the queue, there were 3 votes to stay open vs 2 to close. Later, there were more votes to close added, but there is no possibility to "leave open" vote once it's not in the queue, so that's a bit unfair to compare. There is a possibility to upvote, which many users did, though the privilege to upvote is available to many more users than the ability to close vote.
@BryanKrause Sounds like you agree that there's no evidence of consensus.
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5004 | Implement "umbrella" question-collections for similar questions?
This questions has brought up something that I have thought of before: There are recurring questions tackling the same general question, in this case:
How to include (whatever) papers in a CV?
A quick search reveals that questions similar to but not a duplicate of the question have already been asked in the past, so there is -- as I would call it -- a "question family" that has the same parent question (including papers in CVs).
So I have wondered this before: would it be beneficial to "collect" such questions with similar topics under an umbrella question link? People searching for an answer to their question could more easily browse existing questions on similar topics. I am familiar with the "related questions" on the right side, but I think this would go beyond that, and should definitely be curated by either moderators or other members of sufficiently high reputation.
This may be relevant. Such questions are referred as "canonical questions", and its tag shows past suggestions and discussions for various canonical questions that were eventually created.
So you could open a meta question for the specific canonical question you want to suggest.
In addition to the tag @GoodDeeds mentioned, https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=canonical is a bit broader and includes additional meta questions that probably should get the canonical-question tag but haven't yet.
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4142 | What are the demographics of Academia SE?
Do we have any information about user demographics, such as:
(1) Fraction of early-career/mid-career/senior academicians,
(2) Fraction of doctoral students/University professors/scientists at research labs etc.
(3) Broad demographics on research areas (social sciences, physical sciences, mathematics, biological sciences etc.)
Why?
(1) and (2) will help users get a better person time of what type of questions to ask, how to word them, and judge how representative these may be.
(3) will help users decide if this is the right place to ask certain questions that may be specific to some fields.
If no such data is available,
is it possible to carry out a voluntary, anonymous poll of members to get these and similar demographics?
Please check my edits and roll back if needed.
We have Academia Community Polls which I would describe as a voluntary somewhat anonymous (up votes/ticks are anonymous, but making a new "answer" is not). That poll includes:
Which of the following "roles" describes you best?
What is your gender?
What fields would you consider yourself part of?
There is also a good description of the problems with interpreting polls like these, so I am not sure what value they have other than fun.
An issue with that poll is that it cannot be reset. Given that many of the polled data are subject to change with time, it would be helpful to reset them after a few years and redo the poll. Or, at least, it would be helpful to have the possibility to change a comment vote, but probably the powers that be would not be interested in changing this behaviour.
@MassimoOrtolano the role question clearly changes over time, but I am not sure if people really leave fields or just acquire new ones. Obviously people transition gender, but I still think of gender as being relatively static (even a gender fluid individual is statically fluid).
There are a few other questions whose answer can change with time, e.g., "Are you currently working in Academia?", "Which countries have academic systems you are familiar with?", "How many publications in peer-reviewed journals have you made in your career?" (this quite probably), "Are/were you happy in your PhD program?" (this is subject to change without notice :-) ), "Did you do a part of PhD studies at another institute?" and also those about the location.
@MassimoOrtolano yes, of course. I was being a little snarky. For the poll questions this question asked about I am not fully sure it is a problem. For other questions it is clearly an issue. That said, I am not sure the poll should be used for anything other than hey look someone said they study underwater basket weaving
Yes, indeed. Also because the fraction of participants to the poll with respect to the user base is so tiny that the poll is statistically meaningless. It's just to update the fun from time to time :-)
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3737 | Could we please have a limit on negative voting for a newcomer's question?
Here's a question written by a newcomer with a small starting rep. It currently has a total negative score of -7, and four close votes (including the one I just cast). It was written 13 hours ago and has not yet been closed. Jeesh!
Granted, the question has problems! But it's hard for people to learn how to pose better questions when this level of negative voting occurs.
It would be different if it were an established participant who was asking something outrageous like, How can I take revenge on my competitor and steal his best grad student -- or something like that. I did once see an outrageous question posed by someone with a pretty good rep, that got a lot of downvotes. That can happen, and my point is that Nikki's question is not in that realm.
Friends, can't we be reasonable and stop downvoting such a question when it gets to -3, and instead focus our efforts on closing the question swiftly and painlessly?
Edit:
I will change my suggested floor to -4 based on the answer by @strongbad.
I agree, and I was going to write a similar suggestion.
I strongly agree: my close vote is down-vote enough for a newcomer.
We definitely should be nice to new users. This includes welcoming them and explaining what can be improved about their questions and answers. As for not down voting them, large negative scores, especially in the absence of close votes, have little positive influence and a pretty big negative influence.
That said, it is worth noting that questions with a score of -4 or worse are hidden from the active page. Assuming a question has a close vote, giving it a score of -4 will get it off the active page. This has the advantage of decreasing the visibility until higher rep users handle it through the close review queue.
Additionally, closed questions with non-postive scores are automatically deleted by the community bot.
The fact that questions with a score of -4 or less are hidden from the active page can be a drawback, however. For instance, I close-vote more from the active page than from the review-queue, because the review queue shows questions from my ignored tags or questions that I'd skip anyway.
@MassimoOrtolano yes, it can be. Seems like the review queue should respect ignored tags but that might be hard to do client side.
@StrongBad since the review queue can filter based on tags, I'd doubt that would be very difficult.
I am a newcomer and that post was mine. When I find the website for the first time. It made the best first impression on me. I thought that was a great way to ask questions in a friendly manner. I did not want to hurt anyone or waste your time. I am just a newcomer. on that post, I mentioned that I am not a native speaker, instead of giving me a piece of advice you just told me you need to work on your writing before going and studying there. I was in the middle of very important talk with my professor, instead of guiding you just teased me. I know that I made mistakes. I am going to leave this website. I want the admin to remove my account. Thank you for stopping me. I WON'T be active here anymore.
Best wishes!
A belated welcome to AC.SE. I am sorry your initial experience was not welcoming. The SE system takes some getting used to since we are a question and answer site and not a discussion forum. Please take a look at our [help] and feel free to ask other questions. Down voting and closing questions are just the way SE tries to maintain a high quality site and having one bad experience doesn't mean you will never get good answers.
SE feels very bad to newcomers.. that's clear!
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4088 | Need a couple of examples of questions that are too hypothetical to keep open
I've read several questions here about whether a certain question is too hypothetical. A nice rule of thumb I read at one of these was that in a not-too-hypothetical question (i.e. an acceptable question), it should be possible for OP to supply additional details if queried.
That's somewhat helpful but a bit more guidance would be helpful. I need to read some non-gray-area hypothetical questions that were closed or should have been closed.
If you can't find any specific examples, then it's okay to make something up (if it's realistic).
This came up as I was reading some of the questions written by a medium inexperienced participant who recently posed a Meta question about participation by non-academics. I realized that I don't have any personal experience yet evaluating hypothetical questions to determine whether they're well posed.
Edit to provide context. I was trying to decide whether How to deal with consequential rounding errors when verifying the works of others? was on topic. I noticed that Help says To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where … you are asking an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened? but I also realized I don't know how hypothetical is too hypothetical. I read some Meta material about this, so now I have the theory (see above), but without some practical examples showing where to draw the line I don't feel confident about determining when to vote to close because of being too hypothetical. Guidance would be much appreciated.
I think that any ruling on 'too hypothetical' would be a very special case of 'ensure that questions are an actual problem you (or someone else) have or had', which I think if not a rule, is a strong recommendation already. So, I don't see what you will gain with gathering these examples.
Have you seen: https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/630/929 , https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/657/are-these-open-ended-hypothetical-questions and https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3251/do-questions-need-to-be-about-actual-problems-that-you-face
@StrongBad - I had missed the first of those three, so thank you. There, ff524 discussed an instructive example question. This was a tiny bit helpful in that I had a chance to see an example of a question that ff524 found too hypothetical. (I agree. For starters, since when can one flaunt federal, state and/or local laws and ordinances when on the campus of a public university?) But the question is open. It has no close votes. It had wild up and down voting with a current net vote of -3. The question was written by you. This...
.. has ended up confusing me even more. // Look, in the classroom, when a student says, "Could we see some examples, please? I think that will help me understand this concept better," wouldn't most instructors share some examples? Pinging also @Discretelizard.
@aparente001 using my super mod tools (which might be available to others), I can see that all the close votes have aged away.
@aparente001 Well, eh, as far as my comment goes, I very much doubt StrongBad actually seriously considered teaching naked. Hence, the example you mentioned can be closed as 'unclear what you're asking' (maybe another close reason?) with the rationale that this isn't an actual problem that StrongBad is facing. Does that make things clearer? Otherwise, it would help if you're more specific about your confusion.
@StrongBad - Thanks for explaining.
@Discretelizard - Do you think it's too hypothetical to pass muster?
I'm going to go vote to close, let's see what happens, maybe this will give me better clarity about what's closable and what isn't, based on this criterion.
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4097 | Would like to add "faq" and/or "canonical-question" and/or "canonical-post" tag to these questions
We have a helpful list of standard Q&As, which makes it easier for questioners to find out what they want to know, and write non-duplicate questions. The list also helps with identifying duplicate questions, and with figuring out where the dupes should point.
I would like to make this list even more useful by tagging each such question (on the main site). The possibilities for a tag (or two tags -- some sites make a distinction) that I've seen from other sites are
faq
canonical-question
canonical-post
common-question (sometimes this has an S on the end)
community-faq
I personally think it's less scary to set out to write a "common-question" than a "canonical - anything." Canonical is a somewhat intimidating word. But I'm flexible.
This would involve adding a tag to at least 14 main site questions, maybe more -- so I wanted to check here at Meta before I dive in. Also, if possible I'd like the tag we end up with to be pink so it will stand out better. I can't create a pink tag myself.
Some sites have canonical questions and/or common questions, with a special tag added to the individual comprehensive, reusable questions: Physics, Chemistry, Law, ELL, superuser.
At Meta we already have faq-proposed, faq (pink), and canonical-question -- but we don't have anything on the main site.
Edit 4/2/18 9 pm ish (EST): Thanks to some discussing with Wrzlprmft, I am now able to refine the proposal somewhat:
It seems that pink is not possible (sniff).
I'd like to suggest that the created tag include some prominent instructions, that only moderators are to bestow this special tag on a post. We ordinary mortals would be permitted to post on Meta to request that a candidate post be given the canonical tag (or whatever we might decide to use -- I myself lean toward "common-question").
So, you want something similar in function to this: https://cs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/599/reference-answers-to-frequently-asked-questions, basically? I think that [tag:reference-question] would be a decent tag name here as well.
If there is such a tag, it should NOT have the word "reference" in it, as there are already tags for "reference-request" and references related to citations and references relating to recommendations, and people choose the wrong ones. (Some tag disambiguation and clean-up is in order there, I think.)
@Discretelizard - I agree with cactus_pardner. I'd rather use one of the tags already used by some other SE site. (In addition to the reason given by cactus.)
I do not consider having a tag for this a useful idea:
We already have a list of canonical Q&As on Meta. For frequent close voters this is a better resource than a tag, because it can be structured, curated, etc. Just save it as a favourite.
The proposed tag is a meta tag. It thus confuses automatisms based on tagging (which assume a connection of topic).
There is no mechanism for special tags on the main site, i.e., tags that can only be applied by users with certain privileges and have a special colour. In particular this means that anybody would be able to apply such a tag.
No matter how we name the tag, new users will misuse it. Be it due to auto-completion or because it pops up in the suggested tags for some reason.
There is no mechanism to point new users to this tag. Most of them already ignore all the guidance we throw at them. And this is not even thrown at them. The best we can do is to incorporate a link to this tag in the How to Ask blurb or help/on-topic, but there we could also link to the above list (which then should arguably be hosted under a different question, but that can be easily arranged).
I forgot about that list of canonical Q&A list. I just add that meta question in my favorites. Thanks for the reminder.
Hmm, accidental or misguided overtagging doesn't seem to be a problem on the other sites where I explored the use of this type of tag.
// I like your idea of putting it in the How to Ask helper. For completeness it could go in the help/on-topic too although that probably wouldn't have much impact.
accidental or misguided overtagging doesn't seem to be a problem on the other sites – Keep in mind that as long as somebody takes care that the tag is removed, you probably wouldn’t notice. Also consider that tagging on this site is more challenging than elsewhere on the network and thus new users often select bad tags. However, most importantly: Have you found any site which has such a tag and a post on meta where somebody really found the tag useful? The only thing I see that cannot be done with a meta post are complex searches, but that’s nothing we need with our number of canonicals.
Anyway, if you want to change our how to ask blurb, better make a separate meta post for that.
"Keep in mind that as long as somebody takes care that the tag is removed, you probably wouldn’t notice" Even so, I never saw it being misused on CS and I've been a regular on the queues for a while now. But perhaps the tagging situation here is trickier. Then again, as 'academia' doesn't really have 'reference material' like a specific field would have, the tag would be a bit strange. And most of it would work without the tag.
@Wrzlprmft - Anyway, if you want to change our how to ask blurb, better make a separate meta post for that. I think it's premature for that since we're still in the stage of figuring out whether the link in How to Ask would point to the Meta post or to the set of posts with the proposed special tag.
@Wrzlprmft - Have you found any site which has such a tag and a post on meta where somebody really found the tag useful? Yes. // Note, I'm not saying that my proposal would permit the software to do something that it currently can't do. I'm saying that my proposal would permit human beings to do something that they currently aren't aware they can do, or forget that they can do. // This is minor, but may I also point out that SE is built on the concept of tagging; having a list buried somewhere in Meta is inherently kluge-y.
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4153 | How to proceed with the lingerie–elevator question?
The question What was offensive about the "ladies lingerie department" joke, and how can I avoid offending people in a similar way? has caused a lot of controversy in comments and answers, in particular with respect to whether it shall be open or closed. Since any discussion on this in the comments or chat will inevitably get very tedious due to other matters being discussed in parallel, we (read: some moderators) have decided to lock the question and take this issue here.
Be aware that there are already seventy deleted comments on this question and its answers, some of which were not nice.
This Question
In an answer please propose how we should proceed with this question:
Should it stay closed?
Should it be reopened as it is?
Should it be changed in a specific manner and then reopened?
Please answer only with respect to this site.
Migration would only happen if the target site wants it (which is unlikely) and thus not something we can decide.
Food for Thought
It would be great if you could address these questions in an answer:
Does this question fit our scope?
Is the question reasonably narrow?
Is it reasonably clear what is being asked?
Can it be avoided that this question turns into a popularity contest?
Update: A new question has been posted, following from the discussion below Jake Beal's answer.
The new question has some discussion here.
@NajibIdrissi - There's also the phenomenon of voting to close AND writing an answer... but that is a fairly new participant and I'm hopeful think time and experience will do their job.
Having just reviewed my supervisor's training on workplace harassment, I have strong opinions on this question. Short version: it can have a simple and definitive answer, and should be edited and re-opened
This is not really an Academia question, but a general question about professionalism in the workplace. As such, one might argue that it should be migrated to Workplace.SE.
At the same time, a lot of the questions and answers on this site boil down to "yes, academia is also a workplace, and professional behavior is required." I think this is important, because many people seem to hold beliefs that academia is otherwise.
As such, I believe the question can be answered quite simply and in much the same way that it would on Workplace.SE.
In my opinion, the core problem with the question is that it invites "explain this joke to me" answers. It should be edited to focus more clearly on the "How do I avoid workplace harassment?" question instead, and answers should be dealt with similarly.
More concretely, I believe the answerable concern in the core of the question is:
I am worried because I don't understand precisely what was offensive, so I fear that I might do something similar.
I would consider the question to basically be suffering an X-Y problem because the asker has jumped to an attempted solution of "understand why this joke is offensive" rather than sticking with the problem of "I fear that I might do something similar."
The question explicitly excludes joke explanation (and this isn’t the focus of the existing answers), but it does solicit explaining the offensiveness – which is a slightly different focus than “How do I avoid …?”.
As it focuses on the offensiveness it seems more like an interpersonal interaction and IPS.SE wants nothing to do with the question. My guess is Workplace.SE would reject the migration also.
@scaaahu we talked about this in the network wide super secret moderator room. My take on the discussion was no moderators wanted the question. What I don't remember was if anyone from workplace.se was around.
@Jakebeal: Please see my edit to the question and clarify whether you propose to have the question reopened on this site.
@Wrzlprmft I propose to have it reopened on this site. To do so, I would propose to: 1) Edit the title (which asks to explain the joke), 2) Compress everything from "I don't understand why ..." down into: "I am worried because I don't understand precisely what was offensive, so I fear that I might do something similar. What are reasonable actions that I can take to avoid having a similar problem?" This would focus on a concrete answerable about steps and measurable outcomes and be uninviting to rants and intention/motivation analysis.
Doing this to the question would, I think lead to something that is simple and constructively answerable. I'm less sure about what to do about highly voted answers that would be rendered misfit---are there appropriate moderator tools for "rebooting" the answer set?
@jakebeal when edits are so drastic, the tools would be to close the original question and ask the new one.
@StrongBad - That sounds like an excellent solution. A non-catchy title would at least postpone the question arriving at the HNQ list. Perhaps "How can I be respectful to colleagues and avoid pitfalls as described in question?".
@StrongBad How should we arrange that? Do you think it would be appropriate for me to post the revised new question, or should we attempt to persuade the OP to return and coach them?
If you are interested, just post a new question. I can make it CW to try and help encourage people to try and edit it to get the best fit. If you want me to, just flag it. If it is well received and gets an answer I can add a link from the original question to your new one and ping the user.
@StrongBad Done.
Here is the link to the new question: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/109937/32436
why do you think professionalism in academia is off topic?
I think that this is a good faith question which we should attempt to give a good faith answer to, and I like several of the answers which were given before it was closed. It could also go on workplace or IPS, but I do think academic norms are different enough that it would do well here.
There are a number of academics who don't see how what, from their point of view, seems like a light joke, can feel exclusive and unwecloming to others. Off the top of my head, I remember Should academic papers necessarily carry a sober tone? , Would students feel uncomfortable if I include in my lecture a quote which is somewhat sexually suggestive? and Is it appropriate for my professor to include gender offensive material that is unrelated to the class subject matter in the course notes? .
I think the answers to those questions are helpful to academics who are proceeding in good faith but don't see the problem.
One of the things I love about most of the stackexchange network is that it is a place where you can ask very basic questions and get clearly written answers. Not every place should have to be like that (indeed, my primary SE site, mathoverflow, is very explicitly not!) but I think it is good that most of the SE network is.
As regards the question of whether this would be the same in any workplace: I don't think so. As an academic, I continually receive the message from my employers and my community that they are very concerned about gender representation and have put a lot of thought into issues of microaggressions. I hear the same thing from people I know who work in tech, but I don't hear it from doctors, lawyers, musicians or chefs. I think gender issues are more tense in this community, so I think an answer explaining the norms in this community would be helpful. Indeed, I suspect that math is different from political science, and it might be best if we got an answer from someone in the political science world.
It makes no sense to open it.
If you make it generic, and remove the actual quotation there is no
question in the question. It would basically be asking "What are some
offensive things you could say to women at a conference?"
If we leave it open with the quotation intact, that means we're OK
with people posting rude comments they hear at a conference and
asking "Was this woman overreacting to this comment?" ... which
really isn't the point of this site.
There are some questions about taking offense that would make sense here. For example, someone insisting on "Miss" over "Doctor" or "Professor," but we're not here to judge passing rude remarks an academic is subjected to.
I find it hard to believe the OP thought there was some specific academia-related reason the comment was in poor taste, and agree with StrongBad's opinion they disagreed with the negative press.
I will add to that, it doesn't even have to be a conference. It could be in any setting.
@HermanToothrot and Azor Ahai - The question is, "How do I avoid saying offensive things to women at conferences?" Not "What are some offensive things I could say?". // It's up to the moderators and the community to keep everyone on topic, and prevent people from diverting the focus to "Was this woman overreacting?". // The specific relevance to academia is that women have had difficulty entering and progressing in certain academic fields or subfields, and this won't change without respectful dialog and discussion about existing problems and possible solutions.
@aparente001 I do not think "How do I avoid saying offensive things to women at conferences?" is on-topic either, since that would be asking for a list. Therefore, IMO, removing the details would make the question pointless. // That is not unique to academia, and I have no idea what her field/subfield was, and I don't think it's relevant to the question at all.
@AzorAhai - Thanks for your thoughtful reply. For the first part -- I personally think it can be answered without a list, but note that there are plenty of valid questions on this site that receive good answers that include a list. // Note, I'm not suggesting that the details should be removed from the question. // For the second part of your reply - just because a problem comes up that is not unique to academia doesn't mean that it's necessarily off topic. That is, I don't think that characteristic in itself is a deal breaker. // I do appreciate that you yourself don't ...
... consider the dilemma described in the question relevant for your life in academia. Fortunately many others who participate here do, and I hope, over time, your interest grows regarding exploration of more ways to support diversity in academia.
@aparente001 I'm not sure where you got the idea I don't care about the dilemma? And I take minor offense that you think I'm not interested in supporting diversity in academia, but I recognize maybe my phrasing at some point gave you that impression. I regret it if it did. || My point there was that you said women have difficulty in some subfields - but I have no idea what her subfield is and I don't think it's relevant in this situation because that remark would be incredibly rude to make to any woman ...
... Anyway I think the question "Why is this comment rude?" is not really on-topic here. Maybe the question could be rephrased as "Is this remark especially rude to women in academia?"
I'm sorry I misunderstood! // Re "Is this remark especially rude to women in academia?" - Hmm. I'm starting to get a bit lost. Are you saying it's offensive to men too?
@aparente001 No? I'm saying it's very offensive/rude for a man to jokingly ask a woman to press the button for "women's lingerie," no matter if they're professors or not (unless, I suppose, she's an actual elevator operator).
Let us continue this discussion in chat.
@aparente001 Anyway, I think jakebeal's answer is best - this question is not salvageable but the underlying question could be rephrased and asked separately as you suggest (I upvoted that comment)
I think the question should stay/be closed for a number of reasons. First, I do not agree with the arguments that
I think it is wrong to assume that no part of this is specific to academic culture (if that's the case, that's part of the answer)
I cannot possibly see how a comment about women's lingerie can be construed as having anything to do with academia. While the comment was made at an academic conference, it would have been just as offensive at any other event (e,g., a trade show). In fact, none of the current answers provide any academic specific context.
Second, the question fails 3 of the 5 don't ask tests
every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”
Why I find X offensive is no more or less valid than why someone else finds it offensive (or not)
there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”
This is essentially what is being asked
your question is just a rant in disguise: “______ sucks, am I right?”
I cannot help but think one of the motivations for asking the question is that the OP feels the sanctions (and negative press) were unfair.
Third, the question is rather broad and I believe requires an answer that covers the history of sexual harassment/discrimination and the "Elevator Floor Announcement" trope. While it is possible that someone will provide a sufficiently broad answer, I think it is unlikely given the number of answers the question has already received.
Finally, I think the question is reasonably clear in asking "in what way is X offensive". The problem is that the answer really depends on the person you ask. I can assure you there are a number of topics that my grandfather would not find offensive, that I find astonishingly out of place. I think the answers are going to continue to be based on personal experience/views which are controversial and lead to extensive discussion in the comments.
I do not think editing the question can address the fact that I do not see how a comment about women's lingerie can be construed as having anything to do with academia. I also do not see how anything short of a major rewrite would transform the question from a bad subjective to a good subjective. The broadness of the question is not a huge issue in my opinion and if everything else could be addressed through edits, I think could be ignored in reopening the question. It might be possible to address the personal experience/views issue by rephrasing the question as "Why might groups of individuals construe the comment as offensive?", but I am not sure that is the case and it does not address the boat programming and bad subjective nature of the question.
Looking at the Elevator Floor trope (I think I am too young to have realized this could exist), he was basically quoting Harry Potter. That teaches us quite a bit about context and connotations and how you can go wrong (as the person saying something and the person interpreting it). It might be a question for Interpersonal.SE, but not Academia.
@skymningen we checked with IPS.SE and they would reject the migration.
@StrongBad By contrast one could say it passes 2 of the 5 don't ask tests.
@LateralTerminal sure, but failing any one test is often reason to close a question. Just because a question passes one (or even two) of the tests is not enough to suggest it shouldn't be closed.
The question should be open to receive answers, but with lots of structure.
First, I'll respond to the specific points raised by StrongBad.
"I cannot possibly see how a comment about women's lingerie can be construed as having anything to do with academia."
It wasn't the underwear that had to do with academia, it was the setting where the underwear remark occurred, that created the connection with academia, and the nature of the question "How can I avoid a faux pas of this type?".
"The question fails 3 of the 5 don't ask tests."
(a) "Every answer is equally valid, as in, “What’s your favorite ______?”. Why I find X offensive is no more or less valid than why someone else finds it offensive (or not)."
I believe it's possible to provide a comprehensive answer which explains each of the levels on which the elevator remark was offensive. There are innumerable answers on this site that involve a list of points. Just because a question has a multi-part answer doesn't mean it isn't well posed.
(b) "There is no actual problem to be solved, as in, 'I’m curious if other people feel like I do.' This is essentially what is being asked."
Actually, OP starting out by saying, Such-and-so respected body found that the remark was offensive. He goes on to say, help me understand how it was offensive, and suggest how I can avoid being inadvertently offensive. So, OP isn't curious if others share the respected body's determination that the remark was offensive. In fact, he asked that people not get into a debate about that, and simply take the respected body's position as a given.
(c) "Your question is just a rant in disguise, as in, '______ sucks, am I right?'. I cannot help but think one of the motivations for asking the question is that the OP feels the sanctions (and negative press) were unfair."
I didn't take the question that way. It seemed to me that OP was asking how to avoid giving offense because he wanted to know. The question wasn't a rant in disguise because rants in disguise don't go past the complaining stage, or if they do, the constructive part is of less importance than the complaining part. (For hybrid posts, that combine rant + constructive part, there's an easy rescue -- edit out the rant part; and this leaves a well-posed question that can be left open.)
"Third, the question is rather broad and I believe requires an answer that covers the history of sexual harassment/discrimination and the 'Elevator Floor Announcement' trope. While it is possible that someone will provide a sufficiently broad answer, I think it is unlikely given the number of answers the question has already received."
I looked at your link for the trope; it appears to be tangential. Regarding the history of sexual harassment and gender discrimination, while that's a fascinating topic, the question can be answered without writing a historical treatise.
There are other questions on this site that someone might feel tempted to answer with an overblown answer. That doesn't mean the questions are badly posed.
"I think the answers are going to continue to be based on personal experience/views which are controversial and lead to extensive discussion in the comments."
In my opinion, a subjective answer based purely on personal experience wouldn't be a well-constructed answer.
(If you're still concerned about this, the moderators could create a ground rule for this question, that answers that consist of nothing but the OP's subjective experience will be removed.)
One of the major challenges Academia SE faces has to do precisely with gender. Each question related to gender issues is a learning opportunity for individuals who participate here, and for the community as a whole.
I do appreciate the headaches this question creates for the moderators; but I have a lot of confidence in our moderators. I think they're up to the job of keeping things organized and civilized -- with the help of community members responsibly raising flags when needed.
One or more good answers to the question OP raised would add to the value of the site.
Yes the comment was made at an academic conference, but the reason it is offensive has nothing to do with where it was made. The comment would be just as offensive if it was made at a trade show and none of the answers are specific to academia.
It is worth noting that the issues we have with gender questions tend to be caused by outsiders. The questions tend to make the HNQ list and attract a lot of attention. The views expressed on those questions are not representative of our community.
@StrongBad If the comment was made in an elevator of a university campus building, a female professor pushed the button, a male student said lingerie department, do we treat it as off-topic question?
@scaaahu: If you ask me: Yes; this question is as much about academia as “How do I fix my professor’s computer?”.
@NajibIdrissi: Except for the source of the cited code of conduct (which can be replaced by any other reasonable code of conduct), I see nothing specific to academia in your answer.
@Wrzlprmft - "the reason it is offensive has nothing to do with where it was made" -- Here's the thing. Unless we root out sexism and other sorts of intolerance in academia, and at Academia SE, needed changes will be unnecessarily delayed. Look, I sympathize, regarding the amount of dreck the moderators have to deal with when our controversial material hits the !!Top Ten Click On This!! list, but that's a separate issue, which of course does need to be resolved. Censoring healthy inquiry into gender issues in academia is not a good solution to that problem.
Honestly I don't understand why
How can I avoid inadvertently offending my female peers and getting into trouble for it?
is open and
What was offensive about the "ladies lingerie department" joke, and how can I avoid offending people in a similar way?
Is closed.
They are both still basically asking the exact same question in a different way.
I think the original question was formatted in a much better way with more context.
Have you seen https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4165/follow-on-to-the-lingerie-elevator-question
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4079 | Does Academia.SE welcome answers from laymen who are not active in Academia?
I frequently see questions from this stack in the Hot Network Questions list (the network-wide list of questions in the right sidebar) that I find interesting. I sometimes answer them and have acquired a small amount of rep from a couple of upvotes per answer.
However, I'm not a scientist, student, professor, teacher, researcher or university staffer. It has been about 7 years since I last was in a school in the capacity of a student. Because of this, I'm not sure whether it's wholly appropriate for me to answer these questions.
On one hand, I have no experience with academia, so I don't know any of the established procedures and rules from Academia. What I suggest might be completely inappropriate for someone who is active in Academia.
On the other hand, I have no experience with Academia, so I might be able to provide a unique perspective from someone with a minimum of preconceptions. In some notable cases in the past, such perspectives has led to stuff like unsolvable conjectures being solved, impossible machines being invented and generally major advances in a number of scientific fields.
From reading another meta answer, I have seen at least one person explicitly mention
A user that, based on her/his bio and SE habitus, seems trustworthy to answer the question
as something they typically upvote and
Answers that seem to fall into the "uninformed opinion" category ("I don't have experience with this, but clearly ...")
as something they typically downvote, with this answer getting over a dozen upvotes. Does this mean that this community does not want answers from people who are not part of the scientific community?
Eh, I think the 'HNQ tourists' should just not be allowed to vote. It skews the system.
@Discretelizard Can they upvote at all if they haven't earned enough legit reputation on another site to get the free bonus rep? I actually find it more problematic that this bonus rep lets you upvote, but not downvote. That's where it skews things. It discourages the down vote mechanism. If I can be trusted to give meaningful up votes, why am I not trusted on down votes? They should both be accessible simultaneously or not at all.
@zibadawatimmy No, they can't. But 200 rep is trivial on sites like SO, so the 'positivity' is heavily biased to the knowledge/preference of programmers.
Many times common sense should be welcomed. Laymen may provide another viewpoint, sometimes unbiased.
@user1420303 But on the other hand, they may also misinterpret the context or the specifics of a question based on excessive generalisation from their own experiences
As I comment on Pete Clark's answer below, a particular bugbear of mine is users wandering in from StackOverflow with a whole load of unexamined prejudices and blithe assumptions about the world based on their own experiences, making comments about pedagogy or power imbalances or systemic problems in academia with very little solid basis; then -- and I think this is the real problem -- we get lengthy arguments in comment threads, where inevitably oppposing sides both get upvotes due to a ratchet effect
"In some notable cases in the past, such perspectives has led to stuff like unsolvable conjectures being solved, impossible machines being invented and generally major advances in a number of scientific fields." This is very rare. Notable, yes, but rare.
@Turion I wouldn't exactly call it rare. Maybe in the case of things that have long been seen as unsolvable or impossible and as such stand out more to the public, but it happens more often often if you look at the stuff that's not even close to unsolvable or impossible. This mainly tends to happen in the more tangential stuff: not finding a solution to the problem itself, but rather optimising or debugging the solution.
There are definitely questions where it's not necessary to be an active academic to provide a useful, complete answer (see e.g. my top-voted answers), non-academics can be experts (e.g. questions about psychology, didactics or technology), or being an academic is even actively harmful (e.g. questions on didactics, and I'm only joking a little). That said, I'd expect those to be the exception.
Excellent question! Thank you for taking the time to ask it.
Academia is a subculture. Like almost every other subculture, it has its own social mores and norms. Many of the questions here are asking about those "you have to be there to know it" aspects of academia. To that extent, (in my opinion,) if the question seems to requires knowledge of the field, its probably best to leave those for other academics. What may seem to be good advice from the outside may actually be harmful to those familiar with the culture.
That said, a good chunk of questions more broadly defined as, "is this a good idea?" We've had some very good answers from outsiders to some of those questions[citation needed], and I would welcome anyone to contribute there.
Agreed. There are plenty of questions where perspectives from the outside are valuable. It will often be good to mark the answer as such though (so many answers with bad advice on what goes in a CV and what employers "really" want to see from people not in academia).
I have a pet peeve about nonacademics answering questions on this site. But not with all of them; only with those evincing a certain kind of behavior. Namely, what irks me tremendously is those who answer questions about academia but refuse to comment on or acknowledge their lack of academic expertise.
(In fact this is not limited to non-academics. I am just as bothered by e.g. academics who have never left Continent A but answer questions about academia on Continent B without acknowledging -- or even knowing, perhaps? -- that these answers may well be negatively useful.)
If you want to answer a question as an academic outsider, please include in your answer that you are an academic outsider. As others have pointed out, this does not automatically disqualify or discount your answer: for some questions it will actually improve it. But readers deserve to know this information, whatever they do with it.
"If you want to answer a question as an academic outsider, please include in your answer that you are an academic outsider". I disagree. I think that answers should be judged on their content, not on their provider. Unless you're answer is based on personal experience, I see no reason why the author should matter. If someone from outside academia gives bad advice, we can simply downvote.
I don't see why readers 'deserve' to know this information, just as much as readers don't 'deserve' to know any information at all from me, other than the questions and answer I provide!
+1 for pointing out that the situation is similar across cultures within academia
+1 for first para, prehaps changing "comment" to "recognize" or "be aware of".
The latest answer on https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/107777/how-do-i-talk-about-my-abusive-former-advisor-if-people-ask/ is an illustration of this kind of thing, and seems to support the comment of @Discretelizard https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4079/does-academia-se-welcome-answers-from-laymen-who-are-not-active-in-academia/4105#comment12360_4079 about the site's tendency to get techbro comments
@YemonChoi Although I wouldn't use that name, this does seem to be a relevant example, yes. But do observe that there is no need for that user to display affiliation here, as it is clear that the questions ignores the context and is bad and therefore is currently at -2 (perhaps it has also been upvoted, but I lack the reputation to see that.)
@YemonChoi Also, "the latest answer at" isn't a very convenient reference as this specification vanishes once there are later answers. Also, the answer in question seems to have been deleted. Note that you can directly link to an answer by using the 'share' button at the bottom of the answer.
@Discrete lizard: On this site, the majority of answers are based on personal experience to at least some extent. Moreover, a lot of answers here are neither inherently "good" nor "bad" but rather context-dependent; removing the context is a disservice to the reader. Sometimes really wrong-looking advice turns out to be dead-on for a part of academia very far away from mine. Sometimes it turns out that someone is bringing in anti-academic biases of one kind of another. Again, context is very helpful.
@PeteL.Clark Yes, but not all answers. Hence, the blanket statement to always include affiliation seems a bit strong to me. Furthermore, why is the author always relevant context? If there is an anti-academic bias, then why can't this be seen from the text alone and if it can't, then what is the problem? I really don't see why you give so much importance on the author of answers.
@Discretelizard Thanks for the good points (I am somewhat torn between the position Pete advocates and the counterarguments you raise). Incidentally, given what seemed to happen in the comments to that deleted answer, and given what happens when you look at the user's Linkedin page, I think "techbro" wasn't so inaccurate a guess on my part ...
@YemonChoi It's not so much that I thought the term wouldn't be applicable, it is just that I dislike the term as it has often been used to demonize all males working in 'high tech' jobs, not just for those behaving badly.
@Discretelizard: You're right that I don't mean that this kind of disclosure would be necessary or helpful for all questions on this site: a minority of questions ask for purely factual information.
@PeteL.Clark But not all non-'just facts' questions demand disclosure of academic experience, see some of my answers, for instance. I think the minority of questions that for which such a disclosure is meaningful is still sizeable enough that it cannot be ignored at least. Still, while I understand that you may want this, I highly doubt that it reasonably possible to 'enforce' this in the current format, so the entire discussion is moot, really. (I also don't think you want to enforce it either (though I could be wrong), but I at least wanted to show some points against it)
Just in peeking through your answers on the site so far, although you've gotten a lot of upvotes on some (likely through the HNQ bloat, as others have pointed out), lots of your answers don't answer the actual question, and are more like extended comments on other answers.
Some of this might be because you lack the "insider information" necessary to answer the original question, or it might be just a style in your answering that is outside the normal guidelines for what make good StackExchange answers. Given the topic of this meta post, I'll assume the former:
I think that laypeople who are not part of Academia should not use partial answers to address only parts of questions when they are not prepared to answer the whole question. There may be some questions here that can be answered by anyone, but in most cases those questions either belong on a different stack, or the user answering them may not have sufficient understanding of Academic culture to recognize when an question actually has an academia-unique answer.
As just an example, completely independent from your personal answering history, the role of an academic advisor as both a "boss" and a mentor is completely different from that of a boss in the outside world. Advice for how to deal with a bad boss at work is often completely inappropriate for an academic context, even if the interpersonal problem is the same.
what is HNQ? Can someone explain for users that are illiterate?
Hot network questions - the ones that appear on the sidebar. They get a lot of nonspecific traffic that overwhelms a specific stacks normal viewership, especially for smaller stacks.
Well, I'm just a Masters' student, so most of my academia knowledge is very basic.
However, note that all answers are judged by their content (and form), not their creator. Hence, as long as an answer that is useful, but not necessarily from an academic perspective, it can be accepted.
One example of such an answer could be this one:
phd-in-mathematics-science-communication-jobs
No academic knowledge required, yet still an useful and well-received answer.
"Well, I'm just a Masters' student, so most of my academia knowledge is very basic." your humility is incredibly refreshing; you'll go places with that attitude (and the insight you displayed in the answer).
@msanford Thanks for the kind words. I guess my main point is that some questions from within academia can have answers from outside of academia. So, as long as you know what you're talking about and write an useful and clear answer, your affiliation shouldn't matter.
As a user can obviously garner several hundred rep or more without a direct or deep or active involvement in academia, there are obviously questions you can answer successfully and appropriately.
However, being aware of the lack of direct experience means you must carefully consider whether, by virtue of not being involved, there are things you don't know that critically undermine your answer accuracy and relevance.
Given the number of academicians that fail to do this (a small but still identifiable superminority), and given an apparent awareness of the issue, you're probably fine as you are.
Some question actually can only be answered from an outsider's perspective. Applying for industry jobs is a prominent example. Many PhD students will have questions related to this topic but a typical academic career path does not include leaving academia.
If you post stupid stuff, you will be downvoted. Similar to other SO site, bad answers will move down, good answers move up. Your answers with upvotes were considered helpful - write more of these!
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4576 | Stack Exchange support of the community
Recently there has be a lot of discussion regarding Firing mods and forced relicensing: is Stack Exchange still interested in cooperating with the community?. A number of moderators have resigned or are taking time off in relation to issues that arose out of SE's incompetence in instituting changes to be more welcoming to LGBT+ users. Some of the issues LGBT+ users face are well expressed by Aza in their Resignation Notice. To prevent people who do not care about these issues from having to read on, the bottom line is that I will NOT be resigning or taking time off because I think I can be a positive influence in helping support the needs of our LGBT+ users. That said I am extremely disappointed by the SE team in their lack of support for our community and in particular the LGBT+ members.
The SE team is proposing changes to the Code of Conduct that I think will make it harder for moderators to ensure LGBT+ members are respected. SE employees removed stars from dissenting comments in the private moderator chat room where the changes to the CoC were being discussed. Further, the most strongly dissenting moderator was fired and other moderators step down (e.g., Gilles) in support of her. While I do not believe the fired moderator was without fault (in my opinion her behavior unintentionally hurt LGBT+ users/moderators), what SE employees have shared with us and how they went about removing her (including the timing on the eve of one of her most holy holidays) makes me feel betrayed because they have muddied the waters regarding their efforts to support our community.
About a year ago, SE revisited their theory of moderation and promised moderators Trust. Support. Agency. Accountability. Autonomy. The SE team has yet again failed to deliver on this promise and is again letting our LGBT+ users and moderators down. The SE team has lost an opportunity to proactively provide us with the support we need.
So, if I am understanding your post correctly, SE is changing the CoC to be more welcoming to LGBT+ users, but (at least some) moderators think the change will actually make it harder to ensure LGBT+ users are not abused/mistreated?
@TylerH you know our hands are tied regarding some of this. I have no idea why SE is changing the CoC. I am concerned that the proposed changes will make things harder when dealing with issues important to LGBT+ users. Most importantly, I am pissed that the SE team has let everyone down.
Sure, I'm not expecting you to detail any specifics; I just wanted to make sure I was parsing your description correctly.
@TylerH I think I fundamentally disagree with the beliefs expressed in Caleb's answer, but I hope you can see how some of the issues he brings up are a moderation nightmare.
I do - it puts certain sites in an impossible position.
Is there a good summary of what's actually happened? The links that I've followed are very vague, and I don't have time to wade through lots of meta.SE looking for hints.... @StrongBad, FWIW, you have my respect and support :-)
...reading a little more, it looks like people are upset that Stackexchange wants them to respect users' preferred pronouns. That's not a position that I have much sympathy with. But, I may very well have the wrong end of the stick, because it's all more or less "private"...
@Flyto I am not sure which position you do not have much sympathy for, but that is your personal choice and doesn't matter. People are upset about a lot of things, but I think it really boils down to the SE team messed up badly the past few days.
@StrongBad fair point, my comment was ambiguous. But from what you've said, it sounds like that particular matter isn't the heart of the problem.
You've tagged this [meta-tag:discussion]. What do you want us to discuss? There's not much we can do about the new CoC. Is this more of an announcement of things to come, perhaps? Am I missing the point of the question? For the record, yes, I'm quite aware of what's happening on meta and SE-wide.
@Mast all meta question must have at least one tag from bug, support, discussion, or feature-request. I think my question is probably closer to an announcement than a discussion, but if people want to discuss my actions or SE actions or possibly even if the community should do something, they are welcome to.
+1 for fundamentally disagreeing and not concluding that automatically implies evil intent.
Maybe I missed something, a sincere question: Where exactly is the connection of recent events and LGBT+ (which you mentioned 7 (!) times)? There are allusions about the CoC, but I have only seen speculation about that. You also referred to the post by Ava, but admittedly, I haven't seen anything there that goes beyond accusing others of "bigotry" (and I will not watch 9 (!) videos at the off-chance that they clarify things). You don't know whether I'm LGBT+, and I don't know that about you. That's totally none of each other's business. How is this relevant for moderation?
@Marco13 if you don't see anything in Aza's post other than accusations of bigotry, then there is nothing I can say to convince you. My suggestion would be for you to talk to someone who you respect and who understands LGBT+ issues about Aza's post.
I "respect" people who answer sincere questions in the context of a civilized, open discussion (even if they think that the other side may just be ignorant or what...?). Aza talks about unwelcomeness, pain, resting, and hostile behavior. There seem to be some severe accusations hidden in there, but if this is the case, they have to be articulated much more clearly. I'd really try to understand it, but it has to be clear and factual (I'm a nerd, and almost certainly in the spectrum - maybe this explains what others may perceive as stubbornness...)
I indeed missed something - I just saw that this is already discussed in more detail in https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/334058/248000 - still reading, a lot of things are happening right now...
@Marco13 I agree with you Aza's post was highly confusing and insubstantive, I had to dig through a ton of posts to figure out what they were talking about too.
Yeah, a lot of the arguments are about things that only moderators have actually seen, and nearly everybody is being disciplined in not "leaking" that. So for the rest of us, looking in, there's a lot of strong feeling but very little info or context. (unless something's changed in the last 24 hrs. I'm out of date)
Here's some more info, via the press: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/01/stack_exchange_controversy/ I strongly suspect that this isn't complete info, and may not be fair - because while "mod fired for intentionally misgendering people" would be controversial, I think it would be differently controversial - but it's all we have to go on.
@Flyto There was an update posted
Why do you find particularly remarkable that she was fired on the eve of a religious holiday? I wouldn't consider it more disrespectful than any other time, and I am not sure why it deserves to be mentioned. I could possibly see your point if this was her main job that provided food on her table, but as far as I understand she was just a volunteer moderator.
@FedericoPoloni I am a little worried that they used her religion against her and were hoping she would be distracted by preparations for the holiday and offline/less likely to respond for 72 hrs to make this easier for them. I am not saying that is the case, but the optics (and a lot of this is about optics for SE) are not good. Why couldn't they have waited 3 days?
So, looks like the actual theory of moderation is spouting a lot of flowery rhetoric about doing right by moderators, regardless of behavior. Oh, and using carefully-gendered pronouns so they don't get upset when they're stepped on...
@TylerH: The CoC will not - as far as I can foresee and speculate - be "more welcoming to LGBT+". That might be a stated purpose of the new CoC, but it is doubtful that this atmosphere of coercion, oppression and mistrust will make things more welcoming.
@Flyto To "respect" is fundamentally different from being compelled to use gendered language over gender-neutral language. I'm surprised this has to be explained to you.
@StrongBad: did SE know that she would be away because of the religious hollyday? I read a lot about all this but couldn't find the answer. If so, it is a real concern that they used that opportunity to sack her in her absence. If not, that's just bad timing. she could have been temporarily away for whatever reason: vacation, sickness, having a child,...
@Taladris she was a mod at judism.SE. As to whether SE knew she is Jewish, the importance of the holiday, or if she would be offline, I don't know. Even if they knew, the people making the decision may not have. Regardless, it seems worrisome.
In case it gets lost in all of the noise, Sara Chipps (Director of Public Q&A) posted an official response on Meta Stack Overflow: An Update to our Community and an Apology
Spoiler: There's no apology there, and very little information... But that's not anonymous' fault of course so +1 for the link.
The CTO of Stack Exchange has now posted a new apology.
@StrongBad, thank you for balancing your expressions of concern with a willingness to continue to stay constructive and to moderate.
I have been following the discussions, and while it certainly appears that the company's employees did not handle this situation well, I also am not impressed by the most highly voted responses of the community. In reading those reactions, I come away with an impression of people who have come to feel rather entitled based on their degree of activity in the StackExchange community.
Personally, I try to remember that at the end of the day, this place is really about the people who come looking for answers---most of whom never even ask a question. That some of us enjoy spending time here, providing those answers, and even building some community seems to me to be quite secondary.
We'll see how the company sorts things out on its end---frankly, I think that responding slowly and giving people a chance to settle down may be one of their best choices right now. In the mean time, carrying on with the things that brought people here in the first place seems like a good idea.
Preamble
Wow.. I stumbled on this subject when I went to SO.meta to post about perceived decline in quality of answers and increasingly level of garbage, so I was going to ask about whether or not there was a decline in interest as well as lapse of moderation.
It took a great deal of time to figure out the sequence of events and try to get the nuances of the whole ordeal, and I am sure there is a lot happening behind the scenes that we "mere mortals" don't get to see.
I don't have the rep to write this on the SE.meta where the "apologies" from the SE staff came out, so it partially relates to your post @StrongBad, and partially to the subject as a whole. I hope you forgive me if parts of what I write here don't seem relevant to you.
Speculating at the "why"
I feel this is extremely discouraging but to some extent a natural consequence of the near exponential growth of SE sites.* The main income of these sites is traffic so as the network grew, it needed to cater to a larger and larger crowd. The way I see it that has several critical and profound challenges (in no particular order):
It became harder and harder to have guidelines that was relevant and agreeable for all the communities.
SE staff became more and more distanced from the community, I remember the times where the SE staff would often post on Meta, and occasionally give insights to the way the company reasoned behind the scenes. They weighed in on feature requests as well as encouraged growth on newer communities
As the network grew hungrier for new users, and reach out to more people, the level of "noise" increased. Here I mean duplicate, low-quality questions and answers. The need for moderation increases as the crowd increases. This too has an important implication, as the community grows in size, the dissent also increases. Despite sometimes pretending otherwise, there are inevitable differences even within a community. What seems like a normal way to express an opinion to one person may come across as offensive or insulting to another. There are cultural components to that, as well as other personal factors which are clearly hard (if not impossible) to know in advance. So staff, moderators and users will likely clash at some point, inevitably so...
Together with the previous item, as the network grew the perceived value of the network may have changed in the eyes of the "subject-matter-experts", especially if the "noise" is not kept below a certain level.
Where I stand
All that being said, I am not sure where we are headed. I don't believe it'll be "business as usual" not after this much turmoil. I also don't believe things will be "fixed". Most of all I don't believe in the sincerity of the apologies provided by the SE staff.
Personally I don't really care about how they will do right by the people they have wronged, that's between company and the individuals. I don't care for the apologies, since I trust actions not the words.** I also don't care much about the change of CoC relating to the use of pronouns (possibly because my native language does not use different pronouns based on gender).
What I do care about is how the company treats people who volunteer to improve their product. Let's remember one thing, the primary unique value proposition of this place is the fact that this is a place that brings "experts and enthusiasts" together, where we help each other solve our problems, learn and grow. So we bring the value, they provide the medium. In other words, we are the product not necessarily the customer. Let's try to keep that in mind.
Moderators especially voluntarily take time to improve the site, and to make sure there is productive, respectful and civil discourse. As far as I know (please correct me otherwise) community moderators get zero financial benefits for doing the extra work.
That's the real issue in my eyes, the network is too large, perhaps too large to fail. So they probably feel (or felt) that roughing some feathers is not gonna be an issue. There will be people sticking around, or joining a year or two down the road, to provide the content. They treat their main assets as expendable objects. That's what I find the most troubling!
TLDR
Last but not least I have no trust what-so-ever for the staff/executives at SE, for no other reason than that they are representing a company. Companies have financial interests, and in general (at least in my experience) only care for their customers (or ethical/moral standpoints) when it's profitable i.e. when not doing that would be harmful for business.
Trust is an inherently human thing; I trust the people I can shake hands with, look into the eyes of, and perhaps, have a beer with. I don't trust anyone that's on the other side of the ocean from me, and more importantly has a vested financial interest in the subject matter.
That's what I would have liked to write as an answer to David's or Sara's "apology". You want to win back people's trust, show them you actually care about the community, and not see them as a business asset.
* Not immediately relevant perhaps, but the company is based in NYC as far as I know and I am guessing at some point they have started to cave in to pressures of finances, reason in the more conventional terms of economics and profitability.
** When I was reading the apologies provided by SE staff, specifically David and Sara, it is clear to me that the language has been carefully structured, probably heavily consulted by the legal team. In that sense, reminiscent of the apology letters/statements by professional athletes after some PR scandal.
I see no remorse, and no acknowledgement of what really went wrong. I also see no real change in sight. It's essentially; "our game our rules, if you don't like it then stop playing"
Frankly, holding elections in this environment, without informing users, or worse, candidates, that this was going on, was the wrong thing to do.
Well, the whole election process started well before the current moderator situation blew up. Hard to go back in time... (The question collection started September 9th, the questionnaire was 9/16, etc.).
It seems like keeping people in the dark about things is sort of an official SE approach now, so - par for the cours?
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4645 | Resigning and leaving SE
I have decided that I can no longer contribute my efforts to Stack Exchange and therefore I am stepping down as a moderator and planning on leaving the community. I will not be deleting my accounts or content, but I will not be actively participating. I have been thinking about this for a while and it is not related to any single event. Our community is welcoming and supportive. The SE Community Managers, past and present, are both knowledgeable and professional, but more importantly, they represent the community spirit that made SE great; they are amongst the greatest assets of SE.
When I ran to be a moderator I said:
My personal opinion is that the community opinion rules, so it will be difficult for me to be in disagreement with the community. I like to think that the SE policy is that the community opinion rules. If the community opinion is so against the SE opinion, the SE team has moderators who can handle it. If the SE team really pisses our community off, I would go to bat for our community in private (e.g., in the mod only teacher's lounge) and in our public chat and meta.
Over the past few months, it has become clear that my views of our community now disagree with SE policy. I have gone to bat for us, and I have been unsuccessful. I am no longer an effective agent for advancing our community goals, I have simply been biding my time until SE did something so horrendous that I felt no choice but to leaving. That is not a fair way to represent you, so I am stepping aside in the hopes that others can be more successful.
When I joined Stack Exchange 8 years ago, it was an awesome community that had awesome support from the company. They not only provided the servers, they had developers actively working to make the experience better and employees whose jobs were to build the community. Even before it was trendy, they cared about user privacy and the rights of our contributions.
Over time, SE became an awesome community with just enough support to keep the whole thing from imploding. At first it was simply that the support from the company did not keep up with the growth in the communities. Then SE started cutting support and diverting resources.
A year ago, SE began to transform into an awesome community where SE keeps the lights on and was not negatively interfering with communities. The core values of the company began to shift and outwardly it seems building strong communities was no longer the focus, making money was. Of course companies have to make money, but it made me uncomfortable contributing to SE if they were going to sacrifice their core principals to make a buck.
Most recently SE has become an awesome community despite the interference of the management. Volunteer moderators and community members are being asked to implement policies that SE thinks are right for us. They are not acting on our feedback or telling us why they are making the decisions they are. They are the boss, they have that right. What they do not have the right to do is act like the boss and then say the community is "built and run by you [users]".
In the 5+ years that I have been a moderator, I have learned so much. I thank you all for working with me. For those that I disappointed with my actions and in-actions, I wish I had more time to show you through my actions that I have taken your criticism to heart and have learned from it. Alas, all I can leave you with is empty words that I am sorry that I was not better.
Hate to see it, but understand completely. Thanks for all you have contributed, here and around the network. No apology is necessary - your leaving is not based on any failure of yours. I'll miss you.
{*salutes*}
Nooooooo..... Very sorry to see this (though I share many of your concerns). Wishing you all the best.
@StrongBad excellent play on words (or brilliant typo): "it made me uncomfortable contributing to SE if they were going to sacrifice their core principals" . Sorry to see you're going too. Thanks for all your hard work keeping this place on the rails.
The TeX community will sorely miss you, dear friend!
You will be sorely missed, but I completely understand. Thank you for all you've done to help keep this community running smoothly.
I will not be deleting my accounts or content I may be wrong, but I don't think you can delete your content, can you? That's one of the (many) reasons I no longer contribute.
@BobsaysreinstateMonica I think you can delete your content, it's just that the mods or the SE staff can undelete the deleted content if they wish. Also, >10K users, the mods and SE staff can still see the deleted contents. In other words, they are soft-deleted. To the mods, is my understandings correct or incorrect?
@scaaahu Yep, correct!
@scaaahu that's what I thought. It's not exactly how I would define "delete".
I'm sorry to see this. I understand the concerns about batting efficiency, but I seriously doubt that there are better batters around. It's not your batting, it's the unending torrent of curveballs.
I hope you come back soon!
Looks like https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/342363/248268 didn't fly!
What is happening with SE!!! Monica and now StrongBad!!!
Good luck! I'm sure you come back some time so see you soon!!!!
Is re-featuring this a request for @StrongBad to re-evaluate given the recent announcements at Meta? I'd love to see him back!
"The core values of the company began to shift and outwardly it seems building strong communities was no longer the focus, making money was." Could you talk about why SE make you feel that more specifically? And thank you for your effort.
Thank you for your service!
We will miss you and your contributions as user and moderator. They were always excellent. The site will not be the same without you. All the best!
(I could try to write a long essay, but I don't think I could find the right words, so I will stop here.)
To a significant amount of researchers out there, life in academia is rough, even brutal and toxic. Poor students have their lives, hopes and dreams sucked out of their bodies, for the sake of production, of science, of progress, breaking the shackles of ignorance for the good of mankind. It is a heavy burden, sometimes too heavy.
Wir müssen wissen, wir werden wissen!
Most of the time, at a high price. We get stressed. We get lost. Sometimes, we cry for help in the hopes some blessed soul will lend a hand. It happens, thankfully. But some cries, most of them surely, go unnoticed. Students suffer to reach deadlines, to get papers accepted in conferences and journals, to get a good insight, to come up with innovation, to make a difference. They struggle so hard to not fall apart, to not break into pieces. It is common to hear "Where's the revised version of your paper?" instead "What was the last time you ate? Are you hungry?". We want to harvest knowledge at the expense of the well being of students.
When in despair, where to go, where to find a escape valve?
I do believe one of the answers to this question is this very website. You all bring hope to poor students that are struggling with their academic lives, providing technical advices and guidances without, however, losing the kindness needed to address such themes in a humanized way.
And that is where you, Dr. StrongBad, really shines. :)
We know each other from the TeX community. Sometimes, we have a nice conversation in the chat room. Speaking of which, the vast majority of the chat residents has a doctorate degree. These people are experts in their fields, work in renowed universities. But, when hanging out in there, we never cared about our OrcID profiles, our titles, our h-indices or any of this academic balderdash. We are just a bunch of wacky people having legimitate fun, helping and instructing each other the best we could.
Your work in this community reflects the exact same ideal we all hold dear. You are a superb moderator and you will surely be missed in this community, as well as in the TeX corner. I completely understand the motivations for your resignation, and I share your concerns with the future of SE/SO as well.
Thank you very much for making academic life a better, less frustrating experience for most researchers, scholars, lecturers and students out there! Kudos to you and to all the moderators in this website!
A great hug from the TeX community! Quack! :)
These are great words! :-)
@Massimo thanks! :) ooh you are in TeX.sx too! woooooo
Maybe you'd reconsider. The only way this place can get better is if the people who care enough to contribute stay around and keep at it.
I hope it isn't just general burnout though. For that, a break might be enough.
Since this is the academia forum, let me add that the administration of universities also do some stupid and terrible things on occasion. But few faculty leave in protest. Many of us have experienced such things, I guess. The situation isn't exactly the same, since giving up volunteer work isn't the same as giving up a job. But, still, it is the ones that stay that have a chance to make a change.
The problem is that moderators and community managers simply don't have a say in how SE is run any more. SE took that away, and made it very clear when 2 long-standing (8-9 years) community managers were fired.
Not only fired, but publicly lied about.
SE has made is pretty clear they don't tolerate moderators objecting to or even just raising some concerns or questioning what they're doing. And what they're doing is not good. So moderators only have the option of helping the company go in the wrong direction, quitting or getting fired. But of course I don't judge anyone for staying a mod because they're more optimistic or they don't want to lose the community.
Bottom up change may work in a workplace setting where employees have some influence, employees may put their hands together and eventually the employer may see they need the employees. When there's a proper divide between leadership layers and the bottom class (users and regular mods) then they're not going to convince the leadership class. It's a bit like expecting the fish to solve the problem of overheating and polluted oceans. You can write a novel about it, but it's not going to work out in practice.
The core values of the company began to shift and outwardly it seems building strong communities was no longer the focus, making money was.
I'm confused about why you think this. The company was definitely founded to make money from the start. The initial focus on community was a step towards that. What is amazing here is that it was such a long-term strategy.
I do not see why you should expect a company to put anything ahead of profits. There are exceptions (social enterprises) but I never saw any signs Stack Exchange was an exception.
That is a really good question. My guess is that when they started they knew "market share" was not enough and that they needed an actual revenue stream, but they thought ads would be enough. They eventually realized that ads were not enough (although they keep trying) so they started careers. That was at least relevant to the SO community. Now they are on to Teams which doesn't seem relevant to the communities (except maybe as a place to find potential customers). The problem, as I see it, is that their revenue stream is not intertwined with the communities.
It's fair to expect that making money is the primary goal, but I think it's also fair to expect that supporting the (volunteer) communities is a secondary goal. For example, many/most superusers have been very clear that we want Monica reinstated -- I cannot imagine how this would have economic implications for the company, yet here we are.
Many (or possibly even most) companies start with the goal to improve the world in some way. Yes, money's definitely generally a part of it, but it's not the only part. You can find plenty of business owners who won't compromise on their vision for their company for the sake of making more money, and how SE handled monetisation in the past certainly (seems) in line with this. The farewell to Stack Exchange by Jeff Atwood (co-founder of Stack Overflow) speaks a lot about making the internet better and not at all about making money.
This. I've just been reading some fairly convincing analysis that suggests that SE's strategy now is to grow Team and Enterprise by an order of magnitude, and that the public Q&A sites are just not relevant to that.
@Flyto You mean the past and current SE is not big "Team and Enterprise"? Or not big enough?
@scaaahu different products. https://stackoverflow.com/teams & https://stackoverflow.com/enterprise
The company was definitely founded to make money.... I don't mind that. As long as I'm having fun here. But since it's become exclusively about money, don't you think we all deserve a share? This whole situation with SE taught me a lesson (yet another time): Never contribute anything for free to a business. It's just business. Long live Jimmy Wales!
I'm adding an answer to point out the last interaction here, in case you missed it; it is now buried in the edit history. On April 2, @Wrzlprmft added the tag status-review to this question, which (after a recent change) is the preferred way to ask for SE staff attention on important posts in metas. One week after, SE employee @JNat silently removed the tag without addressing the issue and without an edit comment.
The issue which caused me to add the tag was that StrongBad was still not de-modded (because things had fallen through some crack). JNat addressed this issue when removing the tag. No bad things happened here.
Thanks for the clarification. Still, I would have appreciated an accompanying comment from SE ("thanks for your past service to our site").
@FedericoPoloni The SE CMs like JNat are super overworked right now, in addition to any additional stresses coming from the pandemic; they aren't the correct employees to direct frustrations towards.
@Wrzlprmft nothing really fell through the cracks. I never formally asked for my diamond to be removed. I figured I would eventually time out and they would remove it at the next election. Soon after you added the tag jnat reached out to me and we decided that it made sense to remove the diamond now since an election might be a ways off. As always when interacting with the CMs everything was very professional and he made it clear that my past contributions were appreciated and I am welcome back if I want to return.
@StrongBad: Are you back now??! Or just monitoring this thread?
@StrongBad I'd love to see you back ;-)
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4934 | Community Ads for 2021
September update: Community Ads are now live network-wide. All ads with a score of 6 or higher, or with a score of 4 or higher and no downvotes will be displayed (except for any that have a note from the CM Team explaining why it wasn't selected). Go to the main post on MSE for a list of the ads that are being displayed. And stay tuned for 2022's edition for the next opportunity to submit more ad proposals!
AUGUST NOTE: This post has now been locked and new submissions are not being accepted. Ad submissions are now undergoing review by the Community Team, and this question will be updated once the ads are live.
We're almost halfway through 2021, and in case you missed it, Community Promotion Ads are gonna be a bit different this time! TL;DR: submit and vote for ad proposals before August 2nd!
What are Community Ads?
Community Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, or on other sites in the network. They can show up in the right sidebar, or in banners in question pages. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be considered by the Community Management Team to be displayed.
Why do we have Community Ads?
This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. The goal of this initiative is for future visitors to find out about the stuff your community deems important. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are relevant to your own community's interests, both for those already in the community and those yet to join. You may want to promote external resources, or Meta guidance for newcomers, for instance.
This initiative has an added goal of providing your community with an opportunity to showcase exemplary questions from your main site, as well as frequently-linked-to guides from your Meta site. While the latter makes sense to be shown solely on this site, the former can be shown all across the network. These should avoid hot button topics, and instead focus more on evergreen questions that show what your community’s all about.
Why do we reset the ads?
Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. Historically, we've reset the ads every year — since this is the first run of a new format, we'll run the ads collected in this post through the end of 2021 and reassess the rotation cycle then.
The community ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a previous exposure.
Are there restrictions to the ads I can post?
All proposed ads need to abide by our Code of Conduct. Our ad creative guidelines also generally apply (note that the first 2 bullet points on the “Tracking” section do not apply, and a lot of the guidelines surrounding claims, comparisons, proof, etc., while still applicable, may not be particularly relevant). Finally, ads can not be promoting products nor soliciting programmer time or resources for: knowledge sharing or collaboration tools for technologists, or for sites where ad buyers are primarily targeting technologists.
How does it work?
The answers you post to this question must conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored:
Each answer must relate to a single ad submission. Please do not post multiple ad submissions in the same answer.
All answers must be in one of the below formats:
If you have an image for the ad you want to display on this site (must be the case for ads to external sources):
[![Image name. Example: "community_ad_name_300x250"][1]][2]
[1]: https://image-url
[2]: https://clickthrough-url
If you want to create an ad for a question from your main or meta site, to be advertised on this or other sites in the network (staff will generate a frame for the ad with this site's theme, for brand consistency):
Question title
Question URL
Ad size (right sidebar or banner ads)
Site(s) to be displayed in. Can be:
- "self" for ads to be displayed on this site
- "all" for ads to be displayed all over the network
- a specific subset of sites
Please do not add anything else to the body of the post. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.
Image requirements
The image that you create must be 300 x 250 pixels for right sidebar ads or 728 x 90 pixels for banner ads. Images can be double that if high DPI.
Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)
Must be GIF, PNG, or JPG
No animated GIFs
Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB
If the background of the image is white or partially white, there must be a 1px border (2px if high DPI) surrounding it.
Selection process
This post will remain open for ad submissions and voting until August 2nd. At that point, the question will be closed/locked, and no more ad submissions will be accepted. For ad submissions to be considered for selection by the Community Management Team, they must have a minimum score of 6 at the time the post was closed/locked for submissions. Given this is the first run with this new format, we may adjust the score threshold to be a bit lower if we see ads struggling to get to it (especially if the ads are not getting downvotes) by the time submissions and voting are closed.
Reporting statistics
Once this cycle is over, at the end of 2021, the Community Management Team will provide you with reporting statistics, as described in the "reporting" section of this post.
Feel free to use the question's comment section to ask for any clarifications.
I would like to see no community ads on this site, so I am downvoting all proposals in the attempt to keep them below the 6-score threshold (and I invite other people who feel the same about ads to do so). No offense intended for the answerers or their projects.
JNat: or is there a different option to vote to prevent ads from being shown?
There are ads on the internet?
There's no other way to express disagreement, no, @FedericoPoloni — if you think an ad should not be displayed, downvote away.
Is this even the right size?
@user1271772: I hadn't noticed that sizes requirements had changed, will fix :-)
This doesn't appear to conform to the size guidance provided in the question. Please flag this answer with a link to the properly sized image hosted in i.stack.imgur.com so that I can replace it so we can display this ad @nic
Update: I used this image as is, and the ad serving system resizes the image to conform to the size mentioned as a restriction. The ad will look slightly distorted, since the proportion is relatively different.
Any reason why this uses a mixture of fonts? In particular, the font for "Quantum" and "Computing" is different, which looks a bit odd.
This ad doesn't look like a good fit for this community. We have a broad spectrum of research interests here, so a discipline-specific ad would be irrelevant for most of our users. And we do not want to give the impression that we care about the content of research or that we focus on STEM.
@GoodDeeds Thanks for the feedback! It's an open-source and collaborative project so if you think having everything in the same font would be better, you'd be welcome to make that change. Someone else yesterday said that different fonts are a good idea but didn't like one of the specific fonts used here.
To Federico: You've expressed your distaste for such ads multiple times now, and also here. Now let's let the community decide. Generally new sites, especially when dealing with an academic subject and with users that are essentially 100% in academia, benefit a lot from promotion on other sites in the network, as Academia.SE has too.
Font issues (which I already commented on over at Physics Meta) aside, I think this is an excellent ad for Academia Stack Exchange.
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4863 | 2020: a year in moderation
As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the past 12 months.
As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network are moderated somewhat differently to other sites on the web:
We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in that we amortize the overall moderation cost of the system across thousands of teeny-tiny slices of effort contributed by regular, everyday users.
-- A Theory of Moderation
That doesn't eliminate the need for having moderators altogether, but it does mean that the bulk of moderation work is carried out by regular folks. Every bit of time and effort y'all contribute to the site gives you access to more privileges you can use to help in this effort, all of which produce a cumulative effect that makes a big difference.
So as we welcome 2021, and in keeping with tradition, let us look back at what we accomplished as a community... by looking at some exciting stats. Below is a breakdown of moderation actions performed on Academia over the past 12 months:
Action
Moderators
Community¹
Users suspended²
32
31
Users destroyed³
228
0
Users deleted
18
0
Users contacted
55
0
User banned from review
1
0
Tasks reviewed⁴: Suggested Edit queue
52
1,787
Tasks reviewed⁴: Reopen Vote queue
0
871
Tasks reviewed⁴: Low Quality Posts queue
4
747
Tasks reviewed⁴: Late Answer queue
0
389
Tasks reviewed⁴: First Post queue
38
3,749
Tasks reviewed⁴: Close Votes queue
49
6,665
Tags merged
7
0
Tag synonyms proposed
5
0
Tag synonyms created
12
0
Revisions redacted
7
0
Questions unprotected
0
30
Questions reopened
28
15
Questions protected
89
71
Questions migrated
30
1
Questions merged
4
0
Questions flagged⁵
108
1,903
Questions closed
487
1,704
Question flags handled⁵
887
1,126
Posts unlocked
14
17
Posts undeleted
21
77
Posts locked
30
363
Posts deleted⁶
496
2,167
Posts bumped
0
358
Escalations to the Community Manager team
23
0
Comments undeleted
370
0
Comments flagged
57
1,591
Comments deleted⁷
7,370
2,826
Comment flags handled
1,407
242
Answers flagged
144
1,659
Answer flags handled
1,468
337
All comments on a post moved to chat
203
0
Footnotes
¹ "Community" here refers both to the membership of Academia without diamonds next to their names, and to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.
² The system will suspend users under three circumstances: when a user is recreated after being previously suspended, when a user is recreated after being destroyed for spam or abuse, and when a network-wide suspension is in effect on an account.
³ A "destroyed" user is deleted along with all that they had posted: questions, answers, comments. Generally used as an expedient way of getting rid of spam.
⁴ This counts every review that was submitted (not skipped) - so the 2 suggested edits reviews needed to approve an edit would count as 2, the goal being to indicate the frequency of moderation actions. This also applies to flags, etc.
⁵ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes).
⁶ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.
⁷ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).
Further reading:
Wanna see how these numbers have changed over time? We posted a similar report here last year: 2019: a year in moderation
You can also check out this report on other sites
Or peruse detailed information on the number of questions closed and reopened across all sites
A big thank you to Shog9 for writing the queries and script to facilitate fetching and posting this data to all the sites in the network, and to Brian for the subsequent work making the whole thing more user friendly.
Wishing everyone a happy 2021!
Why is "suspensions lifted early" not listed here? It was listed in the 2019 version.
Given that it is present on reports on other sites, I'd say the script that generates these only creates a row for stuff that's non-0. Which is to say: it's not listed here because there is nothing to list.
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4537 | 2019 Moderator Election Q&A - Question Collection
The purpose of this thread was to collect questions for the questionnaire. The questionnaire is now live, and you may find it here.
Academia is scheduled for an election next week, September 16. 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.
Here's how it'll work:
Until the nomination phase, (so, until September 16 at 20:00:00Z UTC, or 4:00 pm EDT on the same day, give or take time to arrive for closure), 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. We reserve some editorial control in the selection of the questions and may opt not to select a question that is tangential or irrelevant to moderation or the election.
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.
@ JNat: Why does https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4562/2019-community-moderator-election have "Community" as an author rather than a Stack Exchange employee like this post and the questionnaire one? This seems a bad practice, because it means that no "community manager" gets notified of comments to that question to answer them.
That's an automatic post, @FedericoPoloni. Regardless, whoever is "running" a given election will generally keep an eye on that post for queries :)
I would be very surprised if you folks at SE couldn't create an automatic post with a different author than Community.
We prolly can, @FedericoPoloni. I'm assuming there's some reason for it to be the way it is — but we're working on further automating some steps of the election process right now, so I'll add a note to change that in the future, so the post is attributed to the "election leader." :)
As a moderator, I find that comments are a tricky thing to deal with. Under what circumstances will you delete comments?
Note that there are lots of flags that comments are obsolete/no longer needed.
What is your stance about the current scope of Academia Stack Exchange and how this is enforced?
Should we close any question that does not strictly comply with the current scope?
Should we be lenient and keep open questions that can potentially generate good answers even if borderline off-topic?
Should we narrow or broaden the scope?
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 time zone? What is the time period you are available for moderating our site everyday? Please specify the answer in UTC format.
[Blatantly stolen from scaaahu in a past election.]
Academia.SE frequently has questions rise high on the Hot Network Questions (HNQ); often these questions are on more controversial topics than the mean question here and attract visitors from across the SE community who otherwise don't participate here.
What do you think the moderators' role should be with respect to HNQ list questions? How do you think presence on the HNQ list should affect moderation decisions?
Do you have any previous experience as a moderator, either on Stack Exchange or on other kind of communities (e.g. newsgroups, forums etc.)?
New users and posters tend to struggle more than experienced users. What would you do as a moderator to improve the onboarding and also improve the welcome felt by new posters to Academic SE?
Extracted from this answer with multiple questions to allow individual voting
In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?
Note that there were no votes on this answer when the edit was made.
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?
Extracted from this answer with multiple questions to allow individual voting
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?
Note that there were no votes on this answer when the edit was made.
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5247 | 2022: a year in moderation
As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.
As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network are moderated somewhat differently to other sites on the web:
We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in that we amortize the overall moderation cost of the system across thousands of teeny-tiny slices of effort contributed by regular, everyday users.
-- A Theory of Moderation
That doesn't eliminate the need for having moderators altogether, but it does mean that the bulk of moderation work is carried out by regular folks. Every bit of time and effort y'all contribute to the site gives you access to more privileges you can use to help in this effort, all of which produce a cumulative effect that makes a big difference.
So as we say goodbye to 2022 (and where did January go, right?) and dive head first into 2023, let us look back at what we accomplished as a community... by looking at some exciting stats. Below is a breakdown of moderation actions performed on Academia over the past 12 months:
Action
Moderators
Community¹
All comments on a post moved to chat
146
0
Answer flags handled
754
199
Answers flagged
122
831
Comment flags handled
785
101
Comments deleted⁷
6,074
1,735
Comments flagged
76
811
Comments undeleted
186
0
Escalations to the Community Manager team
15
0
Posts bumped
0
250
Posts deleted⁶
316
1,658
Posts locked
7
286
Posts undeleted
14
58
Posts unlocked
3
4
Question flags handled⁵
583
1,001
Questions closed
573
815
Questions flagged⁵
75
1,551
Questions merged
3
0
Questions migrated
10
2
Questions protected
41
29
Questions reopened
26
20
Questions unprotected
0
8
Revisions redacted
2
0
Tag synonyms created
5
0
Tag synonyms proposed
5
1
Tags merged
3
0
Tasks reviewed⁴: "Close votes" queue
14
3,254
Tasks reviewed⁴: "First answers" queue
0
868
Tasks reviewed⁴: "First questions" queue
1
1,515
Tasks reviewed⁴: "Late answers" queue
0
179
Tasks reviewed⁴: "Low quality posts" queue
1
285
Tasks reviewed⁴: "Reopen votes" queue
1
496
Tasks reviewed⁴: "Suggested edits" queue
74
1,404
User suspensions lifted early
1
0
Users contacted
58
0
Users deleted
11
0
Users destroyed³
167
0
Users suspended²
35
102
Footnotes
¹ "Community" here refers both to the membership of Academia without diamonds next to their names, and to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.
² The system will suspend users under three circumstances: when a user is recreated after being previously suspended, when a user is recreated after being destroyed for spam or abuse, and when a network-wide suspension is in effect on an account.
³ A "destroyed" user is deleted along with all that they had posted: questions, answers, comments. Generally used as an expedient way of getting rid of spam.
⁴ This counts every review that was submitted (not skipped) - so the 2 suggested edits reviews needed to approve an edit would count as 2, the goal being to indicate the frequency of moderation actions. This also applies to flags, etc.
⁵ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes). Community can handle these flags by at least one person voting to close a question that has a close flag.
⁶ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.
⁷ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).
Further reading:
Wanna see how these numbers have changed over time? We posted a similar report here last year: 2021: a year in moderation
You can also check out this report on other sites
Or peruse detailed information on the number of questions closed and reopened across all sites
Wishing everyone a happy 2023! ^_^
Thanks for the info. Interesting that the number of flags (both answer and comment) has decreased by a factor of 2 since 2020, and a factor of 3 since 2018.
@cag51: I wonder whether this is related to certain people who committed shenanigans with automated flags being banned. Also, requiring registration reduces spam and thus the need for flags …
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4059 | Why they put this question on hold?If it is vague how to know what they see vague?
I have asked a question. In this question, I provide details about what I mean and even a link to the content I am talking about. Some people put the question OnHold because they say It is not clear what you want. But when I asked what is unclear nobody answered or commented. It is very strange that some people handle such a detailed question in this way and when I ask what is vague no answer or comment. The question is how to know what is vague? I want to know what is vague. Ironically they are unclear for the reason in putting this question on hold. I hope somebody will listen.
First of all, please accept that some people only vote to close and not explain. That is regrettable, but we can't force them to. Second, don't let it get to you. Closed questions can be reopened. Especially if the question isn't clear, it can be reopened when it is clear what you mean. I'll have a look and see if there's anything that confuses me. Thank you for taking this to meta, that is good practice.
So, after having checked your question, I must say that I agree I have no idea what is unclear. Perhaps some people voted to close due to being off-topic, as I think it is borderline on-topic at best. Unfortunately, the system cannot display multiple close reasons. Then again, I cannot know what other users are thinking. I hope that some of them will eventually clarify why they voted to close. Please be patient in the mean time.
Oh, I put a suggestion on the 'multiple close reasons issue' up on the 'SE-wide' meta: please have a look
Some people just like to delete things.
@Discretelizard thank you. At least someone see the problem here
The problem is that you've asked five different things, and regardless of how related they may be, that's either too broad to be answered properly or unclear what exactly you're asking so that a better or worse answer can be determined. I'd VTC and DV this kind of thing on every site in the network, and have done.
@Nij, First of all, I think it is not so many different things, It is a single thing. Please see what has been added to question. Second, breaking this question, one may miss the point even if she read all the answers to different questions.
The current version still has at least three distinct questions. They may be related but that's what the related questions and linked questions section is for. If one may miss the point despite reading multiple answers, one is going to miss the point by reading an essay posted in one answer too.
The multiple questions are bound together by McEnerney's use of the term community. Scaahu wrote, Unless we watch the video, how could we know what he meant by "community"? Some of the close votes and lack of reopen votes may have come at least partly from a similar lack of clarity. So let's get on the same page about that first.
Oxford 1 A group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common. ‘Montreal's Italian community’ ‘the gay community in London’ ‘the scientific community’
Community, used in this way, is a term that's come into vogue in recent years in at least some parts of the US. (Note, in "I attended a small, supportive liberal arts college that had a great sense of community," it has a slightly different meaning.) Maybe some of our participants haven't come across this usage yet, but what McEnerney appears to have talking about is the set of people who have an interest in the particular area (or sub-area) of study.
I would like to respond to StrongBad's argument, "It is hard to see the single thread that runs between the questions and without that it is unclear how to write a single comprehensive answer that answers your unstated question." (I don't understand "unstated question," since he was pointing to the multiple, supposedly unconnected questions as being the problem.)
Sometimes one person will have an easier time understanding a particular question than someone else. That's why the system requires five closure votes rather than just one. But, following StrongBad's logic, the existence of an answer that holds together well and responds to what was asked, shows that the unclearness was subjective -- some people got it and some didn't.
About the video link. Posting a link to a video in a question is helpful. This is done regularly on many SE sites. Not posting a link to the material the question is about -- that would be bad.
I hope others will join me in voting to reopen.
In my mind, the unstated question is the single thread that connects the 5 questions. The fact that one user, and probably many users, were able to understand the question, does not mean the question would not benefit from an edit that would make it clearer to future users. Looking at the voting/review history of the question, there are a number of users who find it unclear and a few who find it clear. It would be great if a user who understands the question could help clarify it for everyone who is confused so that we can get the question reopened.
@StrongBad - By unstated question do you mean that you know what it is, but it wasn't made explicit? Or do you mean that there was something left unsaid, and you're not sure what it was? Or maybe that the multiple questions don't and can't have any unifying thread, so no wonder it's missing from the post?
In my opinion, the only way the original post works is if there is a unifying question that ties the 5 stated questions together. That unifying question, if it even exists, is not stated. If someone could tell me what question (or possibly statement) ties the 5 stated questions together, I could potentially see voting to reopen the question.
@StrongBad - I gave it whirl, let's see if the edits, plus the definition of community that I provided here, help.
@StrongBad, Please see what I append at the end of question. I think that is the unifying question you mean. Thank you.
@user85361 can you delate those 5 questions since people are confuing it as separate and try to write paragraph insted? following instruction from that video?
There are 5 questions in your question. Each of which could probably stand on its own and receive an in depth answer. It is hard to see the single thread that runs between the questions and without that it is unclear how to write a single comprehensive answer that answers your unstated question.
I understood OP question as one, he was referring to talk of some professor, OP question remaind me on the one user question about author of Professor is IN, book. where there were several question regrading what advior/supervisor should be like and who to avoid. This is why I think it is not fair to close this question
@SSimon great. Please write an answer explaining the issue and suggesting ways the question could be edited to make it clearer to people. Then we can edit the question and get it reopened.
I need approval from moderators, until they reply to my last message to them, I will not be able to reply
@SSimon, I agree with you. This is a single issue and all of the subquestions are in fact to make a concept clear.
@user85361 yes I follow very carefully every question that was asked on this forum, I notice that you had just bad luck as much as you tried to explain and help, people didn't bother to understand your question, which is, by the way, were important for future in academia, generally there is luck of content and understanding for people that are asking question not related to math, CS, engineering or some sort of IT. I think they cannot relate to problems explained in your question and that is why they dont voted to close
@SSimon, I hope what I appended to the question helps to improve. It is bad that we have to do so much effort to just open a question.
@StrongBad, I think what I have appended to the question shows that It is not 5 separate questions. There is a single thread in question which If you pose these question in different posts, one may miss the point.
I noticed this question as well. To me it seemed a bit, well, broad -- question #3 is basically "how do I network", and the other questions broaden the scope still further. Your first two paragraphs explain why you ask the question, but don't make your question any more specific.
In my view, all researchers struggle with the question of how best to network -- that's part of the game, and SE is for Q&A, not comprehensive tutorials. If you want to reopen the question, I would focus on what makes your situation different than that of every other researcher. Examples -- maybe you work in an esoteric subfield? Or in an country without a strong research infrastructure? Or don't have an advisor? Or can't afford to attend conferences? Or have never published anything? Or...?
I don't agree with you. Question #3, is not just how do I network. Please look what I have appended to question to see if it is more helpfull.
It is not just networking. It is about becoming part of a community. To me it is completely different.
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5175 | Is the following question technically low standard to our main site?
Please read the following question
What all can be understood from more 'Review invitations sent'?
The question received 3 close votes (2 duplicate & 1 community-specific reason) and 2 down votes.
It is not at all a duplicate of another. And I am not aware whether the community-specific reason is apt because I don't know about the notation used by Elsevier. I don't know whether I need to interpret it based on the context of peer-reviewing or as in the general case.
I want to know what are the potential issues with this question to refrain before posting questions on our main site.
The main objections from users I found are
It is a trivial question and not related to academia alone.
How can I know whether it is trivial or not if I am not in to review process and didn't find explicit information regarding it? How safe it is to say that the interpretation of '3+' is the same as in programming or others if I don't know about the review requests etc., You can read one of my comments
If we are uncertain about the number, it is recommended to keep 'n+'.
But if the editor sends a review request to a particular(fixed) number of
reviewers, then what is the need to tell '>=n' instead of the exact
number? So, there might be some information like the review process
will be started if at least 'n' reviewers accept and the remaining can
be extra or optional!
It is not useful in any way
I did not ask the question because it is useful to me. I am just curious to understand. And I don't think usability is a necessary criterion to ask any question on our main site.
No one provided an exact answer till now. Then how can I convince myself that it is a trivial question or of low standard?
First, beware that sometimes votes—whether up or down—are not really indicative of the quality of a question, but more of the preferences of the voters: some are just irritated by certain types of questions, typos, topics etc.
Then, what it is generally suggested in answers and comments about the publication process, and something we should probably add to the canonical answer, is to avoid interpreting or guessing every single detail of what appears in the manuscript status. Every journal has its own internal idiosyncrasies which are totally irrelevant to the authors: sometimes such details are hidden to the authors, sometimes the web interface provides pieces of information which are best ignored because without knowing the actual internal processes they might just lead to anxiety (why is this happening to my manuscript? did I do anything wrong?). What you're asking about falls essentially in this category: whether 3+ means 3, 4 or more is irrelevant to the authors and the actual number depends on the editor handling the submission, something we cannot know. Moreover, this kind of information might vary at every update of the web interface, and questions of this type may quickly become obsolete.
Finally, it can be argued that the answer to your question is in the linked duplicate target:
The editor selects a number of potential referees to review the
manuscript. Should a referee decline to review or not perform the
review in a certain time (as given by the editor or journal), the
editor usually has to select a new referee. The main exception to this
is if the other referees already provided sufficient reviews at this
point.
The question is a duplicate of "How should I interpret a particular submission status?"
The answer says "The editor selects a number of potential referees to review the manuscript." That happens to be the best answer; the editor can select the number.
Questions like this are closed very frequently.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.966057 | 2022-07-02T18:36:02 | {
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4805 | Does the main site can't understand non-western?
I am getting this opinion after asking this question on the main site that. Some users received it well. And many others are just down-voting and closing the question.
What is the issue with the question? It is expecting an answer from the people who experienced the same or from some standard practices of such people.
Is it because of the reason that the culture mentioned is absent in west, the question is taking down by people?
Is suggestions for a majority of women from many countries are not entertained there?
Update: It has been closed now.
To somewhat re-iterate my comment on the main question: The cultural standards in question also do not expect women to have any (intellectual, full-time, upper-class) career – which is also true for traditional Western culture. (Mind that for lower classes, everybody had/has to work hard to survive anyway; stay-at-home wives are in some sense a luxury.) Women adhering to these standards will indeed not be entertained here, but that’s because these standards expect them not to engage in the general topic of this site.
To the title, I'd say fully yes. Even as a European, the advice feels often wrong and "too US" (and often, answer begin with "Generally", "Normally" or "Obviously" and present something which is unheard of in (my parts of) Europe). It must be even worse for non-Western (and generally, for universities/countries with bad systems/corruption etc.)
@user111388 what feels non-European about the advice provided? The only answer suggests to distribute equally the household tasks among the couple, and to take advantage of "formal regulations stimulating a healthy work-life balance". This definitely applies to Europe, probably even more than to the US. In fact, the answer mentions Scandinavia, and everything in the answer can be applied to Germany too.
@wimi: This answer is absolutely (western) European. Other answers are not. (I was referring only to the title of this meta question, not about the linked question.)
@user111388 that might be true. But the only way to fix it is to provide answers from other perspectives... US users of course have US experience.
@wimi: Yes, of course. But there are, as of today, not enough, say, Indians (or Europeans, or East Asians) that Indian answers can be usefully provided. I am not saying that this problem can be easily solved (although it would be a beginning if people would write in their answers that their knowledge is about the US and not the "whole world") but I agree with the title of this meta question.
Actually, I'm surprised the question is still open and still has a nonnegative score.
What is the issue with the question?
I think the comments make the issues pretty clear:
This is not an academic question; many careers require long hours for low wages during the early years. For example: bankers, lawyers, and doctors.
This is similarly unrelated to any particular gender or race; single fathers in the West face similar pressures to what you describe (well, except for "periodic cycles" I guess). Indeed, some may find your assumptions offensive.
Even setting aside these troubles, it's not clear what sort of answers are possible. Your actual question is "how do superwomen find time to deal with academic activities?" and the only possible answer is "they work hard and efficiently." (Though, I did think Wetenschaap's answer was excellent).
Is the main site intolerant to non-western?
If you search the India tag alone, you will find 77 questions, many of which are open. So, we have a pretty good record of handling non-Western questions (though our user base does seem to be predominantly western). I realize it can be frustrating to ask a poorly-received question, but I don't think accusing us of intolerance and bigotry is a defensible reaction.
This is not academic question. Please check the stipends and salaries in academic and non-academic contexts. Then you will come to know, it can be academic. Remaining professions are not same in this context.
I am well aware of how much academics get paid :-)
Then, how can you compare with remaining professions? some scholars get 8 thousand per month. Can they hire maid, like any other profession?
In the US, first-year medical residents gross $5000/month and carry $250,000 in student loan debt. For first year lawyers, the situation is only slightly better. So I don't think any of the professions I listed are hiring maids early in their careers.
I didn't ask about US. India can be different. https://www.legallyindia.com/topical/d/2726-what-is-the-starting-salary-for-a-law-graduate
The current version of your question (v5) makes no mention of India, other than in a tag. At any rate: I stand by my answer; not going to debate it further. Cheers!
@hanugm: In any country, there are better and worse paying professions than academic ones, even if you restrict yourself to intellectual, full-time, upper-class careers. The salary doesn’t this make this academia-specific.
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1941 | How to suggest another StackExchange site during flag as "off-topic"?
Not all the SE sites are in the option when flagging a question as off topic. It would be nicer to suggest the exact SE site when flagging off-topic questions. Or am I missing something? Is such an option available in addition to notifying it in the comments section?
There are two ways for migration:
(Flagging →) Closing → Off-Topic → Migration – This is only available for frequent migration targets. Academia has only its own Meta as target as this is activated by default.
Adding new migration targets here is possible in theory, but as far as I can tell, there is no site to which we are migrating very often. Most questions we get that are on-topic on another site are still closeworthy there (due to being unclear, opinion-based or similar) and thus they should not be migrated. Also such a target should only be established if close voters can be expected to have a clear idea as to what is on-topic on the target site, which does not hold here in my opinion.
Also note that if you flag for closure (and do not have the close privilege), the only effect closure has is that the close voters see this and may thus need less time to find out what shall be wrong with the question.
Migration by moderator – If you are sure that a post needs at most minor tweaks to be a good fit for another site, you can use a custom flag to alert a moderator to migrate it.
In this case, you can also flag to close. While custom close reasons exist for users with the close privilege, they are not available to flaggers (see here). So, all you can do is flag as blatantly off-topic, leave an explaining comment.
Two side notes:
If you think a question is generally a good fit for another site, but has issues, advise the asker to improve these issues and read the other site’s guidelines.
If you are not sure whether a question is a good fit for another site, state this in your comments and advise the asker to check the other site’s guidelines (or do so yourself). A considerable amount of users get frustrated because they are recommended other sites when their question does not actually fit there (we have this problem ourselves, see here).
So, in short, I would not be able to flag with specific migration suggestion until I get the close privilege, right?
Yes, unless you want to migrate to Meta Academia and unless we decide to create a new predefined migration target.
Answer accepted! Now, how to suggest this feature to the admins? I see I am not the only one facing this problem. Why not have a auto drop-down combo box like the one on top of the web page to list the StackExchange community?
Why not have a auto drop-down combo box like the one on top of the web page to list the StackExchange community? – Because that would almost certainly end up in a lot of people suggesting sites or actually migrating to sites that are not actually fit for a question. Take for example this question that was also posted on Writers and closed there as well. Individual comments allow you to specify a question’s problems and how certain you are that a question fits on another site.
If you still want to suggest that we get some default migration target, suggest on Meta Academia. If you want to change something about the way the interface works (e.g., that you can use individual reasons when flagging to close or can always get some predefined dialogue with a drop down of all sites), you are better off on [meta.se], but beware of duplicates.
Why can't it be based on majority rules? If most of the flags suggest the same SE site, then that can be the confirmed one. It would help both the moderators as well as the questioner.
To suggest migration to another site, you have to add a custom comment. I was confused by this myself at first, but apparently this is a deliberate choice by design due to the very large number of SE sites that now exist (see this meta question for some history).
I would recommend adding a comment manually, and then using the "Blatantly off-topic" flagging reason.
You cannot use a custom off-topic reason when flagging for closure.
In flagging, I still see: "Other (add a comment explaining what is wrong)" Is this high-privilege only?
I suppose so. I didn't get this option.
@jakebeal: Yes. You can check by going through the flag dialogue on a site where you do not have the close privilege.
@Wrzlprmft Oh, hey, that's a smart thing to do... I am updating my answer accordingly.
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4299 | Academia's updated site theme is now live for everyone
Update - the theme and layout is now live for everyone.
Thanks for your feedback in this process. If there's additional feedback, please feel free to add to the answers below.
As part of implementing the new unified themes across the network, we're gradually rolling out updated site themes for each site. As of today, we have enabled your updated site theme for testing.
If you can't see it right now, that's by design! We're hoping to get feedback from you before rolling it out to everyone permanently. If you'd like to review it, here's how:
How do I enable it?
Click here and check the "Beta test new themes" option. This will turn on the new theme for all sites that have one in testing, including this one. Here's more info on how to opt in. You can uncheck the box to revert to the older theme until the site is live for everyone (note, it will take a few minutes to go into effect).
What type of feedback do we need?
On this post: Bugs related to this site's design elements
Please help us look for issues/bugs related to the theme design and how we have mapped the old theme to the new. This needs to be done within the limits of the new unified theme.
On Meta Stack Exchange: General concerns about left nav or theming
If you have concerns or issues regarding the left nav or the overall approach we are taking to theming, then this Meta Stack Exchange post is the right place for feedback.
As you may notice, there are some unique design elements like voting arrows and tags that are being standardized in this process. Keeping these custom elements makes our ability to maintain the sites too complex and, while we're very sad to see them go, we're in a difficult position of needing to make the site designs work together so that we can continue to address feature requests and bugs that will make your Q&A experience better. This is addressed in a Meta Stack Exchange post if you want more detail.
What new themes?
If you're like, "What the heck are you talking about?", then you should read the Meta Stack Exchange post entitled Rollout of new network site themes (and maybe the posts it links to for the full background).
Thanks so much for your constructive feedback!
This is... terrible.
General comments:
University image: status-completed
The line weight has been adjusted. When shrinking the image, the weights were too fine and made the image look fuzzy or undefined. We'll get a better weight for them.
Empty space: status-bydesign
It's important to remember that, while there's white space on that page, elements live in those empty spaces on other pages, like the Questions, Tags, or search results pages (links go to screenshots). Additionally, due to the responsive design, how much white space you see depends on your page width.
Ask Question button placement: status-bydesign
See the empty space images... The placement for this button needs to be easy-to-find and consistently in the same place. Right now, the only time this button isn't in that spot on a page it exists on is on question pages themselves, where it's been moved slightly to the right to make more space for question titles so they don't wrap so much.
Specifically on the kerning issue, it looks like the text is just bolded, which makes it look really bunched up. Comparing it to existing text, the existing is actually pretty bunched as well... may as well fix it if possible.
Old:
New:
I'm fairly sure "a lot of empty space" was the fundamental design theme. They've been consistently lambasted over the empty space and the left-nav panel-o-empty-space in particular (so much so that Catija was compelled to specifically mention a meta thread specifically about it). And yet they keep trucking forward. So my guess is that nothing's really going to be done about it. I hadn't really noticed the kerning thing yet, though. Good point.
I haven't seen a good explanation of what they want this space for, which presumably means it'll eventually be ads?
@NoahSnyder The placement of the elements is maintained on each page for ease of use. If you only look at the Home page, yes, it does look somewhat empty, but on search results or tag pages, there are more elements added and the space is utilized rather than empty. Keeping the elements in the same place makes them easier to find as the placement is predictable.
https://stackoverflow.com/teams and https://stackoverflow.com/customers and https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/02/08/information-architecture-navigating-stack-overflow-enterprise-stack-exchange-sites/?cb=1 might help in understanding why the left navigation was created in the first place. Less so why sites that are utterly unrelated to SO need to adopt this feature too.
@Catija - Will we get any feedback as to whether these thoughts are incorporated into the final design? I've turned off the beta test for now as it really isn't as nice as the current design.
Yep. I or someone from the design team will be updating this thread with status tags as we discuss/implement changes. Hopefully starting tomorrow or Thursday.
@Catija - Fantastic, thank you. Looking forwards to the evolving discussion. For what it's worth, if it would be possible for you to post high-res screenshots of the new pages that would be immensely helpful, as changing the settings is a pain in the buttocks.
We're fairly certain, @eykanal that what you're seeing with the kerning is due to a setting that's turned on on your computer. It looks like you're on a Mac. In preferences, on the General tab, at the very bottom there's an option for "Use LCD font smoothing when available". Coupled with certain monitors, this can give that "bold" appearance you're talking about. If you disable it and restart your browser, it should go away. That said, I'm not sure why you're seeing it on the new version and not the older one.
@Catija - I'll try to test this tomorrow on a PC, but this was the same browser with the beta on and off. Not sure that checks out. I'll update.
@Catija Could you please avoid that style where you answer to our observations using blockquotes on top of the answer? First of all, it abuses quotes, then it's basically top-posting, and then it is difficult to figure out who the actual author of that text is and who it is directed to. It seems a terribly bad choice to me to use this method to discuss suggestions for improvements.
@FedericoPoloni I have no other option and it directly is an official response. This is the standard way we've been responding to this across the network and we've never had a complaint about it that I'm aware of until yours just now. Comments are often invisible and useless. If there were only one issue in each post, I could change it but when there are multiple issues, I have no choice... and I'm not going to use one style for each.
@Catija I have no other option what do you mean? You clearly do have other options. Answering at the bottom or in a comment, for instance.
we've never had a complaint about it that I'm aware of until yours just now Actually, there has been a thread here on meta.academia about abusing blockquotes to add emphasis.
@FedericoPoloni I'm not using them for emphasis... I'm using them to indicate that the words belong to someone other than the poster... to literally remove the confusion of who wrote it. It would be the same as the OP quoting something I wrote in comments as a response. I'm just skipping the comment step and quoting myself in the answer.
I'm 100% aware of y'all's policy here and the network's policy on quotes: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/306037/284336
@Catija maybe leaving your username underneath the block quotes would avoid possible confusion. We're all accustomed to using block quotes to actually "quote" somebody or a piece of text, and if an answer already contains block quotes it's easy to miss new ones added by a Community Mod. The mod specific tags help to differentiate but maybe a different shade or colour could be reserved for mods/dev team announcements/comments/agreements etc.?
status-completed
These are now blue instead of pink.
What's with the pink OP highlighting?
(from this answer.)
On the plus side, the jarringness of the pink has brought my attention that the OP signature gets highlighted in question and answer bylines just like it is in comments, even in the old styling, so there's that.
But why is it such an awful shade of pink? Why is it the same pink as deleted posts? (OK, it's not quite the same colour, but it's close enough that they register as the same colour if you don't have them in direct contrast.)
And to make things worse, the same awful transformation has attacked the comment highlighting:
Pretty please, choose a more neutral colour for this notation :-).
Heh, when I first thought that I thought there was a new feature that showed that this user was deleted.
@forest That's precisely the problem. Light red has a long history as a functional design marker on this platform (and exclusively so, moreover), and using it for something else waters down that significance (which is bad) and carries over those connotations to places where it is harmful (also bad). (Not berating you, btw - just spelling it out explicitly because it does need to be said.)
Oh I fully agree. It's an obnoxiously confusing color.
So, the way we determine these colors is by looking at the primary button color (in this case a dark red/pink) and lightening it. We can get rid of the pink but we'll also need to change the button colors for the Ask Question button and the other buttons around the site.
@Catija Ah. That is an extremely unfortunate coincidence. I also take it that the button color is derived from the overall color scheme and in particular the tilted book in the logo? That does significantly narrow down the options, indeed, and it balances a nice and active color from the button vs an anti-functional design. Maybe change the button color to the grayish blue of the leftmost book? Or uncouple the button color from the logo scheme to a more neutral bookish reddish brown that doesn't look pink when lightened? (Is that uncoupling possible? Or are other things also hooked on that?)
We'll see in the next update, I think... this has been "fixed" on the designer's end but I think it's waiting for someone to build to the site. I'm not sure which option he went with.
Apparently they're blue now and the ask question button is still red... There you go!
@Catija Thanks for the follow-up - it's great to see this.
status-completed
The line weights have been adjusted. When shrinking the image, the weights were too fine and made the image look fuzzy or undefined. We'll get a better weight for them. Clock face also has hands now!
The line strength for the buildings in the top right is too thick given the shrunk buildings. I acknowledge that it has to be at least one pixel, so my best suggestion is to remove or shrink the clock tower and clouds and increase the size of the buildings, as long as they have enough space at the top without looking crammed.
Also, in case you keep the clock tower, the face of the clock could be made more recognisable. You still have space for more than three pixels.
Well, those SVG issues on the logo could be rather worse.
This header doesn't exactly look great:
It seems like the title should only go as far as the divider between the question and the right bar. Right now, it doesn't seem like it's part of the same element. And, with two-line titles like this one, there's a lot of awkward empty space.
This is a general issue with the new unified theme that is not specific to this site (example).
Oh okay, this was just the first place I noticed it.
As @Wrzlprmft says, this is the case. We're actually looking into this anyways because it means the Ask question button isn't consistently placed, too. Part of the issue is that long titles wrap a lot on smaller screens, so we wanted to widen the potential title width beyond the center section alone... this may not be the best solution and some fixes will be addressed when we optimize the layout for mobile, which it currently isn't.
There isn't enough contrast between "open" questions and questions with an accepted answer on the landing page. The box around the answer is nice, but some shading would make it clearer—and break up the monotony.
Can you show me what you see and what you're asking for? The questions with accepted answers have the answer box in bright green, so it's pretty clear in my view.
I have to use night shift pretty intensively (even during the day), so the green of the box doesn't show nearly as much contrast with the black but will look the same if I try to screen grab it. So I get the box without nearly as much contrast.
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4908 | Should [courses] be a synonym of [coursework]?
I noticed two very similar but distinct tags — coursework and courses.
The tag courses is less than a year old, is used on only twelve questions (two of which are also tagged with coursework), has no tag description, and seems to cover the same topics as coursework.
So, I suggest that courses be made a synonym of coursework.
Looking at the twelve questions tagged courses, I don't see the usage of this tag as necessary (the key points are already covered by other tags, and the tag courses seems redundant in those questions).
I think we can safely remove tag courses from those few questions, without the need of creating an (imperfect) synonym, and then let the system clean up the abandoned tag.
I have to agree with this, since [tag:course-design] also exists. And since [tag:courses] has no wiki it is unclear what it means.
We probably should blacklist the tag after that, lest it be recreated at the next opportunity.
@Wrzlprmft According to step 3 here, once we removed the tag, we should have another meta discussion to decide whether the tag it's worth blacklisting. It seems a quite convoluted process.
@MassimoOrtolano: I don’t think we need to go through that process when it’s just about avoiding people resurfacing an unclear synonym or pointless tag. It’s more for cases where you really don’t want a topic on the site or similar.
In most of my teaching the term coursework refers to what would be called "homework" at grade school. It is a specific assignment created by the teacher that when completed contributes to the assignment of grades based on the judged quality and content. The grade is usually the result of the course. There may be several items of coursework within a course. coursework differs from an examination in that it is done in the student's own time over a specified period.
However courses is completely different. This relates to a component of a degree programme (often worth a specific number of credits) that contains several elements of assessment, some of which may be coursework. The term courses can, in some places, be synonymous with a programme and elsewhere be a specific component of a programme (e.g degree programme).
There should be no synonym or blacklist action.
I also refer you to the meta question: Academia varies more than you think it does – The Movie
In the US I often see people use "coursework" to refer to the courses included in some graduate program. For example "there is more coursework in Program A than program B" would not make me think of homework assignments but I would take this to mean that program A has more required courses and more time put towards courses vs research compared to program B. I don't think I ever hear "coursework" used as a synonym for "homework".
All my examinations in grad school have been take-home essays which are done in my own time over a specified period
I've removed the status tag here. I think y'all have done a good job of responding to the issues of this tag and it's currently been removed from all questions. In general, we only outright block tags if they come back more than once, so I've let the mods here know to watch out for the tag and, should it come back, let us know and we'll get it blocked.
Thanks so much for your work to manage the tags here - I know that tags can get out of control from time to time and cleaning them up is an important part of that process.
It seems like coursework would be used by students, but courses could be plausibly used by both instructors and students, like here and here maybe.
"Coursework" is also a bit more specific (that first question, "Why do TA teach sections?") isn't really about coursework.
I support the synonymization, but just some points to think about.
Agreed, an alternative might be update their tag descriptions and clearly delineate the usage for each, which is not happening right now.
Maybe it would be better to blacklist it and say "use coursework for students, or teaching for teaching?"
Blacklisting is fairly unusual and requires staff intervention. Probably better to make it a synonym, make the usage clear, and retag any of the 12 questions that would become tagged inappropriately.
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4884 | Where is the "not suitable for this site" flag?
I flagged this question. When I did, there were 5 or so flags available, including "need of moderator intervention". I picked this one because I could not find the option "not suitable for this site" which used to be there. Now the flag was declined because I did not pick the correct flag. If I want to flag it again, this is what I see:
It seems the list changes if a questions was closed. For a different (open) question, I have these options:
There is no "not suitable for this site". So which flag should I use in this case?
We've understood that there's definitely some confusion about how to recommend closure for a question from the flag dialogue - the "needs improvement" terminology and the description doesn't really indicate to many people "should not be here" or "off topic" - we're hoping to look into this in the future but don't have any immediate plans, so I've marked this status-deferred.
I managed to find the flag, it is buried in the flagging menu:
"needs improvement" (clearly not true for a question which is off-topic, it should just be closed),
"community-specific reasons" (again, I don't see why this makes sense: do other SE sites not close OT questions?), and then
"blatantly off-topic".
I find this placement immensely counterintuitive for people like me who only flag occasionally, as I need to make two selections which seem wrong.
I feel most of your pain, but am powerless to address it. See here for a relevant post on Meta SE. I do consider off-topic a community-specific reason, however, since it is specific to the community what is off-topic. That doesn’t mean that it’s intuitive, of course. It can’t do any harm to add a sentence to the explanation though. The problem with the word off-topic on SE is that it has been the label of this category for so long that it has acquired a different meaning on SE. This caused a lot of confusion in the past.
do other SE sites not close OT questions? – Yes, but they receive far fewer of those than we do (at least off-topic questions in the common meaning of the word). On the two other sites I moderate (German Language and Graphic Design), questions that are completely off the scope (and not spam and similar) are a rare event. Only few sites need and have an explicit close reason for blatantly off-topic stuff like we do.
@Wrzlprmft I see. Maybe that's why the meta SE question hasn't gotten more resonance. (81 views? I find that quite surprising.) It still seems like a good idea to request this, especially since this is (in terms of the underlying technology) a trivial problem to solve. Is there any good way to petition SE inc for this?
The "needs improvement" item used to read "should be closed", which better explains what it is: it is essentially a version of the close dialog available also to people with not enough reputation to access it, through a flag. I guess that the SE politically correct police decided to change the wording (https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/396754) because closing questions is too offensive. :)
@cheersmate About the number of views of that question, beware that the main meta is a somewhat different site, with its own culture. Things that get attention might not necessarily be the most useful from the user experience point of view.
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5341 | How much slang is acceptable in a question or answer?
The answer posted by Thomas Chen for the question below has several slang words and phrases. The OP doesn't have an origin specified in their profile. I want to downvote it because of the slang and add a comment explaining why I'm doing so but is that a reasonable course of action?
Possible choices for switching programs in the same university (original, pre-edit text below):
Blimey, it sounds like you're in a bit of a pickle. Remember though, you're not alone in this. Kick off by having a natter with your advisor about the whole thing - they're there to give you a hand. If your current programme isn't tickling your fancy, you might want to consider switching to something that gets your motor running.
Try to sort out any disagreements with your professors, even if it seems like a tall order. You'll feel much better once everything's out in the open. If you're still worried about the grading, consider asking for a second look - you've every right to understand your marks. Don't overlook your mates, either - they're there for advice or even just a good chinwag. If things get too intense, don't hesitate to seek professional advice. It might seem a bit overwhelming now, but keep your eye on the ball. You've got this, mate!
Examples: in a pickle, chinwag, natter, tickling your fancy, tall order, ...
I do understand all of the slang but only because I've read and watched media from various English-speaking cultures.
I edited the answer to make the language more "regular" and in the end also mor accessible for non native speakers. After all, I consider it one of the perks of this site that it is possible to edit content. And in 99% of the time, the OP doesn't object the edit or reverts the text back to the original form.
I try to avoid unnecessary big words, for the sake of clarity. And I prefer literal language. But how people learn big words and idioms and slang is largely from hearing other people use those. So it probably doesn't make that much sense to, in essence, try to ban those things. Although if you feel a post is so filled with such things that it would be incoherent to many English speakers, that may warrant a downvote.
I didn't like the tone of the answer and it felt more like an experiment to fit as much idiomatic language in as possible rather than answering the question, so I downvoted it.
It's not appropriate to downvote a user that you don't like or because they left a critical comment on a post of yours. But if you don't find an answer useful relative to the question asked, you don't really need more than that to justify a downvote. We rely on the opinions of the masses to help good content rise to the top.
For a single idiom or slang usage where you think you can improve an answer without hurting the meaning, it would be more appropriate to use the edit feature and replace it with something more readable. I sometimes have a bad habit of using that sort of language myself and appreciate when someone helps improve the readability of what I've posted.
It sounds like someone asked ChatGPT to pretend it's British.
@AzorAhai-him-: Good point. The Cockney jargon aside, the real problem with the answer was that its advice was vague and inane - just like ChatGPT.
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5490 | Policy proposal: Concerns about tone in questions that mention specific individuals
Today, I voted to close this question about a specific Oxford PhD student and her appeals and potential law suit. I have previously voted to close other questions that ask about specific individuals, although I haven't kept a list.
Edit: I originally proposed a straightforward ban on these kinds of posts. I have edited this to reflect my change in thought based on feedback.
Questions that ask about specific individuals often have an aggressive-to-toxic tone1, even if they have a hint of an on-topic and generalizable question.
I think that we should provide strict guidelines about mentioning specific individuals in academia. It has long been our policy (2014) to not ask questions about specific universities, "questions about specific programs, courses, curricula, projects, and research topics are considered off-topic here," see also this 2015 Meta Q&A.
We currently have a policy against "making allegations against named individuals or organizations." Perhaps the first question could be considered an allegation against Oxford (although 1. not first alleged here and 2. perhaps not "severe").
I think we should go farther. In the end, most questions about a specific individual come down to the policies at their institution (or laws in their country, etc., etc.). I'll quote from Allure's answer to the first question:
I don't have an internal view of Oxford .... So it's possible her complaint has merit; I simply don't know, and probably nobody except those with direct knowledge of the process do.
I propose we institute strict guidelines about how to format questions about specific people (or, spurred by popular new articles). Having a guideline will let community members feel empowered to overhaul questions, where usually we prefer to leave OP's voice as much as possible.
Individuals have sometimes been mentioned by name, as examples of personal-name, e.g. Simon Baron-Cohen and António Franco de Oliveira Falcão, which I suggest is fine.
Footnote 1: Toxic questions include the Oxford question, This one about the former president of Harvard, and this question about the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics, which was CV'ed as off topic for different reasons.
Other relevant questions (collecting suggestions from comments, etc.):
This well-received question about Taiwan's ex-president, which shows how to ask a question inspired by an individual without attacking them.
This question about US honors, inspired by an individual, that IMO is also a decent example of how to ask these kinds of questions.
This one about President Obama publishing a paper in JAMA.
I agree this question should be closed. I'm not sure about the overall policy, though, I think existing policies already cover it for the most part and we tend to be more open to questions about things that are in the public academic news, even if they involve specific institutions, individuals, etc.
My gut reaction is similar to Bryan's. I was one of the close voters on both questions you linked in the first paragraph and largely agree with your sentiment. Questions that are effectively asking us to become comment threads on individual cases, no matter how famous, are usually opinion-based or too focused on individual factors. I guess the question is: Are we seeing this type of question with a frequency that merits an explicit policy rather than just having things closed as they come up?
@user176372 Having a policy is free. I don't think that we are bogged down by too many policies at the moment. I would honestly rather see mods be enable to mod-hammer these questions closed immediately rather than let them stay open until five CVs are accumulated.
@BryanKrause Between the two policies I linked, I think there's still room to clarify. I would be fine with a question about a specific university if they're in the news. I'm less comfortable with questions about specific individuals.
The question about Obama's JAMA paper is perhaps also relevant. While it did attract close votes at the time, I think it shows that some questions about individuals can be meaningfully answered here. Of course, it very much helps if the question is phrased productively from the start.
@Anyon I think that an exception for people who are public figures outside of academia would be fine. My point here is about not aiming the site at members of the academic community, which POTUS and the president of Taiwan (from below) have their own notability
I would vote "no" on a policy as you propose. Once a case makes the news, or an individual becomes a public figure, then it is generally appropriate for us to comment. I don't see any need per se to close these questions.
On the other hand, I would support a general "best practice" that public figures or famous cases should be presented as examples of a deeper question when possible (rather than just asking for comment on a particular case).
In brief, my rationale is that these questions are often interesting and we should avoid the knee-jerk reaction of voting to close, instead editing as needed. For example, "Did the president of Taiwan receive a half-PhD?" would trigger summary closure under your proposed policy, and even without your proposal would probably be close-voted to death. But the isomorphic formulation of "Is there such a thing as a half-PhD? I heard the president of Taiwan received one" turned out to be a an interesting and well-received question. Making edits to turn the former question into the latter is a best practice. (I'm not suggesting "forced edits," but you can cite this page as justification for why the edit is appropriate).
Let's look at the questions you cite:
The Shakespeare student. There are a few issues here.
First, it is horribly written with this giant copy-paste. For sure it should be closed until it is rewritten.
If it is rewritten but otherwise unchanged, I think it's borderline. The case is public, and the student is trying to get publicity, so I have no concerns along those lines. Rather, my concern is that we have only the student's side of the story, so it will be a lot of speculation. Still, we often have only half the story and have to speculate.
If it is rewritten to something more objective like: "Does Shakespeare have scope for a PhD thesis?" or "What is the required scope for a PhD in Literature?" and lists this case as an example, then this could be an interesting question.
The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics.
We have already ruled that Nobel Prizes are on topic here.
This question has biased wording, which probably soured people on it.
Other than that, I would argue this question is OK and shouldn't have been closed. That said, I'm not going to spend energy trying to correct this injustice because the question is pretty low-quality: the official reasoning is already available online and all we can do is copy-and-paste that explanation, perhaps with our own speculation added.
Harvard's ex-President.
This case has already gotten ample publicity.
This is an unusual case where we probably do have enough information to make a judgment, since the thesis is public and the purported plagiarism probably is as well. Or we could cite the other experts who have already looked at this case in detail.
I think the only reason this was closed was because it is too broad, asking both (1) is omitting a citation really plagiarism, and (2) did she deserve her severe punishment. The first of these could be asked in the abstract, and has been several times in several different forms. The latter is probably an interesting question that could be asked more generally, with the newsworthy case listed as an example.
As a somewhat tangential related comment (mostly consulting the Harvard ex-president question): My threshold for closing questions for being opinion-based lowers substantially for borderline questions which are clearly related to a topic that has been in the news very recently. These have a tendency to hit HNQ and then attract more answers than our community seems able to police with upvotes/downvotes effectively. Regarding editing: Often the original poster is unenthusiastic for making their own edits, and enforced edits are controversial.
Thanks for the reply. Your third bullet point tho for the Shakespeare Q is essentially “edit out the reference to a specific individual or make it an example,” which I think is consistent with what I’m proposing. I left the Nobel prize in as related, not necessarily a core example. I’m not sure it should be open but let’s set that aside (it mentions no one by name).
What about a guidance that posts should ask a general question and mention specific individuals only as an example, if at all necessary? It’s the toxic tone in all these Qs that I would like to see addressed. To me the Taiwan president Q (I wasn't familiar with it) is an excellent example of how these questions should work.
Yes, I can agree with that. Updated the answer.
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4259 | How to answer two questions where the same answer is appropriate, but the questions themselves aren't duplicates?
Context
I recently updated my answer to the question Do all countries have the same gender imbalance in science? with additional information.
Basically, my answer contains the following position :
It is a misconception that women are underrepresented in science or STEM fields fields in general, as this applies to only some fields (with especifically computer science & engineering standing out)
Yes, this is a roughly consistent for different countries, although countries with greater gender equality - ironically - have a greater gender gap
This could be at least partially explained by gender stereotyping or the high "geek factor" of those fields, but biological sex differences may play a role at least as significant
I believe each of the three components of my answer are equally important, due to the numerous common misconceptions there are about gender inequality in STEM as a consequence of the current political climate. For the same reason, I deemed it necessary to back up this position by a lot of data, with graphs & sources. In fact, my update consisted mostly of adding additional data, graphs & sources as a response to a comment on that answer, which - rightfully so - pointed out that I insufficiently backed up that gender differences are roughly consistent for different countries.
After updating my answer, I stumbled on the question Why are women even less represented in engineering than in other STEM? and realized that all of the three components of the aforementioned answer apply here as well to the same degree. So I re-posted my answer to this question, with minor modifications.
Around the same time, I found the question Could it be beneficial for me to not disclose my gender/ethnicity in an REU application?. Here, I posted an answer that basically contains the following position :
We know that women that faculty members generally prefer female applicants over male applicants
We also know that African-Americans & Hispanics are typically favored over European-Americans & Asian-Americans in college admissions
There are numerous campaigns worldwide to increase the number of women or "minorities" in STEM, including the creation of jobs where only women are allowed to apply
Therefore, as a white male, I would be inclined to not mention race or gender on my applications for tenure track job applications, especially with respect to positions in a STEM field. For the same reason, I would be inclined to mention my gender as a woman or my race if I were black or Hispanic.
This too, of course, was backed up by sources (although less extensively).
Then I found the question Should I disclose gender, race, disabilities etc. in tenure track job applications?, where again the exact same components apply. So here, too, I re-posted my previous answer with minor modifications.
Problem
I learnt that my answer to Why are women even less represented in engineering than in other STEM? was deleted by a moderator (Strongbad), with a comment not to post duplicate answers, and that I should "tailor [my] answer to the specifics of each question".
So I decided to remove the least relevant details of my answer and re-post the remaining part of my answer as a new answer, referencing my answer to Do all countries have the same gender imbalance in science? for the details that were left out. This answer was also deleted, by the same moderator. No comment this time.
Then I received PM from an anonymous moderator about Could it be beneficial for me to not disclose my gender/ethnicity in an REU application?. They told me that normally they would "just delete the duplicate answer", but that they would not delete my answer in this case because it "presents a unique view that is not presented in the other answers and in general goes against the majority view of the community". Also, they wanted to make it clear "moderation of these answers is not related to the views expressed in them, but rather the generic information".
I responded to this message by explaining that in both cases I believe the exact same answer to be equally applicable to both questions, and that leaving out just a part of the answer (at least IMO) significantly reduces the quality of the the answer for both questions in both cases.
I also asked how I could answer Why are women even less represented in engineering than in other STEM? without my answer getting deleted? I received no response so far.
Question(s)
I find it hard to believe that the deletion of my answer to Why are women even less represented in engineering than in other STEM? isn't abuse of the rules of this community with respect to duplicate content in an attempt to censor an unpopular opinion, especially considering a different decision was made by a moderator in a very similar context in the very same community. But let's just assume it isn't and the reason two different answers to that question are deleted has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual views expressed in them.
Can anyone explain to me why it's OK for Could it be beneficial for me to not disclose my gender/ethnicity in an REU application? and Should I disclose gender, race, disabilities etc. in tenure track job applications? to have roughly the same answer, but not for Do all countries have the same gender imbalance in science? and Why are women even less represented in engineering than in other STEM?? Is it just a matter of different moderators making different choices or is there a difference between both cases that I'm just not seeing?
And if it is really just a matter of different opinions from different moderators, doesn't this mean the community rules need some revision towards greater objectivity? How is it acceptable that the personal opinion of one moderator determines whether a detailed answer backed up by ample sources ends up getting deleted? How is that fair to the members of this community?
Also, is there a way I can answer Why are women even less represented in engineering than in other STEM? using relevant information from my answer to Do all countries have the same gender imbalance in science? without my answer getting deleted?
Would I need to find different data, different graphs & different sources to pretty much demonstrate the same argument? Would I need to rephrase every paragraph to pretty much make the same argument? And if either of these would be acceptable, why not just allow the answer as it was? Why all the hassle to rephrase the form of an answer when the content itself is fine?
Or if it's really just a matter of including content not relevant enough to the question, which content must be removed to make the answer acceptable and on which grounds? How is not each of the three components of my answer sufficiently relevant to the question?
Since I'm not confident I'll receive a response to my PM, I suppose this is question is a suitable alternative approach for getting an answer to (at least some of) those questions.
There is a lot in here, it might be better if you could split it into individual questions.
@StrongBad : Basically, I have three main questions : (1) What exactly is it that I do wrong? (2) What makes the deleted answer different in nature from the one that didn't get deleted? (3) How can I post an answer to the question that does not get deleted? --- I don't see how splitting this question is helpful to anyone or how I would need to split it up.
That is a helpful summary. Let me update my answer. I still think each of those could be separate questions, but now at least I think I can give you answers.
tl;dr: Since your answer was duplicate text and a lot of it didn't directly address the question that was asked, it gives the impression of someone who hears a few key words ("gender" "STEM" "underrepresented") and posts a whole screed without taking the time to give a thoughtful answer to the question that was actually asked.
On Academia SE, answers should directly address the question as asked. When you post an answer that includes lots of stuff that isn't specifically targeted to the question, it is likely to get deleted.
In the case of (for example) your answer to Why are women even less represented in engineering than in other STEM?, the question begins with the following statement
women are approx. half of the students in biology, chemistry and maths (check e.g. here ) but barely 20% in engineering.
as the premise of the question, then it goes on to ask a question about the reasons for this. Specifically, it asks for studies that give possible reasons for the different gender ratios in engineering vs. other STEM fields.
Then the bulk of your answer is devoted to text and images that reiterate the premise of the question, rather than answering the actual question.
Thing stated as a given in the question:
women have high representation in some STEM fields and low representation in other STEM fields.
Your answer:
women have high representation in some STEM fields and low representation in other STEM fields. Already assumed as a "given" in the question.
women have high representation in some non-STEM fields too. Not relevant to a question that is specifically about STEM fields.
two paragraphs at the end that address the "why" question - this is the only portion of the answer that seems to answer the question as asked.
(Although I haven't looked at the studies you cited and whether they were specifically about motivation for pursuing other STEM fields vs. engineering.) Also, it seems you didn't read the part of the question where the OP wrote
It is often stated that women tend to choose careers where they feel more useful towards society but that is difficult to reconcile with the fact that the share of women in Chemistry is 50% but only 35% in Chemical Engineering
as a part of your answer was "women are driven by a biological urge to help people" without addressing the difficulty the OP stated with this particular reason.
Your second answer contained much less irrelevant content, but about half of it was again reiterating the premise of the question.
An answer that directly answers the specific question, "(Cite studies to explain) why women have lower representation in engineering than other STEM fields", without extra content that doesn't answer this question, would not be deleted.
Yes, the claim that women have high representation in some STEM fields and low representation in other STEM fields was assumed as a given in the question. However, this is a wrong assumption. Are you saying wrong assumptions in a question should not be corrected? Also, I never made the point that women have high representation in some non-STEM fields, only that they have high representation in some STEM fields... precisely to correct the false assumption in the question.
(continued) With respect to the difference between the share of women in Chemistry is 50% and the share of women in Chemical Engineering, women being more driven by a biological urge to help people definitely seems insufficient as an explanation, but the other two explanations still hold here. Would the second version of my answer be acceptable if I elaborated on this particular issue?
@JohnSlegers How was it a wrong assumption that was corrected? The question stated pretty much exactly the same that you did, namely that the representation of women is lower in engineering than in other STEM fields.
@TobiasKildetoft : The question starts with the statement "we know that women in much of the developed countries are less represented in STEM studies". Applied to STEM as a whole, this statement is wrong. It is only in some STEM fields (like computer science & engineering) that women are underrepresented. In fields like biosciences & social sciences (both scientific fields and thus part of STEM), women are actually overrepresented. This is an important nuance that is almost always overlooked, yet it is critical to understanding the cause of the gender distribution in STEM.
@JohnSlegers Actually, if you take STEM as a whole, I have yet to see any data that does not agree with that statement. Just because some subfields have it the other way around does not contradict it being like this for the entire field when seen as a single entity.
@TobiasKildetoft : But STEM isn't a single entity. It consists of multiple distinct fields, with representation of women ranging from underrepresented to overrepresented. To ignore the overrepresentation of women in bioschiences & social sciences is deceptive. And it is often left out on purpose to push political agendas that seek to institutional discrimination of men in favor of women in all STEM fields in all sorts of way.
@JohnSlegers Nothing is a single entity, but it can be beneficial to simplify things by considering it that way. Since the question at hand was about differences within STEM, it is natural to start by comparing STEM itself to other things. Also, I am not sure why you think people are not aware that women are not underrepresented in biology, since that seems well-known to me (and as far as I am aware, social sciences are generally not considered part of STEM).
@TobiasKildetoft : Social sciences are not a part of STEM? According to whom? Some federal agencies, such as the American National Science Foundation (NSF), use a broader definition of STEM that includes psychology and the social sciences (e.g., political science, economics) as well as the so-called core sciences and engineering (e.g., physics, chemistry, mathematics). Others, like the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) use a narrower definition that generally excludes social sciences and focuses on mathematics, chemistry, physics, computer and information sciences, and engineering.
@TobiasKildetoft : (continued) Considering the term STEM literally stands for “the academic and professional disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics,” I'm not sure how excluding certain sciences (like social sciences) are a reasonable definition, but I see your point. Either way, the key problem with representation in STEM is the subversive claim that women are underrepresented in STEM due to some sort of social injustice and that this injustice needs to be corrected by discriminating men.
@TobiasKildetoft : (continued) Yet, the fact that women are overrepresented in biosciences and social sciences is counterindicative for this alleged social injustice and suggests that different preferences among men and women are a more likely cause for the underrepresentation of women in fields like computer science & engineering, probably at least partially due to biological differences between men and women. This totally goes against the mainstream narrative, which is why it is critical to mention when addressing gender distribution in STEM, regardless of how you define STEM.
What exactly is it that I do wrong?
Your behavior was generally fine in that you did not violate the golden be nice rule. What you did wrong was post identical answers to different questions. Our community does not like duplicate answers that are not tailored to the question. It makes users feel like the answerer is trying to make a point. This is especially true for controversial views on soft questions.
Also, when we see *duplicate/revised versions of deleted answers with down votes, we get a little worried that users are trying to game the voting system. I am not saying you were, but it is something we think about. Overall, your behavior (posting duplicate answers and a new answer instead of an edit) is/was no big deal and I just wanted to steer you towards more acceptable behavior.
(2) What makes the deleted answer different in nature from the one that didn't get deleted?
Flags. User raised flags make all the difference. Moderators tend to only find issues when they are flagged or brought up in meta/chat. We don't generally go looking for issues. The answer I deleted was flagged by a user as being identical to another answer. The ones that didn't get deleted had not been flagged and I (and likely the other moderators) did not know about them. Now that we know about it, it is probably worth looking into more, but hopefully this meta question will help you see a way forward so that we don't need to step in.
(3) How can I post an answer to the question that does not get deleted?
If two questions have identical answers, then they should be considered duplicates and closed as such. If there is a difference, or even a perceived difference, then the question should get left open. In that case, the best answer would point out the differences and perceived differences and explain how they do not affect the answer. Then provide a link to your previous answer and a brief summary of the key points of that answer. This is essentially the same way we answer all questions for which the answer is available online. In other words, don't just provide a link, but summarize the content that is being linked and explain why that general content is relevant to the question.
For completeness, I also want to address a couple of your comments about moderation.
I sent the moderator message. The message was signed "moderation team" because I didn't change the default signature. The system used to default to signing the individual moderators name and I generally do not think about it. Sorry for any confusion.
When I deleted your revised answer, I sent you a moderator message instead of a comment. I wanted to be clear about what was going on, but did not feel that discussing the contentious nature of the answer in public was the best course of action.
I didn't respond to your follow up message, because I haven't had a chance yet. The gist of my message would have been, please ask in meta. While you found the right path on your own, steering some users to meta (and the right question), can be difficult and it takes time to write an appropriate mod message.
The content of the answer did not affect my moderation decisions. I looked at the two answers and thought that they were duplicates and that the newer one was not tailored to the question. That said, I looked at the answers because they were flagged. The flags quite possibly were raised because of the content.
Thank you for your lengthy answer. I'm not entirely sure, though, how this applies to the answer that got deleted. Concretely, how would I need to modify it for the question to be acceptable? Are there any portions at all that are allowed to remain? Also, what is the reason for forcing people to click a link if they want information that is 100% relevant to the question just because that information also happens to be posted elsewhere in the same community? What purpose does that serve other than annoying people with unnecessary clicks?!
@JohnSlegers If you believe the same answer is appropriate for both questions, then I would replace the entire answer with a link to your original answer and a brief summary of that answer. Then I would preface that with an explanation as to why the questions are in fact the same despite on the surface seeming different.
@JohnSlegers I don't understand the nuances of your argument well enough to see how they answer either question, which makes suggesting how to improve it hard. It seems like a well researched answer to an as of now unasked question.
As I tried to explain in the "context" part of my question above, my argument was (1) that women are NOT underrepresented in STEM in general (a common misconception), (2) that this a global trend (also commonly misunderstood) and (3) that biology is one of several possible causes (politically incorrect but scientifically valid). I used this explanation to answer the question "Is this a global trend?" and "Why do these gender differences exist?". While the questions are different, IMO the same argument is equally valid for both.
(continued) Anyway, if you are the same person who sent me the PM, why did you say "Normally, I would just delete the duplicate answer, but in this case ... "? I read this as "I would have deleted your answer but decided not to do this because...". This I found very confusing, hence my assumption that you were refering to a different answer... which was indeed not removed but for which the same arguments for / against removal could be made!
@JohnSlegers sorry for the confusion. Normally, I would leave a comment, delete the answer, and be done with it. In this case, I deleted the answer, and sent a mod message because I wanted to be clear (which apparently I failed at) that I was not deleting the answer because of the content.
OK, that makes sense now. Thanks for the clarification. Anyway, it's still not really clear to me which modifications I need to make to my answer to make it acceptable. Is there any part as all I can leave of should everything be removed to be replaced by a link of the other question? And what content would my answer need other than the link to the other question? And what's the point of all this additional work? IMO, it only prevents people from reading a perfectly valid answer to a perfectly valid question :-s
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3937 | 2017 Year in Review
With the new year behind, I wanted to ask what are some topics of discussion that Academia has addressed this past year and should be summarized in a year in review. With this in mind, what are some possible topics that needs to be considered moving forward?
In my recent memory, I can think of the continued need to help new users become acquainted with the SE format, what’s on and off topic; or that cheating is still an issue even at the graduate level.
No issues I guess...
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3875 | What is the effect of Anonymity on both questions and answers?
In a short discussion between myself and moderator ff524 about a deleted question. Moderator ff524 mentioned,
There are other sites that are not as strict about moderation - Reddit, etc. SE is deliberately different in its moderation policy, because we try to be a home for people who like answering high quality, on topic questions. But some of our users enjoy contributing to those other sites, too ;)
Emphasis mine.
I agree with Moderator ff524 on all points. But this led me to think about the effects of Anonymity on both questions and answers in Academia specifically.
In this particular case, the author of the deleted question has some experience and interaction with SE sites, specifically Mathematics SE. But purely on mathematics topics.
With the following variables on anonymity in play (not exactly rigorous, but will suffice in the meantime):
Anonymity:
Binary: has an equivalent real-life ID associated, or a pseudonym.
Effect: if real-life, then words said would carry over to their IRL identity. If pseudonym, then there is a degree of buffer between the two.
Reputation:
Integer: based upon a voting system reflected up on a user's contribution.
Effect: more privileges and respect afforded to the user and can be used as a rough yardstick to measure the experience of the user to the SE model.
What is the effect of Anonymity on both the quality of questions and answers?
The various logical derivatives:
Does real-ID mean higher-quality questions?
Does real-ID mean higher-quality answers?
Does pseudonyms mean higher-quality questions?
Does pseudonyms mean higher-quality answers?
Does real-ID mean lower-quality questions?
Does real-ID mean lower-quality answers?
Does pseudonyms mean lower-quality questions?
Does pseudonyms mean lower-quality answers?
In my experience at the Workplace as well as Academia, I would presume that Anonymity has a role to play, but not to the extent that I theorize.
There are great question and answer contributions from users from both sites whether with a pseudonym or real-ID.
But in general, poor-quality questions and answers are from pseudonyms; whether due to inexperience or the buffer (between a person's actions and his/her real-life identity) offered by a pseudonym.
I could be entirely wrong after all, would someone with more expertise on the matter care to comment?
Mm... dunno. I write on the net both with my real name, here and on other SE sites, and with a pseudonym in an Italian technical forum, where I usually answer questions about electronics, physics, metrology and mathematics (now very rarely due to a chronic lack of time). I try to do my best to give good, possibly useful answers under both identities, and probably my better answers are really the technical ones, given under pseudonym (which, in some sense, could be a pity).
the deleted question link is broken, FYI
You can't see it because the question was deleted,
If you take a look at the top page of users, the split is slightly in favor of pseudonyms over real names (4:3 advantage, roughly).
I'd argue that the quality of answers is independent of the use of a pseudonym. The quality of the questions depends on experience with SE sites rather than just being "experts" or not. We've had many excellent "signed" and "anonymous" questions. However, as you suggest, it's unlikely someone will "sign" a bad question with their real name.
I can recall a number of cases of mod worthy bad behavior by users who have provided their real names.
Several of those who use a pseudonym, however, have a link to their home pages from which the real name can be inferred. I think the comparison should be done between totally anonymous and others.
@MassimoOrtolano I tried to do that and only found 7/36 without much information in their profiles.
Looking at our first page of users 7/36 users provide limited information in their user name or profile (i.e., are anonymous). Three of these users are, or were, moderators. At least one of these users (me) was not always anonymous. On a random page of users 15/37 are anonymous despite having reputations between 2831 and 3365. These differences could be related to the quality of contributions or an indication that higher rep users are more likely to not be anonymous.
We can also look at the average vote counts for questions and answers by anonymous and non-anonymous users. This is sounding like a question for the data explorer, but taking a very small sample of the top three non-anonymous and anonymous users reveals that the top three non-anonymous users have a combined 3628 answers and a combined rep of 352158, for an average rep of 97 per answer (I ignored the number of questions). The top three anonymous users have 2083 answers for a combined rep of 277104, for an average rep of 133 per answer. This suggests that anonymous users may provide better answers.
In summary, as a biased anonymous user, it looks like anonymous users provided better answers :) As an academic who likes to butcher statistics, I bet my findings will not replicate.
But, for instance, the top one, who is not anonymous, hasn't answered any question in recent times, when many of our questions reached the HNQ list with its boost effect on reputation ;-)
@MassimoOrtolano the non-anonymous users would need an additional 653 days of rep cap performance to close the gap assuming they managed to do this without answering any more questions.
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4045 | Someone is down-voting my old low-scored questions in Academia
This question may not be well fitted here. But I am wondering why someone is perhaps intentionally down-voting my old low-scored questions asked here?
I wouldn't surprise if the down-votes appears at the time I asked the question. But the down-voter is targeting my old low-scored questions. I would appreciate if the same down-voter gives some up-votes to my high-scored questions. But I can't see it.
Although I don't care the votes or scores at all, but still wondering the possible reasons for it.
Do you have any reason to think all these votes are coming from the same person? Or that you, specifically, are being targeted? It's not so unusual for old posts to get some votes as people come across them through search (nobody seems to complain when an old post gets an upvote...)
I guess it. Because in my last 2.5 years, I had never seen any such behavior. My questions are down-voted very very rarely and that to at the time I asked (may be 3 or 4 in total until 26 Feb, 2018). But in last 15-17 days I had got 4 down-votes in my old low-scored questions.
I'm tempted to take a look on your answers/questions to see the quality and eventually vote (up or down). Would it be against the rules the distribution of votes through the posts of one particular user if the votes were not biased?
Great @TheDoctor.. I appreciate it.. But why only old low-score questions... For your information, I got only down-votes in those days (from 26 Feb - 15 Mar).. if someone had a look to check the quality, do you mean he was interested in my low-scored questions only?
@TheDoctor Yes, that would be against the rules.
Some kinds of targeted voting are detected automatically and reversed by the system (see this Meta post).
In other cases, where it isn't the kind of pattern that is automatically detected, moderators can ask a Stack Exchange employee to take a closer look at a voting pattern. I have just done this for you. If there is targeted voting going on, they'll reverse it (and let the mods know who was responsible, so we can take care of that). If a few weeks pass and nothing happens, it means they've checked it out and confirmed that it wasn't targeted voting.
Targeted voting, whether up or down, is against SE community guidelines and, when detected, generally reversed.
Yes, happened to me - but the moderators spotted it before me and I only knew when they sent me a message saying something like « block voting reversed » . You mods do a good job - thanks.
Might be worth noting that targeted upvoting is also not allowed. (Re: "I would appreciate if the same down-voter gives some up-votes to my high-scored questions", if that happened it would also be against the rules and reversed if detected.)
@Solar that was an automated thing, thank the SE devs for that not the mods :)
Thanks to the SE Devs then for that and the mods for what they do !
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3985 | Should there be a warning before a user attempts to modify an older post?
A second ago I was one click away from commenting on a question from 2012, because I did not notice it was so old. Incidentally, I stumbled upon it via the side bar.
As far, as I understand, "late answers" (and, by extension, comments) are frowned on. I would not suggest disabling commenting on them. I suggest some kind of a visual clue.
A deeper shade of background. Of a JS-popup "This question is from 2012, do you really want to answer it?" might help.
Would it make sense to filter the questions that pop into sidebars by age?
As far, as I understand, "late answers" (and, by extension, comments) are frowned on.
No, that’s not correct.
Stack Exchange is not a forum and we do not frown about thread necromancy like most forums (which does not even make sense for most of them).
If the information in the existing answers is outdated, incomplete, or just wrong, you are encouraged to write a new answer.
Not doing so would be like refraining from editing Wikipedia articles that haven’t been touched in a while.
There are even two badges for providing good late answering: Necromancer and Revival.
The reason why we have a review queue for late answers is to get another check on late answer (of new users) to compensate for the decreased visibility due to the question’s age.
Related: Excavator and Archaeologist.
I don't think that late answers are frowned upon. Where did you get this impression? Yes, it frequently happens that late answers contain spam or questions by new users instead of real answers, and these are certainly frowned upon, but a good answer to an old question won't cause any issue (it's a pity, though, that a late answer may not get the attention it deserves).
For instance, I actually answered a couple of old questions on Cross Validated –
without realizing they were old – and one of my answers was then accepted, even if it came some three years later than the question.
So, no, I don't think there should be any mechanism to discourage users from answering old questions.
"I don't think that late answers are frowned upon. Where did you get this impression?": Probably from more traditional forums, where bumping old threads is often strongly discouraged.
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4001 | Is it okay to reproduce an answer that I wrote from another SE site?
A recent question is essentially identical to another question asked on the MathEducators SE.
I wrote an answer to the MathEducators SE question; would it be inappropriate to copy/paste that same answer to this site?
I think it would be better if you were to explain that you've answered a similar question elsewhere on SE, include a link, and summarize the key points of your answer.
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3311 | Can this kind of question be asked here?
I've got a theory for an open source software that will enable an education system to operate with far greater effectiveness, and I want to start an open source project to develop it and release it free to any government which might want to use it, but before I move forward with the project, I want ask about the fundamental principles in my theory, and learn about what problems my format might encounter.
Is this the kind of question could potentially ask here? If so, what would I have to be careful to focus on to keep it on-topic for this site?
If not, do you know of any SE site where this kind of question would be welcome?
The introduction above is probably the same one I'd put in the question. My question is, what are the fundamental strengths and weaknesses of this conceptual education format?
The software makes it possible for any government who'd like to use this, to utilize the software to establish certain educational resources. Afterwards, the student, teacher, parent, government, and potentially the employer all interact with the interface in unique ways. Their actions come together to reach what I think to be the most efficient format for education. I'll explain each interface, and it should become apparent how each aspect of the system comes together into a complete educational medium.
Interfaces
Source Material Submission:
Any source of wealth (government, charity) or a private sector can submit a free or premium lesson to the system's database, for any user to either purchase or use for free. Alternatively, generous teachers may submit their own material. The party must hire a teacher / professor to record a portion (or entirety) of a subject, meeting the requirements of certain curriculum. The teacher faces a camera, and explains a lesson, optionally providing resources such as images, text, and video. The system guides the teacher to divide the video and resources into a series of video segments which a student can watch in order to learn the subject matter. Rather than utilizing privately owned textbook content, the teacher must write their own chapter or sub-chapter to accompany the video lesson, replacing the textbook. The teacher is encouraged to cite peer reviewed papers and reliable sources to support information provided where necessary. Additionally, the system guides the teacher through the process of creating quizzes and tests for each subject and chapter.
Government:
A government who chooses to utilize the system will either participate in the above Content Submission process or select a set / suite of lessons (free or premium) which meet the standards of the curriculum they desire. They will give their teachers access to the system, and train them to use it.
Student:
The student is guided by the system, with assistance from the teacher, to progress through the video lessons at his/her own pace. When the student has trouble understanding anything, he/she presses a button and is put into a queue for teacher assistance. The teacher may initiate a voice-to-voice and/or instant messaging session to help the student when it's his/her turn, or physically navigate to the student to help. Students are in a school environment as usual, but no longer progress yearly, but rather at their own pace, guided by teacher and hopefully parental motivation, as the system guides them through the government's curriculum. The system may automatically pair students taking the same course for group projects when appropriate.
Teacher:
The teacher is able to efficiently track the progress of their assigned students. Students may change their assigned teachers dynamically as they progress into subjects which different teachers specialize in, and may walk from classroom to classroom, guided by the system in order to be under the supervision and guidance of whichever teacher is most relevant the the subject currently being learned at any given time. The teacher is able to monitor and respond to a queue of students who have requested help, see their current assignment and video segment, and remotely or physically communicate with them to help one-on-one. The system also provides similar communication in a triangle between teacher, student, and parent, but more on that next. The teacher may change a student's lesson to an alternate option approved by the school system, based on the style of learning that the student takes better to.
Parent:
The parent is guided by the system to view their child's progress, review detailed analysis of their child's performance compared to other students, and at the push of a button schedule remote or physical meetings with the teacher, including face to face video calling, instant messaging, voice communication, or a physical meeting time and place, which the system allows the parent to select based on the teacher's self-defined availability. The parent is given access to the materials of the student and is able to watch the students's activities and progress in real-time.
University Integration:
The system is designed for different schools and universities to work together seamlessly, and thus universities can use this system in the very same way that elementary school systems do. Just like with the grade school utilization of the application, courses must be overseen by someone, and tests/exams, while taken through the system, must be supervised by a school system, whether it be a university or grade school. The role of professors, universities, and teachers, is to select the set of lessons they believe to be most effective, and guide the students through the courses, without actually having to do the work of teaching the subject matter themselves.
Employer:
Employers world-wide are able to approve courses selected by universities for education in their pertinent fields, or they can hand pick or even submit their own set of courses to/from the global database of lessons based on exactly the quality or style of teaching that they want their future employees to have. Students can potentially look ahead at any point during their education and know exactly which courses the employer of their choice wishes them to take, take those courses through the system, and select universities based on how popular their courses are with various employers in their field.
Summary
The purpose of this system is to take away the repetitive yearly work of re-teaching a subject from the teacher, and leave it to a high quality video. This allows the teacher to spend more time one-on-one with students and focus on the big picture and also individual tutoring needs of each individual. It makes leaps and bounds toward keeping teachers, students, and parent involved together and communicating efficiently. It potentially makes progress toward world goals of a more affordable education systems at all levels, as fewer teachers will be able to handle more students, with greater effectiveness.
Question
What fundamental flaws and oversights exist within the format described?
You haven't told us enough about your question to judge whether it's on topic here or not. Perhaps include a draft of the question in this meta post?
@ff524 Ok, its done.
Thanks for clarifying.
@ff524 I realize its extensive, but I couldnt figure out a simpler way to accurately explain the theory.
Although your question is off topic as a "question", you are of course still welcome to discuss it in [chat] :)
The question you have described is an open-ended "what if" question that is definitely off topic on Academia.SE. I am pretty confident that it would be off topic on all sites in the SE network.
From the help center article on questions not to ask:
To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …
...
you are asking an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”
Now, if there are small aspects of higher education that you are not sure about, and that you need to know more about to develop your software, you could ask about those.
For example, you could ask "How do universities handle X?" where X is something very specific, or you could ask "Why do universities do Y, when it seems like Z would be much better and easier?" - again, where Y and Z are very specific and focused.
But there is no way to ask us to critique your CMS/LMS design and have it be on topic.
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23 | Accommodation questions
I would vouch for accommodation questions to be on-topic, as long as they are clearly focused for academic hosting (that is, "Channels for accommodation for 6 months at VU-Amsterdam" is on-topic, "Looking for accommodation in Centralia, Pennsylvania" is not). Also, direct "Does anybody here have a room available from/to? write me at" are completely off-topic.
The focus is to give tools, not solutions to the problem. The tools will stay valid and useful to other readers in the future. The "I have a room, write me" will not.
The reason is that relocation and quick finding of accommodation channels for short term rentals is a complete and necessary part of the academic lifestyle. Very, very often, the universities provide little or no facilities or preferred contacts for such task. Networking, unknown but dedicated services, local traditions, safest channels (e.g. commercial vs. private) on this regard is a necessity we have to endure as much as we have to endure applying for grants.
It seems to me that answers to such questions are going to age very badly: the answer I'd give for London today is very different to what it would have been 3 years ago, which would have been different again from ten years ago. That would seem to go against the StackExchange vision, where, as I understand it, the intention is to build a lot of content that ages well, and is not too localised in time or space.
you have a point... but technically also grant proposal guidelines don't necessarily age well...
@StefanoBorini I agree - and the same principle should apply
There's a narrow line between "how does a person find short-term housing near such-and-such university" and "does anyone here have a place I can sublet for six months?" If accommodation questions are allowed, both the phrasing and the answers will have to be very sternly moderated.
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1 | Softness of the closing criteria
I would like to open the meta discussion on the criteria for closing.
I think we should be a little more open than the rest of the SE community when it comes to questions that are
Localized: academics travel a lot. Something that is localized today may not be localized for us tomorrow. I worked in 7 different countries since I started and I am still not done.
"List-like" or "opinionated": there are topics that may involve a list of options, and often, academia is not a "this way" kind of answers. Occasionally, there may be things that you have to agglomerate from different sources, in order to get a "better strategy". I am thinking, for example, about best practices for visas, which may favor different inputs from different people having different backgrounds. The "correct" answer may come from someone that is unmarried, and another answer from someone that is married. The first answer may not be useful to a future reader, but the second one will. It's the usual "bad subjective/good subjective" I think.
Opinions?
I think it is a bit early to formulate policies, we see on the main site how it evolves. I belive the questions until now support your theses.
A blanket policy of "be a little more open than the rest of the SE community" is a bit difficult to use as guidance. It's better to address specific issues (citing example of the problem) so we can come up with action items and policies.
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73 | Closing questions?
I'm relatively new to Stack Exchange, so I'm not sure if there is a universal policy for closing questions across sites. But I've noticed here that there are questions with low or negative scores or questions that are similar to ones asked and answered before, and they're left hanging on the front page. Turnover seems slow compared to other SE sites.
I just wanted to put this out for discussion, I don't have a terribly strong opinion about it either way.
The main problem here is that there are far fewer moderators, so most posts don't reach the number of close votes necessary to close. The solution to this is (1) flag offending posts so that site-wide mods can vote to close, and (2) vote to close if you have the capability to do so.
That was what I suspected, but how do we solve the issue of too few moderators? Encourage more voting on questions and answers to get overall reputations up?
@Amy - That's one SE-endorsed way, but we should be sensible about it... random mass up voting will result in a low-quality site. Another good method is to publicize the site! Posters, links in sigs, twitter, etc, go nuts.
@Amy: I've added a question to the meta board asking if it's time to start adding pro tempore moderators; perhaps this discussion should be carried out over there. . . .
I wanted to offer an alternative to @CharlesMorisset's answer.
Closing a question is not an end-all to a question. It is not deleting (which is almost never done). The OP can edit a question after it is closed, thus I think vague or very-weak questions should be proactively closed with a comment letting the user know that they should edit their question and request for re-open on meta.
Three reason I think we should close questions:
If a vague question is not closed, then someone might spend time trying to answer the question. After, the original question cannot be made unvague because it might render the original answer off-topic. I don't think we are in a slum for questions, but it is very easy to ask poor questions, and we should try to avoid those.
Asking bad questions is sometimes a chronic condition. In the beta period, a single user seeding with a lot of poor questions can really lower the quality of a site. I think there might have been issues with this in the early period of cogsci.SE. Closing a question sends a very clear message to the user that their question is not upto the standards of the site.
We are not starved for questions, and we have a lot of academics on the site who seem to be participating actively. However, I think this SE is particularly vulnerable to quick weak questions that can overwhelm the front page and make it hard to attract new users, or scare away existing expertise.
In other words: I think we have reasons for closing, and not many against it.
You're right - closing a Q still allows the opportunity to edit and re-open. I think that means I can agree with both you and Charles? (ha) But the problem right now seems to be too few high-rep users and mods. I'm not sure how to overcome/solve that issue.
@Amy upvote quality questions more on the main site! it gives users rep which eventually allows them to cost close and open votes.
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5064 | Why does SE misspell "occurred" as "occured"?
To see examples of the misspelling, visit this link:
https://academia.stackexchange.com/posts/55665/revisions
On the right hand side, you should see the word, e.g. "occured Dec 13 '20 at 1:05" at the top of the column.
Can this be fixed?
(note, this also occurrs elsewhere: Typo in "An error occured when uploading the image". occured -> occurred)
Probably best to see if someone has reported it on MSE (https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/364538/typo-in-an-error-occured-when-uploading-the-image-occured-occurred seems to be a separate instance of the same word), and if not then to report it there. As for "why", probably because people make mistakes.
Added the status-review tag which should bring this to the attention of SE staff in about 6 to 8 units. Likely to be low-priority but also an easy fix; will probably get done in a broader sweep taking care of this sort of thing.
@BryanKrause Why was the other typo on purpose (as per your edit)? Is there some context to that post that I am missing?
@GoodDeeds Sorry, just a dumb joke I made that isn't landing; I intentionally incorrectly put an extra 'r' in "occurrs/occurs" in that edit since I happened to be using the word at issue to describe another post.
@BryanKrause Ohh, I get it now, thanks! I had thought that you meant that the typo reported in the linked post was on purpose.
misspelling
Agree that this is a misspelling. I expected it was a valid alternate spelling in some corner of the Anglophone world, but it appears to be a simple error.
Can this be fixed?
Not by Academia.SE mods. This seems to be a site-wide issue, and if there is any client-side control over this text, it is not something we have access to either. As Bryan said in the comments, the next step would be to make the request on Meta.SE, if it hasn't already been requested (but these types of bugs tend to be considered low priority).
Maybe: 1) inform the big Meta staff to search every occurrence of this spelling-wrong word and remedy them? 2) Somehow migrate this from here to Meta.SE?
@VScode_fanboy I asked for guidance on what mods should do when this sort of question is asked on a site meta even though it applies to the whole SE, and the answer was to status-review tag it as I have done which will automatically add it to a queue for review by SE staff. They're aware of this spelling error in a couple places and will look for others as well when they get around to fixing it. I don't know who the "big Meta staff" are you're talking about but this is not the responsibility of MSE mods and there isn't any other "Meta staff".
@BryanKrause Yes I meant the normal staff by "big Meta staff" I used the word big because, er, Meta.SE is big. I didn't know the status-review tag point the questions to a specific queue.
@BryanKrause something off-topic: a good portion of status-review tagged posts, haven't got attention in 5 years in the Meta.SE (some even has no response ! let alone the status-review tag). Let's see how this get handled.
@VScode_fanboy There have been some efforts to address the backlog like https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/361140/ticket-smash-for-status-review-tag , but overall this status-review tag=in the queue procedure is relatively new: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/348642/what-posts-should-be-escalated-to-staff-using-status-review-and-how-do-i-esca so I don't know that the older posts are really a good way to judge.
If the question doesn't even have status-review, then it hasn't been put in the queue and it's ordinarily up to the mods to do so (you can flag for moderator attention if you have a MSE post that you think should be reviewed after reading that MSE post about status-review). My impression is that SE has made a strong effort to respond to these more recently, after going through a period in which feedback from meta was perhaps...undervalued. This has been part of stated efforts by the CEO, CPO/CTO, and VP of community to value and prioritize input from SE users.
@BryanKrause I didn't know about that effort. I already read the second question you linked.
Thank you for the report! This has been fixed sitewide, along with another 21 other "occurrences" of the same misspelling.
Interestingly, this is one of the 100 most common misspellings and not a single person in my house could spell it either.
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4886 | Is a question about a specific web service, relating to academic integrity, a shopping question?
I asked and suggested an answer to this question about whether instructors should use a newly-presented academic-integrity web service from the Chegg company (the "Honor Shield"). The question quickly received a number of upvotes, and no suggestions to close from community members.
However, a moderator then closed it as a "shopping" question, linking back to this question on meta from a few years ago.
The title of that meta question is, "What to do with questions asking to evaluate commercial online services?", but the body of the question, and the accepted answer, deal with assessing organizations in general. That is: the examples in the meta question are all of the form, "Is organization X useful?". And the highlighted summary of the answer is, "Evaluating an organization is not OK."
But the question I posed is not about evaluating an organization in general. It is putting up a specific online web service, which is publicly available to any instructor, and relates to an important academic-integrity issue which has had numerous other questions on SE in the past year, to vote and find a consensus response by the community here.
In contrast, I might point to this other meta question from last year, on the issue of, "What are the limits of 'shopping' questions when it comes to software?". In that case, the top-voted answer observes that specialized software tools are intrinsic to the work of many academics, and summarizes that, "I think that this is the right site for this kind of questions, and that we should amend the definition of 'shopping question' to make them on-topic if they are not on topic already." I think that meta question is much more relevant than the one linked by the question closer.
Compare also to several questions specifically about the Turnitin service (on the same theme, another specific online tool to support academic integrity checks) that have been left open on SE Academia over the years, e.g., here, here, and here.
Is a narrowly-focused question about a particular online software tool, which relates to an issue of academic integrity, truly a shopping question? Should all questions of this nature now be closed, or left open?
Note: After a fairly small edit to the title and concluding query-statement by another member, the given question has been reopened by community voting.
I'd consider that specific kind of question highly opinion based. After all, your answer boils down to "Chegg is a bad guy, so don't interact with it". That is, it seems more an attempt to attack a specific service, rather than a genuine evaluation of the offered option.
So, I think that it should be kept closed, either as opinion based or as a shopping question (depending on how one looks at it).
There are some crucial differences between your question and other examples you cite:
Your question (and answer) hinge on the integrity of the company in question. This is partially due to the nature of the service in question, but that doesn’t solve the problem. Questions about evaluating whether a journal is trustworthy¹ have the same issue. Your answer spends the first two (non-summary) paragraphs on evaluating the company. At the end of the day, the main reason why we close questions is the answers they attract, and your question inevitably attracts answers that evaluate the company.
Your question (and answer) is not about how or when to use a tool but whether to use it at all, with the conclusion that nobody should ever use this.
Your question is not about evaluating a type of tool, but a specific tool. You are not using this tool as an example for similar tools (which is even possible if such do not exist), but your question is about this tool in specific.
¹ which is after all usually only one product by one publisher and while your typical predatory journal belongs to a predatory publisher, there have been cases of single journals of a reputable publisher being wrecked by an editor.
Compare also to several questions specifically about the Turnitin service (on the same theme, another specific online tool to support academic integrity checks) that have been left open on SE Academia over the years, e.g., here, here, and here.
The first two questions (and many other typical questions on plagiarism-detection services) illustrate the difference quite well: The integrity and quality of Turnitin are not the subject of these questions and the answers do not address this. If we answer somebody that it is a waste of time and money to have their own thesis checked for plagiarism by such a service, this doesn’t mean that the service is bad or nobody should ever use such service. It’s about when and how to use such tools. The third question is asking many things at once and some of them are shopping (“I would like to know whether the free tier is totally worthless”), but nobody answered that (and I now removed it).
It is putting up a specific online software tool […] to vote and find a consensus response by the community here.
That’s exactly the kind of popularity contest that we want to avoid by banning shopping questions. We are not the Board of Deciding which Academic Tool is Proper. Votes decide whether an answer is useful to the asker and future visitors – which usually means weighing the pros and cons, being generally applicable, etc. Votes do not decide whether an answer arrives at the correct™ yes-or-no conclusion.
In that case, the top-voted answer observes that specialized software tools are intrinsic to the work of many academics, and summarizes that, "I think that this is the right site for this kind of questions, and that we should amend the definition of 'shopping question' to make them on-topic if they are not on topic already." I think that meta question is much more relevant than the one linked by the question closer.
Mind that the focus of that question is recommendation questions, which does not translate well here: You do not choose one tool to solve your problem, but even if everything works as advertised, you would have to use all of them. The entire angle of my answer to that question, namely to focus on how to solve a given problem (be it with or without specific software) does not apply.
Is a narrowly-focused question about a particular online software tool, which relates to an issue of academic integrity, truly a shopping question? Should all questions of this nature now be closed, or left open?
There is no simple yes or no answer. Such questions should be closed if they focus on evaluating the tool, company, or similar instead of solving a particular problem or when or how to apply a tool.
I dunno - I haven't voted one way or another, but there's lots of specific questions about software. For example, a question like "Should I use LaTeX in sociology?" would probably be fine and get the answer "No," or cf here: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/157578/advice-to-manage-a-facebook-group-for-phd-students/. Note that LaTeX and Facebook are specific tools. I think you shouldn't have mod-hammered this Q, nothing that there weren't any other CVs.
I never claimed that all specific questions about software are problematic. The LaTeX example is considerably different because it has a specific usage context and will probably attract answers weighing the pros and cons. You would not get answers dissuading the use of LaTeX in general. Also LaTeX is not commercial. I would consider the Facebook question also problematic as it attracted several answers that are just general Facebook bashing. I cannot fully evaluate that one though, since it assumes familiarity with Facebook tools that I do not have.
As for hammering this, I still consider this far from borderline and a clear case of an opinion-based shopping question. At the moment of closing it had become an HNQ and thus a prominent broken window. Also please mind that since closing, three users with CV privileges chose to leave it closed and another moderator seconded my decision. So hammering it open now would be at least as problematic as hammering it closed allegedly was.
I don't think Latex not being commercial has any bearing, and I think the Facebook one is fine and they're all valid issues with the platform. Anyway, mod hammering it closed is a big precedent ("leave closed" is imo different than "close") and I still think you shouldn't have hammered it but I'll acknowledge that now undoing it would be bad (still not as bad - if it's as obvious as you think, it should be promptly closed, right?).
@AzorAhai-him-: This community does not operate on precedents. If the community decides that it wants such questions (which doesn’t appear to be the case), so be it. One reason for mod-hammering is to perform a quick action if needed and this was the case here: The question was clearly about evaluating and bashing an individual company, which no matter how much that company deserves it, clearly goes against a repeated community consensus. As it was active (and an HNQ), there was the risk of it attracting additional answers, comments, etc. exacerbating the problems.
From another perspective, moderators are human exception handlers. An open and active popular question that should clearly be closed (as per our policies) is such an exception. The normal way of handling it (waiting for close votes) would have been too slow. On top, the decision could always be undone by reopen votes or meta consensus. Of course, evaluating the size of the problem is a judgement call, but that’s the kind of judgement call we moderators inevitably have to frequently make and were elected to make. So far, this meta discussion seems to confirm this judgement call.
Ah that's not what I meant - I meant that it's the precedent for dealing with this question. Surely you can agree that sending it to the reopen queue and seeing it receive n CVs is not the same as it receiving n CVs naturally. It has as many reopen votes as leave closed votes. Anyway, I won't belabor it any more other than to state I still disagree with your action.
If this is that black and white, it should be closed by voting members, not moderators
@ScottSeidman: What’s the logic behind this? If anything, extreme (black and white) cases also cause bigger issues and tend to demand quick decisions (as I argued to be the case here). Moreover, ideally there is no difference in the outcome of the decision. By contrast, borderline cases are usually the ones argued to not be decided unilaterally.
"If this is that black and white" was sarcasm. I hold shopping questions to be of the form "What product, among many, should I consider" -- not "should I use product X?", which I consider fine (especially when X is of great topical interest to many participants. I strongly disagree with "no difference in outcome" as 1) it's not clear to me that the community would have closed this, and 2) a perception of overmoderation is most certainly an outcome.
@ScottSeidman: I hold shopping questions to be of the form "What product, among many, should I consider" -- not "should I use product X?", which I consider fine – We have over several years established a categorisation of shopping question that works for our purpose and this includes questions of both kinds for good reasons, namely that both types of question suffer from almost the same problems. If you wish to debate that, please provide some arguments. All you do so far is saying that you disagree.
@ScottSeidman: especially when X is of great topical interest to many participants – That’s not a good criterion to decide whether a question should be closed. There are many questions that are of great interest, but should not be asked here since they are far too broad, too opinion-based, etc.
While I completely disagree with the Academia.SE def of a shopping question, I certainly accede to community standards. That said, I edited the question such that it is no longer a shopping question, yet still achieves what I believe to be the intent of the question. I ask that it be reopened.
There are several problems with shopping questions: first, they tend to attract spam. Secondly, they invite opinions. Third, they encourage answers that become obsolete very quickly. An answer claiming that OP should buy a computer with one of the Pentium Pro processors would be completely useless at this point, for example.
On the one hand, this is asking only about a single product, so it's not an unconstrained request for a list of things. That being said, it's unlikely to attract spam.
A more debatable question is whether or not this is likely to attract opinionated answers. The term "should" invites opinions rather than answers because there isn't an agreed-upon standard about what things you should even consider in answering it. This question would be improved by editing it to specify what factors you would like people to consider in writing answers. Something like "can we trust Chegg to handle our data correctly?" or "does this product actually accurately identify cheating?" are answerable questions.
I think you should make a new question that does not request an assessment of a particular company or product. Wrzlprmft claims that "Your question ... hinge[s] on the integrity of the company in question." This is not true. If the question were "Should I rely on a third party to enforce academic integrity?" then the answer would be no. The question is about a specific case of that situation.
I've voted to reopen. This is not a shopping question.
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4640 | Why is the question about female students' evaluations of a particular faculty member's teaching still open?
The question was closed. Currently, my closure reason comment has 25 upvotes. There are several bad answers. I cannot find any comments about reopening (too many to read them all carefully.) Why is the question open now?
Why are female students evaluating my teaching worse than males?
The question is open now because it was actually reopened by the votes of five users.
Once the question was reopened, since other comments were piling up, I deleted the few comments discussing closing and reopening because it seemed that there were no other objections (the fact it was New Year's Eve may be a reason, though). The deleted comments were:
I am genuinely curious. What is the purpose of closing? OP asks some
useful questions that can potentially have good answers. Maybe others
experienced a similar situation and can provide a general answer.
Voting to reopen. Even if there's not a simple, concrete answer, a
good response could be something like how to go about a fact-finding
mission. If this instructor wants help figuring out student feedback
and improving their course to make a better environment for all of
their students.. I mean, isn't that a really good sort of question?
Voting to reopen. Thanks for insights
I left your comment for the suggestion "Try asking your students", which may be valuable.
Having a useful answer does not make it on topic, especially if the useful answer does not answer the question or is purely opinion. 2. How to find facts answers, of which there are several, are not answers to a question that requests facts rather than methods.
@AnonymousPhysicist I'm not claiming that the question is on topic: I think it's one of those bordeline cases that might be considered on topic, maybe with a few adjustments. But this is for the community to decide, I don't think we mods should act unilaterally in any direction now. The objections that you bring in the comment above would be better added to your meta question, if you want to present a case to convince the community that it should better stay closed.
My comment was in response to the comments you quoted, not you. This meta-question does not make a case for anything. I am still considering if I care to open another meta-question requesting action.
@AnonymousPhysicist "...not answers to a question that requests facts rather than methods." While someone more experienced might have known to ask for methods rather than facts, naïve users are part of the intended audience for SEs so it's normal to get imperfectly asked questions. Thus, where it's reasonable to do so, we should simply be addressing the user's problem as best we can, rather than closing questions due to technical problems like this. Nat's answer is correct: "someone could post the information necessary to help the asker figure out what they were asking about."
Just answering the technical side of this: If you go to the question’s edit history, you can see that it was reopened shortly after being closed (and by whom).
Interesting that someone voted both to close and then re-open the question.
@DanielR.Collins so vote to close then vote to open - pre drinks then post drinks... :)
tl;dr– The question was answerable because someone could post the information necessary to help the asker figure out what they were asking about. While this may've meant telling the asker that they had some investigation to do, that's perfectly fine – just like it's fine to give abstract answers on SE.Math or instructions on how to figure out a computer problem on SE.SuperUser.
Somewhat belated, but wanted to explain my reason for voting to reopen...
Discussion: Good answers are maximally concrete, but sometimes that's still pretty abstract.
Hypothetically, say someone on SE.Math asks:
If x + y = 2 and x = 1, what's y?
Then we'd tell them that y = 1.
But say someone asks:
If x + y = 2, what's y?
Should we close their question for not having enough information? Or, is it okay to be abstract in saying that y = 2 - x?
I'd frame this as an issue of folding abstract syntax trees. When we answer questions, we:
Parse the question.
Fold it as much as possible.
Post the result as an answer.
For example, when answering either SE.Math question, you'd probably arrive at the fact that y = 2 - x. However:
In the first case, you continue to find that y = 1 because you're able to.
In the second case, you stop and post y = 2 - x because that's as far as you can go.
Point being that questions are still answerable even if we don't have enough information to "fully" answer them.
The SE.Academia question discussed in this SE.Academia.Meta question could be answered abstractly.
With respect to this SE.Academia question, it'd seem hard to give a concrete answer (like y = 1) to why the asker's female students gave them lower scores than their male students.
Still, it seems like we could answer it.
I'd suggest something like this:
Put yourself in the asker's shoes.
Imagine how you'd find the answer to this problem.
Fold it as far as possible.
Post the answer.
Of course, there'd be a lot of ways that you could, in theory, find an answer to the question.
For example, one possible answer might be:
Invent a time machine.
Go forward into the future to where there's thought-reading technology.
Bring that technology back to the present.
Use it to figure out what the students' reasonings were.
That'd be sorta like telling the SE.Math person that they should get a quantum-computer to find an approximate solution for y. Which, obviously, would be a bad answer despite technical correctness.
Instead, good abstract answers ought to be reasonably implementable. For example, a good answer might:
Present the space of likely explanations based on published researched or/and personal experience.
Suggest a practical methodology for narrowing down the presented possibilities to as few as possible (ideally one).
For example, a good answer might be like:
Studies have shown that, when there's a gender disparity in student feedback, it's likely due to one of the following reasons:
Teaching style appealed more to one gender than the other.
Subject was more interesting to one gender than the other.
Students perceived instructor as having been sexist.
In order to determine which of these common explanations may be applicable to your case, you should:
Perform this inventory to determine if your teaching style has a gender bias.
Check this table for gender preference statistics on your field, and then this correlation to estimate the expected effect on student feedback.
Consult with your TA's to get their opinions on if perceived sexism may've been an issue.
Of course, if the asker had included more information, e.g.
a detailed description of their teaching style;
a full description of their subject and course content;
feedback from their TA's on if there may've been perceived sexism;
then instead of posting the more abstract answer, we could fold it into a more concrete conclusion.
The point's just that we don't need to simply say something like
Your female students were more bored by the subject matter than your male students.
if we don't actually know that to be the case.
Conclusion: The question was answerable, even if not concretely.
In short, while there may not have been enough information to precisely explain the gender disparity that the asker saw in their student evaluations, a good answer wouldn't need to provide such a concrete answer any more than a good SE.Math answer would need to provide a specific number.
Instead, it's okay to give an asker a framework that they can use to find their concrete answer. For example:
If someone's asking for a solution to a math problem, it's okay to give an algebraic response instead of a number.
If someone's asking how to fix their computer, it's okay to give them instructions on how to diagnose the problem before actually telling them how to fix it.
If someone's asking about how to interpret student feedback, it's okay to give them instructions on how to go about examining that feedback.
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5005 | Is there a generic question for people who are worried about alleged misconduct years ago?
Recently I realised that with some regularity there seem to be question of people who seem to be obsessively worried about some alleged misconduct which happend many years ago. A very recent example is the following: Would these be adequate grounds for severe reprimand from my undergraduate program?. An older example.
In most of these questions, it looks like the actual problem is not an acedemic one. Is there a generic question about when to worry about alleged misconduct after many years to which these could be marked as duplicates?
Overlap in some cases, not all: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/153661/68109
In general, concern about long-ago transgressions fall into two categories.
Very serious ones, where the misconduct could potentially lead to degree revocation. For these, we have this canonical question.
Less serious ones, where there is no real chance of suffering consequences, but there may be some guilt. In this case, the issue is not really academic, but psychological ("scrupulosity", perhaps).
We should avoid playing psychiatrist: we have no particular expertise to offer when it comes to dealing with feelings of guilt. So, questions about how to deal with guilt are mostly off-topic (I would recommend leaving a gentle explanation in the comments, or a link to this discussion). This was the case with the linked post.
Similarly, we should avoid playing judge: it is not our role to adjudicate individual cases and decide whether the asker is guilty or not. So, questions asking us to judge their long-ago offense will mostly be dependent on individual factors.
But, there may be a few questions where there is an actual academic question that is broad enough that it could be useful to others in the future. In such cases, the question is viable and should be left open.
Note, I rewrote this answer (changing mostly the structure, not the substance) after considering Arno's excellent answer.
I disagree with cag51 on this type of question being off-topic, despite agreeing that this ultimately is a psychological issue, and that we shouldn't play psychiatrist.
What we can provide for these questions is a rough assessment on how serious the potential transgression is, and whether worrying about consequences or unpaid moral dues is reasonable or not. As an analogy, everyone will perceive a clear difference between "15 years ago I stole a candybar and I'm worrying the law will catch up with me" and "15 years ago I murdered someone and I'm worrying the law will catch up with me". When it comes to violations of the academic code of conduct, it will be much less obvious for "outsiders" to judge.
Of course, being told that the worry is unreasonable will not necessarily help the asker to stop worrying; and the question of how to do that is indeed off-topic here.
A peculiarity of these questions is that whether the asker believes the answer is more of a concern than usual. For this reason, I'd be extra cautious with closing as duplicates here.
This does not seem consistent with the long-standing practice of closing questions that depend strongly on individual circumstances. Misconduct is very often all about individual circumstances and a "rough assessment" is not actually productive.
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2176 | Advertising academic jobs in Academic SE
I've seen that stackoverflow has one section for advertising jobs. I think it would be very interesting to have a similar thing here for academic open positions.
Please check http://careers.stackoverflow.com
I fear it might be less useful, because academic open positions are so specialised.
@gerrit The same applies for stackoverflow jobs. They have a search engine and you can specify the region, type of contract, and field.
I find the proposal interesting, however one potential issue is that universities might wish to menage this stuff directly.
And if the advertising is handled privately by the community members there can be a bias: I might not be willing to advertise a position in my field in which I wish to apply... not that I fear competition, of course ;-)
Yes, it would be great if there was a single place where jobs were generally advertised. While I generally widely disseminate jobs in my department, the reach of AC.see is so small, that I would never consider doing it here. Additionally, job adverts do not fit the Q/A nature of our site and a search committee does not want to get involved in a discussion about the position.
If you know about jobs, I say post away in chat. Maybe even make a dedicated chat room if you want.
I am inclined to say they do not belong on the main board, but if we as a community want a single big-list job wiki type question (possibly one per field and year), then I could see if working. That said, I think job wikis are really awful and our format would not improve it. If you want to go that route, ask a new meta question with a detailed description of what you are proposing. Just so you are clear, while as a mod I do what the community wants, I would most likely down vote such a proposal.
Please check http://careers.stackoverflow.com
@MojtabaEbrahimi careers.so is a very different site from the standard SE site. Potentially SE would create a sub-site like careers.academia.stackexchange.com, but I think search committees do a bad job of advertising and if it costs money to post would be even more reluctant.
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3340 | How to select an answer to a question that I recently asked?
In my most recent question regarding whether to abandon an open math problem, I got (surprisingly) much more dialogue than I anticipated. I had expected very quick answers that all say something like, "yes, you are mistaken, stick with what's current."
Instead, I got some great answers that advocate for both choices.
There is a concise answer that has 46 up-votes -- the most net up-votes.
Then Pete Clark's answer has 26 net up-votes and Dan Romik has 9 net up-votes.
I think Pete Clark's and Dan Romik's answers (and additional comments) are the best.
Am I doing something "wrong" if I choose one of their answers, instead of choosing the answer that is the most popular, based on up-votes?
Thanks,
From the help center:
As the author of the question, you have an additional option:
accepting an answer that you believe is the best solution to your
problem.
To accept an answer:
Choose one answer that you believe is the best solution to your
problem.
To mark an answer as accepted, click on the check mark beside
the answer to toggle it from greyed out to filled in.
You may change
which answer is accepted, or simply un-accept the answer, at any time.
Accepting an answer is not mandatory; do not feel compelled to accept
the first answer you receive. Wait until you receive an answer that
answers your question well.
Note the repeated reference to the "answer that you believe is the best". Choose any answer you want (or none at all).
Ok, thanks @ff524 :)
In addition to the above comments, it may be helpful to edit your original question to provide insight into why the correct answers were chosen for your particular topic.
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5398 | Why were my comments deleted?
I wrote two comments on this question. Both were deleted. The moderators provided no justification for this deletion. Which "rules" did those comments violate?
Related
Is deleting comments a form of censorship?
The comments in question stated:
You: Step zero — pick your ancestors wisely.
OP: Can you explain what it means?
You: The thinking castes are not merely educated, they are the result of centuries of proper breeding. I would expect most Fields medalists to come from these castes — e.g., Ashkenazim, Brahmins, Parsis, Puritans. After all, MIT is in Boston. However, if one's ancestors lived through an ice age, then they might have been selected for the ability to think and plan long-term, which might be positively correlated with intelligence. Thus, at high latitudes, people might jump from peasant to professor without many generations in between. At lower latitudes, however...
As for why I deleted it, I think that should be obvious. In short: (1) answers in comments always run the risk of being deleted without warning, and (2) your remarks about how “proper breeding” makes those at “high latitudes” inherently more suited to be the “thinking castes” would certainly have derailed the comments section, and likely violate our code of conduct in any case.
1. IMHO, deleting comments that point out that the question is misguided (and should probably be deleted) are exactly the comments that should not be deleted. 2. If many people cannot deal with biological reality, is that my responsibility? Their parents failed to raise them properly, which is sad, but not exactly my responsibility. Which exact paragraph of the Code of Conduct would that be?
Your answer does pertain to my 2nd comment. How exactly did my most innocuous 1st comment violate the Code of Conduct?
Because it's only purpose was as preamble to your second racist comment. OP needed you to clarify it and the clarification was racist, so clearly not "most innocuous".
If you meant it as satire you should label it as such. Without that, it is pretty offensive.
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4821 | Is academia the right place to get help for dealing with classmates?
I have an issue with someone in my group project (a non-ESL student who writes in broken English)
Is this the right SE for this? Is there even an SE for this?
Well, is this happening in an academic setting (college or university) or a school setting (high school, etc.)?
It depends on the issue. Interpersonal S. Exchange could also be good. But, please make absolutely sure you mention the country and culture this happens in.
@Wrzlprmft this is in a college
@MarkBiernacki: I see you took my suggestion. Let's see how it turns out, ISE is always exciting;)
In most cases, questions about interpersonal interaction in the classroom or classwork should be discussed with the class instructor. It might be appropriate to ask about here, but if you have not asked your instructor first, it would be reasonable for people to downvote your question for "not showing any research effort."
"requirements and expectations of students" are on topic, but "content of coursework" and "undergraduate culture" are off topic.
https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic
Why was my question put on hold for depending on individual factors?
"should be discussed with the class instructor": That heavily depends on the culture you are in. Most instructors I know come to class, give their homework and go. Some answer emails with questions. They do not see (rightly or wrongly) themselves responsible for questions on Interpersonal interaction. "One member of the group does nothing for the projects." "That's your problem, don't bother me with this."
"They do not see (rightly or wrongly) themselves responsible for questions on Interpersonal interaction." That's unethical negligence. It's well known that if students interact without any guidance, race and gender disparities increase.
I disagree: That's just a different culture. Students are adults and as such are seen as themselves responsible. It's the same in other parts of adult life (and I must say that I believe most of my former student collegues to be better with "gender disparities" than any of my former professors). Anyway, whether this is right or wrong, it's the case that in some country, the instructor is not responsible.
@user111388 "Students are adults" True, but adults are often implicitly racist/sexist/etc. In my view, if you don't feel educating students not to be biased is part of an educator's responsibility, that is equivalent to saying bias is okay. It's even more important if students are being harmed by bias. I'm talking about ethical and professional responsibility, not what is written in a job description/contract.
This may be. But in the same way that nobody educates professors, politicians, blue collar workers, doctors etc about their biases and group work abilities, students are also not educated about them (in general). This is just not seen as part of university (in my region). My point is that your statement "should be discussed with the instructor" is not universally true.
"nobody educates professors ... about their biases" That is not true at all. I think your experience is unusual. 20 years ago it might have been typical.
Again, maybe in your region. I am an university level instructor myself - I had no information/class/whatever on how to teach/biases/whatever, and, sadly enough, I know I could get away with bad teaching if I wouldn't care.
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4768 | Did this question have a thank-you note added by somebody other than the person who asked it?
The revision history of this question seems to be saying that edit #6 is the addition of a thank-you note where the question-asker apparently thanks the people who answered the question:
Thank you to everyone for these thoughtful and detailed responses. My fears have been broadly dispelled, although some anxienty remains. I probably have more to fear in my current setting directly than through a chain reacting involving my degree.
I have posted some thoughts under the first response and will remain engaged in the discussions above.
But this revision seems to be attributed to a different user than the one who originally posted the question. Am I understanding correctly that this is what happened? If so, is that an acceptable thing to do?
One possibility that's on my mind is that the OP account might be a throw-away, owned by the same person as the account that added the thank-you note, since the question (especially as it was originally phrased) is a bit sensitive. Note that there are no comments from either account on any of the answers, though there are comments from the OP account on the question itself.
See the revision comment: appended answer 153529 as supplemental. Now, I would bet that https://academia.stackexchange.com/posts/153529/ would link you to a now deleted answer (can't see it though, don't have the reputation ;) ). I'll send you over.
The edit you mention was made by a moderator (most likely on behalf of the OP).
@Tinkeringbell Ohhhh, I see. I can't see the (presumably-deleted) answer now either, but I bet that's exactly what happened. If you want to make that comment into an answer, I'll mark it accepted in a few hours (assuming no better explanation (or public confession?? lol) comes along).
I'll leave it to the people here that have reputation to confirm the hunch ;-)
Leaving out (user)names from this question does not actually make the involved people anonymous and is just an inconvenience for the readers.
@Tinkeringbell I have the reputation, but that address format is invalid. You can see the deleted answer either directly on the question page https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/153498/can-public-political-criticism-of-my-alma-mater-result-in-my-ba-being-revoked-35/153529#153529 or more shortly https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/153498#153529, or view its timeline on https://academia.stackexchange.com/posts/153529/timeline.
@FedericoPoloni Whoops! I don't make my own urls that often ;)
The edit matches, word for word, what the OP of the question posted as an answer. A moderator (Massimo Ortolano) deleted that "answer" (presumably since it does nothing to answer the question) and incorporated it into the question itself. That seems appropriate, and better than leaving the non-answer as-is or deleting it outright.
The OP mistakenly posted that additional text as an answer. Moderators can directly convert such non-answers to a comment or an edit to the question. The edit is automatically attributed to the moderator who performed the action (me in this case).
This action can be seen from the question's timeline, accessible by clicking on the clock icon below the question's score:
The action is represented by two rows in the timeline: first the deletion and then the edit (users with less than 10k reputation will only see the edit event).
I can see these events in the timeline when logged in, but not when using a private window. So access to this information may require the same 10k reputation privilege as to see individual deleted answers.
@Anyon The whole timeline should be accessible to all logged-in users, regardless of reputation, see this meta post.
@Masimo Thanks for the link, but I still don't think all information is available to all logged-in users. On other stacks I've reported answers that were since deleted, but that I can't see on the timeline. To verify, I went ahead and made a fresh account (1 reputation point). Accessing the timeline of the discussed question from that account, I only see your edit event - the answer event that should be below it is not visible.
You need 10k rep on this site to see deleted answers here, even their entry in the timeline. Fortunately, while I’ve seen this type of edit before across the network (even making some myself), I’ve never seen any be malicious. After all, it’s either going to be someone trusted making the edit, or a reviewed edit where hopefully the reviewers check to make sure that it’s a legitimate edit.
@Laurel and Anyon Thanks, I've edited the answer.
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3763 | Sorting according to the score introduces an unwanted bias
I noticed that:
answers on this site usually get sorted descendingly according to their score,
in general, answers are either upvoted or left untouched rather than downvoted, and
I (and, presumably, most of us) do not have the time to read ALL the answers thoroughly if there are many of them, but do have time to scroll through the topmost.
This leads to the situation that in the presence of several answers, the topmost answers are likely to increase their score and stay on the top, regardless of whether there are better answers below.
Is there a technical means to avoid this bias? Surely, you can sort by active, oldest, votes, but those sorting modes would simply remove one bias and introduce a different bias instead. Moreover, the default sorting mode is "votes". My suggestions would be to introduce some randomness into the orders. I'm not sure how much randomization is necessary (fully random or taking the votes orders and moving a random answer to the top): feel free to comment.
EDIT: Following the comment of Massimo Ortolano, if someone could migrate to the general meta discussion, I'd not be against.
Answers on all sites are ordered in the same way. This has long been discussed on the main meta, e.g., https://meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=answer+order
There already are options for active, oldest and votes . Are you saying you do not want people to be able default to votes?
One simple way around this problem is that the answer at the very top is actually the one selected by the question-asker as the accepted answer. Hopefully if no one else reads all the answers, the person who had the initial question does.
On the main meta your question would be probably closed as duplicate of the Fastest Gun in the West Problem The highest voted answer proposes the implementation of the sorting criterion described in Federico's answer. Thus, SE is well aware of the issue, but solving it is probably not in their priorities or they think that a new sorting criterion might cause other issues.
It has been suggested that a better sorting criterion is the lower bound of the Wilson score confidence interval for a Bernoulli parameter. Apart from the sexy-sounding statistical name, it's the system used to sort comments in Reddit and other sites. It is intended to fix exactly this kind of bias.
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5228 | Should we have a canonical question about the relation (or lack thereof) between plagiarism and paraphrasing?
As a preface - it is a recurring topic, fragments of the relevant discussion can be seen here on Meta. Even in my relatively short time here, I have seen a few persistent strains of "is X plagiarism", with the most common confusion seemingly coming from the stance on paraphrasing. A few academic integrity resources such as this MIT one shed some light on the issue, as they dive straight into "borrowing exact words without attribution is plagiarism", which - in my opinion - fails to establish a solid foundation and convey underlying concerns.
Should we have a canonical question covering all (well, to the extent it could be done) things plagiarism?
Usually, I find myself conflicted because of not having a good duplicate target for VTC and end up writing an answer. And then try to make it not just a collection of links - that almost screams "canonical question".
EDIT: (apologies for being late) As cag51 points out, the overall issue about plagiarism and authorship is broad, and the corresponding tag has plenty of questions along the lines of "someone stole my work or is suggesting that I steal others' work, what do I do?". While the linked question covers many of the bases for "is X plagiarism?", I still feel it is not quite there as a duplicate target. Mostly because it assumes a bit different perspective from what askers typically have in mind. I believe that a more FAQ-like answer or a collection thereof could be helpful, but our regular format does not allow that; questions either end up being too broad or violate one question per post rule.
There is also an argument to be had that providing these detailed answers is outside of SE's scope, as they are covered elsewhere on the Internet, but people keep asking them here. And we keep answering them here; they are still legitimate. But it seems - at least, to me - the redundancy is becoming quite high.
Plagiarism is a big topic (an entire tag, in fact). What exactly would the canonical question be? If it’s just about “is X plagiarism?”, then this question might be a good starting place.
Perhaps something to dispel the confusion (often seen) between plagiarism and copyright violation.
yes, I think some kind of definition of what plagiarism, self plagiarism, copyright but also proper citations entail would be very usefull.
I'll note that plagiarism and paraphrasing are completely orthogonal notions. One can have either without the other. One can have both, or neither.
See this question and the answers over at Law: https://law.stackexchange.com/q/87396/35500
I have the feeling that since this has been brought up, the number of plagiarism related questions has increased even further. I think it would really be great to have a well written canonical question that people can refer to.
@Sursula Yep, getting that feeling as well as of late. Been busy as it gets and, admittedly, procrastinating a bit, hopefully will finally get to write it in a day or two.
Let me write up what I understand of the proposal / discussion in comments, so that people can upvote if they think this is a good canonical question, and downvote if not. Edits / comments suggesting edits are also welcome.
I think the proposal is for a canonical question called "What is Plagiarism?" The canonical answer would have several bolded questions that we go through one by one, perhaps with links to related questions:
What is plagiarism?
Can I paraphrase? Is it plagiarism if I change a lot of the words?
Is it still plagiarism if I have a citation?
Where does copyright come into this?
What is self-plagiarism?
We should also have some explanation that we don't judge individual cases, so as to minimize the frustration when someone asks us for a verdict and their question gets closed as a "duplicate" of this.
Also, we should be clear on who would write this, if it gets approved. I don't think I will volunteer for this one; not sure if Lodinn was volunteering or not. Others?
If I can make one, somewhat opinionated, suggestion - move out the question of "What is self-plagiarism?" into a separate question and topic. Self-plagiarism is a completely different phenomenon that has, aside from the stupid naming, nothing in common with actual plagiarism. We should not add to thee conflation by dealing with them in a single canonical question.
I am torn. On one hand, I agree; if you don't know what plagiarism is, then a lengthy discussion about self-plagiarism will likely be irrelevant and confusing. On the other hand, precisely because the names are so similar, there is some confusion; and many of the existing answers about S-P do discuss regular plagiarism, copyright, citations, etc. So, having a brief but clear definition of S-P and how it relates to the other items may be valuable.
I agree with xLeitix; separate out SP (easy enough to put a link "Worried you're self-plagiarizing? Click here!"
Fair enough, updated.
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/191668/do-views-about-plagiarism-apply-equally-to-structure-as-to-content This fits right into the discussion here.
I could draft it, sure - after all, being "just the ideas man" has never been well-received on internet forums, much less so academically connected ;) However, it is abundantly clear I am not exactly the best communicator around, so I would also very much count on the community input for revisions and clarity.
Sounds like a plan, I for one am happy to help with editing. There seems to be a consensus here, so I think this canonical Q is approved. And as you say, these questions have been answered many times already on this site, so you should be able to pull bits and pieces from existing, well written answers (with citations, naturally), rather than having to draft the whole thing from scratch.
Actually, @xLeitix, self plagiarism does have something in common with ordinary plagiarism. One of the major reasons we cite in the first place is to continue a chain of science/scholarship from its origins to the current paper. Self plagiarism breaks that chain denying the reader the complete context of the work, just as plagiarism does. That "complete record" includes all citations and bibliographic entires as well as arguments in the original paper. Separating self plagiarism out is fine, but there are important (vital) overlaps.
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5184 | Suggestions to improve the use and the findability of canonical questions
2 suggestions for canonical questions:
The recently established canonical question for field switching
after PhD has the following added to note to close voters:
Questions about switching from X to Y may be closed as a duplicate of this. However, please be sure that the below answer actually
answers OP's question before voting to close! If the question asks
about something not covered below (other than the specific fields),
the question should be left open until its answers are merged into
this canonical question.
I think that is a great addition and should be included in all
canonical questions, as I have the feeling that often, questions
that kind of fall into canonical territory get closed even though
the specific answer is not (yet satisfactory) included in the
canonical answer (the journal workflow is one of those).
Although canonical questions do exist, they are not easy to find as the float around in the sea of questions indistinguishable from other, non-canonical questions unless you actively click on them. My suggestion for making the canonical questions more "findable" would be to simply create a tag named canonical and ad this tag to all the canonical questions, with an explanation in the tag wiki on how canonical questions work, how people are invited to add to them etc.
Regarding point 2., see previous discussion in Would like to add "faq" and/or "canonical-question" and/or "canonical-post" tag to these questions and Moderator-only tags, such as "canonical-question", as well as the site-wide direction that was given quite a while ago in The Death of Meta Tags
@Anyon thanks for the links, I did not know that there was an existing list of canonical questions. I do think that users not very familiar with this site will not find it (I mean, I did not even find it myself...) and will keep on posting questions that already have existing answers. Maybe a link ti the the meta list could at least be somehow linked to somehow to the main page or the intro section.
Not that all new users read the help section, but linking to that question seems like a good idea. In general I think StackExchange has an issue with jnternal discoverability of old questions and answers, although discoverability with external search engines works quite well.
Note: What potential duplicate targets should I know about as a reviewer?
We already have a list of canonical questions. The advantage of this (over a tag) is that it can be sorted by category and similar. The obvious problem is that users are not sufficiently aware of this list or otherwise don’t know where to look for canonical questions.
If we add a banner to canonical questions, we can also include a link to this list. This should obviate the need for a specific tag, as it is then visible on every canonical question, just like the tag. This way we avoid the problems of a tag, like mistagged questions, the tag being removed, etc.
This is certainly better aligned with the "StackExchange Philosophy." On the other hand, the complaint seems to be that canonical questions are hard to find; adding a hard-to-find link to the hard-to-find pages may not solve the problem. (Personally, I am agnostic; having bookmarked the canonical list in my browser, I never really experience the purported issue).
But how would a tag solve this problem better than having a link in the canonical-questions banner? In both cases, you need one canonical question as a gateway (to the tag or meta list). But then maybe I am bad at putting myself into the shoes of those who have problems finding the list.
With a tag, you could click on the "tags" button on the left and then navigate to the canonical-questions tag...which is maybe a bit less hacky than trying to locate either the list or an existing canonical question, which for me usually involves using google and site:academia.stackexchange.com. The mobile experience may play into this too, not sure (I rarely do more than read the site on my phone).
IMO, the banner is better than the tag for at least one reason, we only have 5 tags per question. For example, buffy edited the workflow of journal question by replacing the peer-review tag with canonical question. However, peer-review tag is very important for this question. Do we really want to sacrifice peer-review for canonical-question tag?
Another thing, I always use search to find that journal workflow question by searching for "workflow". There are not many "workflow" on our site, the search is relatively quick. Just FYI.
@Nobody, I thought pretty long about which tag to drop and decided that peer-review would most likely have been combined with other of the remaining tags, so would be minimally disruptive.
The problem with banners is that you first need to find the question in order to see the banner. Those who retag questions considered canonical already know about canonical questions and so don't really need the banner.
@Buffy I am thinking for the first time users rather than >3k voters.. If someone sent a manuscript to a journal and keep getting "with editor" status, they come to us to find information. It is possible they think it's an faq. It is also possible they think it's about peer review. I don't think they would think it's about a "canonical question" because it's not very often used on other sites. So, I think if we really want to use a tag, "faq" is better than "canonical-question".
Thanks for your suggestions. I'll write my responses in two different answers, so people can upvote/downvote individually.
I agree we should add some version of the quoted text to each canonical question. Naturally, we'll have to think a little bit carefully about phrasing these: we should try to be clear about which questions are merely "specific instances" of the canonical question (and should be closed) and which are asking for general information that should be in the canonical answer but isn't.
Along similar lines, I like how the newest canonical question's "notice to readers" paragraph gives a brief explanation for why questions about switching from X to Y are now considered duplicates of the canonical question; this should reduce confusion / annoyance when someone's specific question is closed as a "duplicate" of the much broader question. We should make sure the other canonical questions have something similar.
canonical questions do exist, they are not easy to find
My suggestion is: This is not a bug. Canonical questions are the same as every other question, except that they have been discussed on the meta site. They do not need special treatment.
The good ones are easy to find because there are many duplicates pointing to them.
Thanks for your suggestions. I'll write my responses in two different answers, so people can upvote/downvote individually.
I agree the "canonical question" tag is probably a good idea. But, there are some potential issues we should be aware of.
First, meta-tags have been banned from Stack Overflow and are explicitly discouraged elsewhere. Looking through the rationale, many of the concerns would not apply to a canonical-question tag, but this ones does: "The reason meta-tags are a problem is that they do not describe the content of the question. They describe some other aspect of the question, like the author’s skill level, or the author’s motivation for asking it, or generally what 'kind' of question it is (poll, how-to, etc.)." I think creating a singular meta-tag is probably not a terrible idea notwithstanding the above, but we should be clear that this is a singular event and not a precedent.
Second, there is concern that novice users will misuse this tag and make random questions "canonical." Mod-only tags were suggested a year ago; I think mod-only tags are a fine idea, but they would have to be implemented by the StackExchange developers, which would take years (if they agree to do it at all, which I think is unlikely given the above). So, we would have to manually detect and remove incorrect applications of this tag; this is a bit of a maintenance burden (though I think it's probably worth it in this case; people have been complaining about how difficult it is to find canonical questions for years).
Note that I review some tags daily, especially New tags and do a fair amount of cleanup. I'm happy to continue this for the canonical-question tag and remove it when I think it is being misused (as I do for other tags BTW). We can seek a long term solution (and should), but a bit of diligence by a few users in addition to mods can help keep the site clean. It is probably a mistake to add canonical-question to more than a few questions per day to avoid flooding the main question page. And a review of my wiki entry for canonical-question should be done by interested parties.
I would also volunteer to keep an eye on a tag like this, it would probably suffice to check once a week or so.
@Sursula-they-, we get a lot of questions in a week. You can add the tag to your "watched tags" list and it will become obvious on your screen when a question appears with the tag.
Note that while it’s easy to track the tag being added to a question by subscribing to the tag, that does not apply to the tag being removed. CC@Sursula
I think, with some experience, that implementing mod-only tags should not take years. Most of the code is already in place for other purposes. Testing would be required, of course. But "it would take years" reflects very poorly on the skills of the developers. Have the mods here requested it as a feature? If so, what was the result?
My time estimate is "data-driven" -- the feature announcements coming out on main meta now were requested 5+ years ago. Once they actually start working on it, I agree it should be very easy/fast to implement, but there seems to be a long and slow-moving queue. Not sure if anyone on our team has requested it -- I personally have not, because I think they will altogether refuse, citing the above blog post. But I'd love to be proven wrong. Also, AFAIK, there is no special way for mods to request features, it's just a matter of creating a post on main meta.
However, please be sure that the below answer actually answers OP's question before voting to close!
This is wrong.
When voting to close, you are voting for a duplicate question, not a duplicate answer.
If two questions are the same, or should have the same answer, then they are duplicates, even if no answers exist in the site. This rule should apply to all questions, canonical or not.
This doesn’t work well for canonical questions. Consider, for example, What does the typical workflow of a journal look like? How should I interpret a particular submission status?. This Q&A gives a (hopefully good) overview that answers many basic questions (which is why we created it), but it cannot possibly answer every question within its scope. If we close questions that could theoretically be answered by this but aren’t, those will likely never be answered.
Also, SE duplicates are more answer-focused than this answer presents it. If an existing Q&A completely covers another question, the latter is a duplicate, even if the question is technically different. In fact, this applies to many questions we rightfully close as duplicates of canonicals. On the other hand, there is a reason that you can only flag/vote to close a question as a duplicate if the target question has an answer.
"If we close questions that could theoretically be answered by this but aren’t, those will likely never be answered." That is exactly what has been happening. The solution is to read the questions being closed and edit the answer to the canonical question.
"If an existing Q&A completely covers another question, the latter is a duplicate, even if the question is technically different." Could you explain how this can happen, if the answers are all on topic?
"there is a reason that you can only flag/vote to close a question as a duplicate if the target question has an answer." Are you sure? I thought I had done that before.
That is exactly what has been happening. – Yes, and it has not always been good. — The solution is to read the questions being closed and edit the answer to the canonical question. – This is occasionally sensible, e.g., if you have a submission status that is not listed in the canonical yet but an obvious analogue of a listed status. But quite pragmatically it doesn’t work as you idealise it: Often we have questions closed as duplicate where the answer would be too special for the canonical or nobody edits the canonical.
Here is an example for the above.
Could you explain how this can happen, if the answers are all on topic? – For a simple example, consider: Should I get a letter of recommendation from my mother, who is a famous researcher in my field? and May I write a letter to support my girlfriend's application? The relationship between recommender and recommendee is different; one is from the recommender’s and one from the recommendee’s perspective. Yet what answers one question also answers the other; they are duplicates.
"there is a reason that you can only flag/vote to close a question as a duplicate if the target question has an answer." Are you sure? I thought I had done that before. – See this FAQ.
@Wrzlprmft I do consider those two questions to be duplicates, even if they are technically different, but my viewpoint is not based on the existing answers.
The example did clarify your viewpoint.
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3391 | Does an unbalanced focus on "appropriateness" and "offensiveness" suggest educating has become a lesser priority?
On the sidebar of this page, just now I saw 3 of the 6 "hot topics" were about "appropriateness" or "offensiveness" (image attached).
A search in this site for questions containing "methodologies" returned 539 results. "Appropriate" returned 2,397 results. "New research" was behind "appropritate" by 3 questions.
Have education and academics taken second place to something that tends to repress and stifle the free exchange of learning and ideas? If so, how to restore free exchange?
If not, what is the explanation for this apparent unbalance in discussions among academics?
EDIT
A commenter pointed out that the screen shot was of "related questions" not of "hot network questions". My bad - this would explain the high number of articles about "offensive" and "appropriate" in the image, since the question I was looking at contained this vocabulary.
Which sidebar? I see only two on my account: "related questions" and "hot network questions". Given that I see only academia.se questions in your screenshot, I assume you are speaking about the first. But, of course, those include only topics related to what you are browsing at the moment, so it is normal that you see there only appropriateness-related questions if you are viewing an appropriateness-relating one. This is by design.
There's no point in trying to achieve education when the environment is hostile or nonconductive to learning. You think your offhand remark is nothing, but it could literally be the one event that convinces a person they should give up on that subject. "Free exchange" is only possible when everybody can be involved.
There are far better places to ask method questions than here, and most must be so specific to be off topic here. But for all the places to ask method questions, most of those are not valid for soft/social questions related to politeness and appropriateness, ethics, etc. Don't try to draw sweeping societal conclusions from such limited observations.
Nij, didn't education ever occur before "offensiveness" or "appropriateness" were considered to this degree?
Federico, it was the "hot network questions". It was my first visit to the site - I had not searched for any topics at that point.
The one question that apparently brought you to the site was at the time in the HNQ list. Once you are on the page of this question you get shown a list of related questions, related to the one you have open. This is true for every question, you could just try it with a couple of posts an see the list change. The list you show is not the HNQ list but the one of questions related to that one post. That said, I do think you raise a valid point.
@Deborah but your screen-shot isn't of the "hot network questions" list, it's of the "related" list. If you're talking about the "hot network questions" list, you should include a screenshot of the "hot network questions" list.
LindaJeanne my bad. You're right. Well, that would explain the prevalence of the type of question!
@Deborah "didn't education ever occur before "offensiveness" or "appropriateness" were considered to this degree?" Only for some people.
Great questions Deborah. The fact is, many people that frequent this site think of themselves as the "Appropriate Police". Yet, even as they engage in this self-appointed task, they engage in offensiveness. I'm not sure what the actual cause is, but one cause might be an unfortunate combination of hypersensitivity and age-related senses of entitlement.
This site does not show what is a priority among academics because "the content of your research" is off-topic here.
Note that a lot of the questions containing the word "appropriate" have nothing to do with things that could "repress and stifle the free exchange of learning and ideas".
For example,
What is appropriate number of keywords for conference paper?
How to decide the appropriate level of explanation for math in academic papers?
How to find out the terms used for a topic, so that I can find the appropriate literature on it?
Help picking an appropriate citing style
Also, you wrote
A search in this site for questions containing "methodologies" returned 539 results. "Appropriate" returned 2,397 results. "New research" was behind "appropritate" by 3 questions.
But on my search, "appropriate" returned only 597 questions. I suspect you were searching across all posts (including answers), not only questions.
Regarding the sidebar, as pointed out in a comment:
Which sidebar? I see only two on my account: "related questions" and "hot network questions". Given that I see only academia.se questions in your screenshot, I assume you are speaking about the first. But, of course, those include only topics related to what you are browsing at the moment, so it is normal that you see there only appropriateness-related questions if you are viewing an appropriateness-relating one. This is by design
In other words, the "evidence" you supply in support of your claim that there is an unbalanced focus on "appropriateness" and "offensiveness" is based on a flawed methodology.
People tend to focus on the wrong, the crime, more than the average, the normal.
That's the normal psychology, not anything wrong.
But sometimes, it does make trouble.
Questions about appropriateness or offensiveness fit in with Parkinson's law of triviality. Everyone can have an opinion on what's appropriate or offensive, even if they're not otherwise interested in academia.
It probably "helps" that one of them is about sexuality (the dress one), and one of them is about a hot political topic in the US.
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4523 | Is Stack Exchange Academia based on a flawed premise?
I have been thinking about the general model on which the stack exchange sites work and I feel like academia.stackexchange is rather flawed. The model is essentially that lay practitioners are able to prove their experience in a socially recognized way (upvotes) and are therefore granted corresponding privileges. In this scenario, academia, however, the qualifications of the people answering ought to be more important. After all, the social consensus will only point to the answers which ought to be how things are, and might not really reflect reality. Without going into the details, if someone who has never been on say, a faculty hiring committee, rushes to answer how one's research might be judged and gains upvotes (or simply has no downvotes which are visible), then the person asking the question is not getting a good answer.
The gist of it is, that for this particular stack exchange, proving credentials ought to be linked to reputation stakes, atleast in terms of downvotes. Given that the number of faculty active here is at any point in time going to be fewer than the number of students and academic staff (research assistants, like myself), I feel that verified faculty ought to be awarded downvote rights.
tl;dr: Is it meaningful to allow answers from people who may not have experience in the area in which the answer is being sought?
This definitely belongs in meta, not here, but you might be surprised just how many of the regular contributors here are faculty, many of them senior faculty. Askers are more slanted towards students.
That's not what I meant. I am well aware that there are very highly decorated contributors as well. I just pointed out that it's probably relatively lower. Also even if it were exclusively based on the contributions of faculty it would probably not make sense to force every contributor to spend enough time answering questions to be allowed to down vote answers they know from experience are not true.
I don't think you understand, I really mean that the most active voters and answerers here are faculty. Not that they are rare decorated contributors. The downvote threshold is very accessible. If you can't downvote you haven't spent much time answering or asking. In any event, SE isn't going to get in the business of verifying credentials, so what you are suggesting is a nonstarter.
On the contrary, it doesn't matter who wrote the answer, if people are upvoting it that's an agreement that it's a good answer. Hopefully people who have no idea as to how good it is won't upvote.
Stackexchange is in some ways like Wikipedia, of which it was said that it's an idea that only works in practice, not in theory ;-)
Are you suggesting that people who, out of the sheer kindness of their hearts, answer random strangers’ questions on the internet, be required to be held accountable/prove their worth? I guarantee you that you’ll see a dramatic drop in the number of qualified posters.
I'm not sure if this a comment only thing but all these comments seem to be snarky attacks and weirdly defensive statement. Yes my only intention is to have people who can't be bothered to come up with a real answer come and rail on the question. Yes of course I'm trying to insult people. You geniuses of the comment section have caught me out, all out of the kindness of your strange heart.
Related: Do the answers and opinions on Academia Stack Exchange reflect the opinion of whole academic community?
The reasons for your skepticism apply to most stackexchange sites, of course: Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Maths, history, politics, even physical exercise: The "expert answers to your question" may or may not come from official experts, and the upvotes sometimes don't reflect what real experts think is a true answer or, more often, what experts think is an interesting question.
When someone with experience and certain grade of expertise answers a post, you can tell. You don't need proof of identification. I have been a member of academia for nearly five years but I have answered only six questions because I am not qualified, and it would be quite difficult for me to fake it, even if I pretended to. Oh, and by the way, people online can lie or embelish their credentials.
@henning, yes they do indeed apply to those sites. I haven't actually ever gone to them yet. My concerns are not valid on the best known sites (StackOverflow or the other programming sites), since there it is easy enough to test to see if the answers work. Anyway I shouldn't continue, someone has been stalking my profile to down vote all my posts anyway, I had heard the Academia SE was toxic but I had no idea how much.
The flawed premise appears to be on your part. How StackExchange works is pretty clear, and if you have a question you can go to the Mother Meta. You seem to want it to work differently. SE isn't going to change. You may feel free to start a new website to operate as you see fit.
Only this question has been downvoted; on meta that indicates disagreement. No one has gone through and downvoted your other content. You have hardly participated here so it doesn't quite seem you are prepared to suggest changes. You then accepted an answer that the community seems to disagree with, so yes, if you are trying to model a broken aspect of SE you've found one, but it's not an issue with 99% of the legitimately asked questions.
I don't want to go over this again. Someone down voted 3 of my old, answered questions on stack overflow as a result of this wretched question and I'm sick of being pushed around and edited by the helpful community here. Thanks everyone but I think I'll stick to my IEEE network.
Making good research in a particular field does not automatically give you a full understanding on how the academic world works
I see the stackexchange system rather like a very democratic and efficient spam/filter system. The best answer might not appear always at the top, but in top 3. So I don't see how a premise is not fulfilled. It's a better filter/ranking system than google page rank at least ;-)
academia stackexchange is as democratic as all other stackexchange sites technically, but I would judge voting here as rather aristrocratic, on many non-popular important and academia-specific questions mostly knowledgable users are voting like on expert sites like mathoverflow.se. Unknowledgable don't even understand the question. A downvote is pointless. A downvote doesn't exist also in real academia, there are papers which get cited, there are no papers getting down-cited. Would be a pointless feature. Positive feedback is enough. The downvote here rather points moderators to remove obvious spam/off-topic. Important content you find here and in literature via search algorithms and upvotes/citations/likes/links to a website etc...
Last but not least, if a stackexchange site attracts experts depends on a lot of things. Mathoverflow.se works, theoreticalphysics.se did not and was closed:
Why did Theoretical Physics fail?
But here the premise was wrong that high-level physics can work with a stackexchange format. For phyiscs in comparison to math/CS a forum format is much better. The physics.se site rather pushs professional physicists away due to the mass of laymen, popular and homework questions. This risk is not so high on academia.se as most questioner are PhD students, also for my taste the amount of undergraduate low level questions here in comparison to beta launching of this site is annoying, e.g. "How do I know if I have passion?" and alike questions.
Don't think in premises, it's complex technology and hundreds of users here, sometimes it works for a distinct site topic, sometimes not. No reason to become philsophic or too academic :-) I'm much more surprised a site like politics.se or skeptics.se is working with the stackexchange format than academia.se. Most answers here are rather simple to vote in order of correctness/importance...
@user111955 my answer is not really an answer but an explanation to OP, most user think what StrongBad wrote about the status quo of academia.se and that OP premise is plain wrong (me too, also low-level questions are increasing here imho exponentially) and upvoted accordingly, but I think it doesn't give OP really an explanation like I tried how and why this site works.
I am still amazed that the community works and attracts high quality questions and answers and knowledge people. Further high quality answers tend to get up voted and low quality answers tend to get down voted, or less heavily up voted. Only rarely does something I think is wrong gain lots of support and it is usually a result of the HNQ list.
I am not sure the issue is specific to Academia.SE. There are lots of site, including so called "hard" sites where people could vote based on what they want to be true. It just doesn't seem to happen.
A few considerations:
Not every question here is only answerable by faculty. What you'd propose would actually have to have a level and field specific filter. Can I credibly talk about the experience of say, a graduate student in linguistics? Nope. How many years do I get before my postdoc certification expires?
I think people are not particularly shy about expressing their credentials if they think it matters for the question at hand.
Beyond whether or not StackExchange would even do it, tying an account's capabilities to a credential inherently creates identifying information for the account. There are those who would not participate in the system if that was a requirement.
Overall, I think it's pretty rare for me to find a question where an obviously wrong, "How I imagine academia to be" lingers as a top voted answer for very long.
No. Decision making in academia is not based on credentials. It is based on peer review. Peer review is the best system we have for curriculum development and research. So it seems reasonable to assume it is the best system we have for stack exchange is also peer review.
I hope for a better system some day, as peer review has many flaws. But credentialism does not work. For example, the well-known error by Einstein that was rejected following peer review.
https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.2117822?journalCode=pto
A crucial part of peer review is that it is based on peers who are technically proficient in your own field. When I submit to say, ACS nano, I do not expect a lay person to review it, nor do I expect someone in a completely different field to review it either. So I am unsure as to how peer review is equivalent to getting concensus based answers from people who may or may not be peers.
@HaoZeke, "On the internet, nobody knows you are a dog." Journal editors also do not know if you are a dog when they ask you to peer review. And certainly they invite reviewers who are not faculty or PhDs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._D._C._Willard If Willard had an email address, he would be getting peer review requests.
No, I did not say they get lay people to review. But they do not have the filter proposed by the asker.
As my previous comments have been judged to be insulting. I will restate them. Please give examples where peer-reviewed journals have used animals as reviewers. Furthermore, please give verifiable examples of cases where the reviewers are not qualified (as in they are invited to review but not experts). Do note the difference between peer-reviewed journals (which have verifiable editors, who are not animals). Additionally, Willard may have appeared on a few papers, but I doubt he was offered an editorial position in a known journal.
Actually, I would be very pleased to see any example of a person on an editorial board of a journal (lets say, Wiley, ACS, APS, AIP, or Taylor and Francis) who nobody knows if they are human or not, or if they have falsified their academic credentials, or that they have been given their position without any form of filtering other than volunteering anonymously.
@HaoZeke Your comments no longer have anything to do with my answer, or even your initial comment, and they are disinteresting. I will not respond further.
Peer review would be much more effective when double-blind. Also here on stackexchange the user with a lot reputation gets much more easily much more upvotes. High-rep users like you who always post what they think and not what gets most upvotes are the minority. Imagine every user here would be anonymous and rep not shown. Would be very interesting experiment. Academia the same, researchers with high rep easily get more funding. [personal accusation removed by moderator]
The quality of single stackexchange sites could be much improved with different/specific boundary conditions for Q&A and voting, then maybe even a site like physics.se would attract professional physicists like mathoverflow, not some few dozen as currently. But this will not happen due to technical and community reasons.
I will give an example of me for someone who was asked to do peer review well prior to my PhD.
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4159 | Can I ask about the research level of a certain university here?
For some reasons I need to know about the level of research conducted in a certain university (not because I want to study there: I got my Ph.D. years ago). Specifically, I'm interested in a certain department. I did some due diligence, such as looking at the Google Scholar profile of one of the professors, and looking at the website, but I didn't get a conclusive answer. Can I ask this question on Academia.SE?
The question you propose would be a shopping question as it asks us to evaluate an individual university.
What you can ask about is how to evaluate the research level of an anonymous university (unless we already have a question on that).
Interesting. I will check if a similar question exists, otherwise ask it.
Not sure what "level of research" implies, but I imagine that would not be a good question for this site, as that's fairly subjective. I can't imagine what we'd post beyond what you already were able to find for yourself.
Quality of research...how would you call it otherwise? To make an example, I expect universities in the Ivy League to excel at research in general. In particular, the Department of Statistics at Columbia produces excellent research. The Stanford Center for Turbulence Research is known for the high level of its research in Computational Fluid Dynamics, and the Department of Computer Science is one of the leading groups on Computer Vision/Deep Learning (yeah, I know Stanford is not part of IL). That's what I meant with "level of research".
Basically, I wanted to know if that university was at a similar level as Berkeley, Columbia, Stanford, etc. for what it concerns research (so I wasn't interested in teaching).
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4783 | Please undo the synonymisation of the tag disability with health-issues
The tag disability is currently synonymised with health-issues (see the full list of synonyms for health-issues). Based on the list of tag synonyms, this synonym was created on 22 June 2019, so it doesn't look like this was a direct consequence of What to do with the mental-health tag from June 2015.
Both the tag synonymisation and some of the proposals in the June 2015 question appear to be based on a model of disability that treats disability as (1) primarily a medical issue and (2) a problem that belongs to the individual. In my area of work—digital accessibility—and in disability studies this is known as the medical model of disability. Based on the medical model, disability requires a "cure" or, if that is not feasible, adjustment or behavioural change in the individual as a surrogate "cure".
This model is now outdated and has been replaced with the social model of disability, which does not deny the impact of the impairment but does not seek to change the person either. According to the social model, "disability" refers "to the restrictions caused by society when it does not give equivalent attention and accommodation to the needs of individuals with impairments" (Wikipedia), to " the result of the interaction between people living with impairments and an environment filled with physical, attitudinal, communication and social barriers" (People with Disability Australia) or to "a socially created problem and a matter of the full integration of individuals into society" (Disabled World).
(The medical and the social models are by no means the two only models of disability, but I hope that we can handle this tagging question without additional disability theory.)
What I am asking by requesting to undo the synonymisation between disability and health-issues is for Academia SE to leave behind the outdated medical model of disability. (I do not wish to imply that Academia SE defends or promotes the medical model, only that is seems to be implicit in these tag synonyms.)
This would mean that, for example, the following questions would no longer be tagged health-issues but disability:
How do conferences work for deaf scientists?
Teaching visual tools for visually impaired students?
Does the Americans With Disabilities Act require accommodations for students whose disability prevents them from behaving ethically? (currently closed)
How should I apply for readmission to a graduate program from which I had to withdraw due to misconduct caused by a disability?
(probably) Trying to volunteer as a research assistant post-Master's and not having any success so far (currently closed)
Oral Defense for Hearing Impaired Student
(This list is not intended to be exhaustive. There are a number of questions that are still tagged disability even though they were submitted after 22 June 2019, e.g. Does FERPA require parental notification of disability assessment? .)
Desynonymising disability is not a perfect solution. Strictly speaking, some of the above question would be more appropriately tagged accessibility, but that tag does not exist on this site and creating it might be harder to achieve here.
Update 05.09.2020: On second thought, inclusion or disability-inclusion (the latter is a term used by the CDC in the USA) may be a better tag than accessibility. It would definitely work well for questions such as How do conferences work for deaf scientists?, Teaching visual tools for visually impaired students? and Oral Defense for Hearing Impaired Student.
I like moving to "accessibility" anyway ... would synonymizing both to that still be problematic? I confess I'm not understanding the nuance here completely after a couple of reads. But thanks for bringing it up!
@AzorAhai--hehim accessibility would be the best fit for questions such as "How do conferences work for deaf scientists?", "Teaching visual tools for visually impaired students?" and "Oral Defense for Hearing Impaired Student"; these questions are about integrating persons with specific impairments, not about the impairments as such. Synonymizing accessibilitywith disability would be less objectionable than the current situation.
Well, yes, since questions about the impairments themselves would off-topic, no?
@AzorAhai--hehim Which seems to support the argument that disability is a poor choice for a tag name...
I'm not sure about that, but it's not that important, I don't think.
Oh that's why my changing that tag kept reverting for no apparent reason. Yes, this is a terrible synonym.
I do not think inclusion is a good tag for this application. It's too vague - is it about including first-generation students, is it about including women in a men-dominated field? It suggests to me "making people feel welcome" which is not the same as "how to help people physical access X."
@Araucaria-Nothereanymore. Okay, sure, but someone who is an expert in building inclusive learning environments is not an expert in helping someone with physical or mental disabilities navigate the university system. So when thinking of the tag as "helping experts find questions they can answer," I don't think it's as good as it could be.
It's like how we have [sexual-misconduct] and [personal-misconduct] instead of just [misconduct]
@AzorAhai--hehim I see your point about inclusion, so I have added disability-inclusion as an alternative.
@Tsundoku Works for me. I would suggest though, that as a meta question, you make your suggested tags answers so we can vote on them; right now it's not clear what a vote up on this question means, does it mean "this is a valid concern," "accessiblity is a good tag," or "disability-inclusion is a good tag."
Coming from a US perspective, the "Americans with Disabilities Act" is a quite central piece of legislation that adds the "disability" label to a lot of things. I'm sympathetic to reframing the way we talk about disability, but it remains true that at US universities you will probably encounter the "disability office" rather than the "accessibility office" or "inclusion office" (and the latter is more likely to refer to racial inclusion, non-native English speakers, religious minorities, etc).
Forgive my, perhaps, overgeneralizing, but ... It seems there may be a fair amount of common ground between those who are discriminated against (for race, creed, color, religion, sex, gender, disability) -- all because they are different from some perceived "norm". While each area has different challenges, all exist because of some perceived 'norm' and the lack of acceptance or discrimination against (conscious or unconscious) of those who don't fit people's mental model of "normal".
A question: what is more normal: having such biases or not? Can a society be cohesive if it has no norms?
@BryanKrause I have suggested the term disability-inclusion in a separate answer. I prefer it over accessibility in spite my awareness of the ADA, because accessiblity usually refers to "to the design of products, devices, services, or environments so as to be usable by people with disabilities", i.e. technical aspects, whereas questions related to disability inclusion on Academia SE focus on social aspects rather than strictly technical ones.
@Astara Those are valid concerns, but this question is about getting rid of the medical bias with regard to disability, not about discrimination in general. Academia SE already has tags for [tag:ethnicity] (synonymised with [tag:race]) and [tag:discrimination].
As someone with a disability, I find the social model of disability incredibly patronising and dehumanising. My disability is very much a health issue, and I'm desperate for a cure. To suggest that my disability is not a health issue and is a socially-created condition is extremely insulting and complete BS on so many levels. YMMV
@BobsaysreinstateMonica I believe the idea here is to allow a distinction to be made between disability and more general health-related questions, rather than to impose it. Users would be free to use both tags at once.
While I do see the problem here, I think that having two separate tags does not really solve it while creating more problems:
By the nature of our site, we almost exclusively focus on the social aspect anyway. For the questions we get, it mostly does not matter whether something is a disability or a health issue (wherever one draws the line between the two). To give a somewhat unrealistic, but illustrative example, whether somebody cannot access a lecture hall because of a broken leg or a permanent paralysis hardly affects our approach to the problem. Indeed, sometimes the answer to a question is that some health issue qualifies as a disability and thus grants certain rights.
The line between a permanent disability and temporary health issue is indisputably blurry, or one might say that one thing can be a disability or a health issue depending whether you view it from a social or medical point of view (which is not so different from your outline).
Again by the nature of our site, most questions in health-issues are about disabilities or something that may be one. In fact, in a brief search I couldn’t even find a single question which I would consider correctly tagged health-issues, but which was clearly not about disabilities.
As a consequence, I expect that splitting the tag as proposed would lead to users being confused as to which tag they should use and users not finding existing questions that help them. If we ignore everything related to the name of the tag for a second, what do we gain from splitting?
Instead, I suggest that we think about a better name for the main tag (i.e., the synonym target). This is obviously not an easy choice as one has to consider amongst others:
Some choices may cause people refraining from using the tag altogether due to social stigma, e.g., disabilities.
Some choices may cause the undesirable associations you describe, e.g., health-issues. (Though I am somewhat surprised by that since at least to me health issue does not imply that something requires cure or similar – not that I dispute that others have this association.)
Here, I would like to play the ball back to you, the expert. But even if there should be no good and concise name for this, I would refrain from splitting the tag. In that case, I would consider even a super-clunky name like accomodating-and-handling-health-issues-and-disabilities the lesser evil.
[{physical,mental}-{accommodations,accessibility}]?
I prefer the asker's proposal. Not having the tag seems the most stigmatizing thing. If it's both a disability and a health issue, both tags can be used.
@AnonymousPhysicist: If it's both a disability and a health issue, both tags can be used. – Then where would you draw the line between the two and how can we ensure that users draw it and we do not end up with a lot of badly tagged questions? Are there any questions where one of the two tags clearly does not apply? After all, all disabilities are related to health issues, even if though I see the point that viewing them from this angle is undesirable.
"a lot of badly tagged questions?" I don't think that's a real problem that needs solving.
"Are there any questions where one of the two tags clearly does not apply? After all, all disabilities are related to health issues," Tsundoku gave a very clear explanation for why that attitude is not appropriate for this site. You should follow Tsundoku's advice. It's trivial to make a question about health issues that is not about disability; maybe "How does sick leave for for graduate students?"
@AnonymousPhysicist: "a lot of badly tagged questions?" I don't think that's a real problem that needs solving – How is this not a problem? Tags exist for finding content and similar. If badly tagged questions do not concern you, why not just delete all the tags in question? — Tsundoku gave a very clear explanation for why that attitude is not appropriate for this site. – Tsundoku’s argument is that we should not primarily focus on disabilities as a health issue that can be cured or similar, which I do not object to. However, that does not mean that disabilities are not related to health.
@AnonymousPhysicist: It's trivial to make a question about health issues that is not about disability; maybe "How does sick leave for for graduate students?" – Sure, but that’s not my point. My point is that we rarely or never get such questions.
I'd have no problem with eliminating tags entirely.
@AnonymousPhysicist The fact that you'd eliminate tags entirely, doesn't mean that others wouldn't find them useful.
accomodating-and-handling-health-issues-and-disabilities? I'd rather not lump disability/impairment together with health issues. For questions about how to integrate students or researchers with a disability, [tag:inclusion] sounds like a better option.
@Tsundoku: I like [tag:inclusion] as well. I will try to go through some questions in the tag systematically to see whether this fits everything or whether some other major subcategories come up (which then may get their own tag or give us some insight on how to proceed).
Is there a problem with using the tag accessiblity? AFAIK that's the standard term for this kind of thing, for example your phone has a menu called 'accessibility settings'.
@BrtH: Well, to begin with it is not what is typically used for accomodation of psychiatric disabilities, which make up a considerable amount of what’s in the tag. Unfortunately, I couldn’t do the thorough assessment of the tag I wanted to do yet, so I cannot be any more detailed on this.
@BrtH "accessibility" is less standard outside the US, in my experience.
@AnonymousPhysicist I am outside the US. 'Toegankelijkheid' is the standard term in Dutch. However, it's not that I have a very strong opinion about this, I was more wondering why people are making it so difficult for themselves if a standard term already exists.
@BrtH As I explained in another comment on this page, accessibility / toegankelijkheid refers to the technical aspect (digital accessibility, building accessibility, etc), whereas the tag we are looking for should primarily cover the social aspects.
@Wrzlprmft: Note that we already have an [tag:inclusivity] tag. It's currently used on four questions (of which all but one are also tagged with [tag:diversity], and the last one probably should be, too). If an [tag:inclusion] tag is added, [tag:inclusivity] should definitely be a synonym (or the questions should just be retagged).
Also, regarding the potentially narrow scope of [tag:health-issues] if disability questions are removed from it, how about renaming it to just [tag:health] to broaden the scope a little? (We already have [tag:healthcare] as a synonym of it anyway, so it's clearly not just about specific health issues.)
@IlmariKaronen Three out of the four [tag:inclusvity] questions are irrelevant to [tag:disability-inclusion] since they are about gender diversity or (the closed one) race. Only the last one may be relevant to [tag:disability-inclusion].
@IlmariKaronen: how about renaming it to just health to broaden the scope a little? – I concur. Also see my first answer.
To have some data to help deciding, I went through a bunch of questions in the current that heath-issues. I excluded only closed questions. I categorised the questions along three axes:
Mental (depression, ADHD, etc.) vs. physical (broken leg, cancer, blindness, etc.):
28 questions were about mental issues.
6 questions were about physical issues.
4 questions did not specify anything.
I want to mention that I think the distinction does not affect the answer for many of these questions, even when accounting for the stigma of mental issues. (Though I did not do a statistics on that.)
Disabilities and chronic diseases vs. short-term issues. I went for the former when in doubt, which mostly applied to mental-health issues.
28 questions were about disabilities or chronic diseases.
3 questions were clearly not about disabilities.
5 questions were about preventing health problems, mostly psychohygiene.
For 2 questions it was completely unclear.
Accommodation and handling bad performances vs. other issues.
21 questions were about accommodation and handling bad performance.
12 questions were clearly about something else (including the 5 questions about preventing health problems).
5 questions were not clear about this on account of broadness (“How do you handle …?”).
Since Azor Ahai -- he him suggested that I should post an alternative tag as an answer, here is a suggestion: introduce the tag disability-inclusion for (suggested tag wiki excerpt)
Questions about the inclusion of people with disabilities in higher education. These questions can cover both social practices and technological challenges, and can apply to either students or teaching staff.
This should be broad enough to cover all the examples listed in my question above.
This should be broad enough to cover all the examples listed in my question above. – And what do we do with the rest of questions in that tag? Does this tag fit? If not, what does fit and is splitting along this line a good idea?
Maybe add another tag, [qualified-disability] for people who have received certification from the disability office? So a prof might ask about [disability-inclusion] when preparing colorblind slides, but a student could ask about boht.
@AzorAhai: Maybe add another tag, [qualified-disability] for people who have received certification from the disability office? – This sounds like a horrible line to draw: “Your disability is not qualified; you must not use this tag.” Moreover, this distinction is irrelevant for a considerable amount of questions.
@Wrzlprmft True, it does have a bad ring.
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5485 | Do we need to update the "politics" tag to match the questions it has been added to?
The description of tag politics mentions only personal political opinions and such. However, it seems to be used almost entirely for such things as political factions within departments and universities. That is, groups with competing, even warring, opinions about academia itself or the fields of the individuals. Tag interpersonal-issues overlaps with this idea, but isn't quite the same.
The current guidance is more of a footnote to the concept than actual guidance.
I was tempted to remove the tag from a recent post until I checked the historical usage.
Should the description of politics be updated to match the usage?
First, I would rename this tag to either university-politics or academic-politics. The latter is a bit broader and recognizes that not all academics/researchers are in universities.
My suggestion would be something like the following:
This tag is to be used for questions about intra-university factions and disputes and how they might be resolved. It is not about national, governmental, or regional political parties or factions or opinions.
The longer form might include:
The [university-politics] tag is for questions that might be normally described as "department politics" though disputes and factions between rather than strictly within departments are also covered.
This tag is also appropriate for such disputes within research labs that may not be associated with a university, but have much the same purpose as university research.
For questions related to the academic field of political science, use the [political-science] tag.
For traditional political questions the companion site https://politics.stackexchange.com/ is more appropriate.
Update: this is done. The old politics tag has been renamed university-politics, and the guidance updated. A few questions will need to be retagged.
I agree with this. I just had a look at some of the questions, and the tag and its use are quite messy. Often, it is also used alongside or instead of political-science which is explicitly mentioned in the politics description as something that should not be done.
My suggestion would be to
in any case remove/replace it in all instances where political-science is the correct tag
and to
either rename the tag into political-opinion to make clear(er) what it is about without having to look at the description (which I guess many people don't do). In this case, all instances where the question is actually about department politics, the tag should be removed
or change the tag description to fit the scope of political factions at unis. In this case, all instances where the question is actually about political opinions, the tag should be removed. Some of them might be fit for retagging with interpersonal-issues.
implement a combination of both: have both politics (or even department-politics or similar) and political-opinion, each with the above proposed meaning.
However it works out "departmental-politics" would be a good synonym.
Update: this is also done. In addition to the university-politics tag, there is now a political-opinion tag. Some of the questions currently tagged university-politics probably need the tags changed to political-opinion.
I would separate into two different tags:
a new political-issues tag for questions like this one where OP is concerned about publishing in an Israeli journal, and this one where OP is concerned that their degree will be worth less if they graduate from countries involved in international conflicts. We can describe it as "when global or regional politics affect academic careers."
a departmental-politics tag for questions where the OP is concerned about inter- or intra-departmental politics. This could be a rename of the existing tag, and then we clean up. We should clarify that this is not just for interpersonal conflicts with one or two individuals, but a situation where different factions of the department have different goals and it is necessary to navigate this environment.
Neither of these should usually overlap with political-science (unless OP is a political scientist and this is relevant to the question). I found only one clear case where politics and political science were incorrectly applied to the same question, and I already retagged that one.
I like this idea, but political-issues might need a better, more specific name. "politics"and its variants still causes US people to think Democrat v Republican rather than the wider definition, and similar elsewhere, I'd guess. Thinking-Cap time.
Agree, I've spent days trying to think of a better one. I like "global-politics" or "national-politics", since that is unambiguous and covers most questions, but that excludes regional issues (e.g., if a prof in Ann Arbor was running for mayor and had questions, that sounds interesting, but global-politics seems a little grandiose). And regional-politics seems like it rules out global issues, such as the cold war.
"professional-risk" seems to have the right concept but isn't obvious.
@cag51 I guess "extrainstitutional-politics" would imply an appropriate scope, but it is rather awkward.
And "university-politics" or even "academic-politics" might be better than "department-politics".
"personal-standards" for such posts as the reluctance to publish with an Israeli journal? I'd hesitate with "personal-opinions" though.
All the answers basically agree, so I'm inclined to go for it and use the verbiage in the higher-voted answers (political-opinion and departmental-politics). I like some of the other name suggestions here, but I suppose we should follow the votes.
@cag51 but as you posted the answer later, I am unsure if the people really agree more with our suggestions. I am unsure if a second Meta post with a poll just for the renaming would help. I am unsure if both suggested tags would be a fit for all situations, e.g. https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/78159/are-professors-allowed-to-participate-in-political-activities seems to not be about an opinion, but rather about mixing politics and academia.
@Sursula: another interpretation is that with only 3 upvotes and answers that basically agree, people are in favor of any reasonable solution and don't care too much about the details. So if you, me, and @Buffy agree on something, we can probably push it through. I'm good with political-opinion and departmental politics (which came from your answer). I think we can write the tag guidance for political-opinion in such a way to make clear that it includes the question you linked (professors engaging in campaign work is an offshoot of their political opinions). Thoughts?
Again, university-politics is better than departmental. Academic-politics may be better yet. See my revised answer. It would be nice to make the change without driving too many questions to the top of the active list at once. That may be a mod superpower, but not mine. That is why I didn't try to change things on my own.
My concern about university-politics is that it excludes questions with other types of politics, such as when dealing with journals, industry R&D, or government sponsors. academic-politics is good, but we have a long-standing convention of not beginning tags with academic-, since everything on this site is inherently academic.
Hmmm, is dealing with journals or having opinions about them a form of "politics"? I think I wouldn't support this tag for such things. Conventions can have exceptions. I don't think many other tags would find that qualifier useful.
Of course not every question about dealing with journals would be appropriate for the "departmental-politics" tag. But for example if your grad student pissed off a reviewer, and now there is a angry back-and-forth "in public," trying to diplomatically smooth things over might be considered "departmental-politics." (Dealt with this once.)
Anyway, I am losing patience with this. If we cannot agree on two tag names, maybe we should just leave the status quo.
@cag51 I'll butt in and vote for [tag:university-politics] as it clarifies the difference between external politics and institutional politics, even if it is slightly imprecise for the occasional question.
@AzorAhai-him- I second the suggestion
@AzorAhai-him-, that works well enough for me. But leaving it "as is" is the worst option.
I've made an edit to my suggestion tag wiki.
Sounds like a plan then.
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5382 | Can a mod redact the edit history of this answer?
I think I put too much information into an answer originally (the mods know which one), and would like to redact the journal names + fields from the edit history.
Perhaps it's more effective to flag the answer for mod attention?
Sorry for the delay, not sure how I missed this post.
This is in-progress. I had to manually go through and redact everything on all four versions of the answer. Another mod will now have to manually approve these redactions. Assuming that one of them is willing to do so, it will be done.
Let me note for the others that this is a bit of an exceptional case. We only redact answers when the existing answer "is likely to cause harm," and in cases like this (several versions, not a ton of views), we are more likely to just delete the answer altogether (perhaps with an invitation to repost it). But given that this OP has made many contributions to the site and rarely makes such requests, I think we can approve the redaction in this case.
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5418 | Should we reopen the "cold temperature on exam performance" question?
A question titled Effect of cold temperatures on exam performance was recently closed. The question is decoupled from the "inciting incident" and simply asks if there is any scholarship on the effects of room temperature on exam performance.
To me this question should be left open. True, this could be considered a question about the "content of physiology," but the fact that it strongly relates to best practices for exams makes it firmly on-topic here, in my view. If the question had simply been "What should I do if I show up to give an exam and the room is extremely cold?", I doubt anyone would have voted to close. The fact that this question specifically asked for evidence rather than just "common sense solutions" makes it a stronger, not weaker, question in my view.
What do you think?
Update: Question is now reopened.
By now, I do agree. It's really little different from "what are the effects of X on academic issue Y, and is there research on it?", and that does seem to be in the spirit of Academia.SE. Maybe make this meta question a little more general?
I agree as well, and have voted to reopen.
Think of the inverse: A prof wondering "the room I used was really cold, should I adjust scores?" (the answer would be yes, apparently) would be on-topic.
Seems on-topic to me... Flirts with being opinion-based, but it's a real judgment call that instructors may have to make, with real consequences.
fine with me, I voted to reopen.
The question is now reopened.
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4420 | Should we have a canonical question about degree revocations?
Update: This is now live.
It seems like we've got a lot of questions about degree revocations recently (1, 2, 3, for example).
It seems like the answer is consistently "No, unless you intentionally committed fraud (which you would know about)."
Should we create a canonical question to close all questions like these as a dupe of?
It is interesting that there have been so many lately. It may be that one has spawned the next that spawned the next and it will all die down shortly. But, yes, we should...
I wouldn't be surprised if there is already an answer someplace that could become a canonical answer.
Are there universities that are known to have significantly different practices? E.g. is there something like "If you went to X State, they occasionally revoke degrees according to general principles, if you went to State U of Y then you should know they are notorious for revoking degrees for even the most minor of irregularities like not saving your parking permit for five years beyond graduation as required by Policy Circular 22.A.ii., and if you went to Memorial U of Z, they haven't revoked a degree since 1532.", or do 99.9% of universities follow the same set of general principles on this?
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4808 | Academia SE is the best SE! As a student, how can I effectively contribute?
I've never found a Stack Exchange site or a QA site comparable with this SE. Every one is super friendly. Every question is either well-crafted, or concise and precise. Every answer is super helpful. There is no fight, no politics, no troubles. Everyone is simply helping each others. I've learned much more about academics here than from my super busy advisor.
However, as a student, I have very very little experience to offer back to the community. In addition, I don't want to misguide others with my inaccurate information and my immaturity. I feel guilty if I don't give back in return. How can I effectively contribute?
I have to concur, the vibe here is extraordinary! ( Bravo! )
Thanks so much for sharing! Glad that we're helpful. I can see two ways you can help out, and I'm sure there are more:
There are many questions stemming from a teacher's point of view, or a lab advisor, or a colleague. Your perspective is quite valuable on these posts. You'd be surprised how quickly the student experience is forgotten. Share your thoughts, especially when you notice that they're not being expressed in other answers.
Play the long game! I've been on this site for ... *checks watch* ... more years than I care to admit to myself, and the type of contribution I've been able to provide has shifted dramatically. "Pay it forward," as the saying goes, whenever you have the opportunity.
On a related note, please take to heart that your asking questions and participating is an incredibly valuable contribution to the community. You have over 35k views on questions you've asked... using the time-honored tradition of guesstimating, that's probably over 15k people who have benefitted from your contributions. That's incredible! Well done!
Even more ways to contribute: Proof-read answers and questions, participate in close-voting and reopening, checking suggested edits, adding or removing (non-)pertinent tags from a question, voting, flagging duplicates, off-topic questions, inapropriate content and overly long discussions in the comments.
"I've been on this site for ... checks watch ... more years than I care to admit to myself" You have 8 Yearling badges, so at least eight years here.
Academia SE is the best SE!
Hard to argue with that!
However, as a student, I have very very little experience to offer back to the community. In addition, I don't want to misguide others with my inaccurate information and my immaturity.
It is admirable that you recognize this! Unlike some other SEs that are based on technical "facts" or verifiable references, we rely heavily on "personal expertise" from those with experience in academia. We are lucky that our user base represents a wide cross-section of students, lecturers, post-docs, professors, industry researchers, and former academicians. But we must all recognize our limits, and avoid the temptation to overgeneralize from our experience or knowledge. I am sometimes reminded of this "the hard way" when I answer a question I shouldn't, and end up saying something stupid about law or theoretical math. :-)
I feel guilty if I don't give back in return. How can I effectively contribute?
Eykanal gave some good suggestions, but let me underline three in particular.
Ask questions. As discussed here, crafting a well-received question is difficult. Long-time users are familiar with our site's norms, and can be a good source of interesting questions.
Edit. This is definitely something that not everyone can do: it can be a tricky balance to make (sometimes major) revisions while still respecting the asker's intent. But if you have good writing skills (which you seem to) and are familiar with our norms, this can be really impactful: I have seen edits turn a soon-to-be-closed or largely-ignored question into an HNQ. And it is largely thankless work.
Vote and flag. If you've been around for a while and are familiar with our norms, your votes (including close/reopen votes) are very helpful. And as for "there is no fight, no politics, no troubles"...well, the view as a mod is a bit different, but flags are a very helpful way to bring (potential) issues to our attention before they turn into trouble.
I don't want to misguide others... How can I effectively contribute?
Vote on questions. You do not need to know the answer to a question to determine if the question is useful.
Actually I don't think we have a "dearth of votes" problem.
Because it hasn’t been mentioned yet:
Review, in particular first posts. I would argue that this is the most important review queue, because if done properly, a good first posts review can make a new user feel welcome, fix problems with a question before bad answers or closure happen, and so on. Just make sure that you edit the post as well as you can, leave comments helping the author to improve their post (or explain what is the problem with an unsalvageable post), and vote and flag as appropriate.
In my experience, a secondary advantage of reviewing is that you automatically engage with posts, and learn something in the process or find questions that you can answer.
I feel guilty if I don't give back in return. How can I effectively contribute?
Even just upvoting questions and answers you like is a valuable service, and it is a nice little show of appreciation for those of us who contribute questions and answers.
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4869 | Closing questions that are not questions: what to pick?
It happens regularly that a user complains about something but does not have a question.
When voting to close, would it make sense to have the option "not a question", or otherwise at least add this reason to the description of the "Needs details or clarity" option?
If at all possible, try to ask (friendly) what the question is and edit the question. Some people (mostly, people who are not in mathematics or comp. Science) are not used the strict style here and believe it is clear what question they ask because it is implied in their post.
Per site, we have limited freedom in what we can modify in the close dialog. Specifically, we can only modify the community-specific reasons, and we cannot add further options (see note below about the details).
I suggest you to use the option "Needs details or clarity", as imperfect as it is, because the poster needs anyway to clarify what is the question. Note that this option is global for the whole network, and the likelihood of such a change—given the backlog and the priorities of the Stack Exchange staff—is probably tiny.
Note: Specifically, with the exception of Stack Overflow, standard sites have a limit of three community-specific close reasons, and we have already reached this limit. If there is a really strong case, and consensus about its need, a site can ask to have a fourth community-specific reason, but it's generally discouraged. About your suggestion, I can hardly see making a strong case around it.
Just for additional history, a long time ago, there was actually "Not a real question" close reason... which later got refined into "unclear what you're asking" (among the rest) which then became the current "needs detail or clarity".
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5010 | Should the answer that appears on "top" be the OP's "accepted answer" or the answer with most votes?
UPDATE:
Having gotten mixed feedback on this change across the network, SE has decided as a default to keep the "old way", but sites can have a discussion like this one to request the "new way":
Unpinning the accepted answer from the top of the list of answers
Thanks to everyone for the feedback. Seeing that some sites do not want to unpin the accepted answer, we decided to move forward with the status quo and not to change the default behaviour on existing sites. If you think unpinning the accepted answer on your site makes sense, please do the following:
(meta discussion, share with SE staff via status-review, log decision)
It doesn't seem like there's going to be consensus here in favor of a change, so it seems we'll stick with the default option of how things were. We can re-start the conversation in the future.
I updated Academia.SE's consensus to be "50/50" since the voting is quite even between the two options.
On Academia.SE, all other StackExchange sites, and until recently Stack Overflow, the answer that appears first is the accepted answer (if there is one), the one that the OP decides is to be marked "correct". It is followed by all the others in order of votes by default (users can also change to sort by Active or Oldest).
As a result of user feedback, especially about "accepted answers" that have become outdated, and a test that suggests users on Stack Overflow benefit from the top answer being the one with most votes rather than the one that is accepted, this behavior has now changed on Stack Overflow.
Also quoted from that Meta announcement:
We can change the way the engine sorts answers in site settings. We
would like to hear from you all if it is something you want to see on
your site. (Please let me acknowledge in advance that we will not be
able to run a test on each site.)
Currently we are planning to move forward with one of two scenarios,
based on your feedback:
Unpin the accepted answer on all SE sites by default and pin it back
on a few sites that ask us to do so.
Keep the accepted answer pinned
on all SE sites by default and unpin it on a few sites that ask us to
do so.
Please let us know what you think will work best for your site!
If you can discuss this question with your community it would be
awesome. We are going to collect feedback before the end of September
19th.
So, what do y'all think? Whichever way the default ends up going, how would you like things to behave on this site?
Here's a SEDE query to see posts where this change would have a retroactive effect (has accepted answer; accepted answer is not the top-voted answer): https://data.stackexchange.com/academia/query/1458833/questions-with-accepted-answer-pinned-above-highest-scoring-answer This does not include any voting effects of having the accepted answer at the top, however.
What portion of questions have an accepted answer?
My impression has been that askers either accept the first answer when there are no other answers yet or they do not accept at all. Does the data bear that out?
@AnonymousPhysicist You could definitely write SEDE queries to answer those questions, feel free to share the answers if you do!
Er, maybe I should revise that to say "probably"; I'm not familiar enough to know if all those things would be queryable in particular the exact sequence.
@AnonymousPhysicist As of now, 16,079 questions out of 36,700 have an accepted answer, which is 43.81%.
Note that users have some options about the order in which to list answers: oldest, active, votes. A UI change could let the individual choose whether to pin the accepted answer or not.
I also note that in the current system, the topmost voted answer is easy to find, since it is always (first or) second if the ordering is by votes. It comes immediately after any accepted answer.
And, I'll also guess/predict that if the change is made, then the fraction of questions with accepted answers will decline.
I did notice that at SO, if two answers have the same (max) votes and one is accepted, the accepted answer isn't necessarily first.
@Buffy Related feature request on Meta.
When will a decision be taken on this?
@GoodDeeds SE updated the post at https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/369568/unpinning-the-accepted-answer-from-the-top-of-the-list-of-answers - after seeing feedback from many sites on questions like this, SE has decided to keep the old status quo but sites can request a setting change if they have a meta discussion supporting the change. The voting has gone a bit back and forth but the status quo currently has more sum votes while the change has more upvotes (ignoring downvotes).
@GoodDeeds The standard for meta polls tends to be count the upvotes only, but I don't think 20 votes vs 18 votes is sufficient meta consensus for a change and especially not when downvotes are generally pushing the opposite way. We can certainly revisit this as site in the future and opinions may change as users get experience with different SE sites that do it differently.
Thanks, so if I understand correctly, it stays at whatever default that SE chooses, which in this case is keeping the accepted answer pinned, unless a future discussion strongly favours unpinning?
@GoodDeeds Yeah, that's correct. I'm open to other interpretations of how we should do things and I haven't discussed this with the other mods, but it seems like the process SE has laid out favors keeping the default unless there is support for a change.
The top-voted answer should appear on top, even if a different answer has been accepted (this is the new behavior on Stack Overflow).
This is my preference, because OPs do not always make reasonable selections (and the community / mods cannot change those selections, even when clear-cut). In some rare but noteworthy cases, the accepted answer has a hugely negative score, but the big green check mark may give casual users the impression that this is the "correct" answer.
Yeah, I think @cag51 hits it for why this change could make sense here despite it being rare for questions here to follow the SO pattern of outdated answers, as those typically involve technology changes that happen at lot faster than changes in academia happen. I've also noticed several occasions where OP accepts an answer that fits the "what OP wanted to hear, not what they needed to hear" pattern, and that subsequently this validating-but-possibly-dangerous answer gets a bunch of upvotes via the HNQ, probably because visitors found it on top, even if it had a low or negative score before.
I counter that the OP of a question should have, and feel like they have, some respect. Odd that it is mods that like this. I agree that some questions are asked to get a particular answer and the OP is a bit incensed when they don't. I think "dangerous" answers get downvotes mostly. But a lot of such questions get closed in any case. I call out a few of those and absorb a few down votes myself for it.
I also, IIRC, have some accepted answers with negative votes. Not hugely. It isn't only the OP that can "want" a specific answer. And some questions are poison in any case.
And, FWIW, some of my most down voted answers are the ones I'm proudest of. Some things need to be said, even if they aren't heard.
@cag51 As a counterpoint, sometimes an excellent answer for a question already in the HNQ is posted late, and an accept by the OP gives it attention which it would otherwise have not received due to being buried under several others. (e.g. ref: https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4414/68109)
Agree that this happens occasionally, and I would (in generalities) support a "smarter" way of ranking the answers than just votes. But the current system relies entirely on OP's judiciousness, and I think it's pretty rare that OP selects a better answer than the voters.
BTW, this is a good example of an accepted-answer that I think should be "unpinned."
@cag51, one example shouldn't drive a policy.
There are many bad examples; that's just one I happened to come across recently. Also: in all the discussion of the "tyranny of the early upvoted answer," no one has mentioned the "tyranny of the early accepted answer."
In any case, RE late answers being overlooked -- there is a solution in the works! The announcement is here: they are developing a trending sort to address precisely this issue. It seems like everyone will agree this is a Very Good Thing (assuming it is implemented well). Personally, I think this (and not putting OP's choice first) is the correct way to handle the issue (though unfortunately, it could be some time before trending sort rolls out).
The accepted answer should appear on top (this is the status quo).
This is my clear preference. It matters little if there are only two or three short answers, but searching a long page for the accepted answer is wasting my time. Alternatively provide a "click" to the accepted answer somewhere at the top of the page. It is clear enough when the accepted answer doesn't have the most votes without any changes at all.
It is also immediately clear that the question has an accepted answer without looking elsewhere.
The strongest argument against this is that frequently the OP is not the best judge of the "best answer". This recent question is a very good example of this... the OP is clearly looking for a specific type of answer, despite the fact that the community overwhelmingly agrees that a different answer is more appropriate. Look at the top entries on this query for more examples... this isn't that uncommon.
@eykanal, I disagree with you on your example "recent question". I don't find the top voted answer very compelling, and I think the OP was truly lost, not trolling for a specific answer.
If the accepted answer is to be "deprecated" by not listing it at the top, why bother marking it at all? It is nice to get 15 rep occasionally, and to be publicly acknowledged for it, but the system would then be saying something like "ignore all that". It is also possible that a clearly wrong answer (ethically) might be the top voted one. Quite a lot of people here have little respect for copyright, for example.
@Buffy It'd still have the checkmark identifying it as the OP's preferred answer. In that way OP still has a privileged vote, as only they can assign the checkmark, they just don't have as much control over what other people see first. Academia.SE is indeed a bit different from other SEs in that many of the questions here are much more personal than elsewhere, but if SE is meant to be a repository of Q&A where other people can benefit, I don't quite see the logic of the person originally posting the answer deciding what the next asker sees first, rather than the voters.
@Buffy Whether trolling or lost, they still are not the best judge. I appreciate your second comment quite a lot... on StackOverflow, the checkmark is simply a visual indicator that the OP found this to work for them. At Academia, the checkmark is indeed much less useful. The whole point of these sites is to tap the wisdom of the crowds... why place such a highlight on one person's thoughts, especially when that person is the one who professed ignorance at the outset?
@eykanal The checkmark can indicate what worked even in Academia (at least for some questions). "why place such a highlight on one person's thoughts": because they need not just be thoughts. The OP is the one facing the situation they need help with. They are the one in the best position to declare what advice they received on the site helped them. That is very useful information that is not captured by voting. Votes would indicate what should be the best answer based on the collective experience of the voters in general, and accepts would indicate (contd.)
@eykanal (contd.) the best answer that helped the OP the most for the specific situation. So, to me, it makes a lot of sense that the top voted answer and the accepted answer are in the top two positions among all the answers. I agree they may not be the best judge, but my perspective is that their view is also important. I would not mind having the accepted answer in the second place, but that's not a choice here.
@GoodDeeds Briefly; I guess I disagree. IMO, the OP's successful (or unsuccessful) application of advice in their specific situation is likely not that relevant to future readers. There are always specific nuances that affect any given situation, but the general advice—which is what this site is for in the first place—is almost always still true.
I personally very much like being able to see the contrast between "this is what the OP liked" and "this is what the community thought", which comes through very clearly when the accepted answer is on top. When the accepted answer floats to an arbitrary place in the list, that's much harder to see.
@eykanal, I think that "likely not that relevant" is far too strong a statement. And for a few topics the "general advice" can be toxic. I don't see this as a basis to choose.
Among the choices given, I like pinning the accepted answer best. But my far preferred solution would be a change in the UI so that the individual reader can choose, either per-site or overall in their profile.
I note that it is currently possible to order the answers various ways, of which "by votes" is the default. But a checkbox to pin (or unpin) the accepted answer (or not) along with choice on the ordering would be simple enough to implement.
Note that with pinning the accepted answer, the top voted answer comes next by default, so it is trivial to find.
@Araucaria, yes, that would probably be a better design.
Accepted answer should come first, because it is the one that answered the question. The person asking the question knows what kind of answer they need better than anyone else, so they should make that judgment call.
Here's an example of a question I asked on the Politics.SE where the top-voted answer turned out to answer something that I didn't mean to ask. I edited the question to clarify that, but the top-voted answer remains the top-voted answer, and it should logically not appear at the top.
Exactly. Especially with the more controversial questions, answers sometimes tend to be opinionated or differing from what was asked in the first place.
This post does not express a view either way, but provides some data (using queries from this Politics.SE post, which I reran for Academia with various modifications).
Findings:
We have 10.0K posts with 2+ answers and an accepted answer
Of these, there are 1,080 posts (10.8%) where the accepted answer has 3+ fewer votes than the top answer (on most questions, a clear difference).
For 93 of these 1,080 posts (8.6%), the accepted answer was written at least 3 days after the top answer (and so the discrepency could be attributed to an excellent late answer)
89 of these 1,080 questions (8.2%) are closed
19 of these 1,080 accepted answers (1.8%) have a negative score (and there is at least one answer with a nonnegative score).
At least one of those 19 is mine, actually. ;-)
I think the typical asker sticks with a question much less than three days.
I think the change is a mistake for Stack Overflow, because there answers are more clearly objectively right or wrong. I've seen many posts where an answer that simply doesn't work gets most votes, and the asker - who, unlike most voters, has actually tried the proposed solutions - has picked the answer that actually solves the problem.
Since Academia is a more subjective Stack, where answers more often represent cultural norms or personal experience, I think this is less of an issue. None-the-less, the asker is usually the one who is best placed to judge the answers and most invested in whether they are suitable or not.
It is natural to be irritated by those cases where a good quality, highly voted, answer appears below a low quality answer that is accepted, usually because it is the answer the OP was looking for from the start. However, these are - in my impression, at least - rare exceptions and it would be a mistake to change the system to account for the uncommon case rather than the common one.
(As an aside: my preferred system would be to show the top voted answer first if it beats the accepted one by some margin of votes, say 50% more or 100% more, and a minimum of 10 votes or something. I don't think that can be implemented by individual stacks though so it's by-the-by)
My answer to this question has gathered a ton of down votes and is accepted. It is currently hovering in negative space. Perhaps it is a case study for the question here.
I stand by my answer there.
I answered late as I explained in the first sentence. My prediction seems to have been correct.
I would argue similarly, but in the other direction. I think this is a case where your answer sides with OP and tells them they are justified and doesn't sufficiently counsel them on seeing the circumstance from the perspective of others, and I think OP has accepted your advice at their own peril. This is not a case of a late answer not getting votes due to limited exposure; to the contrary, I believe there have been more downvotes than upvotes since it got the exposure of being listed first. OP came asking how to avoid offending others, and may have left with a recipe that will fail that goal
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5283 | It's time for me to resign
The title says it all: I'm resigning. In the last few days the Stack Exchange staff introduced a new policy about AI-generated content and how we should moderate it.
This is a policy hastily created by Stack Exchange and forced to us moderators in an insulting way, irrespectful of the expertise and the work we have volunteered so far.
Therefore, I'm no longer interested in spending my time for Stack Exchange.
Here I've learned a lot, and it's been a pleasure and a honour to serve this community as a moderator, working together with all the other moderators, past and present.
So, well, so long and thanks for all the fish!
Just adding my thank you for all you've done.
Thank you to you and all the moderators (and ex moderators) for everything you did for this wholesome community. I'm sad the AI hype is shattering all the good stuff.
Thank you for your time as a pleasant, friendly, and helpful mod. :)
I think the strike is the better measure, but then, you posted this a week ago... I wonder if one can ask to be reinstated as a moderator just in order to go on strike, like in that Seinfeld episode.
@einsupportsModeratorStrike When I decided to resign, I was aware that a strike was being planned, but I decided to resign anyway (but I did sign the letter about the strike). There are three reasons for this. 1) I happily volunteered my time here as a hobby, and I'm happy if along the years I've been able to help someone within my domain of expertise, but if I have to endure insults from the SE staff for a hobby, well, no thanks. (cont.)
I'd have kept the mod position and participated to the strike in that capacity if I thought that SE had the capacity for performing a correct analysis with cool head, but the responses from Philippe were clearly those of someone who is panicking and is incapable of analysing, listening and work for the best of the communities; his later posts on Meta did confirm my first impressions. (cont.)
Last but not the least, in my view, the Community Managers should have stopped the management from behaving in this way toward the moderators and the communities, but this hasn't happened and this means that within SE there's no one that could stop the higher ups from misbehaving again in any point in the future.
@einsupportsModeratorStrike Let me add this: I started participating to online communities about thirty years ago in the newsgroup era. I've skipped earlier BBSs just because my modem was really too slow and the connection expensive. When newsgroups started to become obsolete, I moved to Internet forums and then to SE. Some of the users who I first met in the newsgroup era are now here (I even met a couple, or met common acquaintances). So, in my view, platforms pass, people stay and move. Maybe this and AI won't be the end of SE, but the management should not consider the platform eternal.
Thank you very much! You have been the best moderator for me!!!
Thank you for serving as a moderator at Academia SE. It was a pleasure to interact with you here as well as all over the Stack Exchange.
It is a shame what Stack Exchange (as a company) is doing to the community. The way it was done is simply disrespectful, and I have a strong feeling that this is not going to be an isolated incident. Even though, given the history of how the company interacts with us, the pattern has been established long ago.
Thanks, Massimo.
While I think your outward contributions of amazing answers speak for themselves about the type of member the community is losing, the community might not be aware of how respected of a moderator you were internally. As a former moderator, I always knew I could count on you to contribute to the drudgery of cleaning up flags. While constantly cleaning up spills for years on end is no small feat, it is not what made your hidden contributions special. What always impressed me about you was how your words and actions always helped lead the mod team through the truly difficult issues that we sometimes faced.
I hope you can walk away with pride knowing that while SE may have let you down, you did not let this community down.
These words are amazing for me, thank you very much!
@MassimoOrtolano I had really hoped that SE changed it ways (cf. https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/386845/how-has-the-se-network-management-changed-since-sept-2019), but it seems that is not the case.
Yeah. A discomforting thing is that when I've started thinking that SE was reaching a decent steady-state, they again take a number of appalling decisions... an avalanche of mistakes.
Never a mod here, nor privy to your internal discussions, but as a network mod, what contact I had with @MassimoOrtolano left me with a very similar impression. I should add that I had quite a bit of interaction with you though, StrongBad, and every word you wrote here is equally applicable to you and how you behaved when we were riding the storm a couple of years back.
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5166 | Questions about old, hard to find sources
Every once in a while, questions about (very) old papers or books pop up and the inability of the OP of said question to find them, e.g. this one or this one, posted recently only a day apart. The answer to such questions are always very similar:
Go to your librarian
Check Google Books
Try to find and contact the original authors / the original publishing entity
On top of that, people often try to find the paper/book in question online themselves and post in the comments.
In most cases, these questions stay open although IMHO, they are
Borderline shopping questions (OPs asking for a concrete source)
Borderline duplicates of each other
Much too specific for the scope of Academia SE
For me, it would make much more sense to make a canonical "What are strategies to find old and very old papers, books, theses, etc." question and consistently close all the specific questions as a duplicate of that canonical question.
Because as nice as it is to help an OP out with a specific paper, this is not the right platform to do so (again, IMHO).
What are your thoughts?
(If there is agreement that a canonical question would make sense, I could set that up but I don't really know how that is done...)
Rather than write a new question, look through the existing ones to see if an existing one should be "canonized". But, I support the idea.
Perhaps this one could be a candidate? What do you do when you find yourselves with an unreadable/inaccessible paper?
@Ian That seems like a very good candidate indeed.
Also, if there are other, functionally-equivalent posts with good answers, we can merge them into the above post. They just have to be similar enough so that all the answers on both posts still make sense after the merging and editing is done.
It is probably a good idea, though I hope people will still be allowed to ask new questions if they have tried everything in the canonical answer and failed. I think the title should include "obscure" or "hard to find" sources, not just "old" ones. The answer should include some examples of how you can find things yourself by clever googling of elements of the citation information, looking at other citations of it, etc.
@gib but then they would be asking a shopping question?
@Sursula-they- I don't think asking for help finding one source is shopping, though perhaps it is against another SE rule. I just think we shouldn't be too strict. Anyway it is unlikely to happen, as in most cases a librarian will find it.
This seems like a good idea. It looks like we already have two questions that essentially cover this ground:
What do you do when you find yourselves with an unreadable/inaccessible paper?, as Buffy suggested in the comments, and
How can I find an old paper when the usual methods fail?
So, I suggest that we:
Merge the latter into the former. We'll probably have to generalize the question a bit, and perhaps edit a few of the answers so that things make sense.
Add this to our list of canonical questions
Add a note to the question. Something along the lines of "I asked for help with finding a specific article; why was my question closed as a duplicate of this? Sorry, we are not librarians and it is not our role to hunt down individual sources for you. All we can offer is this advice about how you might proceed with your search."
Close all relevant historic and future posts as a duplicate of this. Personally, I don't intend to hunt-and-destroy dozens of old posts, but people can flag them as they come across them. We'll be particularly happy to close old posts without any upvoted answers; may as well get them off our backlog.
Update: this is done.
I like this idea. Maybe also look for phrasing-fodder at the answers posted to the two questions that are linked in this meta question. Also, some of us are librarians, but in this venue we would still refer you to your local university or community librarian.
This is done. Further edits to this post, and flags to hammer other posts as duplicates, are welcome. If any further discussion is necessary, let's do it here on meta rather than on the linked post.
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5376 | Should we make Google Scholar questions off topic?
I am wondering why we should keep on answering questions related to Google Scholar (GS).
This is a product from a well known advertising company (Alphabet) which is poorly documented, absolutely obscure in its working mechanisms. GS is a tool that simply exploits other providers of information, without giving proper credits or without even explaining where the information is coming from. It is not hosting copyrighted documents, like other similar tools did (academia.edu is one that comes to my mind), but it has some similarities with them.
The questions are in general not shopping questions, but they ask for "how to do" things with GS.
In the past, there were "similar" questions in Academia.SE for example for academia.edu (how do I upload, how do I find something, etc.). Nowadays, questions about academia.edu are off-topic, while GS questions have a tag and are considered acceptable.
Should we change this?
Tags do not indicate what is on and off topic, they are only for categorization (this doesn't affect the legitimacy of this question, but it's a common misconception that I don't want to propagate).
Why would being owned by an advertising company or "GS is a tool that simply exploits other providers of information, without giving proper credits or without even explaining where the informations are coming." [sic] make it off-topic? I can understand somewhat the point about its internal bits, but practically any site on the web relies on ad revenue.
@AzorAhai-him- I would say what makes the questions off-topic is that we simply cannot answer them in most cases as we don't know how the underlying mechanisms of the site work.
@Sursula I conceded that point. I asked about Earl's other two points.
@AzorAhai-him- practically any publisher relies on publishing fees, but we still do not support predatory publishers ...
And what is predatory about Google Scholar? It's a service, opaque, sure, but I can't really consider it to be "predatory."
@AzorAhai-him- Since the tool is based on unreliable filtering, opaque engine, and the goal is evidently to benefit the reputation of the products of the parent company and not the scientists, it is on the same level as predatory journals and their publishers. Additionally, it helped and it helps questionable research to be spread https://library.gannon.edu/c.php?g=834368&p=6443882 as well as https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/16/how-academia-google-scholar-and-predatory-publishers-help-feed-academic-fake-news/ Enough for me.
"benefit the reputation of the products of the parent company and not the scientists" Is it? Academics are tiny slice of society and Google would be just fine without Google Scholar. It is my primary way of looking up articles, I find it quite useful. But I would conceded many of the points in the Gannon article don't apply to me (not in humanities, don't use ArXiV or law).
Yet, when I talk to graduate students today, many of them talk of heading over to Google Scholar, typing in a few keywords and copy-pasting the citation information of the first paper that shows up - This is not GS' problem. We don't have space to go around and around here, so I will agree to disagree on this point about GS.
"Nowadays, questions about academia.edu are off-topic". Why? I can't find anything on meta to indicate this is the case.
@Laurel not on meta, on Academia:SE
The main site doesn't say academia.edu questions are off topic either. The tag was merely merged into another tag. Why are you saying it's off topic?
@Laurel Never said that having (or not having) a tag means on- (or off-topic). See comment https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5376/should-we-make-google-scholar-questions-off-topic?noredirect=1#comment17144_5376 . My observation is that the rate open to closed question regarding academia edu is quite high in the recent times.
GS is a tool that simply exploits other providers of information
That sounds like many academic publishers, who exploits other providers of information (namely, researchers). At least, GS is not paywalled, and it is widely used across researchers. Therefore, I don't think a question about GS should be made off-topic because it is about GS.
I agree in general, but one at a time. Diamond open access is the only safe way.
Im with you - also because when you look at the questions, most of the ones that actually ask about the workings of google scholar don't have a useful answer because, well, we can't answer them, as we don't know what algorithm is behind their search etc.
But: there are some questions that are kind of about google scholar, e.g. this one or this one that are more about general workings of academia with google scholar being a part of it.
So my suggestion would be to make questions about the functionality and search optimization etc. of google scholar off-topic, yet either keep the tag for the questions that are not about google scholar only. Or we create a new tag like e.g. search-engines that google scholar is a synonym of for these types of questions.
Indeed, I usually vote to close based on not being within scope - we are not Google's help desk. There are a few questions that use Google Scholar as one example that might be OK. But then the correct answer is usually to either use a real publication database or talk to a friendly local research librarian.
I agree. I think a general consensus that questions along the lines of "how do I add my paper to GS", "how do I find X in GS", "how do I use GS for Y" are out of scope would be useful and consistent. Not because GS is a bad tool, just because we are also not doing tech support for any other tool.
(of course that doesn't mean that questions or answers aren't allowed to talk about GS, just that the question should be a little bit more "meta" than that)
It might be worth noting that the tags [tag:literature-search] and [tag:indexing] exist. The description of the former reads "Questions about finding specific papers, books, etc. pertaining to a topic. This includes the use of online databases such as Google Scholar or PubMed to find relevant articles." and so seems to cover the "search" part of a [tag:search-engines] tag. The questions you link could conceivably fall under [tag:indexing]. I also think that having a tag named [tag:search-engines] might encourage questions about non-academic search engines.
An alternative would be a canonical question covering answers to the common questions. It could point to whatever formal documentation is available as well as answer many of the "how do I" questions.
Let me clarify that I'm not suggesting providing GS documentation. The system can change in any case. But, advice to the questioner about the general difficulties of dealing with the system, such as is currently offered in answers, might be valuable to capture.
A canonical question with a canonical answer "Just ask Google" might solve most of the problems. These sorts of questions keep popping up, including one today.
That is one of the option I was thinking, so any question regarding GS can be forwarded there without being too rude (and to make people realize they are facing a common problem)
This seems against the ethos of SE to me. A giant repo of technical how-to is otherwise known as "documentation," and writing Google's documentation for them is not really our role. This would also introduce a maintenance burden if we need to keep this canonical question up to date as Google changes. Finally: even if approved, who would write this canonical Q? I suspect there would be few volunteers.
@cag51, OTOH, a canonical answer needn't be that documentation, but something that points the user back to Google and says that the docs there are insufficient, etc, etc. The sort of things that people now say in answer to the questions. But I, certainly, can't write that question.
I would use the following questions to determine whether tool-related question should be on-topic:
Is the tool primarily used by academics?
Is the tool very much obscure?
Is the tool used across disciplines?
Is there a clearly better-suited sister-site to ask about the tool?
If the answers are YES - NO - YES - NO, I think we should consider questions about that tool on-topic here. For Google Scholar, this is the case. I agree that we don't seem to have the expertise to answer many of the questions about Google Scholar, but this could easily change if Google ever provides a decent documentation about it, or if an insider joins us and provides the answers.
Thanks for formalizing a line of thinking. I think there is one question missing, i.e. "is the tool harmful to science?", but this is my opinion.
Back to your list, I got to the interesting result that if I make the same questions about the publishing process with major publishers, I should consider them as off-topic as the one from GS :) .
I guess I think the point about this site is academics helping each other. Those who don't want to help others use a particular tool are under no obligation to do so. In fact a rule banning discussion of tools would create obligations e.g. to police deletions. So I think we should just let academics ask and answer questions that help each other if they want to.
I see your point.
I am personally worried about tools that are harmful to the development of science and progrees. But then, we regularly answer questions about the hidden mechanics of opaque mechanisms like the publication process of the major publishers, so GS is not really different.
IMO Google Scholar is immensely helpful for surfacing recent publications, and unearthing false citations (people pretending you are an author of something you are not.)
Some of the ideas expressed here seem to be predicated on the notions that:
Google ought to provide some support for people who use Google Scholar
Banning questions about Google Scholar will put pressure on Google to provide the support that they ought provide
Together, the notions seem misconceived. While the issue of point 1 is arguable, I would suggest that all the evidence is against the idea that a boycott would influence Google in any way at all.
More particularly, I think that a boycott would mean that all those academics who rely on Google Scholar will be robbed of the (entirely voluntary and uncompelled) support that some users of SE are willing to provide. And the academics who rely on Google Scholar are legion ... and mostly in developing countries where institutions are less likely to be able to pay for access to a platform like Scopus.
In conclusion: let those of us who don't mind answering questions about Google Scholar continue to do so.
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5390 | Delete [best-practice tag] or improve description - the status quo doesn't make much sense
I came across the tag best-practice and in the description it says:
(DO NOT USE: this tag has been applied very inconsistently, and probably should not be used.) Standard or recommended practices in writing, research, or professional academic conduct
So I wonder if the tag is often not used correctly and it even says it should not be used, why keep it at all?
My suggestion would be to either
Delete the tag altogether or
Improve the tag description and go through questions currently tagged with it and remove the tag from mistagged questions.
I am also open to convincing arguments why keeping a tag that people are explicitely told not to use does make sense and thus the status quo can and should be kept.
Update:
I have now removed the tag from all questions (and added some other useful tags where applicable). The tag should be deleted soonish. Not being a mod, I cannot mark this as "status completed", but it is.
I think it's clear that no one is an expert in "best practices" (and when would a question ask for the sub-optimal practice), deleting sounds fine.
@AzorAhai-him- that would be fun, though. "looking for mediocre ways for teaching students", "I ve been accepted at a top tier conference, but that seems to much of a hassle - how can I switch to a lower tier venue?"
"I'm looking for a job that pays only a middling amount of money - is academia a good fit?"
Marked as status-completed. Thanks for the suggestion and the work!
@AzorAhai-him- - academia is an excellent place to look for middling pay!
I think 1 is best provided it is done with mod-magic so that all those questions don't get promoted. Note that none of the current questions have only best-practice as a tag, though a few have only one other.
Though our powers run deep, this is not one of them. Deleting a tag means removing it from every question that has the tag; once they're all removed, the tag itself will disappear during a daily maintenance window. Nothing mods can do to make it more efficient or silent.
Oh rats. Maybe the OP here can take out a reference or two per day. We did this in cleaning up professorship a while ago.
It's just 29 questions, so it wouldn't take too long.
@Buffy I could start removing the tag little be little, trying not to upset the active questions too much. As Anyon said, there are not a lot of questions, so it will not take too long even if only a few are deleted per day.
I have now removed the tag from all questions (and added some other useful tags where applicable). The tag should be deleted soonish. Not being a mod, I cannot mark this as "status completed", but it is.
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5271 | Tag cleanup: is the [paperwork] tag really necessary?
I just stumbled upon the tag paperwork when reviewing a question and I am unsure if that tag really makes sense to keep. In many instances the tag is (IMHO) misused for questions related to (scientific) papers instead of paperwork.
In the few other instances where it kind of makes sense, it is (again IMHO) not really necessary.
Should we
a) delete the tag
b) remove the tag from the questions where it is used incorrectly and see if it is worth keeping for the rest of the questions?
c) leave everything as it is?
Marking this as completed, since any pending action items are now on the other post (linked).
Thanks for finding this. I agree almost all of those questions are mistagged; we should fix this at least.
I hesitate to just nuke the tag, because there are two possible legit uses:
organizing physical and digital papers
dealing with bureaucracy
So, I suspect we should choose option B and also consider renaming or redefining the “paperwork” tag
I started the process of removing the tag where is used incorrectly, once finished lets have a look what the rest of the questions look like and think about renaming or redefinig from there.
Perhaps a rename to e.g. bureaucracy would clear the intended usage up?
The tag only has six questions so should be easy to just cleanup. I think a tag with a better name, for such things as administrative process would be worth keeping. Maybe there is already such a tag. If not, I don't have a name at the moment. Maybe bureaucracy.
Organizing papers is a different concept that might need a separate tag if there are enough examples at the moment. Some questions on the site are about recommendations for "personal process", but research process seems to cover that idea.
But "as is" it is terrible, I agree.
To be clear, there were 25+ questions when this was posted. OP has been quick to cull the worst ones (and I deleted a few that are no longer needed).
@cag51, thanks. I got into it late.
Now we're down to two, so it seems a decision has already been taken.
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5273 | Rename tag [paperwork] and create new tag for "organizing/structuring" files, papers etc
This is a follow-up to: Is the paperwork tag really necessary?
After removing the tag paperwork from questions where the tag was misused I had a look at the remaing questions and other questions as well.
I suggest the follwing: change the name of the tag from paperwork to bureaucracy as that lies at the heart of said paperwork, also there are several other questions not previously in the paperwork where such a tag would fit well. Of course the wiki entry would have to be slightly changed as well.
On top of that, I noticed there are quite of few questions about structuring and organizing files, paper, bibliography etc. that do not really have a good tag that fits. I propose to create a new tag for that but I am unable to find a suitable, succinct phrase for such a tag as "organizing" doesn't really fit 100%. What do you think of this proposal?
As there are the most votes for the question (with suggestions how to proceed), does that imply that this is the solution we are going to go with? I am happy to implement the changes suggested.
Yeah, it's a little unclear how to interpret the outcome here. Of the 6 remaining questions, I think 3 are still mistagged, 2 are about organizing physical or digital papers, and 1 would be a suitable candidate for the "bureaucracy" tag, if we decide to make one. Perhaps untagging the three remaining mistags is the place to start.
Looks like this has been resolved here. Thanks for the work!
I don't really see a need for a bureaucracy tag, so I'd suggest just getting rid of the last instances of paperwork. While, as Dr. Leonard McCoy said, "the bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the universe", it takes different forms in different contexts and places. As such, tags such as administration and ones based on the type of job or location seem more appropriate in most cases. Admittedly, this question might be an exception. Arguably, there are also some questions about record keeping that might qualify as paperwork but not necessarily bureaucracy: example.
I would be inclined to just redefine the paperwork description such that it covers both:
organizing physical and digital papers
dealing with bureaucracy (defined here to mean low-level administrative tasks like filling out forms and getting approvals signed).
The latter has some overlap with administration, but not too much I think.
A tag with two different meanings, very clearly disjoint, is not a good idea in my mind.
Since the tag only has four questions, I seriously doubt it would be much of an issue. But I acknowledge that the other answer has carried the day here.
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4971 | 2021 Moderator Election Q&A – Question Collection
The purpose of this thread was to collect questions for the questionnaire. The questionnaire is now live, and you may find it here.
Academia Stack Exchange is scheduled for an election next week, 2021-08-09. 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.
Here’s how it’ll work:
Until the nomination phase, (so, until 2021-08-09 at 20:00:00Z UTC, or 4:00 pm EDT on the same day, give or take time to arrive for closure), 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.
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 currently.
We, the Community Team, will be providing a small selection of generic questions. The following two questions are guaranteed to be included:
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?
The community team may also include the following three questions if the community doesn’t supply enough questions.
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?
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. We reserve some editorial control in the selection of the questions and may opt not to select a question that is tangential or irrelevant to moderation or the election. We exclude any suggested questions that are negatively scored.
We will post the final questionnaire on the Election page. Candidates will have the option to fill out the questionnaire, and their answers will appear beneath their intro statements.
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.
For those who missed the reason for this election, here's the reference.
For those who want to know more about the mechanics of the vote counting in a moderator election, this Q&A from MathOverflow Meta provides the details.
@Araucaria I think the note that these questions are from the last election indicates these are not really questions asked by moderators but rather some previously upvoted election questions. There is still room for more!
[Imported from the last election question collection]
What is your stance about the current scope of Academia Stack Exchange and how this is enforced?
Should we close any question that does not strictly comply with the current scope?
Should we be lenient and keep open questions that can potentially generate good answers even if borderline off-topic?
Should we narrow or broaden the scope?
[Imported from the last election question collection]
As a moderator, I find that comments are a tricky thing to deal with. Under what circumstances will you delete comments?
Note that there are lots of flags that comments are obsolete/no longer needed.
How do you view the balance between "trying to be helpful to an OP" and "strict adherence to the stated rules"?
[Imported from the last election question collection]
Academia.SE frequently has questions rise high on the Hot Network Questions (HNQ); often these questions are on more controversial topics than the mean question here and attract visitors from across the SE community who otherwise don't participate here.
What do you think the moderators' role should be with respect to HNQ list questions? How do you think presence on the HNQ list should affect moderation decisions?
[Imported from the last election question collection]
What question or answer of yours on meta best exemplifies your philosophy on moderation? Why do you feel this is the best example?
Have you ever made a mistake posting on this site? If so, how did you react?
Too late: the election is already under way and the questionnaire has been consolidated.
@MassimoOrtolano Thanks, it looks like I made a mistake!
How will you handle a disagreement with another moderator over an action one of you has taken (or will be taking) on a post that requires moderator attention?
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4891 | Daily vote limit reached before Vox Populi badge earned
I just received a notification while attempting to upvote a post on the main site that I've reached my daily vote limit. I've not been voting "today" (which I realize is delimited in UTC) specifically/artificially to get the Vox Populi badge, but it is on my radar (I'm a sucker for badges and other electronic equivalents of those old shiny gold star stickers), and when I got the notification about reaching the limit, I checked on the badge status. It's showing I'm at 37/40 votes.
I remember this happening before, I think on ac.SE, and unfortunately I don't have specifics but if my memory is correct it happened around the same time I did manage to get the badge on another site (ELU) (again, not trying to abuse the system or artificially increase my vote counts or badges, just had a long day of procrastination, most of which took place on SE). That time also, I remember receiving the notification about reaching my vote limit but still only had somewhere around 37 votes recorded for the day.
I've noticed votes take a few minutes to be "locked in," i.e. you can undo a vote for 5-10 minutes after voting, so I thought perhaps the system would register the 38th-40th votes after that time interval. But as of now my last vote is 29 minutes ago, I'm still at 37/40 daily votes, am unable to vote more, and don't yet have the badge.
Obviously a super-low priority bug, if it is one at all, but I thought I'd mention it.
This is by design, as described here. You are entitled to 30 votes; further, the first 10 votes on questions might not count against your 30, so the maximum possible number of votes is 40. More specifically, the 10 free question votes will be available until you start getting warnings about having limited votes remaining; once the first warning appears, you will not get any more free votes, even if you have voted on fewer than 10 questions. You can see here that the vox populi badge was last awarded on Academia.SE two weeks ago, so it is not impossible.
To me this seems unnecessarily confusing; it seems like you should be able to use your remaining question votes after expending your answer votes. But a feature request to fix this was made 9 years and 11 months ago, and the current behavior was agreed upon because "more balanced voting throughout the day would be much better than question-only voting at the end of the day." You could open a new post on Meta.SE asking that this decision be revisited, but it is not something that we as Academia.SE can fix.
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5440 | Update the "What topics can I ask about here?" section?
In the help centre, there's a page giving advice on what topic to ask or not ask about :
https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic
Specifically, in the "What topics should I avoid?", it is written
for an overall assessment of your profile or odds of admission. We do not offer individualized advice; our general advice is available here.
The "here" refer to the question How are Ph.D. applications evaluated in the US, particularly for weak or borderline students? Am I likely to get into school X?. The question is focused on PhD admission and US-centric.
In the comment, a moderator has added
Q: I asked a very specific question about my profile; why was my post closed as a duplicate of this vague question? A: Sorry, we cannot accurately predict your odds of admission from your "statistics" (see the first part of the below answer for an explanation) and providing individualized advice is not our role in any case. Rather, we have consolidated our advice to this one page. If you can "boil down" your question to something of more general interest (e.g., "how does X affect my odds"), consider editing your question to ask this boiled down version instead.
The comment partially solves the issue, but the question is still focused on PhD in the US. It doesn't seem to check the box for "general" advice for any other type of admission/profile (in another country, for another type of post/etc).
As a result, I'm hesitant to flag certain questions as out of scope.
Is the help centre referring to any type of profile evaluation/odds of admission, or only for PhD? Should the help centre be modified or the CW question be edited to include the comment under it with some clarification?
Perhaps we should rephrase the wiki like this:
for an overall assessment of your profile or odds of admission. We do not offer individualized advice (though we do have general advice for graduate admissions in the US available here).
it looks like the simpler solution
would you be able to change to that? It seems from the upvote it is an acceptable solution (I also agree)
Sorry for the delay, this is done
This answer addresses only this part:
As a result, I'm hesitant to flag certain questions as out of scope.
For a question about an individual's chances of achieving something (admissions, paper acceptance etc.), I think it's typically better to flag as duplicate of some suitable duplicate target (if it exists; it does for US graduate admissions as you point out) or as depending on individual factors. Closure for these reasons communicates to the asker much more clearly why the action was taken than does closure for being out-of-scope, especially when it involves topics like Ph.D. admissions for which many questions are on-topic.
that is fairly sensible
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4747 | How do people here feel about chain-reaction downvoting of posts?
Personally I think downvoting should only be done in very exceptional circumstances: I've been on this site for over 2 years and only picked up the critic badge about 1 month ago (meaning I never downvoted anyone for about 2 years).
I appreciate that not everyone has the same opinion as me, and that people can downvote when they like, as long as it doesn't violate the CoC.
However I believe there comes a point at which a post has been downvoted enough already, and further downvoting becomes more harmful than helpful. It happened to one of my answers recently, causing a chain reaction that lead eventually to at least 1 suspension, but I won't go into too much detail about my own situation since I'm biased there. Today I noticed another relatively high-rep user (who clearly knows what they're doing) became the "victim" of chain-reaction downvoting:
It seems here that when the number goes negative enough, everyone that passes by seemingly wants to add to the user's misery. I picture this like someone that's already been beaten by the police, but long after the police have gone away, people that walk by the body on the ground and see that the person has been reprimanded for something, throw a couple extra kicks in.
Apart from Meta Stack Exchange ("Meta is Murder"), I have never seen such badly downvoted posts on the Stack Exchange network over about a decade of being here. Why does this community do this, and why is it tolerated (if you are one of the people that do this, for example downvoting a post that already has a net score below -2, can you provide me with some insight as to why you do this)?
Similar problems have been recognized by others (e.g. Why my question gets so many downvotes? Is it off-topic?) and this site seems to have a downvoting problem in general (https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=downvoting) which I have not seen on the other sites that I'm equally active in (I have 1000+ rep on 7 sites and 150+ rep on 26 sites).
The post shown above had a net score of -11 when someone decided to downvote it to -12, so I wonder: If you are one of the people that pushes such posts further into the ground, is it because you believe the question should be deleted (if so, why don't you vote to delete or if you don't have enough rep, just flag it or wait for it to be deleted by others, since if it's so bad clearly it shouldn't be on the site and it will quickly get deleted by others?)? Or do you usually do this because the post angers you so badly that you feel you need to stab it further? In the latter case, my personal opinion is that the behavior is starting to tread on the fence of violating the CoC and the policy of "Be nice, Be welcoming", but I don't expect everyone to share the same opinion as me.
If you contribute to negative-downvoting chains, I wonder what you think writing a stern comment can't do, that downvoting something which already has a very low negative score, can do successfully?
To conclude my (personal) opinion on this issue (which I don't expect you to share, but I'd like to voice it here):
MATLAB Answers (a StackOverflow clone that lives outside the SE network) has an upvote button, but not a downvote button.
Facebook has a like/thumbs-up button but no dislike/thumbs-down button.
At Matter Modeling SE we have absolutely no Q/A that have a net negative score, but there's been zero issues on the site, and all 7 moderator candidates committed to commenting/close-voting/delete-voting in favor of downvoting:
Note: cag51♦ has observed this phenomenon for upvoting: Case Study: First Answer Bias. This question is also tangentially related: Are upvotes skewed towards the first answer to a question?.
My 4 sub-questions are in bold. Thank you for your considerations.
Some might suggest that the StackExchange model is founded on having both up and down votes. Now, if you are going to limit down votes, are you also going to limit up votes? If not, why not?
If these questions are not rhetoric, I would prefer to answer them in chat, because, while I can try to give my answer succinctly, it would involve the entire chat box, and then you may have something to say in response, and then we will end up with a wall-of-text which is not really answering my question. That "SE is founded on having both upvotes and downvotes" doesn't answer my question about chain-downvoting where a user ends up with a net score well below 0.
Questions about mechanics across all sites should be asked on Meta.
@JonCuster What do you mean? This is Meta. Are you saying that your comment should be discussed here rather than in Chat, or are you saying that I should ask this on MSE? I could ask it there, but this is a question about the culture on this site, which I have observed to be rather unique (apart from MSE which is known to be "murder").
@JonCuster we may agree that upvote and downvote are not symmetric about the 'neutral', in terms of psychological interpretation. Having no downvote button, let's say, would not affect the content which is not upvoted. Users may flag that content they find in appropriate or bad. However, having a downvote metric further degrades the user and the downvoted content making it more vulnerable into the ground. I would ask why to even retain the content which is victim of this and make people notice it? Had there been no downvote button the less upvoted content wont get the attention in first place.
@cag51 Very interesting. I'll try to mention your link somewhere in my question. While this might be a general SE phenomenon, I've noticed it far more here. The answer to your question was that "it can't be avoided on Academia.SE", but that was about chain-upvoting rather than chain-downvoting which is a much more serious issue. It's not true that nothing can be done about chain-downvoting (a confirmation message can be set to pop-up if the net score is -5, and people that frequently do it without even reading the question, can face consequences exactly like serial voters do).
I agree with @SiddhantSingh in that my question even mentions that: If a post has a net score of -25, should it really be on the site? On Meta sites and on MSE, we tend to use answers sometimes as "poll options" and for community promotion ads we "vote" which ones we like and which ones we don't, so -25 would make sense. On Academia.SE does it make sense? If something with -25 on Academia.SE is so bad that it needs to be deleted, it ought to be deleted way before it gets to -5, if the community is doing it's job (in my opinion).
Heavily downvoted answers are usually such because they give bad advice in the academic context, something that should really be avoided, but deletion is for low quality content not for bad advice. Don't conflate two completely different things.
The example you gave is just a terrible answer. It's not only "not useful" (tooltip on downvote button), it's actually harmful and bordering on a personal attack. And that's why people downvote it. They don't "pile on", they just agree with another.
@henning I've now read the answer and disagree with you that it's "not useful". This perspective is actually needed, in order to balance out all the people saying that ghosting a supervisor is perfectly fine. I've now upvoted it, along with three others that did. It is not "terrible answer" and to call it bordering a personal attack, is in my opinion quite a stretch. I don't see how it is harmful. But anyway, it's just an example. The point you're making is that you feel it's fine to "pile on" more downvotes when someone's already at -10. I think people should restrain themslelves a bit more
In general, there are questions that deserve a very negative score. However, without linking the question (or knowing what the question is), it is hard to weigh in on whether this is "chain reaction" or truly bad
@AzorAhai--hehim What makes you feel that when a question is at, for example: -9, it needs to be downvoted further to -10?
@user1271772 If it's bad
If you are one of the people that pushes such posts further into the ground, is it because you believe the question should be deleted
Honestly, I didn't realize I could vote to delete. But in any case, having a bad answer and a clear indication that it is flawed can sometimes be helpful. It certainly discourages reposting of the answer.
Or do you usually do this because the post angers you so badly that you feel you need to stab it further?
I do not think my vote should depend on the current score of the answer. In fact, I scrutinize my voting to avoid being biased by the current score.
If you contribute to negative-downvoting chains, I wonder what you think writing a stern comment can't do, that downvoting something which already has a very low negative score, can do successfully?
This is a false dichotomy.
Or do you usually do this because the post angers you so badly
I've never seen anything on this site worth getting angry about. That includes being downvoted.
As a practical matter, people can vote using whatever criteria they see fit. We do have some guidelines for good voting practices, but votes are anonymous, and we don't usually know why people vote the way they do. The only exception that comes to mind is that we don't allow serial voting, as was discussed on Academia.SE here.
One of the results of this, which I have noted before, is a very pronounced "first answer bias." Further, I usually see a delay on my new answers; then after the overall score goes over 2 or 3, more votes pile on.
I suspect what you've observed is a corollary to this bias. I doubt that people are consciously choosing to pile on; rather, I suspect it is simply easier to see the hugely negative score, skim the post, and say "I agree" rather than having to make an independent judgment as they would on a post without a clear score.
Why does this community do this (if you are one of the people that do this, for example downvoting a post that already has a net score below -2, can you provide me with some insight as to why you do this)?
Personally, I try very hard to make upvote/downvote decisions without considering the question's current score. This does sometimes result in downvoting an already-downvoted question -- in fact, heavily-downvoted questions are normally downvoted for a reason, so this happens with some regularity. But I don't condone downvoting just because the question is already downvoted. In fact, I frequently ask myself, "would I have (down)voted if I hadn't seen the score, or would I have just kept scrolling?"
I do sometimes see answers that have "exaggerated" scores. For example, I think some of my best answers are buried and not all of my most-upvoted answers are my best work. I've also seen some heavily-downvoted answers that I didn't think deserved so many downvotes.
But, I do not agree that there are (many) answers with hugely negative scores that would have gotten positive scores had it not been for the first few votes. I've seen people argue this before, but I rarely agree with such claims (of course, there are exceptions, I'm not commenting on any specific case).
Is it because you believe the question should be deleted?
No. As Massimo says in the comments, "deletion is for low quality content not for bad advice." I would not (vote to) delete a good-faith answer that showed research effort, even if I disagreed with it. I've argued before that moderators do not delete wrong answers; I would similarly discourage the community from doing so. But, I would likely downvote and comment on a wrong answer to prevent the misinformation from spreading.
If you contribute to negative-downvoting chains, I wonder what you think writing a stern comment can't do, that downvoting something which already has a very low negative score, can do successfully?
It is a good practice to explain your downvote rather than just doing a drive-by. My experience, however, is that by the time someone gets a score of -10, there has already been significant discussion on the answer.
why is it tolerated?
You seem to be suggesting that we should crack down on those who vote on a heavily-downvoted answer without reading it. Diamond mods do not have the tools to do this. You could ask the community team to implement it, but you would have to create a post on MSE.
Another option would be to cap the displayed score -- for example, scores below -5 could just display -5 rather than displaying -100. Again, we as Academia.SE do not have the tools to do this.
A related issue I've observed (and, frankly, one that concerns me somewhat more) is that post scores tend to lag post edits. For example, a new user who is heavily downvoted might fix their answer after a day or two (which is exactly what we tell them to do), but they are unlikely to get the score they deserve (which affects new users far more than high-rep users).
"It is a good practice to explain your downvote rather than just doing a drive-by. My experience, however, is that by the time someone gets a score of -10, there has already been significant discussion on the answer" -> My questions was, what will the 11th downvote do successfully that can't be accomplished in the comments and discussion? "You seem to be suggesting that we should crack down on those who vote on a heavily-downvoted answer without reading it. Diamond mods do not have the tools to do this" -> I think you also don't have the tools to crack down on serial voting that isn't [cot'd]
picked up by the scripts (?) but this is besides the point. Before going to MSE to ask about adding this feature, I've asked here what people would think of such a feature. Furthermore, you have referred to network-wide voting guidelines, but there can be additional guidelines also local to Academia.SE, and the question's title seeks to get the community's opinion about what the guidelines should be when a post already has a low negative score. My opinion is that when we see that, we should resist the urge to kick someone that's already on the ground. I understand guidelines can't be enforced.
Ah. If your goal is for Academia.SE to adopt a "guideline" that we shouldn't downvote after the score reaches -5, you may want to start a separate meta post that explicitly states the proposed guideline and let the community vote on it. Personally, I am ambivalent about such a proposal, would have to think about it -- but as you say, it would just (if approved) be a guideline, there is nothing we as Academia.SE could do to enforce it. An alternative would be to propose a technical fix that (given a consensus) we could request from the developers (e.g., thresholding the displayed score at -5).
Perhaps I could ask a new question, but for now the title says "How do people here feel about chain-reaction downvoting of posts?" and I'm gathering people's opinions about it. I'm also curious to understand why it happens that people pile-on downvotes when the net score already obviously sends the message to the user that their post was not liked, and in the case of an answer: already indicates that it might have been bad advice. It's something I never do, because my philosophy is always to be welcoming and not to give people a terrible experience just for one bad post, so I'm curious of it.
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5117 | Is it Desirable to Extend the Purpose of this Stack Exchange?
In the tour of this stack exchange, it is suggested that questions covering these topics should be posted:
academic careers,
requirements and expectations of students, postdocs, or professors,
inner workings of research departments,
academic writing and publishing,
studying and teaching at institutions of higher education (universities, colleges, …),
Given that the Stack Exchange is called "Academia", would it not also be sensible to allow questions directly related to the practical undertaking of research, given it is so fundamental to academia?
As an example (and at the risk of having it closed), a question on the practical undertaking of research could be something like this:
What Query String Parameters can be used with Google Scholar?
A further example of one which has been closed, but which I believe could also fall under the practical undertaking of research:
How can I search for Academic Grants in the UK (Physics, Materials, Tech)?
I understand the latter question is intentionally specific, but to me, that feels like a very broad question that could help a broad range of community members. I am not sure rules which necessitate the closing of such questions are ideal for the community.
Can you give some example of a question that was rejected but might be acceptable? Or even a hypothetical question that might be treated differently?
What would the "practical undertaking of research" include? Questions about research design, methods, statistical tests, fieldwork, hermeneutics, experimental setups? We need to be careful not to open a can of worms.
this got closed for being off-topic, which seems broken: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/164140/is-it-common-for-a-lab-to-pay-for-international-moving-expenses
My understanding is that we already take questions about the "practical undertaking of research" so long as it can be addressed by academics generally rather than requiring knowledge of a particular subfield. This question comes to mind as a well-received, on-topic question about research: How to by-pass bioethics for a trivial bio-experiment?
I agree that the list you linked doesn't indicate that these questions are allowed. Perhaps we should add:
the academic research process
we could add add a qualifier "(but not domain-specific questions about research)", but the more concise sentence seems to better fit with the existing list.
Update: I added bullet #6 as written to the linked page; this seemed to be the common denominator that (most) everyone liked. Some alternative phrasings and other potentially good ideas were raised in the comments -- if anyone would like to pursue any of these further, please make a new meta post with a specific proposal so that the community can consider.
"6. Domain-agnostic academic research process"?
@AntonMenshov Given our audience isn't all native English speakers, plainer language would be better.
Given, that, I'm not sure how to phrase what level of "subfield" is appropriate. Clearly, the linked question could not be answered by a history researcher, but it was broad enough to be acceptable.
"Questions about the research process that could be answered by anyone in your field, broadly construed, such as a biologist or historian (i.e. not a molecular geneticist or [sorry I don't know history subfields]"
I think we need to avoid serving as quasi-advisors on specific research (as we do now). For many closed questions the usual comment is "talk to your advisor".
@AzorAhai-him- you are probably right here.
On reviewing the list in context (in the linked page), I'm inclined to say that no qualifier is necessary. All the necessary qualifiers already exist in the following paragraph ("What topics should I avoid?").
@AzorAhai: I think that thinking in fields or subfields is the wrong approach here as few things pertain to an entire field and even those may not be well suited for this site. The formulation that I find concise and fitting (and have used when writing other parts of the help page) is “the content of research”. The procedure of getting biosafety approval is not about that (and extends beyond the field of biology), so it’s good for this site. […]
[…] On the other hand, the content of research has its flaws as it does not really capture questions about things like pipetting techniques, for which I think it’s safe to say that the community wouldn’t welcome them. But then the field-based approach doesn’t work either for those, as they are relevant to large areas of biology, chemistry, and medicine.
@Wrzlprmft I don't think it's particularly clear on the face of it that "the content of research" would exclude biosafety approval or other kinds of ethical approval. It might be that we define it that way.
Perhaps something like "questions about decisions about your research design?"
In the "don't ask" list, would something like "specific research questions that (are best/can only be) answered by your advisor" work?
It already says "content of research." We could perhaps work the phrase "ask your advisor" somewhere into that bullet (though, not all research questions come from students).
@Buffy: It would be interesting to find out why people are asking “advisor questions” in the first place. I see three possibilities: 1) They are unable to distinguish when a question is best asked to the advisor. 2) The relationship to their advisor is fundamentally broken (and they don’t know that it shouldn’t be like that). 3) They haven’t even thought about whom to best ask the question. — My impression (and I fully admit that it is nothing but an impression) is that Case 1 applies to most of these questions. In that case, we need more than a short text.
@Wrzlprmft, I think both 1) and 3) are pretty common and account for a lot of the issue. And 2) is quite different, usually based on interpersonal issues and bad advising rather than research. We normally handle those OK unless they are too personal. But something like the following might be useful: "For specific guidance on your research methodology and process, the advisor is a better source than this forum."
@Wrzlprmft And 4) They've grown up in a world where they can readily find every answer they need (so far) on the internet without asking a real life person, and it's scary and intimidating to admit to their advisor that they don't already know everything, even though their advisor would be completely redundant and unnecessary if they did.
@Wrzlprmft Why would "advisor" questions be forbidden though? Fundamentally you could say that almost anything is an advisor question, the only thing which wouldn't fall under that category would be a dispute you're having with your own advisor surely?
@BryanKrause I think this is true actually, certainly something I struggled with, especially when you're suffering under the stern gaze of an advisor who also knows all of this could be found on the internet. But I feel that it's no bad thing to have questions like that answered on a stack exchange like this. Fundamentally there are only so many research related problems and having access to the knowledge of many engaged and knowledgeable advisors whose advice is ranked for your benefit is extremely helpful. In all honesty, as a new user, that is what I assumed the site is for!
Our sister site Mi Yodeya has an interesting policy stated on their main page that the site "... does not offer personalized, professional advice, and does not take the place of seeking such advice from your rabbi." I've often thought we should have a similar policy where when people are asking for personalized professional advice we tell them to "consult your local Ph.D. advisor" much as Mi Yodeya says CYLOR ("consult your local orthodox rabbi").
@Connor And indeed, we do serve that role for questions where it's appropriate to get advice from "an academic", because the question is broadly applicable to others. Sometimes, though, the person to get advice from is strictly "your specific advisor".
@BryanKrause Absolutely, I agree with you in some instances the ideal person to ask is your advisor/ supervisor, for example on a lab-related issue you would have to run by them anyway. But for broader questions, I believe crowdsourcing the opinion of multiple academics is obviously preferable and incredibly helpful. However, I think there could be confusion between members on what questions are on topic and off topic derived purely from the rules as they are set out.
I was prompted to ask nearly the same by the discussion under the academic grants question as well and believe that if not for the scope, the community would benefit from a clearer guidance.
That is, it is obvious that if shopping questions (and overly specific questions in general) are allowed, they would overtake the site and would be of not much use to most people reading, which is not the SE way. However, I find it a bit baffling to not be provided with any directions whatsoever.
To be clear, I do not mean that academia.SE should massively expand its operations all of a sudden - rather, the scenario of someone asking a question and being bounced back to their academic network is way too common. They obviously do not have a strong network in place, maybe their advisor is utterly unhelpful or even useless, maybe their university does not provide the required infrastructure and yet the advice they get is akin to "just stop being poor". Personally, that leaves a bad taste - it does not seem to be at all impossible to help those in need of the actual networking they have probably hoped to find here in some shape or form, although it is also obvious this could not possibly fit the SE format.
To that end, I would suggest adding a collection of links to external resources in a form of community question. Maybe a "guide to finding academic connections online if your on-site facilities are lacking". Anything better than "you get to a good place or die trying, this is the way of academia and has been by generations, follow the same path" would be an improvement, IMHO.
Wrapping it up: expanding the scope of the community - no, looking for ways to provide help when we could not answer these questions - yes.
Agree completely with your third paragraph. I'm often annoyed by the "ask your advisor" response -- PhD students have usually considered asking their advisor and often have good reason for asking us instead. I'm less certain about the fourth paragraph: if a question is truly unsalvageable (i.e., about the content of research), I'm not sure we would know where to send them. Making a massive anthology of "places to ask for technical help on subject X" seems a bit out of character for us (though I wouldn't necessarily oppose it either).
@cag51 Oh, sorry, I didn't really mean the contents of research or similar, still talking about networking there. As in, "how to rapidly grow your academic network in a (relatively major field)" if conferences are for some reason not doing it for you. So, as per usual, "where do I find other researchers trying to use lasers to shoot space hamsters" would be a bit too narrow, but helping to find communities to talk, say, climate science, molecular biology or number theory might be a good fit. It is a fine line to walk between endorsing Facebook and asking "well, did you try it?" though...
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4600 | Which kinds of answers in comments (if any) do we want to keep?
As I already said here, if we want to better define our stance on answers in comments, this has to be a community effort.
We have to clarify how we react to users posting comments as answers, how, if, and when they should be flagged, and when we want to delete them.
I therefore do not think that one meta question suffices to establish a well-rounded policy on this that most of us can get behind.
Therefore I will split this process into multiple questions, the first of which is:
Which kinds of answers in comments (if any) do we want to keep?
Procedure
There are plenty of collections of general arguments against answers in comments.
Please have a look at least one of them to make an informed decision:
Please don't write answers in comments on Interpersonal SE.
Should users refrain from answers (or partial answers) in comments? on RPG SE.
Post answers outlining a single type of comment that you want to keep.
Types can be based on context, e.g., “comments answering questions that were not closed for shopping”.
Provide a rationale, with some examples, why these should be allowed.
Define your rationale as clearly as possible so we can build a practical policy around this.
Upvote answers you agree with; downvote answers you disagree with.
Answers that have a score of 5 and at least twice as many upvotes as downvotes will be considered community consensus (rule stolen from here).
If any other answers have a positive score, we will decide how to proceed on a per-case basis.
Do not post a blanket answer that no answers in comments should be accepted.
Such answers will be deleted without warning.
The proper way to obtain this outcome is if no answer reaches the threshold for acceptance. (This is to prevent a self-contradictory outcome.)
You can post a blanket answer that all answers in comments are fine, but you better have very good arguments.
What this is not about
Whatever the outcome of this question is, it will not be suddenly in effect.
We still will have to decide about implementation issues such as:
How should answers in comments be flagged?
How should moderators handle these flags?
How do we react to users answering in the comments?
How do we deal with old answers in comments?
While it is good to keep such practical concerns in mind when suggesting exceptions, this question is only about setting the goal.
(1) I know that moderators are able to delete every comment on a post. Are they able to delete single comments? (2) Do moderators have the ability to convert comments into answers, as if the original commenter posted the answer? Or would the closest we can get be "I'm posting as an answer the comment provided by [commenter]: ..."
@Teepeemm: 1) Yes, we are able to delete single comments. 2) No, we cannot convert a comment into an answer (only the other way round).
We should keep high-quality answers-as-comments on closed questions when there is little overlap between the answers and the comments. In such cases, we can offer advice to the OP even if their question is not a good fit for our format.
Note the caveats:
High-quality. Since there is no opportunity to downvote comments, this proposal does not extend to low-quality answers-as-comments.
Little overlap between comments and answers. If the comment is already covered by an answer, the comment is essentially a "super upvote," which is not constructive.
I somewhat disagree with your example (last paragraph). If somebody can assess the situation to the extent that they can provide a useful answer that is not speculative or misleading (and without coincidentally knowing the OP via other means), the question should not be closed for depending on individual factors to begin with. The entire point of that close reason is that we need to make assumptions to answer, which can be harmful if the assumptions are incorrect.
However, I agree in general that it is a good idea to keep comments like “Only you supervisor can answer this because […]” that essentially boil down the admittedly broad FAQ for closing for depending on individual factors for the asker.
@Wrzlprmft - I had understood that close reason also included questions that "could not generalize to others." For example, people post questions all the time where they post their stats and ask for advice on grad school admissions -- we could answer these without making assumptions, but most of them get closed for individual factors. Still -- I acknowledge your point and will just remove the example altogether, I think the proposal is clear without it.
advice on grad school admissions -- we could answer these without making assumptions – Can we? We can make a somewhat educated guess, but at the end of the day we may be still be wrong about it. It’s like somebody asking whether it’s okay to hand in a PhD thesis typeset in Papyrus. The best guess is “no”, but it may still work in some places.
This merely rewards off-topic questions and thus encourages more of them. It also expressly permits people to post answers that bypass the peer review system. I fail to see why anyone would want this.
Generic, brief comment answers should be kept, including but not limited to those on questions that are otherwise closed for off-topic/too-specific reasons
Examples would be general advice to seek some sort of professional counselling/therapy/mental health services, and advice that someone should ask their advisor/supervisor/mentor/PI.
These are general enough that they are unlikely to require down votes, and fit many situations that are otherwise not appropriate or not solvable questions for SE.
I would agree if it weren't for the "not limited to" clause. If the question is not solvable, it should be closed. If it is solvable and one feels that "ask your advisor" is the best solution, then that should be an answer. There's nothing wrong with 2-sentence answers, some of them get hundreds of upvotes.
@cag51: If the best answer to a question is “ask your supervisor” (and nothing else), it should be closed for depending on individual factors. One of the reasons we have this close reason is to this kind of answer being repeated over and over. From another point of view, we could comment instead: “Have you asked your advisor?” as a request for clarification, and only consider answering if that did not solve the problem.
Agree -- I did say a 2-sentence answer, not a 3-word answer :-) But there could be (and are) many well-received answers that say "this is perfectly normal; you should discuss this with your supervisor. In particular, bring up X." I find this preferable to writing "ask your supervisor" as a comment.
@cag51 Indeed, I mostly intended this answer for situations where I think the question should be closed. In that case, although I'm suggesting the comment is an answer, the reason I'm defending it is that I think of it more as explaining the close vote (i.e., I'm voting to close because this question is too specific to your circumstances and therefore you need to ask your advisor instead). The main reason I wouldn't limit it is because there can be disagreement about whether a question should be closed or not.
Thanks for clarifying -- yes, I agree any exemption that applies "to closed questions" will have to have some sort of grace period for open questions that may become closed.
Do nothing. Answers in comments are not a problem that needs solving.
"Do not post a blanket answer that no answers in comments should be accepted." I do not advocate "accepting" them, whatever that means. Doing nothing does not mean approving putting answers in comments.
We should keep high-quality answers-as-comments when they are posted to old, inactive questions and do not overlap with existing answers. I am referring to answers-in-comments that are much younger than the question they answer.
We should still encourage the OP (or someone else) to convert the comments to an answer. But since the question is inactive and most of the answer-posting and voting is likely finished, the cost of deleting a valuable comment is usually higher than the cost of allowing answers-in-comments.
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4947 | Frame-challenge guidelines – idea collection
Update: The FAQ is now live. Please do not make changes or discuss them here anymore.
A frame challenge is an answer, comment (or part thereof) that doesn’t attempt to answer the question as is, but instead disputes things the asker treats as given in their question (challenges the frame of the question). A common example are answers that point out that a question is an XY question.
Frame challenges are a relevant part of this site, but they also bear the risk of belittling the asker and are a frequent source of drama (e.g., here).
That’s why I would like to create a set of rules and guidelines for them.
The goal here is not to ban frame challenges altogether, but avoid the bad ones and make the good ones better and more welcoming.
Also, this gives (diamond and community) moderators a basis for deletions, edits, and constructive comments.
Given the individuality of frame challenges, I expect that we create a mix of rules and guidelines with a considerable grey area to be decided on a per-case basis.
Since there are a lot of angles on this, I would like to start with collecting aspects that we like to see included in such a guide.
Please post answers for single aspects.
These may be about (but are not limited to):
something that you want to forbid, discourage, allow, or encourage;
examples of problematic behaviour that you cannot categorise, but want to see avoided in the future;
both, answers and comments, and if you think some rule should differ between them;
what kind of assumptions can be frame-challenged;
under which conditions frame challenges are appropriate.
Why are we using RPG jargon? A frame challenge is just contradicting the question. https://rpg.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6842/whats-a-frame-challenge/6843#6843
@AnonymousPhysicist The term is used throughout SE; it may have originated on RPG but I don't know that history with certainty. In any event, no, a frame challenge is not "just contradicting the question", it's an effort to provide the answer someone needs rather than the answer someone thought they needed before they asked the question.
@BryanKrause Those are the same. And wouldn't it be better to get the question improved, where possible?
@AnonymousPhysicist It depends. Sometimes an XY question leaves the "X" unclear and it needs clarification (that's the classic XY problem question). Other times it's quite clear what "X" is, it's just that "Y" is the wrong direction - that's where a frame challenge happens.
@BryanKrause "Other times it's quite clear what "X" is, it's just that "Y" is the wrong direction" Then the question needs to be revised.
Given the amount of 'grey area' expected, I really do not think that any set of 'rules and guidelines' will come close to boxing in 'good' vs 'bad' frame challenges (which are often in the eye of the beholder). I think most of the guidelines could be boiled down to "don't be a jerk". Frame challenges are a very important tool, particularly if done well, to make people re-assess the situation.
@AnonymousPhysicist No, no it definitely does not.
@JonCuster: My experience on this site tells me that many users have difficulties to avoid (unintentionally) being a jerk – in particular when it comes to frame challenges. Even if the proposed guide avoids only that, it’s worth it.
@AnonymousPhysicist I'd respectfully disagree, especially when it comes to common mistaken ideas. Think of it as a class of question/answer pairs of the form: "I am concerned about X" and "This is a common misconception, that usually means that you need to address Y."
@jakebeal You could create a separate question which addresses the misconception.
I feel like I'm missing something in this discussion. Can you share any info on flagging in the examples you're pointing to?
@ScottSeidman: Can you be more specific about what you are missing? I am only referencing one example and I don’t think there is much information to be had in the respective flags. And even then, I don’t think (or claim) that that example is essential for understanding the question.
I'm trying to get more of a feel for why the situation you describe needs to be handled as an exception, and why the current downvote/delete answer vote and our flag system for answers and comments doesn't do the job. Were the examples cited above and below flagged? How would a policy addition smooth things out? I suppose another way to say this is "I'm still not sure what problem you're trying to solve"
@ScottSeidman: Yes, there are often flags, comment discussions, meta discussions, etc. on this. Community and diamond moderators find it difficult to draw lines. Downvoting is not a suitable tool for off-topicness and rudeness. Deleting on the other hand becomes easier with a consensus. So, the problem I am trying to solve here is to avoid recurrent debates, bad blood, and easing moderation.
Using my own questions as examples.
Frame challenges are fine if the frame shift answers the question. E.g.
Why do academics drink so much coffee? Showing that academics don't drink more coffee than average answers the question because it shows the null hypothesis is good enough and the question isn't necessary.
Why is the UK such a brain magnet? Showing that the UK isn't a brain magnet renders the question moot.
Frame challenges are not fine if they challenge something that the OP should know better than the person making the challenge, or if the frame challenge doesn't answer the question even if it's correct. E.g.
In a yes/no question, a student gives the right answer and an unnecessary but wrong explanation. How to grade? This question gives an example of a "right answer but wrong explanation". Showing that the answer is actually right still doesn't answer the question, because it only answers that one example, and there are countless possible other examples that can be used to illustrate the problem.
What should an editor do if the authors have guessed who the reviewers are? Arguing that the authors haven't guessed the identity of the reviewers is rude since the editor undoubtedly knows better than someone who hasn't seen the manuscript, plus even if it's true, it doesn't answer the question (see first bullet point).
*Showing that the answer is actually right * did you mean to write "explanation" rather than "answer"?
Aww... the coffee one got closed? I loved answering that one, and have nominated if for reopening, since I thought it was a great question despite the mistaken assumption.
I like the one-liner "Frame challenges are not fine if they challenge something that the OP should know better than the person making the challenge." If they say someone made a rude or sexist comment to them, don't challenge it. If a student asks about a grading decision perhaps we could frame-challenge them because they are here to ask questions of experienced educators (among other roles).
I disagree with the first point made here. Often it is impossible to answer the question, given the frame: "Why are black people (or women) such terrible researchers?" Few are that extreme, of course, but some questions can't be answered without adopting at least some of the incorrect assumptions of the OP.
I would add another criterion to Allure's useful list: If most of the answer is about issues that are different from that of the question, the frame-challenge is probably not helpful but off-topic.
A helpful frame-challenge will quickly address the false premise and then return to giving advice on the issue at hand. If instead it gets lost in long asides, it turns the question into an arbitrary occasion to talk about something largely unrelated, which I find quite rude.
With more than three quarters of the text devoted to the semantics of "racism" and related terms, I believe the latter applies to one of the answers that motivated this thread.
In my view, this issue should be viewed relative to the totality of all answers to the question, not just the proportion of a particular answer that is devoted to the "frame challenge". If there are 10 answers, and only one of them is a frame-challenge, but it devotes 75% of its text to that challenge, that is still a small proportion of the overall advice.
@Ben Walls of text are rarely well received on this site, no matter their content and no matter how many other answers a question may have.
@jakebeal: I agree completely. And that is all the more reason to consider the racism answer a valuable frame-challenge answer; it is one of the rare cases where a long answer (a "wall of text" if you will) was well-received and highly upvoted.
@Ben I am not agreeing with you. Upvoted off-topic material is still off-topic.
@Ben: How many of the upvoters do you think actually read the entire answer? And if they didn’t on what basis did they vote?
@Ben: Your previous comment suggests that you think that people upvoted the answer in question on basis of its entire content. I may be wrong though (hence “suggest”) and that’s why I ask you. But, yes, I do not think that most upvoters of your answer read it in its entirety. And FWIW, I have many long answers myself where I think that most upvoters didn’t read the entire answer but instead upvoted on basis of the summary, a nice picture, whatever I boldfaced, a funny remark I made, or similar. Also, I did not ask you to justify the votes. […]
[…] Also, while the motivation of individual votes is somewhat sacrosanct on SE (mostly to avoid rudeness when voters do elaborate their motivation in a comment), voting patterns and trends are not. We discuss them on meta all the time, and we must: Votes are a main driving force of this site and if they do not work as intended (i.e., by identifying the most helpful/correct answer), we have a problem. There are numerous examples of clearly wrong answers or non-answers that have been extensively upvoted. If votes worked perfectly, we would not need the NAA flag.
@Ben and the others That the Hot Network Questions list skews the votes of questions and answers , attracting lots of users not familiar with a certain area and who likely read the Q&A superficially , is a well-known fact across the whole Stack Exchange network, and this is what Wrzlprmft is referring to. I thus removed the accusations of trolling and the subsequent discussion.
moderators: The accusation of trolling remains, notwithstanding any dynamics of the HNQ. As both myself and @AnonymousPhysicist have pointed out, asking someone to justify the reasoning for the upvotes of other users is trolling. ("How many of the upvoters do you think actually read the entire answer? And if they didn’t on what basis did they vote?") Censoring that observation to protect moderator actions from valid criticism (while keeping the moderator comments untouched) is IMHO a misuse of power.
@Ben I would counter that you are placing too much weight on the single metric of "upvotes" and too little on other metrics, such as "flags", "meta discussion", "long-standing forum norms". Decision on content moderation is definitely not based on an upvote-based popularity contest; I hope we can all agree that would be a bad idea.
@eykanal: I agree that would be a bad idea. What is also a bad idea is moderators trolling users, then removing criticism of that trolling from multiple users, while leaving moderator's remarks intact. That is an abuse of moderating power (to be clear, one done by other moderators; not you).
I don't think throwing around allegations re: trolling is super-deescalating, but there's a case for leaving comments on meta alone as long as they're not rude or totally off-topic. After all, meta comments are for discussing, unlike main-site comments.
What's particularly wrong with downvoting followed by votes to delete, when eligible?
To add to Allure's great answer:
If the question states that the asker personally experienced a traumatic event, claiming that the traumatic event did not occur, or claiming that the event was not traumatic, is abusive. Comments or answers which deny traumatic events should be flagged as abusive and removed.
Keep in mind that the sorts of people who ask questions often have a much broader view of what is traumatic than the sorts of people who post "frame challenges."
My understanding is that this maintains the status quo.
Can you include a few standard examples of traumatic events, so that we are all on the same page here? I have the feeling that some people who frame-challenge such reports do not even realise that the event could be traumatic (or even is traumatic even if the frame challenge is corret).
What about cases where the facts are not challenged, and the occurrence of trauma is not challenged, but characterisations are challenged (e.g., this event was racist, sexist, etc.).
@Ben There is an important distinction that I think that you are missing. You seem to want to assess an event, as opposed to the experiences of the participants in the event. Consider a PTSD reaction to somebody setting off a set of firecrackers. It doesn't matter what the person who set off the firecrackers was thinking, it's still a traumatic experience for the person with PTSD.
@jakebeal: In the posts that have led to this meta question, both cases involved characterisations of an external event or person by the OP; not characterisations of their own feelings. In one case it involved the OP using a derogatory name for a group of people; in the other it involved an assertion that a certain person was a racist (or had done a thing that was racist). So while I appreciate that the distinction you mention exists, the questions at issue are on the side of this distinction that I am referring to ---i.e., they are characterisations by OP of external events/people.
@Ben You may have triggered this discussion, but it's not just about your posts and the arguments that you would like to have with people. My response here is with respect to this answer and your comment that I responded to. Would you care to engage with the PTSD example that I provided?
@ben I've never seen a Q where "well ackshually that's not sexism" was a good answer to the Q.
@jakebeal: Since the PTSD is not a full question, I guess I would say that the legitimacy of a frame-challenge will depend on the specific question. If someone in that situation asks, "How do I deal with my PTSD" then I don't see any valuable frame-challenge. If instead they ask, "How do I get fire-crackers banned from 4 July celebrations at my University" then a frame-challenge might be in order.
In any case, what I am pointing out here is that there are some cases (which have actually led to disputed answers) where the point at issue is not a fact known to OP, but a characterisation by OP of a fact that is described in the post. Moreover, sometimes the question at issue hinges on that characterisation of the fact. In that case, there may be a reasonable frame-challenge if the characterisation of the fact is dubious.
@Ben If you think facts are "characterized" incorrectly, I suggest you ask on Meta about the best response before posting an answer. Or simply post a comment requesting clarification.
I would maybe add a clarification to what you propose in the lines of If the question states that the asker personally experienced a traumatic event, without disclosing the details, then claiming that the traumatic event did not occur, or claiming that the event was not traumatic, is abusive. If the details or specifics are given, I think it's fair game to (respectfully and tactfully) challenge the interpretation of the event or point out if the OPs perception of the event perhaps differs from how others would react to the situation.
An (oversimplified) example would be "Somebody sent me an e-mail addressing me as "Dear Mr. X" but I am a female and a Dr.! How do I stand up to this sexist action?" -- I think it would be fair dos to challenge whether this the e-mail sender really behaved sexist, or just an unintentional mistake for whatever reason. In this case and in any other the OPs feelings shouldn't be questioned (i.e. they were hurt to be addressed so in an e-mail), but if OP describes a situation I think we should be able to challenge their interpretation.
@penelope: If the details or specifics are given, […] – While I concur, this is an almost academic edge case: We need exclusively written communication (lest we lack tone, gestures, etc.), in full (which often violates anonymity or is too long), and with all relevant context (in your example: asker’s first name, sender’s cultural background, etc.). The only example I can think of was when an anonymous editor desk-rejected paper of the asker, who shared the rejection mail, which was the only communication they ever received from the journal.
Maybe it's helpful to start by laying out (my view of) the status quo, so we can see where (if anywhere) we can improve.
Most frame challenges are done in the comments. Since the goal is to clarify the premise or reframe (improve) the question, this is an appropriate use of comments.
In rare cases, these go too far and offend or belittle the asker (and sometimes the asker becomes irrationally offended at reasonable questions)
Sometimes we try to over-constrain the question. For example, if a user unfamiliar with academia just wants a one paragraph overview of how something works (including how it might vary), it can be frustrating when we force them to specify a million different variables before answering.
Sometimes the frame challenge is technical (rather than about Academia) and so this is mostly off-topic (which is fine, we can move it from the comments into chat).
In rarer cases, good answers can involve discussion of the framing
This often happens when it is completely clear that a particular misconception has led to the question.
Another such scenario is when we get no responses to our requests for details, in which case we must decide whether to close as "details needed" or to provide answers that give our "best guesses" based on the available facts (usually the latter).
Answerers sometimes give advice as part of their answer ("you only asked whether this is possible, but just for the record, it is a terrible idea and you shouldn't do it even if it is possible"). This is mostly fine.
In rare cases, answers fail to answer the actual question (e.g., "I don't know if it's possible, but it doesn't matter, you shouldn't do it"), or include long passages that are relevant to the discussion but do not answer the question. As Catija's answer yesterday reminded us, "the bulk of the answer should focus on the question itself," and so such answers are susceptible to "not an answer" flags.
This often happens when it is completely clear that a particular misconception has led to the question This is key. By contrast, we should refrain from frame-challenges, if it is merely possible or perhaps even likely that the question is based on a misconception. Otherwise we would engage in speculation, which isn't useful and easily derails the discussion.
It looks to me like all the scenarios you list that require intervention are adequately handled already using existing means.
Right, like I said in the first sentence, this is more-or-less what we do now. This was intended as a discussion-starter, not a proposal for change.
I don't see much of a reason to do this.
The issue only becomes an issue if people are violating the much-discussed "be-nice" rules. If people are violating that, then there are enforcement options in place. We have existing tools that adequately deal with such issues, we do not need new ones.
As an academician, I've never not benefitted in some way from approaching a problem from a differing viewpoint. The idea of limiting answers assigned to some "frame changing" category is anathema to me. I suggest that "frame changing" might not be the real problem you're trying to solve, and encourage you to spend more time better defining the problematic aspect.
While I clearly disagree with some of the views espoused in answers in some of the problematic cases put forth here, I found the original answer in at least one case to be largely responsive to the questions, and polite. I learned from the poster presenting their views. Yes, discussion got a little out of hand, but once again, I point you to enforcement of the "be nice" criteria as a way to handle this.
In some of the examples posted, I can certainly understand how some would view a deletion based on a "framing" issue to be a suppression of an unpopular view (and yes-- the view is unpopular to me as well, though that's neither here nor there).
Dealing with some unpleasantness every now and again is an aspect of moderation. While I'm appreciative of moderators' time, if a situation like this popping up periodically is taxing our moderation resources, a viable approach would be more moderators.
I suggest that any moderation time saved by any policy along these lines may well be eaten up by higher level discussion with community staff. (In fact, it might be a good idea to invite community staff into this thread).
I don't think this is being proposed to save moderator's time, but to create a guideline that can be pointed to when moderators make decisions on this sort of thing.
In addition to what Bryan Krause said, having a consensus also helps to cut drama short before (diamond) moderation is needed or avoid it in the first place. Also, while we can start elaborations and discussions based on the code of conduct (née be nice) every single time such problems occur, we would have to re-iterate the same (lengthy) discussion many times. It’s like working with limits whenever one could use the product rule. Here I think it is better to have a general discussion on how to apply the code of conduct to such cases.
This site has too many complex and arbitrary rules.
Frame challenges are inherently unwelcoming.
"moderators a basis for deletions, edits" Moderator action is not needed for frame challenges unless they break an existing rule, such as being rude.
I do appreciate that you're providing a frame challenge for the question of frame challenges, though...
Frame-challenges for controversial cases (e.g., racism, sexism, derogation, etc.)
One particular context in which frame-challenges have occured, and have been controversial (e.g., in the case cited in the Meta post), is where the initial question makes an assertion that some behaviour or some person (or group of people) is bad or evil in some way ---e.g., when a behaviour is asserted to be racist, sexist, etc., or when a person or group of people are labelled with a derogatory term. Another case that sometimes generates controversy is where there are assertions of fact/evidence on university proceedings that may or may not be accurate. In such cases, answers will sometimes devote a substantial amount of space to questioning or critiquing such assertions. Some examples include:
Disputes over racism, sexism, bigotry, etc.: Question asserts that a particular behaviour is racist, sexist, bigoted, etc; answer challenges this assertion.
Disputes over derogatory label: Question labels a person or group of people with a derogatory name; answer challenges this descriptor.
Disputes over factual assertions/evidence in proceedings: Question concerns some kind of (actual or potential) misconduct proceeding and makes assertions of fact/evidence; answer either challenges or questions these assertions or shows sccepticism in the assertions.
I think it would be beneficial to set out clear guidelines for these cases (and other common cases that are drivers for controversy), since they seem to me to be the main drivers for controversial "frame challenges".
My view is that answerers must have scope to question, critique, or even "attack" (not my preferred word), premises in questions on these topics. In many cases we give answers that take questioners "at their word", but a broad diversity of advice also requires this to be tempered with allowing answers that critique premises. Frame-challenges should be allowed (even encouraged) in these cases. If this is not allowed, the alternative is that aspects of questions on this site become dogma that is immune the challenge ---e.g., one cannot challenge assertions of racism, sexism, bigotry, etc., or derogatory labels applied to (unpopular) people/groups, or factual/evidentiary aspects of misconduct proceedings. If guidelines were to prevent frame-challenges in these cases, that seems to me to set us in a direction where the site would devolve into "censorship" and a prevailing orthodoxy ---immune to challenge--- would inevitably take over. I can't imagine that this would improve the quality of the site.
This is the academia stack exchange. Answers should be about academia, not about bigotry or bigotry denial. Off topic posts have always been censored.
“Question asserts that a particular behaviour is racist, sexist, bigoted, etc” – First, in most cases, this answer applies. Moreover, when such cases leave any doubt, they strongly depend on context, tone, gestures, translation, and other things we cannot possibly know. It is the asker’s responsibility to judge these things; we cannot do this. At best, we might tactfully inquire what evidence the asker has (since this may affect suggested procedures) or point out that the account as presented may not convince an authority.
Disputes over derogatory label: Question labels a person or group of people with a derogatory name; […] – I see two cases here, neither of which are reason for a frame challenge: A) The person or group is identified, in which case the question violates the code of conduct and often this policy and should be deleted or edited. […]
[…] B) The target is anonymous (and the label itself does not violate the code of conduct). Here we cannot possibly judge whether the assertion is accurate (as we don’t know the target) and have to trust the asker. Without negative labels such as crackpot, troll, conspiracy theorist, narcissistic, racist, disorganised, unreliable, we cannot have a fluent conversation about the respective issues, though I would never or hardly ever call somebody these in their face.
Disputes over factual assertions/evidence in proceedings – I cannot think of an example where we had something like this, so I am not sure I understand this correctly. Can you give an example for this? As far as I know, we never had proceedings detailed here, and if we had, it would be out of place. And if we don’t have the proceedings, how could we frame-challenge them?
I don't understand the argument here. You seem to be saying that when we disallow or discourage challenging a question's premise in certain cases, then we can no longer challenge the question's premise in these cases. That is of course true, but it's also tautological. You may call this "dogma" and "censorship", I call it "community consensus" and "moderation".
@henning: You may label it a different thing, but it seems we agree on the substance of what occurs. If we disallow challanges to certain kinds of premises then this neccessarily eliminates dissent from a viewpoint. You may call this "cimmunity consensus" but in practice it is the elimination of dissent (which I suppose is a kind of forced consensus). I don't view that as something that is in keeping with academic responsibilities or the utility of this site.
@Ben I don't think we agree on that. I'm not making any suggestion about what kinds of frame challenges on what kinds of topics should be discouraged here (on that see answers above). I'm just saying your argument against having such rules is begging the question.
My concern is that on the specific topics I mention, the elimination of premise-challenges will create a de facto enforcement of a baseline orthodoxy. You can call that baseline orthodoxy a "dogma" or a "community consensus" but its substance will be what it is, and it will not be a good aspect of the site.
@Ben the substance of whatever aspects of questions we will agree to take for granted (what you call "orthodoxy") depends on the respective question. Sometimes this will concern race/discrimination/other controversial topic, sometimes it won't. I don't think we need a "protected class" of topics that can't be frame-challenged (if that's your concern); however, from my experience, the status quo on this site is such that questions related to said issues almost always have their premise questioned, at least in comments, often in answers. So, potential guidelines will be pertinent more often.
@henning: That does not appear to be the present status quo. A protection against challenge seems to be exactly what is being proposed here in the "guidelines" (and it has already been pre-emptively enforced in coercive edits to at least one answer). If answers are edited by moderators to remove substantive content containing premise-challenges then my fears are exactly what is happening right now.
@Ben I still have to see a single call for advice by someone suffering discrimination that's isn't greeted with a demand for "proof".
If we disallow challanges to certain kinds of premises then this neccessarily eliminates dissent from a viewpoint. – Just that no dissent is voiced against an assertion in a question does not mean that we support it. For example, if an asker complains about their thesis being graded too badly and we do not challenge that assertion, nobody would think that we actually think that particular thesis deserves a better grade or that grades should generally be higher. […]
[…] Similarly, if an asker wants to know their options for handling a racist remark towards them, us not challenging whether the remark was actually racist does not mean that we support any verdict on the actual remark (as elaborated in my first comment, we usually lack the information to do that; same as for the thesis grade) or a harder stance on racism.
Usually the "challenge" in question does not even go so far as to contradict the complaint --- in the cases at issue here (e.g., the post on alleged racism), the premise-challenge only went so far as to advise the questioner to consider other possible causes of the statement and make further enquiries. So realistically, we are not talking about "challenges" that force the OP to prove their view; we are usually just talking about raising with them the possibility that they might be wrong.
An overarching concern --- please consider with an open mind
At the risk of being further downvoted into oblivion, let me give a warning to the moderators/senior users of this site. I have noticed that there is an imbalance in rules-based challenges to answers that corresponds roughly to a preference for answers that push a "left-progressive" cultural viewpoint on various topics. When left-progressive views are put in answers, those are not flagged/removed/edited (even if clearly off-topic), but when answers present a dissenting view they are commonly challenged as "off topic" and "rude/abusive". In such cases, moderators sometimes take the (manifestly biased) view that "where there's smoke there's fire" and flags are treated as gospel, without serious consideration of the actual content of answers.**
As some of you will know/admit/grudgingly accept, academia has a well documented bias towards left-progressive viewpoints, and it is something that is derogating severely from the reputational legitimacy of the academy, to the point where there will be serious threats to the viability of university funding in the future (in my view). AC.SE seems to me to be following this general trend, where there is an effort to purge viewpoints that challenge the left-progressive hegemony. The vehicle through which this is done here is the "off topic" flag or the "rude/abusive" flag when someone sets a frame challenge to a question that assumes this orthodoxy. In the cases I have seen, the answers so flagged have clearly not been rude/abusive; often they have been extremely charitable to the OP. The reality is that the motivation is not bureaucratic but ideological/political; I have never seen an off-topic pro-progressive viewpoint generate the reaction of the recent posts.
Ignore my view if you like, but you have been warned. This is a serious issue, and it is not the internal moderators/users who will ultimately be the judges of the quality/legitimacy of sites like this. There is also a broader movement (see e.g., here) expressing deep concern for the trajectory of the academy, and it is only a matter of time before mass delegitimacy occurs. I already see new users come on here and complain that there is a leftist orthodoxy that is not open to reasonable dissent and then they leave (which seems to be by design). The present efforts seem to me to be less of a genuine bureaucratic response to a problem, and more of an ideological campaign to enforce a specific orthodoxy. If you decide to hem the site in with rules that enforce a narrow orthodoxy, it is going to wreck the site. Guys like me will continue to be a thorn in the side, but others will just turn off and conclude that this site is an ideological/cultural monoculture, unworthy of genuine consideration.
** This answer by a site moderator openly states that the mere occurrence of multiple flags shows that an answer is problematic; a clear case of pre-emption of any actual investigation of the content of the answer.
I'd like to suggest an alternate perspective to consider: your answers are spending a lot of time arguing for a particular perspective rather than simply stating it as a possibility and moving to focus on the OPs question. Consider the difference between ten paragraphs arguing a remark might not be racism, vs. saying something like: "Despite the fact that it appeared racist to you, they might have had other reasons for their remark." and then moving on to explain your advice. The first can easily come off as an attack on the OP, while the second is more likely to get your perspective heard.
Is there any suggestion how to manage frame-challenges here, or are you just making a(nother) general political observation?
@jakebeal: I appreciate that some people don't like long frame-challenges. This should be viewed not just with respect to the proportion of a single answer used, but with respect to the totality of answers. One reason that I spend time putting in alternate views on these issues is that the totality of other answers tends to accept premises uncritically, and so it is useful (in my view) to add an answer that gives an alternate view, even if this means a longer explanation. Interpreting explanations of reasoning as an "attack" on OP is not very academic in my view.
@henning: This post is on the latter. The Meta post is labelled as a call for "idea collection" (pretty broad canvas) so this answer registers an overarching concern that does not contain a solution but alerts users to a problem.
@Ben Please read my comment more carefully. It does not actually say what you appear to believe that it says.
@jakebeal: Sorry, I'm not suggesting that you're the one interpreting it this way; I just mean that if it "comes off as an attack" (to whomever makes that interpretation) then that suggests a deficiency in the environment where people are not open to frame challenges to begin with.
The academy exists to progress society. The fact that it is doing that is not cause for delegitimization, that is how it derives its legitimacy.
@Ben as broad as this canvas may be, your answer still leaves me guessing whether it's drawn on the canvass or next to it. Seeing your other answers, I can't help but notice a bit of a pattern.
@Ben but even to the (off-topic) point, I get you don't like it that the average academic doesn't share your political views. (The average academic doesn't share my views either.) But you "argument" commits a slippery slope fallacy: You extrapolate a trend (if it can be called a trend with only one observation in time) to an absurd extreme.
@Ben Btw, in modernity, societal subsystems don't derive their legitimacy from the political center. The average artist may be a left cosmopolitan, the average lawyer a right-wing conservative, the average scientist a left liberal, the average businessperson a right-wing libertarian. Yet artistic beauty isn't evaluated politically but aesthetically; the law isn't adjudicated through ballot, scientific truth isn't discovered by politics but by method, and growth can't be legislated. (In the US and the UK, not even the political system derives it legitimacy from proportional representation.)
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5387 | May I ask this question or will it be closed?
I'd like to know if I can get more specific than a checklist to understand whether or not my research paper (at the graduate level for getting my M.Sc.) is good enough to publish anywhere. It's been reviewed and approved by professors, and personally, I think it stands on its own and is unique for being a survey of the latest and most efficient algorithms in a particular part of geometric problems, and making the results intelligible for a non-expert audience. However I find no objective measure to apply myself, and I would prefer to let somebody else read it before I try to submit it for publication or even put it online.
The content of research including evaluation of your specific paper is off topic here.
If you link to your work it might appear like spam; while it may not be your personal intent, other people try to use this site in a self-promotion way. We do not permit that.
The people to ask would be the professors who have reviewed your work, your masters advisor in particular.
I see that questions are accepted asking "What are the criteria for XYZ to be accepted". I'm worried that it's true what they said about research that reviews and responses are worse than random decisions.
@NiklasRosencrantz There's certainly randomness to the publication process, which is pretty expected if you give it some thought; if you have 2-3 reviewers for a paper, and not everyone agrees about whether it should be published, then the decision depends on which group those 2-3 individuals are drawn from. The broader concept of what is publishable is not as random, though it takes a lot of expert work to evaluate a given project and decide. So, the person you should ask is someone personally invested in your success, like your MSc advisor.
If it's a survey paper, it's not research in the academic sense of original work advancing knowledge, so it's a matter of whether there's sufficient need in the area you wrote it in that it would be useful enough to others to be published.
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