<issue_start>username_0: I am trying to print this really cool [flying toy model](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4551901/comments) on my [ToyBox](https://toybox.com/) 3D printer, but when I try to print the "copter\_key-175.stl" file it complains it is a "non-manifold shape". How can I fix this .stl file?

---

[update START]

*Update for future readers:*
I haven't tried it yet, but the Free and Open Source slicer software, [Slic3r](https://github.com/slic3r/Slic3r), boasts this feature worth trying:

>
> **auto-repair** of non-manifold meshes (and ability to re-export them);
>
>
>

Update again: the **best slicers**, it seems, based on my research, are:

1. **Cura** (FOSS and professionally supported),
2. **PrusaSlicer** (FOSS, forked from Slic3r, and also professionally supported now).

Articles to look at:

1. [Google search for "slic3r vs cura"](https://www.google.com/search?q=slic3r%20vs%20cura&oq=slic3r%20vs%20cura&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i65.2775j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)
	1. Slic3r vs Cura (Cura wins; Slic3r lags due to no full-time company-sponsored development): <https://all3dp.com/2/slic3r-vs-cura-3d-printer-slicer-software-shootout/>
2. [Google search for "prusaslicer vs cura"](https://www.google.com/search?q=prusaslicer%20vs%20cura&oq=prusaslicer%20vs%20cura&aqs=chrome..69i57.10468j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)
	1. PrusaSlicer vs Cura (Cura wins, but just barely, since both are professionally supported with full-time developers): <https://all3dp.com/2/prusaslicer-vs-cura-differences/>

[update END]

---

Note that I have printed many ToyBox-designed models perfectly with this printer over the last 24 hrs.

I have also split the model (to cut the last few cm off the end and shorten it) using this technique here in TinkerCad, then exported the part as a shorter part so I could print on the smaller bed of the ToyBox printer.

Here is what the "key" is supposed to look like:

[![3D rendering of 'key'](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hTkbn.jpg "3D rendering of 'key'")](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hTkbn.jpg "3D rendering of 'key'")

And here is how it comes out instead. Notice the misaligned teeth and layers about halfway through. Once I saw it was botched, I stopped the print early.

[![Side view of 3D printed 'key'](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9BQTr.jpg "Side view of 3D printed 'key'")](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9BQTr.jpg "Side view of 3D printed 'key'")

[![Top view of 3D printed 'key'](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1gm0T.jpg "Top view of 3D printed 'key'")](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1gm0T.jpg "Top view of 3D printed 'key'")

[![Angled view of 3D printed 'key'](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GqYyf.jpg "Angled view of 3D printed 'key'")](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GqYyf.jpg "Angled view of 3D printed 'key'")

[![Back view of 3D printed 'key'](https://i.stack.imgur.com/RE9sB.jpg "Back view of 3D printed 'key'")](https://i.stack.imgur.com/RE9sB.jpg "Back view of 3D printed 'key'")

**How can I make it print properly and/or how can I fix the .stl file?**

Notes:
------

* My operating system is Linux Ubuntu 20.04
* I have Windows 10 running in the VirtualBox virtual machine in case I need to run Fusion 360 or something in Windows
* I tried installing Meshmixer inside Windows 10 and it won't open. I had read online it can be used to fix .stl files, so I was going to look into that.
[![Screenshot of Meshmixer Error Report dialog box](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yfPSh.png "Screenshot of Meshmixer Error Report dialog box")](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yfPSh.png "Screenshot of Meshmixer Error Report dialog box")

Related:
--------

* my comment on [Thingiverse](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4551901/comments#comment-6238246)
* my help request on [Toybox](https://maketoys.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/4411413024916-Cannot-split-part-in-editor-Something-went-wrong-please-try-again-)
* Another person seeking help for this: [tinkercad.zendesk.com: Non-Manifold Model](https://tinkercad.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360038762593-Non-Manifold-Model)<issue_comment>username_1: I have printed at least 5 of them (Cura Slicer, Creality CR10s) and there have been no problems. So I can't understand your problems. I would suggest to use another slicer (Cura). I have now repaired the file with Meshmixer and added it (copter\_key-175\_meshmixer-repair.stl). Maybe this solves your problem.
<https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4551901>
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Non-manifold objects are only accidentally solid, as sometimes it becomes unclear what is the inside and what is the outside. Some slicers attempt to fix this and do a good job of guessing how to correct it. Also, some non-manifold errors are easier to fix than others.

If your slicer is complaining about a part file being non-manifold or you suspect that this is causing a problem, you should bring it into a surface mesh editor like meshlab or blender and try to fix it with the manifold test and repair tools in either of these programs.

Typical ways an STL file could be non-manifold include:

* cracks between faces caused by round off error
* missing faces
* flipped faces
* interior faces
* faces that intersect somewhere other than an edge
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: Update 24 Mar. 2023: the maximum *usable* print volume of the ToyBox 3D printer is approximately *74 x 79 x 100 mm (width x length x height)*, *and* you must add supports to keep tall objects from tipping over and catching
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1st, you must add supports to keep tall objects from bending over and catching the nozzle, like this:

[![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5GKP4.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5GKP4.png)

Notice the side supports. Without them, this ball will not print properly. Between 60% and 80% done, it's so tall that the nozzle will eventually catch on the ball edge, tip it over, and then get jammed against it, causing it to think it hit the edge of the print volume, and forcing the center point to shift several mm in the opposite direction. This results in print sheering and possibly damage to the stepper motors or gears.

2nd, the digital bed size of the ToyBox 3D printer (when you go to load an object to print) is **75 x 80 x 100 mm** (7.5 x 8.0 x 10.0 cm).

When printing large objects up to 100mm in height, it seems to work fine. So, that limit is ok. But, when printing large objects which are the full width, ex: a 75mmx75mm circle, the object will get destroyed once the max diameter portion of the circle is reached. This is because the hard mechanical stops (screws, and metal edges of the print space) and/or limit switches of the printer will be hit, causing the print head firmware to adjust the center print point by several mm in the opposite direction. The object will then print with misaligned layers from that point forward. Since the center point just jumped several mm, the end point will be hit again on a future pass on the opposite side, causing it to jump again. It will jump like this repeatedly until the print is complete. You end up with shifted layers as shown in the photo below. This is a 75x75x75mm ball, which printed fine until the max diameter center portion was reached, at which point the mechanical edge stops were hit, the center point was (presumably) readjusted by the firmware, and the layers sheered:

[![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ndQW2.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ndQW2.jpg)

So, when printing, shrink the object 1 or 2 mm (5%, or 3.75mm of 75mm is plenty, and 1%~2%, or 0.75mm~1.5mm of 75mm is probably enough) and be sure to add an outer ring as wide as or just wider than the max diameter of the object. Ex: here is a manually-added outer ring to ensure the print head starts and stays centered at the beginning:

[![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KcRht.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KcRht.png)

In conclusion, the **maximum *usable* print volume** of the ToyBox 3D printer is approximately *74 x 79 x 100 mm*.

---

Back to my original answer:

ToyBox 3D printer true print dimensions and limit switch problems
-----------------------------------------------------------------

So I figured out that the problem is my print area is so small the printer was occasionally fully pressing and triggering the end-point limit switches! This apparently causes it to stop slightly early, shifting the next layer as it prints.

[The printer specs](https://www.toyboxuae.com/blogs/news/what-are-toybox-specifications) state that it has a print volume of **9 x 8 x 10 cm**. However, the print design area and viewer at <https://www.make.toys/> shows the design volume like this

[![Screenshot of ToyBox viewer](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zouQc.png "Screenshot of ToyBox viewer")](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zouQc.png "Screenshot of ToyBox viewer")

In the square grid shown on the base plate there is 1 cm per square, except that as you can see, the far left and far-right columns are < 1 square. Therefore, looking at this image, the usable bed area appears to be about **7.25 cm x 8 cm** (the grid size shown in the images), NOT 8 cm x 9 cm.

Furthermore, if you do NOT have the "Skip First Ring" option checked on the "Build" tab in the image below, the printer does a "wipe clean" maneuver in the shape of a spiral, circle, or ring around the object to be printed just before beginning the print. This wipes off any dangling stray print material before beginning the print. If your object fully covers the print bed dimensions, however, that ring will be even wider, causing the printer to hit its limit switches.

(**The model in this image is 10.4 cm long, which is too long, causing my printer to hit its limit switches, skewing the layers while printing.**)

[![Screenshot of ToyBox viewer with the 'Skip First Ring' option highlighted](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HAZQ7.png "Screenshot of ToyBox viewer with the 'Skip First Ring' option highlighted")](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HAZQ7.png "Screenshot of ToyBox viewer with the 'Skip First Ring' option highlighted")

So, the problem is that my part is too big. WithOUT that "Skip First Ring" box checked, the dimensions are probably further reduced by another 5 mm or so on X and Y dimensions, bringing it down to about **6.75 cm x 7.5 cm** *usable print area.* My part was 10.4 cm long. The Pythagorean Theorem says that $A^2 + B^2 = C^2$, so $C = \sqrt(A^2 + B^2)$ = $\sqrt(6.75cm^2 + 7.5cm^2)$ = **10.09 cm max** on the diagonal. **My 10.4 cm long part was too long. The printer hit the limit switches, botching the layers.**

Had I checked that box *maybe* I could have gotten away with a part closer to $\sqrt(7.25^2 + 8^2)$ = **10.8 cm long**, but that's really pushing the limits of this printer. **In the end, shrinking the part a bit more to be about 10 cm or less was all I needed to do!**

UPDATE: I've also proven conclusively by designing in [www.TinkerCad.com](http://www.TinkerCad.com) and printing on the ToyBox that the max allowed print height is exactly **9 cm**, and it will indeed print properly all the way up to that height.

---

I'd still like a flying propeller
---------------------------------

That being said, even though [the "key" of the model in my question](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4551901) printed pretty well in the end, the helicopter blade (propeller) printed horribly because the design is flawed and has a bunch of missing material and air gaps around the hub, making the propeller completely unusable!

Instead, I [switched to this thing shown below](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1885007), shrunk it down to 0.6x to fit my printer, set my printer settings from medium to fine resolution, and got pretty good results! I still need to further tweak and edit the design on <https://www.tinkercad.com> to give the pull key better clearance, and better connection with the hub gear, and I think I'll be able to get a great result! I got it to fly a few times up to 8 ft high or so, but the pull is very rough and inconsistent, so the model needs further tweaking.

[![Screenshot of the Thingiverse page for the helicopter model](https://i.stack.imgur.com/g6G53.png "Screenshot of the Thingiverse page for the helicopter model")](https://i.stack.imgur.com/g6G53.png "Screenshot of the Thingiverse page for the helicopter model")

Keywords: ToyBox 3D printer helicopter and toybox printer clearances, print dimensions, print volume, specs, print settings
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]


<issue_start>username_0: I have an Ender 3 pro. In my country electricity outage is an issue, though it comes back pretty instantaneously, when I hit the resume button on the Ender 3 pro after heating the hot end and the bed when the hot end lifts the Y-axis or X-axis shifts a little bit, I do not understand why as when there is no power outage the prints are just flawless.

I have also tried tightening everything but feels like the motors are having their own fun tilting an extra step for no reason. I have thrown away many prints because of this problem as I work in robotics and prototyping is a necessary thing for me and so is the accuracy.<issue_comment>username_1: Not sure on your exact firmware, but it could be that it is using a [M413 power loss recovery](https://marlinfw.org/docs/gcode/M413.html) rather than a power loss interrupt pin. Possible you might be able to change this with your current firmware, but worst case you could install a new controller that does support this power loss interrupt pin.

Depending on the frequency and duration of your power outages it may be worth getting an uninterruptible power supply (UPS). With the heat bed off [this UPS](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/B000FBK3QK) would run a full print easily. It would even handle a heat bed for shorter outages.

Where you work in robotics, you are probably electrically savvy enough to set your printer up on [direct DC battery power](https://youtu.be/5uUb-VnTzlU?t=625), which would be cheaper than a UPS of equivalent energy storage. If you need help going that route just post over on electrical engineering stack exchange with the power supply info.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: you'll need a UPS with EMI filter. I had this same issue and I opt to a regular desktop UPS and the problem was still there. So, I connected a EMI filter and it worked.
Upvotes: 0


<issue_start>username_0: I want to use magnets to hold the lid of a box down tight enough to keep it relatively airtight (along with a rubber seal etc.), but I am not sure what strength of magnet to use, that will still allow it to be opened without causing damage either by having to be pried open or by crushing the print layers. I cannot seem to find any guide to how magnets are used for 3d printing at various strengths and I cannot afford to buy too many types that I am not then going to use.

Any help that you can provide will be greatly appreciated.<issue_comment>username_1: I had a similar experience using magnets to hold two plates together. Currently also building a device (3d-printed) that clamps together with magnets. For both of these scenarios, I typically start by looking at what size and force you need. I would look into maybe 3 options of different magnets to start with. It could be in the range of 0.6 lbs, 4lbs and 6lbs. Do you know how much the "opening force" would be? As in what would keep it opening? If its substantial, I could see more the 6lbs but this is a very very very rough estimate that honestly would be best supported with trying a few ranges of magnets first. Try McMasterCarr if you're in the US. They have affordable sized magnets that I've worked with, ranging from different sizes, thicknesses and magnetic forces.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: You can vary the “strength” of the magnet by making a membrane of 3D printed plastic in between the magnets. The strength of the attraction is something like a logarithmic relationship to distance- small changes in thickness of material in between the magnets have a large effect on how strong they stick to each other. You could dial in your print by buying strong rare earth magnets and experimenting with attenuating the strength with the membrane. Could even use sheets of paper to get the right feel, then measure the thickness of the stack.

If using an fdm printer, it could be helpful to insert the magnets with a pause in the printing, and print over the top, if there isn’t a good way to otherwise capture them.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]


<issue_start>username_0: I want to put relief text on curved surface but can't find way to do that in OpenSCAD. I'm aware it's possible to bend text in Blender and then `import stl`, but I don't like this workflow. I found sort of working solution but it's not perfect.

```
$fn=50;

module bend_text(caption, angle, text_height, text_width, text_depth, steps=10, k=1) {
    dh = text_height / steps;
    r = text_height / (angle * PI / 180);
    h0 = - text_height / 2;
    translate([0, 0, -r])
    rotate([angle / 2, 0, 0])
    for(i=[0:steps-1]) {
        rotate([-i * angle/steps, 0, 0])
        translate([0, -(dh * i + h0), r / k])
        intersection() {
            linear_extrude(text_depth)
                text(caption, valign="center", halign="center");
            translate([0, dh * i + h0, 0])
                cube([text_width, dh, text_width], center=true);
        }
    }
}

bend_text("test", angle=90, text_height=9, text_width=30, text_depth=1, steps=10, k=1.1);

```

[![test](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0zq1h.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0zq1h.png)

Is there better way?<issue_comment>username_1: Yes - you should be able to turn the extruder by hand when it is unplugged and therefore not powered.

The V2 comes with a blue plastic knob for this purpose, it may be too small to turn the shaft by hand.

When powered and "steppers enabled" the motors need a lot more force to overcome, but even that can be done by hand or a machine crash.

If you can't turn the extruder at all, its probably toast. That you've tested other ports on the board is excellent problem solving.

Whatever damaged the motor has likely damaged the board too, or vise versa.

You likely need both parts replaced to get this printer working again. Could be expensive - you might want to compare cost of parts with cost of a new printer, remembering there may be other non-functional components still undiscovered.

Plausibly, with a dead extruder, you could slap a laser on this unit and make it a dedicated burner. The creality laser module is around $50 USD.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: username_1's answer is basically correct, but I disagree with the conclusion that it:

>
> Could be expensive - you might want to compare cost of parts with cost of a new printer, remembering there may be other non-functional components still undiscovered.
>
>
>

If you want to turn the Ender 3 into a decent printer, the controller board is one of the components you want to replace anyway, since it comes with either (old models) extremely loud and poorly performing A4988 stepper drivers or (newer models) TMC2208 stepper drivers hard-wired in a mode where they don't work well and malfunction if you enable Linear Advance (which is critical to getting decent prints on a bowden extruder system). Good boardsthat are exact fits for the housing and cable connectors, with TMC2209 steppers that lack the above problems, can be had for $35 or so.

If the motor is dead, that's a pain but not expensive to replace. Equivalent motors are available for $15 or so all over the place, or you could make the upgrade to a light-weight geared direct drive extruder with pancake stepper instead of the large NEMA 17 (which negates pretty much all of the disadvantages of direct drive and gives you a much better printer than you started with).
Upvotes: 1


<issue_start>username_0: I have an Elegoo Mars.

I have printed a figure in Resin, but after some months I found this - the figure is as if it is not completely cured. The base is open (see picture below). it wasn't open before!

It was printed a month ago, I am not precisely sure. I think I only machine cured and sunlight.

How is this possible?

[![Base of 3D print](https://i.stack.imgur.com/l4bBJ.jpg "Base of 3D print")](https://i.stack.imgur.com/l4bBJ.jpg "Base of 3D print")<issue_comment>username_1: Those are cracks as a result of overstressing due internal stresses to further curing of the print over the course of time (stress cracks).

Most probably the print wasn't cured properly or slicing wasn't optimal.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: You should probably cure more, but curing should not be complete during print, or the layer will not stick properly.

Also, when you cure with UV light or the sun after the print is completed, you can cure only up to a certain depth, [likely around a couple of millimetres](https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/questions/13660/can-uv-cure-inside-opaque-or-more-massive-printed-object).

If your object was massive and you didn't "hollow it" then some resin got trapped inside it and it didn't cure properly initially. It may slowly cure later, but by the time the object cracks due to stress, some resin may still be liquid enough to cause the issue.
Upvotes: 1


<issue_start>username_0: Recently, I've been noticing what looks like under extrusion. My first thought was a clogged nozzle, but it only occurs in some places:

[![(Photo of the issue)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1VvYB.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1VvYB.jpg)

My printer is a PrintrBot Simple Metal, using [MH Build Series 1.75 mm PLA](https://www.matterhackers.com/store/l/gray-mh-build-series-pla-filament-175mm-1kg/sk/M-PL0-Q8ZD) and the model was sliced with Cura 5.1.0. What could be causing this, and how should I fix it?

Slicer settings:

* infill density 10 % (pattern: cubic)
* layer height: 0.2 mm
* print speed: 50 mm/s (travel: 150 mm/s)
* print temp: 200 °C (bed: 0 °C)
* retraction: enabled (Z-hop: disabled)
* cooling: enabled (fan speed: 100 %)

I'm not printing faster than usual, and I watched some of this print print, and there were no obvious issues like a clicking extruder. I find it strange that it occurred regularly along the edge of one piece, but the piece next to it was perfect. It seems to occur around two sharp corners. The other piece didn't have those sharp corners.

Another doubtful theory by me:

I've had some issues with a loose plug recently. Could this be causing a drop in temperature?<issue_comment>username_1: Ultimately, your printer is pushing out less filament than the gcode is telling it to (which you know, but its worth focusing on the exact problem).

If your stepper motor isn't missing steps, then that leaves just a few possibilities:

1. The extruder's hobbed gear is slipping against the filament
2. The extruder's hobbed gear (or whatever is being driven by the extruder motor) is slipping on the motor shaft.
3. You got a bad spool with short lengths where the filament diameter is substantially out of tolerance (in the negative direction).

#3 seems extremely unlikely though is still possible. The filament need not be noticeably under spec, it just needs to narrow enough that the hobbed gear can't grab onto it well enough and you get slippage.

#2 is also unlikely but its so easy to check, might as well.

#1 is what my money is on.

Now we have to think of what could be causing filament slippage. This occurs when the hobbed gear's ability to grab the filament is overpowered by the resistance to flow through the nozzle.

This can either be from too little grip, or something causing unusual and intermittent resistance to flow that causes the hobbed gear to shred the filament.

* If there is too little grip, you simply need to tighten the screw that has the spring that pushes the idler arm and idler pulley against the filament more pressure means better grip for the hobbed gear).
* Your hobbed gear might have gunk between the teeth preventing it from gripping well and merely needs to be cleaned with something sharp.
* Your idler pulley might have be broken, check for any play or unsmooth rotation on the shaft

Once you're certain grip is nice and strong, that leaves something causing resistance to flow:

* There might be a spec of debris with an irregular high aspect ratio shape in your hotend. It can't exit through the nozzle, but it also can't completely block it either, and is constantly moving around and only becomes a problem some of the time.
* One of your hotend's thermistor wires might have an intermittent short, or the thermistor itself has cracked. Low/short circuit resistance ends up getting interpreted as really high temperature, so no power is sent to the heater until a good enough thermistor connection returns. This can result in the hotend getting too cold for short periods. This option seems plausible since there seems to be a rough correlation between the print head position and when it happens, which is consistent with a broken conductor issue. The connection goes bad when the wires are positioned in certain ways, basically.

And it could of course be any combination of these things cooccurring and all contributing.

Unfortunately, under extrusion has so many potential causes that you just have to start going down the list from easiest to hardest thing to fix, and hope the problem is more towards the easy end.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I would strongly follow Teach Tech's calibration guide. It's entirely possible that there are a number of things out of whack, contributing to the overall print quality. In this case, I'd look at doing a PID tune and seeing if your print temps are consistent.

Also, as the filament is fed into the nozzle, that lowers the temp, and if your temperature is not consistent, it might be lowered to a point where it starts to solidify, this would account for the results you get but again, could be a number of things. Even wet filament.

The filament you are using has a temp range of 205 +/-15. That means anything from 190 to 220. Even in your pic you can see the issue starting at lower layers.

Calibration is clearly the first thing to do before anything else.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: **Solved! Finally...**

So after having this issue off and on, an extreme case appeared. It turns out that filament was resisting coming off the spool, and when the extruder and hotend (the Simple is a direct-drive) pulled away from the spool it created tension in the filament, effectively pulling it out of the hotend, though only just enough to cause this issue. In this specific case, it seems that the long edge before the side of the piece was pulling the filament.

Shoutout to @username_1 and @username_2 for their answers. I'm still calibrating my machine, so they'll useful.
Upvotes: 1 [selected_answer]


<issue_start>username_0: There is a lot of questions asking for life advice, e.g. describing a problem with their PhD advisor (or the head of the department). It's very common that there is a list of possible decisions and the asking person wants to pool what do people advise?

On one hand side, they are not good questions in the SE sense - as they are subjective, mixing a lot of questions in one, and somewhat localized.

On the other hand - very often they raise important problems, or *contain* questions that could be extracted.

More than often such questions remain open.

EDIT:

My main point is not to set criteria for closing questions, but to ask what should we do is a question is "asking for a general life advice, given the described situation"?

* Close first, ask later?
* Suggest to focus on one topic or split into subquestions?
* Leave it as it is, because it captures important issues?

Bear in mind that such question come mostly for people who are not yet familiar with SE, and may be not aware that open-ended subjective questions (and even worse - invitations to discussions) are not welcome here.

But at the same time they might be eager to rephrase the question.<issue_comment>username_1: I think an important aspect for such questions is: is the answer likely to ever help a 3rd party?
For example, *[Sex worker/student offering her (legal) services](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/8194/1033)* is a good what-should-I-do question; it's quite possible that other people — now or in the future — face the same problem.
On the other hand, many what-should-I-do questions should simply be closed as *too localised*.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Questions on this board will necessarily be more subjective than on other SE boards, but I think that the topic that we're covering is by definition more subjective, since most of what we're dealing with is interpersonal relationships.

So, I think the standard is to ask, as username_1 suggests, if the question can help someone else. I don't really get the sense that *that* many questions are very localized. However, whenever I see one that is, I try to "abstract" the question and make the answer of greater general validity.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I'm strongly in favor of using comments to suggest improvements (option 2 above). Premature closing will necessarily lead to alienating new users, as that conveys a very mod-heavy community culture, which we don't want. Leaving the question open leads to a cluttered forum. Following the "teach a man to fish" idea, if we subtly convey via comments that a given question could be improved by splitting it up/clarifying the question/removing *ad hominem* or other inappropriate content, we can not only enlarge the community, but we can gain *positively contributing* community members, which are the best kind.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: I would not try to judge such questions on their "objective" merit. I rather see this site as a place for providing *useful* answers to relevant questions people have. We can't say what people find useful over time (perhaps it can be measured by view count over time, links how did they arrive here, etc.). My concern rather is to ensure that even when we have a speculative question, we should make sure that

1. the question is broad enough to possibly help 3rd parties;
2. the question is worded, tagged and answered in such a way that it will be likely found by people having a similar problem in the future.

My stance derives from observing myself often typing into a search engine a vague question in the hope to get something what either a) speaks about my problem and provides a useful perspective; or b) advances my search for my own answer further. Clearly, if a question is speculative, answers to it often can advance somebody's search for help and I would say that is good enough achievement for a Q&A site like ours is.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: I've just browsed the recent questions and they are very heavy on the "what should I do"/life advice side of things. While I don't see localization as a big issue, many of the questions only apply to the very specific situation of the person who asks the question and aren't of particular interest to anyone else - and they're not even necessarily "academic" questions. E.g. ["shall I move away to a good university or shall I stay here and go to a not so good university"](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8737/what-to-think-about-when-choosing-phd-program) (edit: especially given the answers this type of question seems to attact) is life advice and has not much to do with academia.

I was hoping that academia SE would be of general interest to researchers/academics, but it seems to become more of a place for confused grad students to ask for life advice. (Disclaimer: I'm a grad student.)

So I would prefer a stricter policy of closing questions that are very specific and personal, in favour of quality.
Upvotes: 2


<issue_start>username_0: There are several questions with with the words "high school" and teaching on academia.
Can a public school teacher be considered an "academician"? I haven't found any other stackexchange site that is likely to allow for questions about teaching, much less at the secondary level. Has anyone found another site that allow such questions?<issue_comment>username_1: Welcome to Academia.SE, this site is about those involved in higher education (postgrad, research etc). There is a Proposal in Area51 for [Education](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/50826/education).
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: If your field is in mathematics education, you might want to look at [The Mathematics Teaching username_1](https://mathematicsteachingcommunity.math.uga.edu/). (But as of now, there is not much activity there.)
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Although high school teaching is not on topic at this site, I completely agree that it could be considered "academic" under some interpretations of the word. "Academia" is used here as a single-word summary for the site's topic, and unfortunately it's impossible to find a single word that perfectly fits. No disrespect is meant towards high school teaching, and no implication that it's not really academic. It's just not a particularly natural match for the sort of grad student/professor questions this site is intended for.
Upvotes: 2


<issue_start>username_0: The entries in the question listing on Academia.SE are much bigger vertically than other SE sites. There appears to be a lot more spacing above and below each question entry.

![Academia versus SO](https://i.stack.imgur.com/efHUk.png)

Is there a reason Academia is different than most (all?) SE sites in regard to the question listing? I find it more difficult to scan and it requires more scrolling. The vast amount of emptiness makes me feel as if it is an oversight or a bug.

Can this be changed???

EDIT: This was also asked for in a [reply](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/910/746) on the original design post.<issue_comment>username_1: I think this is a relatively simple fix—it's the extra padding around the question. However, I also think that the fix shouldn't be to go something *quite* so dense as [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com). (Currently, I can fit about 7 questions from Academia.SE on my screen compared to about 10 SO questions in the same space. However, SO seems *too* crowded in comparison.

I think perhaps we can reduce the padding a bit, but we should still keep some just so that it remains easy to read.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I also would prefer to see more questions at a glance (less scrolling => I am more happy).
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: When I look at the two screenshots side by side, I prefer the academia spacing. All in all, it is remarkable how much more pleasing to my eye the academia format is than the SO format: some really nice work was done in the design of our site.

It looks to me that the height of each question could be slightly reduced, perhaps to the point of being able to fit one more question on the screen. But I wouldn't want to mess with it too much: all in all, I think that what has been pointed out here is truly a feature rather than a bug.
Upvotes: 2


<issue_start>username_0: I was wondering what is the responsibility of the site with regard to content posted by users that could potentially be defaming? This question was prompted by <https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/29282/are-conferences-organized-by-iact-like-icke-fake> I have no idea about that conference, but there is a basically a post on our site clearly associating this conference with fake ones. What would happen if the organisers would complain about it?

I'm assuming Ac.SE falls under US law, which I'm not particularly familiar with, and, to the best of my knowledge, this problem has not happened yet, but should we take precautionary measures?<issue_comment>username_1: Legal issues are handled by Stack Exchange, neither the community nor the moderators are typically qualified to judge the legal issues. Unless SE intervenes, there is usually no reason to try and enforce perceived legal issues.

Anyone having a legal complaint about a post on an SE site has to contact SE directly, and SE employees will handle the issue from there.

That said, the community is of course free to enact rules on this kind of question. If this kind of content is considered too problematic, or simply not a good fit for the site, it can be disallowed regardless of the legal situation.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: The reason we don't do questions asking for recommendations is that they're too subjective; we don't do questions about individual programs and institutions because they're too narrow in scope.

As for the issue of SE being held responsible for the content of its users, in general web sites have protections under the law from being responsible for such attacks, so long as they respond to them. Otherwise, it would be very easy for someone to maliciously get a website shut down.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: I refer you to the following excerpt from the SE Network [Terms of Service](http://stackexchange.com/legal):

>
> 8. Indemnity
>
>
> Subscriber will indemnify and hold Stack Exchange, its directors, officers, employees, agents, consultants, contractors, partners, vendors and service providers (including, without limitation, hosting and telecommunications providers) harmless, including costs and attorneys' fees, from any claim or demand made by any third party due to or arising out of Subscriber’s access to the Network, use of the Services, the violation of this Agreement by Subscriber, or the infringement by Subscriber, or any third party using the Subscriber's account, of any intellectual property or other right of any person or entity.
>
>
> 9. Limitation of liability
>
>
> In no event shall Stack Exchange, its directors, officers, shareholders, employees, members, agents, consultants, contractors, partners, vendors and service providers (including, without limitation, hosting and telecommunications providers) be liable with respect to the Network or the Services for (a) any indirect, incidental, punitive, or consequential damages of any kind whatsoever; (b) damages for loss of use, profits, data, images, Subscriber Content or other intangibles; (c) damages for unauthorized use, non-performance of the Network, errors or omissions; or (d) damages related to downloading or posting Content. Stack Exchange's and the Network's collective liability under this agreement shall be limited to three hundred United States Dollars. Some states do not allow the exclusion or limitation of incidental or consequential damages, so the above limitations and exclusions may not apply to Subscriber.
>
>
>
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: Since SE has its own legal representatives, it might be useful for moderators to report posts of this kind directly to relevant SE personnel so that they can scrutinise the material and make a decision. Moderators can certainly take unilateral action under moderation policies, but they should not assume that SE staff will know about the post unless they draw it to their attention.

In terms of what could happen if defamatory material is posted, the person defamed could sue both SE and the poster for damages, and obviously they would have access to all the normal legal defences for such an action (e.g., truth, fair comment, etc.). (Courts have complex rules for "choice of law" that depend on factors including the location of the defamed, the places where the message was broadcast, etc., so it would not necessarily be a US action.) While the SE terms of service specify broad exclusions of liability, these types of exclusion clauses in an "adhesion contract" are often ruled invalid by courts, so even with the presence of a contractual term for use, there is legal danger in defamation on the site.
Upvotes: -1


<issue_start>username_0: I have the very strong suspicion that [this question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/62129/where-can-i-find-academics-who-need-statistical-help) is essentially a thinly veiled promotion for the OP's business. That is, it seems to me that the OP is not primarily looking for an answer to his question, but mainly uses it as a vehicle to promote his services.

Are we ok with this? And if not, what can we do? The question, while rather uninteresting to me personally, does not really appear to be out of scope based on our rules.<issue_comment>username_1: Hm, the user is a high-rep user on cross-validated...which actually makes the question particularly odd, because I don't really understand how the user doesn't know how to find academics who need help - he's answered over 1600 questions on Cross Validated alone. I too suspected something might be 'off' here, but I figured it would be best to close as "Unclear what you are asking".

It could be a valid question, but in its present state I think it could be closed anyway. But if it turned out to indeed be an attempt to advertise a commercial service or gain leads, then certainly it could be closed as "spam" - but we don't have that as a close reason, so indeed I wonder how these should be handled? Just closed as 'other', or do we need something more specific?
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: As someone who started in [CV](https://stats.stackexchange.com/). I can vouch for this questioner as he has been nothing but a wonderful participant at CV. He always provides very apt and helpful answers.

Though, I think the question can definitely use some clarification. The deep root is about networking in academia, which I believe is a valid question for this board.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: If the question was asked from the other side of the table and was about finding a reputable paid statistical consultant, I think it would be fine (assuming on topic otherwise).

The question itself reveals the potential conflict of interest with the "advertising" discreetly mentioned in his profile. This is exactly what we ask for in situations like this.

While he might be looking to gain clients here, it reads to me like he is trying to improve his networking/advertising efforts. So in general, I think questions with this level of "advertising" are okay.

Specifically, I am not sure the question is particularly clear or really answerable. I am not sure it is so unclear that it should be closed.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: Though I don't question the OP's statistical knowledge and his capacity as a consultant, I think that leaving this question open as is can cause a flood of questions advertising a variety of consulting services or offers of collaborations.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_5: To take yet another point of view and to address the more general question:

I do not think that we can distinguish whether such a post was created for purposes of self-promotion or from a genuine interest in learning about new ways of finding customers, jobs or similar. Therefore we should apply the presumption of innocence to such posts (maybe unless we are overrun by them). In this specific case, I find it plausible that the asker is honestly interested in what he is asking for. Therefore I do not think that it should be closed for this reason.

Moreover, I do not see how this question is much different from many questions from users who are looking for a position. Both imply that the asker has certain skills and is available for hire.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_6: I think trying to project motives onto a posters question, and then closing it because it *may* be self-promoting, is flawed. The post is far from an egregious case, and honestly, even if it is a thinly veiled bit of self promotion, it involves the following chain of logic:

* Someone searching StackExchange for statistical help will somehow *miss* CrossValidated and come here instead.
* Having failed to find the proper StackExchange site, rather than just asking their question (and getting it migrated or closed), they'll search for, I don't know, "Statistics Help".
* They'll find Peter's question.
* They'll read Peter's profile.
* They click on his link, contact him, and this ends with a doubtlessly lucrative consulting contract...

That's a chain of events that I'm pretty sure will never actually happen.

If instead we read this post as a legitimate question, I think it's a much more reasonable one. Connecting people who need statistical expertise with the people who have it is a problem for people *in the same university* (I know this from experience). Working outside that system strikes me as harder, and something worthy of discussion.
Upvotes: 3


<issue_start>username_0: [One of our community promotion ads](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2158/10643) redirects to a website listing people who have strong opinions against a publisher. This ad pops up frequently on the homepage, alternating with useful, fun and politically neutral ads, and could give the impression that a majority of users of this site endorse these opinions. Only experienced users know that a very low threshold of up-votes will trigger these ads to show up.

Notwithstanding the fact that I don't think it's helpful to anyone to gather academics to that cause, I think it might tarnish the reputation of users of this site who sometimes use their real names. Especially early career academics certainly don't need that kind of negative publicity.

**Should we really use our SE for this kind of promotion?**

---

Note: I'm looking for answers on the generic issue, not for posts or comments trying to convince me said website is the only thing that stands between civilization and obscurantism. I have already endured hours of vociferous campaigning along that line.<issue_comment>username_1: To me the best ads are for web resources which I would want to visit many times. This means that I think "product" ads (e.g., the one for [Zotero](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2151/929)) and "political" ads (e.g., the one for the [Elsevier Boycott](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2158/929)) are not particularly useful. The issue is the static and one-off nature of the material. Having ads be to unchanging webpages (e.g., political blog posts, new articles, or products) which you can digest fully in a single reading seems strange to me.

That said, if the product and political ads point to something that is important to academics (and in the case of political ads, regardless of which side the ad one supports), then I think they are fine to let the community decide on.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: The whole point of ads on this site is to allow the community to advertise what they, collectively, find useful and relevant. I disagree with your "low vote threshold" comment... the ten-vote threshold on meta for a site like ours is a pretty steep requirement, as the vast majority of our users don't visit meta, ever. For an ad to have accumulated ten votes meant that a non-negligible subset of the *active* community agrees with that ad.

As such, I think your question is somewhat rhetorical; clearly, the community feels that we *should* use the site to advance these types of arguments.

However, if you feel differently, you are welcome to campaign against the ad through a meta post. This question seems somewhat broad ("Should our ads involve political content"), which seems to have been your intention given the "edit to add" blurb. However, a question specifically asking about this ad ("Should we allow that particular ad") would give you a chance to voice your concerns very directly and allow for discussion on that ad specifically, and possibly drive others to downvote it and thereby remove it from the rotation.
Upvotes: 3


<issue_start>username_0: My answer to [this question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/111498/40589) has been quite controversial, attracting several hundred positive and negative votes and a long thread of comments. An initial batch of comments was moved to chat per the usual site policy, and two subsequent long streams of comments were simply deleted with no public announcement or explanation.

Many of the comments that were deleted were very thoughtful and interesting and, in my (possibly biased) opinion, contributed greatly to furthering the debate on OP’s question and related ethics questions. The deletion of the comments thus seems quite detrimental to a high-quality discussion and contrary to the goals of the site. It not only frustrates users who have thought and attention to writing good comments, but also (more importantly) deprives the community at large of important follow-up content.

A moderator who left me a chat comment explained that they “had to” delete the comments because comments can only be moved to chat once and the comments thread was “getting out of hand” (or words to that effect).

**My question:** what should be done about the comments associated with questions or answers that attract a lot of attention, including long streams of comments, many of which are of high quality and highly relevant to the debate, and which continue unabated long after the initial stream of comments has been moved to chat?

If your answer is that deleting subsequent comment streams as was done in this case is the best policy, please explain why you think this best serves the purpose of fostering the most informed and high-quality discussion possible (or why it serves some other, even more important, goal that I’m not thinking of).<issue_comment>username_1: The answer is simple, of course. The comments should be moved into the existing chat. If the moderator can't because comments can only be moved once, then this strikes me as a serious flaw in the system.

I had a related issue recently. I posted a comment on an answer explaining my vote and ways to improve the answer, and the comment received several dozen upvotes. A long series of irrelevant comments followed. The entire block of comments was moved to chat, including mine. I queried that and was told that there's no way of selectively moving comments to chat. To me that seems to defeat the point of the comment system, which is *supposed* to be used for suggesting improvements to the answer.

I would suggest that moderators need finer tuned controls for deleting and/or moving comments, and site policies should also be finer tuned. Comments should be deleted or moved based on their individual merits, and not as an entire block (which is akin to throwing out the baby with the bathwater).

As a final point, deletion really ought only to be used on comments that have serious problems (e.g. are abusive). With the availability of move-to-chat, there is little reason to delete a comment.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: ### First of all

>
> It […] deprives the community at large of important follow-up content.
>
>
>

Almost nobody wants to read a discussion spanning twenty or more comments.
This apparently even applies to comment authors – going by comments that add nothing to existing comments.
In fact I would wager that the only people who read all the comments on the answer in question are its author and some moderators.
[The point of moving comments to chat](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4230/7734) is to make those comments visible that are the few ones that are of high interest to future readers *on their own* – be these existing or potential future comments.

Also, please remember that comments are mostly intended to be temporary, i.e., to be made obsolete with an edit or similar.
The main exceptions to this are relevant links, but even those can be edited into the post.
**If you want to say something of lasting value, do not say it in a comment.**

### What should have happened

Ideally, almost none of the fifty-something comments following the initial moving to chat should have been posted as a comment but in chat.
This is not because those comments were entirely pointless, but these comments were either very likely to incite further replies or were only of value in the context of the entire debate surrounding this answer. (Please see [this](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4230/7734) as to what kind of comments I consider worthy of being comments after comments have been moved to chat.)

### What should happen in a similar situation in the future

In the future, moderators should include a link to [this FAQ](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4230/7734) to every moved-to-chat notice.
If you post a comment after such a notice you have to live with the possibility that your comment is removed without warning.
If you do not like this, do not post a comment but in chat.

Comments that do not follow the FAQ above should be removed as soon as possible to avoid the strong broken-window effect that this situation has on some comment authors (“If that opinion deserves the honour of being a comment, so does my contrasting opinion.”).

### What to do with the post in question

After the initial moving to chat, **not a single message** was posted in chat.
Any of the comment authors could have said or thought:

>
> We are having a longer discussion here, let’s move to chat.
>
>
> My comment is essentially a reply to a chat message (being a comment moved to chat); I’ll post it as such.
>
>
> This comment will likely incite a longer discussion, I’ll post it in chat.
>
>
>

They didn’t – despite a moderator’s comment saying that comments are not for extended discussion.

On the other hand, we moderators are not completely without fault either. We could have intervened earlier or more clearly.

I exploited some special properties of the situation, abused quite a few features, and spent a considerable amount of time to move the entirety of comments into [one chatroom](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/79371/discussion-on-answer-by-dan-romik-dealing-with-a-phd-student-reneging-on-an-agre).
**This is a one-time thing. Do not expect this to ever happen again.**
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: I know your answer has been controversial and you received a lot of both positive and negative comments. You have handled that, often hostile, feedback well. Your responses to the feedback have been on point. The main issue that I see as a moderator is your point

>
> The deletion of the comments thus seems quite detrimental to a high-quality discussion and contrary to the goals of the site.
>
>
>

I strongly disagree with this statement. The goal of this site is not for high quality discussion, it is for high quality answers. The point of comments on answers is to help improve the answer. That improvement process might require a back and forth discussion, but the end result should be an improvement to the answer.

When reading the comments and responses, it was clear to me that you thought about the comments and were not going to integrate the concepts in your answer. Given the nature of many of the comments, that is a reasonable decision and yours to make. At that point all the comments became obsolete as they were no longer going to make your answer better. If someone felt strongly about the views expressed in those comments, they could have written an answer.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: The answer by @username_2 states

>
> Almost nobody wants to read a discussion spanning twenty or more
>  comments.
>
>
>

Come on.
**Almost *everybody* wants to read a discussion spanning twenty or more comments.** More people prefer to talk-and-listen than to read-and-write.

But the Will of the People is not my concern here. On the contrary I understand why a website that wants to be and remain a serious Q&A forum, must come down hard on things like comments: we are here to play "too short; didn't read" rather than "too long; didn't read".

So the official policy explicitly *scorns* comments, and canonizes about their lowly nature. But, whatever the SE team wants the comments to be (and maybe rightfully so), they are stubbornly much more, and re-iterating the rules and the official intent around comments will not really help. And indeed, Many-many times comments contain precious content.

In light of the above, the rule "comments can be moved to chat only once and then they can only be deleted", is a dysfunctional SE operational rule (alongside a few others).

The compromise is obvious: sure, keep pushing comments to Chat (after all if you are here to chat, go to Chat), but scrap the "move only once, and then delete" rule. Let the moderators be able to easily preserve all Chatery, without needing to go to the extraordinary lengths our brave-with-the-spear moderator went, which apparently was so frustrating that he ended it with the grave warning "don't ever expect for this to happen again". I agree. Moderators have more important things to do than perform workarounds for inefficient SE rules. The point is to have the SE team change the functionality.

**This is officially a "feature" request**, and I would ask the moderators to consider forwarding it to the SE crew.
Upvotes: 2


<issue_start>username_0: This is to share a case study about the "fastest gun in the west" issue discussed on Academia.SE [here](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3826/are-upvotes-skewed-towards-the-first-answer-to-a-question/3827#3827) and more broadly [here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9731/fastest-gun-in-the-west-problem).

On [this](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/123593/in-a-yes-no-question-student-gives-the-right-answer-and-a-wrong-explanation) 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.<issue_comment>username_1: 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](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9731/fastest-gun-in-the-west-problem)). They even have a likely solution noted there, which is what [Reddit adopted](https://redditblog.com/2009/10/15/reddits-new-comment-sorting-system/) 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 :-(
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: 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):

[![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ezpIm.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ezpIm.png)

the questions can be sorted by most recently active:

[![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qzzWk.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qzzWk.png)

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?](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4747/93303).

*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](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/148951/93303) 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.
Upvotes: 2


<issue_start>username_0: The mechanics
=============

Hot Network Questions (HNQ) are questions shown in the bottom right sidebar featuring from other sites of the Stack Exchange network that are considered “hot” by a heuristic that takes into account recent visits, answers, and votes.
There can be issues when one of our questions becomes an HNQ because its increased exposure leads to considerably higher number of visitors – many of whom are unfamiliar with our site and our community standards.

Moderators can now remove individual questions from the Hot Network Questions list ([announcement](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/325060)).
**This process is irreversible**.
After removing a question, we cannot decide that we want to allow it to go hot again.

How can we use this?
====================

Having a meta discussion about whether a specific question should be removed from the HNQs is not a good idea, because by the time the discussion has reached any sort of consensus, the potential damage has probably already been done.
So, we moderators have to decide on relatively quickly and on a case-by-case basis whether a question should be removed.

**If you feel that any question should not be an HNQ, please flag it for moderator attention and elaborate why.**
This naturally makes the most sense for questions that are already HNQs (which you can now [see in the revision history](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/324641/255554)), but if you think it is likely that a question will become an HNQ, but shouldn’t, feel free to flag it.
Please do not do this for questions that you consider in need of editing, cleaning up, closing, or similar.
Instead perform or suggest the respective edits, flag the problematic comments or answers for deletion, or flag for closure.

What questions should not be HNQs?
==================================

Occasionally, we will remove a question from the HNQs, when there is a serious problem, and given their individual nature, some of these problems are unforeseeable.
However, we as a community can agree that we do not want certain types of question to be HNQs and try to remove them as quickly as possible.

Therefore I am asking:

**Are there any categories of questions that we *generally* do not want to be HNQs?**
If you think so, please suggest categories in the answers:

* Suggest one category per answer.
* Do not suggest categories of questions that should be closed or can be salvaged with an edit.
* Provide a rationale why such questions being HNQs is a problem.
* Remember that at the end of the day we have to decide on a case-by-case basis, by answering the question: "Do we have this kind of problem on our site?"
Therefore a good rationale is more important than precisely defining the category.
* Use votes to indicate agreement or disagreement with proposed categories.<issue_comment>username_1: Please, don't remove questions from the HNQ list at all
-------------------------------------------------------

I think that the HNQ is a non-issue and we should not exclude anything, just leave the algorithms do their work (whether good or not). So, I add this as an answer because I think that we should give the community also the possibility to choose this option.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I think we should prevent [gender](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/gender "show questions tagged 'gender'") and [sexual-misconduct](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/sexual-misconduct "show questions tagged 'sexual-misconduct'") from being featured. While these questions are important for our community, I do not think they make for good advertisements. The answers often get the job done, but we don't have a user base that is expert in the nuances of these difficult questions. Further, they often attract poor answers from the HNQ that garner lots of up votes which makes them move from not good advertisement to poor advertising. Finally, they seem to attract a lot of discussion which eventually degrades into rude/offensive ranting, which becomes really bad for everyone involved.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: I propose to remove all questions where **the asker is a victim of sexual discrimination or misconduct** from the HNQs.
Note that this a more narrow category than [what Strong Bad proposed](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4457/7734).
For example, I would leave questions on how to battle sexual discrimination, avoiding conflicts of interest, and dealing with such issues as a third party.

Rationale:
While the topic of sexual discrimination and misconduct tends to attract trolling and other problems in general, I think this is a price we should pay for the positive effect of raising awareness on these issues.
Silencing the entire topic is exactly what some of the aggressors want.
However for questions by victim, the benefit of awareness is outweighted by the chance of hurtful comments that doubt the asker’s assessment, directly attack the asker, or even blatant trolling.
This is usually the last thing the asker needs in such a situation.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: I propose to remove all questions around the topic of **suicide or severe psychic health problems** from the HNQs.

Rationale:

* For many HNQ visitors this is a dire topic they do not want to be confronted with, to the extent that it could trigger problems itself.
Non-HNQ visitors of our site implicitly accept a certain risk of running into this topic by visiting a site on social topics.
I strongly suspect that titles mentioning *suicide* and similar are filtered out anyway, so this is for the questions where these filters fail.
* If the asker is suffering from such problems themselves, they almost certainly do not enjoy the extra attention HNQs give them.
Also there is an increased chance that some idiot leaves a hurtful comment.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: Why not "all of them"?
----------------------

I'm not sure myself that this is the perfect solution, but take this answer as a way to think about the benefits of HNQ.

What good comes to our community from a question being in the HNQ, usually? Most of the time, all that happens when a question enters it is that we get a bunch of votes and answers from people that are not very knowledgeable about academia. They tend to skew the votes, so that they do not reflect the opinion of university people anymore.

Also, the HNQ tends to promote click-bait questions and controversial issues, which (in my opinion) are not an effective way to advertise our site to new potential users. I'd see more value in a curated list of the best questions and answers, than in a contest on who can get the most clicks by attracting the attention of random users.

The HNQ benefits Stack Exchange more than it benefits us as a community, I believe.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: Anything that's a soft interpersonal or sociopolitical issue that doesn't require any academic expertise to answer.

As a Stack Overflow user who is neither an academic nor a user of Academia Stack Exchange, I find Academia's presence in HNQ consistently frustrating. Pretty much all from here that currently reaches HNQ is soft questions about interpersonal interactions that require no particular expertise to opine on. Yet when we users of other sites click through to them, we usually find ourselves pre-emptively silenced by the question being "Protected".

It's bad for us, because we suffer the frustration of not being permitted to answer with differing perspectives; on these broad questions about how to decently interact with other human beings, only the (disproportionately left-leaning and otherwise atypical) views of actual users of this site are permitted to be voiced in the answer section. That leaves us with only comments as a permitted way to engage with the issues, but those comments get nuked seemingly capriciously by the mods.

And it's bad for *you*, because it channels users into precisely the interactions you don't want. You end up with a horde of users who are just as qualified as you to answer the questions they're reading, but who you only permit to use comments to do so, turning every such squishy interpersonal question into a brawl in the comments section that your mods need to clean up.

Assuming that you're unwilling to simply stop using question protection on these questions, the *other* way you can stop this dysfunction by simply not letting these questions be in HNQ. If there's no particular expertise that someone who works in academia can bring to a question compared to a random member of the public, nuke it from the sidebar. Then you guys get to have the controlled discussion of social issues amongst yourselves that you seem to repeatedly want to have, free from disruption by the rest of us, and we get to go about our lives in blissful ignorance and with slightly lower blood pressures.
Upvotes: -1


<issue_start>username_0: I'm a first-year graduate student, and I just joined a computational chemistry laboratory. I have three tasks now: pass all my courses, fulfill my TA duties, and start research. I'm finding that I'm spending all my time doing the first two, and very little doing actual research. I'm worried that my advisor will be upset that I'm not getting up to speed quickly enough on my research (currently, learning the python programming language and reading a whole bunch of papers). **Are first-year graduate students typically expected to do a lot of research, while still managing their grades and TA duties?**<issue_comment>username_1: I think the answer lies in what your PI thinks you should be doing and how well you can, at least, appear to be doing it while doing things other than research. Even if your PI doesn't enforce a certain allocation it's in your interest to do as much research and little else as possible. **You won't get a PhD by teaching or taking classes.** An overload, in my experience, is unavoidable first year. Is is possible to take electives that your PI teaches? That's about the only coursework he or she won't begrudge you.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I think it's fair to expect a first-year student who has course obligations to spend *some* time on course work, but along the same lines as if it were another course—and by no means the majority of time. When the department requires coursework, it's kind of unfair for a faculty advisor to complain about you having to spend your time taking the required classwork. Particularly in a department like chemistry, which tends to have comprehensive qualification requirements, expecting a first-year student to devote more than a modest amount of time to research is rather unreasonable. If you spend too much time on research, and not enough on classes, you could end up failing your qualfiers. If you don't pass those, you won't get your Ph.D., either!
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: In France coursework is anecdotal since PhD students are supposed to follow only one course a year, and the validation is decided (without grades) by the professor giving the lecture (and attendance generally means validation).

However, the question of balancing research and teaching is of importance. Those that are TA during their PhD have typically 3 to 4 hours a week on average of presence in front of the students during 6/7 months, and most colleagues agree on the fact that 2 to 3 times this amount is spent in preparing/grading (for beginners). So it is on average between 1 and 2 days a week for teaching. I strongly advised my own students not to cross that line: you don't improve significantly your lectures by working more than that, but you clearly decrease the quality of your research work (again, this is for newcomers in academia).
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: From my experience: You *just* have to make it work. You *just* have to balance all that is thrown at you. Believe me, it is a character building exercise, getting a PhD is. It's not just about publishing journal papers. A PhD degree is also about time management, people skills (which can be tested when trying to appease your advisor!) and learning how to communicate effectively (even if you get only 10 hours work done in a week while the expectation was 15 hours, it is *how* you communicate your results during research meetings).

After a year or so and once you have your qualifiers out of the way you will emerge a stronger person who would suddenly even have downtime! Good luck!
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: A lack of time for research in the first year is pretty common in programs with heavy course requirements, and your supervisor will usually know this especially if she or he has other students. I used to tell my supervisor that I was pretty busy with courses and this was no problem, and I doubt your advisor will get upset if you also have this issue.

On the other hand, I like the comment of DNA. You'd be surprised that even with a busy schedule there is a lot of room for improvement in how you manage your time. If you take a bit of time to examine your schedule, possibly with the aide of a spreadsheet, often you can find ways to improve your efficiency. Courses and TA duties are tiring and it is difficult to work after them. If this is your case you could try getting up earlier to have the best part of your day for a bit of research. Even three hours per week per semester will be around 40 hours in a semester, depending on the semester length, and you can accomplish much in this time.
Upvotes: 3


<issue_start>username_0: Looking at the [list of academic ranks](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_ranks) on Wikipedia shows that the same academic rank/title can mean quite different things in different countries. For instant, a "research assistant" in the US can stand for an undergrad student doing an internship, while in the UK it can stand for a postdoc. Similarly, the term "lecturer" might stand for a permanent position (e.g. in the UK) or for a teaching assistant position, open to graduate students.

However, when thinking about it, there are not so many kind of possible positions (permanent or not, with teaching or not, with research or not, with PhD supervision or not, with team responsibility or not, etc), and having a clear title could help a lot (for instance, in my case, I've been working in four different countries, with a different job title each time!).

* Is there some kind of official taxonomy that one could refer to?
* If not, who could be in charge to create it? (the EU, if only for intra-Europe mobility?)<issue_comment>username_1: In general, the answer is negative.

Not only there are different systems in different countries (and same-spelled degrees may have different requirements), but even if a degree seems to be the same, it is not necessary considered equivalent.

Often universities and institutes have some freedom in the interpretation of degrees earned in other countries. Common sense can be a good guide but in case of doubt you need to check if university (or institute) X accepts a foreign academic title Y instead of their Z.

For example, when I obtained degrees [licencjat](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licentiate#Poland) (3 years undergraduate, 180ECTS) and [magister](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magister_%28degree%29#Central_Europe_and_Eastern_Europe) (5 years undergraduate, 300ECTS) from a Polish university, they refused to translate it into anything else (stating explicitly that it is not equivalent to anything else). However, some other Polish universities do translate it into [Bachelor of Science](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachelor_of_Science) and [Master of Science](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Science), respectively. Nevertheless, my new institute didn't have problem to find them qualifying me for their PhD program.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: As the [answer of username_1](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/434/75368) says, there is not really a generally accepted consensus on this.

However, the [OECD](https://www.oecd.org/) defines certain grades to rank academic positions/titles in their [2015 Frascati Manual](https://www.oecd.org/publications/frascati-manual-2015-9789264239012-en.htm) (on page 275). They give some examples of titles that fit in these grades. The [UNESCO Institute for Statistics](http://uis.unesco.org/en/home) apparently [also recommended these grades](http://uis.unesco.org/en/glossary-term/researchers-seniority-levels) to be used and added some additional examples of titles, these I've italicized below.

* **Category A**: The single highest grade/post at which research is normally conducted.
Examples: “Full professor” or *“Director of research”*
* **Category B**: Researchers working in positions not as senior as top position (A) but more senior than newly qualified doctoral graduates.
Examples: “Senior researcher” or “Associate professor” or *“Principal investigator”*
* **Category C**: The first grade/post into which a newly qualified doctoral graduate would normally be recruited.
Examples: "Assistant professor” or “Post-doctoral fellow” or *“Researcher*” or *“Investigator”*
* **Category D**: Either doctoral students who are engaged as researchers, or researchers working in posts that do not normally require a doctorate degree.
Examples: “PhD students” or “junior researchers”

Obviously, these are not very widely used (at least in my experience), but at least it gives you some feeling of the relative levels and something to fall back on in case someone questions the seniority grade you claim.

It also clearly shows the large discrepancy between the U.S., where even a post-doctoral level could have a title with "professor" in it, and Europe, where "professor" is usually the highest or almost highest academic title you can have.
Upvotes: 1


<issue_start>username_0: I am currently applying for research and faculty positions. After an initial phone interview, how can I politely ask for feedback on the status of my application?

What are the necessary, optional, and unwise topics of such a letter?

As a concrete example, here is a quick draft:

>
> I am writing to follow up on our discussion a few weeks ago about the position in (My Field) at (Your Institution). I remain very interested in the position and would appreciate the opportunity to work with you and the (XYZ) group.
>
>
> In particular, have you been able to narrow the list of candidates, and am I included? Is there any additional information that I could provide to support my application?
>
>
> I also appreciate that you sent me a copy of your unpublished manuscript. It promises to make an important contribution to the field by providing the type of robust approach to (The Method) that is required. I would like to learn more - would you be willing to share the supplementary information with me as well?
>
>
><issue_comment>username_1: The only *necessary* component is the line "I was wondering about the status of my application".

Asking whether you can provide additional information is unlikely to help, as the question is too open-ended. It would be an excellent question to ask at the end of the interview phone call, as well as in the follow-up "thank you" email, but beyond that it appears desperate, which is typically not a good characteristic of an applicant.

The comment about the unpublished manuscript is unrelated, and therefore pretty neutral. It just as well could be sent in a second email.

It's worth mentioning that inquiring about the status of your application is pretty similar to habanero sauce; use judiciously, and very sparingly, and it's often best not to use it at all.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: As someone who has been participating in more of these hiring discussions recently, and been responsible for filling some of them myself, I would encourage you to use *extreme* caution before sending out such emails.

Faculty search committees usually consist of faculty members who are already quite overworked, and who have to deal with potentially many candidates who may all want to pester them with questions. If somebody starts acting like a nuisance, they might consider that person "not a team player" and reject the application on those grounds alone.

However, there are a few times when it is appropriate to ask about such deadlines:

* *When you have received an offer from another institution, but the institution you're writing to is a higher-perference choice*. Then you are doing two things: you're making sure that you get an informed decision, plus you're also letting the other guys know that if they're interested in you, they'll need to make a move quickly.
* *If you have a major update to announce.* This might include a change in location (new position, new mailing address, etc.) as well as status updates—you've earned a promotion or a major award. Then it would be OK to mention this in an email.
* *It is well past the "standard" deadline, or a promised deadline.* Then you're just following up on an arrangement, and it's hard to argue against this.

However, you should *never* ask if you are included on the list of finalists. That's considered both rude, as well as unfair to everybody else involved. Like username_1, I think the last paragraph in your excerpt is always superfluous, and should not be included in an email requesting a status update. (You *could* and perhaps *should* send it as part of a thank-you note to the interviewer.)
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: They'll call you if they want to call you.

In general, the only appropriate times to contact a potential employer following an interview are:

1. Immediately afterwards, to thank the interviewer for their time (and reiterate your interest in the position). **Do this within 24 hours of the interview**.
2. If you have another offer somewhere else. In that case, it's appropriate to ask the status of your application so that you can have the opportunity to consider both.
Upvotes: 2


<issue_start>username_0: I am writing my masters thesis now. I saw some theses with the acknowledgement chapter after the abstract, in other cases it's the other way around.

I think the acknowledgement chapter is not related to the scientific work in the thesis, and thus should not be put between the abstract and the introduction. An abstract could be nice in the beginning if we're looking at a paper for example, but for a thesis (usually >80 pages) the reader would have to turn the pages anyway.<issue_comment>username_1: You should check the guidelines from your university. I'd assume that they would have requirements for the order. If not, I always prefer the acknowledgements should come first, that way the non-scientific stuff is out of the way.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Actually, under normal circumstances, I would expect the abstract to be as close to the front of a thesis as possible. The reason for this is to make the job of cataloging and searching easier. Abstracts of theses are indexed by services such as [ProQuest](http://proquest.umi.com), and having to wade through additional pages of material makes their work harder.

That said, username_1 is correct in that you should follow whatever regulations your university has. But in general, in the absence of such guidelines, I would put the abstract *before* the acknowledgments—readers want to know as soon as possible if they should bother to read the rest of your thesis. Burying it after the front matter makes it less likely for them to invest the time.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Just adding my two cents: around me, people commonly print out and bind their thesis in such a way that **the one-page abstract is on the back cover**. I think it makes a lot of sense, and allows one to get an idea of what the thesis is about without flipping pages (literally).
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: I would prefer to put acknowledgement before the Abstract so that I will be done with the preliminaries first, so that when one reads Abstract he will have started looking at the actual content. To me acknowledgement coming between the Abstract and the introduction is a disruption. But the guidelines of the University are to be followed.
Upvotes: 1


<issue_start>username_0: Is it unprofessional to write (in a paper) that something is "really cool", for example, when describing a colliding black hole simulation?<issue_comment>username_1: It sounds unprofessional and unscientific. Imagine also your readers in 30 years, what will they think? They may not even take the paper seriously. Indeed, current potential readers may not take the paper seriously.

What would you think if you read an old paper that describes a black hole simulation as "groovy"?
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: In addition to Dave's answer, I'd say that in general, subjectivity is not very professional when writing academic papers. The point is to convince the reader by presenting only objective argument. Somehow, if I read a paper with something like "it's cool, it's amazing, that's the best, etc", then I might think that the author just ran out of objective arguments.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]


<issue_start>username_0: I'm writing a paper where I have a number of sentences across a few paragraphs, all from the same source. How should I use inline citations in this situation? Should I put them after each listed fact in the sentence at the end of each paragraph, or at the end of all of the paragraphs? The paragraphs are all topically related, but each one is different enough to be a sub-topic. In case it's relevant, the topic being discussed is technology, the paragraphs detail how companies using that technology.<issue_comment>username_1: From what I've seen, the only situation in which you would use a single citation following multiple sentences is if it's obvious that you're quoting that source verbatim AND the quote is uninterrupted. If you're using your own terminology OR the quote is interrupted, you should cite each sentence separately.

This becomes obvious when considering the purpose of a citation. Citations are there to answer the question, "who said this?" If you're quoting someone verbatim, and it's obvious you're doing so, then you only need a single citation, as the reader will infer that it applies to the entire preceding quote.

On the other hand, if you have multiple claims throughout a paragraph, after each claim the reader will wonder, "what's his source for this?" In most cases, you will be using multiple sources, and you will have a mixture of references. However, even if you have a single source for lots of claims, the reader will still wonder *after each claim* what the source is. You should tell them the source of each and every claim separately.

The exception I've seen—and that my advisor requested I use in my writing—is in the instance of a single logical thought pattern being followed throughout a paragraph or set of paragraphs. If you're describing someone else's work, it can be justifiable to state, "the following is an overview of Bob (2007)", or something to that effect. From my experience, though, that usually only happens in review articles.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: If you really have only one reference which you take one paragraph to sum up, I'd really advise username_1’s last item (the “exception”):

>
> Tying one’s shoelaces with only one hand is notoriously difficult [1]. Although it seemed like an unsurmountable issue a few years back, the recent breakthrough of Smith et al. [2] relied on a few topological considerations which have been clearly delineated by Brown [3], and are summarized in the rest of this paragraph. *[Here your description, with claims from Brown, without repeating the reference number]*
>
>
> However, little is known about the influence of the number of fingers used [4] in the tying process. Here, we present a research on tying shoelaces with even-fingered hands.
>
>
>

This is better than having a lot of claims [3] with the same reference [3] written all over one paragraph [3]. However, **you need to make it crystal-clear what part is covered by the reference**: using the paragraph boundary (and explicitly stating this) is a good way of doing that.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: While not really an answer, this is often an indication of a lack of understanding. The original question used of language like paraphrasing, another indication of a lack of understanding. You should probably show a draft to a colleague asking for specific help.
Upvotes: 1


<issue_start>username_0: Proofreading documents for orthography is a pain. I consider that I am decent at writing in my native language (on the grammar and orthography side), but proofreading for typos and whatnots is a time-consuming pain. I’d much prefer to have someone else do it for me, but it's a pain to bother other people with it. Also, when I read students’ work, in some cases it requires two iterations (because it's hard to focus on the science when the spelling is… suboptimal).

So, given that a professional proofreader would be much more efficient at this job than me, leaving me more time to review the scientific content or otherwise actually do research, the logical conclusion is that I should hire one. This would work either for my own writing or for

I know some people actually do that (and also buy more extensive services) for grant writing. However, I wonder: is it ethical to hire a proofreader for theses and academic articles?<issue_comment>username_1: Short answer
============

**Yes, it is ethical**

Long answer
===========

The three options are:

1. Proof-reading it yourself
2. Asking a co-author (for academic article) or a 3rd person (for theses) to proof-read it
3. Pay for a commercial proofreading service.

As I see it:

* Option (1) is inefficient. You've written the text, read it many times over, and your brain will simply fool you in not seeing the typo's.
* Option (2) is done quite often in practice. In my opinion, it's most suitable for journal articles; some articles have quite a lot of co-authors, and one could give a section to each co-author and distribute the work. That's what I usually do (my thesis will be quite small, because it's just a summary for a sandwich thesis).
* As for option (3), I don't see any ethical problems with paying for a proofreading service. I know a number of people (they are not native speakers) who do this systematically for theses and academic articles. They buy commercial services who check and correct the quality of their English writing. This improves the quality of the text and therefore reduces the chance to annoy the reviewers.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I see no problem in hiring an external proofreader. However, I would ask them to flag all the changes they made and then re-check those changes myself. It is certainly possible that the proofreader could misunderstand what the paper was trying to say. So if the proofreader is essentially pointing out places that need my further attention, that seems valuable to me.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Not only is it ethical, but, for really important documents like grant proposals, hiring a proofreader/editor is a really good idea. I've done it, and am glad I did.
Upvotes: 2