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1611 | Do we need a 'women' tag?
A new tag: women has been created and applied to several questions. The tag wiki excerpt says:
Questions specifically about gender issues in higher education and those involved in academic activities.
It originally said:
Questions specifically about women's issues in higher education and those involved in academic activities.
We already have a gender tag that covers the above. It is applied to 16 questions. I do not understand the rationale for a women tag.
@EnthusiasticStudent Please post an answer explaining the rationale for the tag. Poll-style comment votes on issues like this are not very helpful. Since you created the tag, I am encouraging you to post an answer explaining why you created the tag and why you think it is necessary.
I strongly believe that a women tag is both duplicative of gender and counter-productive. My two main reasons for feeling this way are:
Many of the questions, although phrased in terms of women, are really about gender issues in society and about the pervasive climate of sexism that most of us live within. In other words, it's not a "women's issue," it's a gender issue, and the actors who make it an issue are not just women.
Many of the issues raised apply also more generally to anybody who does not cleanly fit onto the standard gender binary.
Well said, that's exactly what bothered me about this tag.
Given the clear agreement on this, I've merged [tag:women] into [tag:gender] (i.e. eliminated [tag:women])
@ff524 Could you make it a synonym instead?
@FedericoPoloni Why?
@ff524 Because I can easily imagine users looking for such a tag when tagging or searching questions, and recreating it again. What we want is that questions that people may wish to tag "women" should be tagged "gender" instead. That's exactly the semantic of a tag synonym, in my opinion.
@FedericoPoloni Oh, you meant "in addition" not "instead" (I was reading your request very literally). OK, 'men' 'women' and 'transgender' are now synonyms of 'gender'
Agree with it (usually) being a gender issue. After all, discrimination -- as a different treatment -- requires a comparison standard. And here I would question whether the other group really has it that well. These issues are usually quite complex and frequently there's a lot of over-generalization. Discrimination also goes both ways, and yes, there are profs who are sexist against men. Separating both women's and men's issues, while usually dealing with the same underlying problems, would fragment the issue and cause diversion and strife. These are human (gender) issues.
@ff524 It was a good idea to create those three tag synonyms. Thank you.
@FedericoPoloni Thank you for suggesting to create tag synonyms.
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1831 | How should a user with a problem contact a moderator?
I am a user, and I have a problem. I want to contact a moderator to discuss it further. What is the best way to do this?
To contact a site moderator, you can
Reply to a message received from the "moderator message" system. The only "trick" on the mod message system is that the messages need to be done in turns, alternated between mod team and user. That means that if the mod team does not send a reply back to the user, the user will not be able to message the team again. The limit is in place to prevent abuse. This option is available even to users who are suspended.
Flag a post or comment with a custom flag. This option is most suitable when you have a concern with the specific post or comment.
Post a question on meta. This option is most suitable if you have a concern that you think requires community discussion.
Post a brief message in the Academia chat room, asking the moderators to set up a private chat and continue a conversation with you there. This option is suitable for private real-time communication with one or more moderators.
If that doesn't work out to your satisfaction, you can use the "contact us" link at the bottom of any page on the site to reach out to a StackExchange employee.
I think it should be emphasized that before posting a question on meta or calling a moderator, users should search well for possibly similar issues which are discussed previously on website or duplicate ones. Also most of the times; there is no need to attract moderators attention to a problem; users on the site will be happy to help other users if they are able to or have enough privileges. Actually, as FAQ it may be worth to open a question entitled "For which issues should I contact moderators?" and in an answer it become clear that some issues can be solved by users with enough privileges.
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1201 | Use of very general tags like "professors", "students", and "university"
I would like to clarify under what conditions questions should be tagged with certain very general tags, such as professors, students, and university.
These tags convey meaningful information in certain situations; for example, it makes sense to tag a question about professors' salaries with professors.
But given that a huge portion of questions on this site involve students and/or professors doing something in a university setting, it seems to me that without very specific guidelines for applying these tags, they have the potential to be overused to the point of being meaningless. For example, is there any benefit to tagging a question about an authorship dispute between PhD students with professors, students, and phd?
Can anyone offer specific guidelines on how to apply these and other very general tags so that they will be useful?
I think the problem is more general than just those specific tags.
I would be extremely interested in usage statistics of our tags. Not how often tags are being used for questions, but how often somebody actually searches for a specific tag. My underlying assumption is that many of our tags are essentially useless, as they are so general, and their use so ill-defined, that nobody actually uses them for their intended purpose (to find questions fitting their interest). For instance, I can hardly imagine the person that would be interested in questions tagged phd, but not all other questions on academia.SE.
To address your concrete question:
Can anyone offer specific guidelines on how to apply these and other very general tags so that they will be useful?
I cannot. What I would encourage, though, is a deeper discussion about how tags are being used in this stack exchange, and whether we can and should clean this up from ground up. I could, for instance, imagine having a smallish number of fixed tags, a la meta, with really well-defined semantics and which are only changed based on meta discussions.
+1 for these parts of your answer: many of our tags are essentially useless, their use [is] so ill-defined and the idea of cleaning up the tags.
I also think that in the help center, the question about tagging should also be reviewed that the user of the website become more familiar with the essential use of the tags.
Don't forget that those tags can also be used if you have a question about something like financing of PHD's you will search for finance plus the tag phd to limit yourself to that. As a limiting factor, not as the base of your search as you were expecting. Now, that's not to say that many people do so currently, but that's just because the search engine isn't as good as it should be~
I have been retagging some new and old questions lately and found much too many questions tagged with one of the mentioned tags, which do not even contain this word in title or body. Due to this, I think that the only way to keep these tags clean is to control every single new question.
Can anyone offer specific guidelines on how to apply these and other very general tags so that they will be useful?
When retagging, I have been going by the philosophy to keep those tags only, if they can be expected to be essential to the question or answer, for example, if the situation necessarily involves some of the respective persons to be a professor (and not just any supervisor) or if it was crucial that a university was involved and not a research lab or some other institution.
The "University" tag seems to be completely redundant. At least in British English, "academia" and "universities" are synonyms: it's impossible to ask a question about one that isn't a question about the other.
I consider research centers that are not directly affiliated with a university (e.g., the NIH labs in the US or MRC institutes in the UK) to be part of academia but not reasonable to use the university tag.
@StrongBad Good point. So I guess "University" only covers about 99.5% of our questions!
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819 | Can I ask a question I read on a blog?
I read a few (OK, too many) academic blogs. Often, readers write in asking the author of the blog to post a question they have about academia. Then the readers of the blog answer and discuss in the comments.
These are often very interesting questions that are on-topic for academic.SE, and I think that this community would have useful answers that I'd like to hear. However, the help center says that
You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face.
Is it appropriate to ask questions here that I've read on a blog, to find out what this community has to say?
Personally, I say yes.
The problem with asking questions you don't face is that you end up with many philosophical questions that don't actually occur in real life. However, what you describe is events that do happen in real life, and are practical issues, but happened to other people instead of you. (I once posted a question on behalf of my wife, who was a first-year graduate student at the time, and didn't worry that I was violating the site guidelines.) So long as the problem is practical and something that you (or others) have faced, I say go ahead.
I'm very curious to hear an opposing viewpoint.
Not an opposing viewpoint, but an emendation: if you are basing your question off another source, that's fine—but make sure to cite it with a link!
Also, write it in your own words - DO NOT COPY/PASTE, as in most cases that would be a copyright violation.
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1314 | Are questions about conduct in university-level coursework on topic?
Whenever we get a question asked by a student about exams, studying, cheating, disputing grades, or other aspects of university-level coursework, I see flags and comments along the lines of:
The course references suggest "undergraduate." Is this question on topic here?
Voting to close as off-topic, since this is a question about a problem facing an undergraduate student
Although it's conceivable that a similar question could be asked by a graduate student who had cheated, in reality this is an extremely detailed description of a totally undergraduate experience.
Well, as it pertains to undergraduate students it would still be off topic. I suspect this is a much less common issue at the graduate level (as coursework is less emphasized) though it is possible.
Given that a large number of master's and a significant number of doctoral degree programs include coursework, is there anything undergraduate-specific about questions on exams, studying, cheating, disputing grades, or other aspects of university-level coursework?
You're right about undergraduate students being more vulnerable to such situations as cheating or asking for exam related advice. A graduate student, by that very fact that they're a graduate student, tends to be more responsible. I mean, it is more of a job like situation; That could be why graduate level questions are usually of the type "How to tackle this challenge?" Also, age of the student might be an influence here. Questions such as "I did this, now what do you think I should do?" tends to be more opinionated, but they could serve as a warning to others.
What is the original reason for excluding undergraduate questions from this site?
@Village Afaik, the original reasoning was that we did not want to get swamped by "how do I best get into [University X]?" type of questions. (which, ironically, we get anyway)
It's certain that dealing with misconduct by undergraduates is very much a part of the academia experience, for grad students as well as faculty. I see that when a faculty member comes and ask: "A student did (misconduct), can you advise me on how to respond?" then as long as it is not too narrowly applicable a situation, then it seems to clearly be within scope.
If a similar question from a student leads to discussion of the faculty perspective and options for engagement, then it seems like having at least some questions and answers of this sort would be appropriate. Certainly, recent reaction seems to show that the community is quite happy to speak at length on the subject...
I am asking specifically about questions asked by a student. Must they lead to a discussion of faculty engagement to be on topic? If so, why?
@ff524 My own personal opinion is that the perspective from academia (not necessarily just faculty) is critical for it to be useful within the scope of this site. For contrast, I note down-voted answers in the recent discussion that talked about how to cheat better or legal strategies to inhibit the professors.
I routinely see graduate students in my own university
study,
cheat on exams and homework,
submit plagiarized homework,
get upset because others are cheating,
dispute grades,
complain that a class is badly organized,
and all the other things we accuse "undergrads" of doing.
Therefore, I believe questions about conduct in university-level coursework should be on topic.
Hmm, that's too bad... or rather, points 2, 3, 4 are bad. Points 1, 5, 6 are perfectly reasonable, I think, , nothing to accuse anyone of :-)
is there anything undergraduate-specific about questions on exams, studying, cheating, disputing grades, or other aspects of university-level coursework?
For what concerns the above highlighted points, I've never seen any difference in behaviour between undergraduates and graduates (immaturity propagates across degrees).
So, yes, I think that questions about conduct are on-topic.
Even professors cheat! Just replace HW/exams with publications. There are academically dishonest people across all ranks. Academic dishonesty in general is on topic here. I very much agree.
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5103 | A question with a lot of non-answers
This question here is asking whether there exists an example of researcher meeting particular criteria, in particular having solved a relevant open problem in the last 30 years and having initally been mistaken for a crank. There are lots of answers obviously not meeting the criteria (eg Galois definitely lived more than 30 years ago).
While I'd consider the 30 years to be a bit restrictive (50 years would be better, imho), overall the strict criteria seem essentially to make this question meaningful. As such, can we do something about all those answers not meeting them? A moderator deleting them all might be the most expedient way of handling this, but would also be somewhat heavy-handed.
This is a clear example of why certain questions are not really suitable for this site.
Yeah, I think this question should be closed, but it has no close votes from the community and has been left open now long enough to attract many answers, so I'd feel hesitant to use a moderator's unilateral close vote.
The question has hit the Hot Network Questions list a few hours after you posted this.
The 30 years restriction may have been 50 or 70 years; I just wanted to make sure "crank" and "affiliation" are meaningful. It is quite clear that this question is not only suitable for this site, but highly engaging and relevant, and not least within the clear scope, and having very precise criteria.
Very good meta question, thank you. That link, is probably a good example of an off-topic shopping question. Just use SE tools and raise a closure flag to bring it up to the consideration of the community.
can we do something about all those answers not meeting [the criteria]?
Just click on that button with a triangle pointing down. That's the Stack Exchange way.
And leave a comment pointing out how the answer falls short.
@JW But the problem with always leaving comments is there’s almost always some immature person who has to comment back on why your comment and/or downvote is wrong and then you have to resist getting into some whole back and forth that just gets moved to chat. I’m kind of joking but I’m not at all joking.
@ToddWilcox I am posting this to complain that the moderators have not removed your comment. This is a problem because it prevents people from unwittingly reposting it and creating a duplicate back-and-forth.
@ToddWilcox The possibility to upvote comments usually takes care of sorting this out.
The question is a distraction, perhaps, but a pleasant distraction. If it gives the users (and those providing early answers are frequent users) a bit of room to stretch their mental muscles then it does little harm. And it informs the rest of us about an interesting topic. Too rigid adherence to the rules can make the place dull. Leave it be, please. Keep calm and carry on.
I think this kind of misses the point, for several reasons:
It's impractical to prove that an example doesn't exist.
Given that it's impractical to prove that an example doesn't exist, unless an example meeting all criteria is available, the next-best answer is an example that meets some of the criteria, i.e. partial answers.
It's probable the OP will be interested in partial answers, since they are after all the next-best available answer.
Ultimately it's for the OP to decide if the answers are helpful. If they don't object, then others shouldn't either.
I would count the last paragraph in the question as an explicit objection to partial answers by the OP.
Very often the asker never returns, so I do not consider this a practical answer.
This question violates the spirit of the ban on "shopping questions" as defined in https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3658/13240
So why did you not vote to close it?
@FedericoPoloni Good question. I did vote for your answer.
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1968 | Gauging interest in a potential academia-focused product
Is it appropriate for the Academia.SE to gauge interest of the community in a potential product (service), focused on the academic market? If so, what is the best way to do that: asking a question or starting a poll (not sure, if this feature exists on this site or on SE, in general)? Note that this is not about advertising existing commercial offering, but rather about validating idea via feedback.
May I know how different this would be from "shopping questions" that SE wants us to avoid?
@ÉbeIsaac: Typically, "shopping questions" on SE are frown upon due to being open-ended, their lifetime issues and attracting spam (see this answer). My "validating idea" question would be different as it would not present any of those issues. However, based on the community feedback and other considerations, I have decided not to pursue this route on SE.
If so, what is the best way to do that: asking a question or starting a poll […]?
Stack Exchange has no poll feature and poll-like questions (e.g., “What do you think about …?”, “Would you use …?”, “What is your experience with …?”) are not welcome.
What you can do is to discuss the idea in chat or host a poll externally and advertise it on Meta, in chat or even the community ads (if it gets upvoted).
Thank you for clarification and suggestion.
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2067 | Serial downvoting detected - SE scripts are "silent"
I detected that somebody serially downvoted my random answers on Academia.SE (see picture below). However, no action occurred from SE software, which supposedly detects and reverses such hostile actions (in addition to punishing the attacker). What should be my next steps?
Sometimes it takes a few days to detect the pattern.
@StrongBad: I see. Then I will wait a little - there is certainly no rush with this. Thank you for clarification.
Take a look at this and this on Meta.
@Wrzlprmft: Thank you for referencing the links.
Those are all on answers to closed questions. I suspect someone downvoted them to make the questions easier to delete (require fewer votes to delete.) So it's probably not personal (for what it's worth...)
@ff524: Thank you for your comment. Even it's not personal, I think that it is totally unacceptable to manipulate votes for any purposes. Not to mention that closed questions should IMHO stay closed and not being targeted for deletion at all (for many reasons, including a drastic difference in complexity of reopening deleted questions vs. closed ones).
@ff524 I've been noticing this pattern on a number of my answers as well. Not enough that I felt it worth raising, but if it's happening widely, it may be worth a discussion.
@jakebeal You can raise a meta post to discuss if you want... but even if there is a consensus that downvoting in order to delete is an inappropriate use of voting, there isn't anything we (mods or anyone else) can do to enforce it. The only tools we have to identify inappropriate voting habits are for identifying votes that target a particular user.
Top tip: don't answer crap questions. Deletion of crap is an important part of how the site works. Answering crap questions encourages the asking of more bad questions, as well as hindering their deletion. When one answers a question that's too broad or off-topic, one worsens site quality. Please be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
@EnergyNumbers: Thank you for the tip - will keep that in mind. However, I'm not sure how it is related to serial downvoting.
The serial downvotage appears to have been fixed by now:
The remaining downvotes (three on a single question) can't really come from a single user.
Do you want to accept this answer or self-answer and accept, just so we see this has been resolved?
Stephan, I'm gladly upvoting and accepting your answer. Your help (and others, if any) is much appreciated. Best regards, Alex.
The downvoted answers no longer appear in that reputation history because the questions they were posted on are deleted, not because votes were reversed. It looks something like this when votes are reversed.
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889 | What is the best way to tell a new user that they can accept an answer if they think it answers their question?
I have noted that a new user has asked a number of questions (about 12-13) over the last week. Some of them have had (in my own opinion) some very insightful and acceptable answers. In all cases the answers have received up-votes but as of yet the OP has yet to accept any answer on any of their questions.
I'm not sure if the user knows that they can accept an answer as academia stakexchange is their only stackexchange account and it appears from their badges that they have not read the about page.
As my question title suggests, should the OP be told (maybe by way of comment and a link to the about page) that it is appropriate that they can accept an answer if they think it answers their question?
This has been discussed before on SE meta (links at the end).
The consensus there seems to be: if it seems that a new user does not know about accepting answers, it's appropriate to post a polite comment on the question saying something like:
Welcome to Academia.SE. If one of the answers below fixes your issue, you should accept it (click the check mark next to the appropriate answer). That does two things. It lets everyone know your issue has been resolved, and it gives the person that helps you credit for the assist. See here for a full explanation
(this sample comment is from Informing new users of how to accept answers)
Obviously, being rude to new users is not helpful. Neither is nagging users who obviously know about accepting answers to improve their accept rate.
Discussions on SE meta:
Informing new users of how to accept answers
Helping users accept answers
How to educate new users about accepting answers
How to tell new users with 0% accept rate to improve it?
Stop nagging new users about their accept rate
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.585875 | 2014-04-10T11:40:38 | {
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845 | What is the best way to promote Academia website in my University
Does the community have standardised material or methods for promoting the site?
I would be interested in promoting it but have no idea about how to go about it.
Since it is an Internet thing, I think that you cannot do better than:
send a link to this site to your colleagues or mailing lists,
describe it your own words what's Academia.SE.
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3851 | My question about zbMATH is closed as duplicate but it is not
I'd like to have my question ZbMATH and conflict of interest reopened. It needs a vote or two more.
The claimed duplicate is Under what circumstances is there a conflict of interest for a researcher to be a reviewer of a submitted academic paper?.
Reasons:
zbMATH is a collection of post-publication reviews of articles, not a peer reviewed journal. As such, the standards for having a conflict of interest might be different.
zbMATH reviews are not anonymous. Peer reviews usually are. This might also influence what is and is not a conflict of interest.
I think that is a pretty clear case for a difference, I like how you edited the question to make the case clearer. If there is anything useful in the comments, you may want to edit that in also.
I think most of the comments are obsolete or not relevant to begin with and can be deleted with no loss of anything of importance.
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4601 | The 'liberal arts' tag
The small 'liberal arts' tag is defined in the tag wiki as:
Questions having to do with liberal arts subjects such as literature, languages, art, music, philosophy, and history.
However, several of the questions seem to be about liberal arts colleges:
Research statement for liberal arts college: how much detail should I go into?
Learning Style Issues
What are typical examples of "scholarly work"?
Where to find details on Bachelor degrees majoring in IT?
Whereas others are about liberal arts:
How to judge the quality of education of an art school?
Is taking ideas from an art critic plagiarism?
Colloquial forms (let's...) in articles
Should this be separated into two tags or otherwise cleaned up?
Is there even any group of disciplines that call themselves liberal arts and have inherent commonalities in their academic culture? Wikipedia directly redirects liberal arts to liberal-arts education.
I do not know. Maybe the tag could be renamed into liberal-arts-colleges , if that is a coherent concept, and removed from the then irrelevant questions.
liberal-arts-colleges might be a coherent concept in one specific country, but outside there Wikipedia suggests that it's an extremely recent import. Perhaps us-style-liberal-arts-colleges would be a more accurate name.
@PeterTaylor There are also tags nih and nsf, as well as irb, and probably other regional tags without explicit mention of a country or such.
Eliminate the tag as too vague
Create a new tag for "Liberal Arts Colleges"
The current tag description is wrong. "Liberal arts" does not mean arts and humanities. The traditional meaning is grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. Other sciences are not in the traditional list because they did not exist at the time the list was made.
I agree. In particular, the three questions over there that are not about liberal arts colleges all could have a more specific tag, and both those tags already exist.
I edited the tag away from the three linked questions about specific liberal arts. Maybe more activity later.
I would tend to say let's leave them be. Yes, there are two distinct meaning here, but :
the meanings are closely related (at least in the US system), and
the number of questions is small enough that it's probably not causing any real difficulties to have them lumped together.
Yeah, the US caveat is needed - I had little idea what "liberal arts" meant until I moved here ;-)
Since there are only a few questions, it is easy and painless to fix the matter.
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3497 | Should legal questions be closed as too narrow?
In this question, Cape Code says:
I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's about the legalese of a specific geographic region and not about academia.
The comment has, at the time of writing, 11 upvotes.The same can be said of any other legal related question. So, should we close all legal related questions as too localised?
See On-topic-ness of questions on legal issues related to academia?
The policy on upvotes to questions on meta always gives me headaches. What does it mean if I upvote this question? That I want to close all legal-related questions? Or that I agree with the remark that OP makes implicitly, that is, "it was wrong to close that question?" Or simply that I think this was a good topic to discuss?
@FedericoPoloni as a default for questions one should follow the tool-tip "useful and clear." Up/down for yes/no is (if at all) useful for feature requests. This is also what the help center says.
Related: Workplace.SE explicitly closes legal questions as off-topic. The litmus test is whether a question could only be answered competently by a lawyer versed is the appropriate laws.
The policy on legal question, if any, isn't consistently applied: Has the stance on questions pertaining to legal issues changed?
I think it is not too localised. The particular example is regulated by US federal law, which makes it exactly as specific to a specific geographic location as "How does the US admission to PhD students work?", and less localised than anything tagged with, for example, Germany.
Laws provide a framework we have to work in, and set limits, duties, and rights in the academic practice that academics should be aware of (or may wonder about).
As long as the question doesn't require a lawyer familiar with the specifics of the case, I think it can stay.
Furthermore, even if the jurisdiction is not the same as mine, many countries' laws mirror each other, so knowing how things are in another place may help me find out how they are in mine.
How is US less localized than Germany? Because it has more inhabitants? Where's your cut-off?
"knowing how things are in another place may help me find out how they are in mine" -- not in any reliable way. The only important thing is to notice that the issue is a legal one, and then check your local laws.
@Raphael my point is that there should be no cut off.
@Raphael one cannot reliably assume the laws are the same, but knowing how things are elsewhere can point me in the right direction. If something is explicitly forbidden in Germany by university regulations, probably my best bet in Sweden is to look up my university's regulations, before checking the law.
@Davidmh: Admittedly, your answer currently reads very much as if there were a cut-off. Essentially, the first paragraph says "Questions tagged United-States are less localized than questions tagged Germany.", which does evoke the question why the restriction to one particular country makes a question less localized than a restriction to another particular country. Always assuming you would tag the question How does the US admission to PhD students work? as United-States, which seems entirely appropriate given the question title.
One of the reasons for which I voted to close this question and similar ones as off-topic is that I believe their off-topicness makes them not useful.
Apparently the OP wanted to advertise her/his self-answer but I doubt that this person or anyone else on this site is qualified to answer in a useful way. Besides, and especially in the American legal system, I think it's probably impossible to answer in a definite manner. Such questions about "rights to this and that" are typically controversial and not answerable outside a formal legal procedure.
So what would a random user benefit from another random user claiming that that this law grants them the right to something? Imagine I asked about students' right re concealed carry of firearms on campuses in the US. I could easily post my own answer citing constitutional articles and laws and claim either that students have that right, or not. It would be useless.
However, questions that are related to legal issue but really ask about what is the practice and reasonable expectations one can have in an academic setting are on topic.
I think this quote form another thread summarized that sentiment quite appropriately:
Most legal-issues questions on Academia.SE are not about the law per se, but rather about the de facto interaction of academic standards and practices with issues regarding the law. That sort of thing is completely within scope of this site.
Can you point us to a page or paragraph in the OCR documents I linked to that you found unclear or ambiguous? 2. Please understand, for a transgender student to file an OCR complaint does not involve a "lawsuit". 3. Did you really find the three OCR documents I pointed to unhelpful regarding "practice and reasonable expectations one can have in an academic setting"? I learned a great deal from reading them. My Q&A were designed to share this information with people in the front lines in colleges and universities. I hope this information will be helpful.
@aparente001 it's irrelevant what I find ambiguous or not. I don't disagree with you or the content of your post I just don't find it a good fit for this site. A blog would be a better venue maybe.
@CapeCode Are you saying that the question "What are the de facto standards and practices that an academic should maintain with regards to complying with federally protected legal rights of transgender students re gender pronouns?" would be on topic, but "What federally protected legal rights does a transgender student in the U.S. have re gender pronouns used in referring to the student?" is not? -- Can't we assume that the "with respect to academics" bit is automatically implied by posting to this site, or do questioners really have to play "Simon Says" with their wording?
@R.M. Yes de facto practice and standards specifically in academic settings is interesting and could benefit from first hand experience from users of this site. Legal disputes not so much. A lot of things are "federally protected" or state law but still not enforced within academia: think of labor laws or copyright.
@R.M. As for the tone of your comment, that's precisely the kind of thing I'd like to avoid by closing political posts.
@CapeCode I'm sorry, I'm still confused by your response. What is the distinction you see between the two question? What makes one acceptable and the other not? To me the core question is pretty much the same. I can't see how sticking "What are the de facto standards and practices that an academic should maintain ..." at the front of the question suddenly turns it from unacceptable to acceptable. Hence the "Simon Says" reference: it's effectively the same question, but a special phrasing suddenly makes it acceptable? I'm trying to see where your distinction lies.
@CapeCode By the way, my "tone", if any, is entirely due to frustration about arbitrary requirements on people asking questions. It has nothing to do with the content of the question, political or otherwise. I'd use the same "tone" in a discussion about a question on library policy. -- Also, it looks like you might be moving the goalposts: legal is distinct from political. Is your objection here because it's a legal question, or because it's a political post?
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3846 | This Question Appears to be Defamation
This question purports that the linked article demonstrates that a person the OP mentions by name committed fraud. This is not true, as both commenters and the answer have noted. However, I worry that the post itself is defamation.
The core question (“what happens to the journal’s reputation when it publishes fraud”) can be asked without the example, or with an example of someone who is widely known as having committed fraud and who has had their paper retracted on those grounds (for example, Andrew Wakefield).
What do people think the correct course of action is? Should the question be edited? Deleted? Something else?
I believe the question itself is salvageable - and indeed, I think the spurious accusation can be dealt with in a sentence or two (as my answer did).
Since then, the question has been edited, and now I think is a fully formed, acceptable and on-topic question for the site.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.587111 | 2017-10-24T20:02:40 | {
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1438 | How do I link directly to a comment?
A comment I read on one of my questions has me interested in asking a separate question and I would like to create a link that goes directly to the comment on the question rather than to the top of the question page. I'm sure I've seen it used before and I've looked in the help section but I just can't seem to find the instructions.
Click on the time and copy the link in the URL bar, to the right of the name.
Silly me, I guess I should write an answer for this.
If you click on the time since posted next to the user's name:
Click on the time and copy the link in the URL bar, to the right of the name. – Compass 1 min ago
It will give you a link in the URL bar. Or right click and copy URL.
URL for my comment above is: https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1438/how-do-i-link-directly-to-a-comment#comment5884_1438
Then, standard linking gives you a comment link.
Caveat - modern browsers may only allow the link to work once if the comment is on the same page. Additional clicks will result in the "You're already here" and not refresh the page for you.
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1170 | Are questions pertaining to high school relevant here?
There do seem to be a couple of questions regarding HS things on this site and as an Indian HS student I just wanted to clarify this before posting questions.
I would say that questions pertaining to high school are off topic here, but questions about being a student or doing research or getting admitted to a academic program can be very much on topic. The thing you need to ask yourself, and it is difficult from the perspective of a high school student, is is my question applicable to graduate students, either current or perspective.
It might help if you ask a meta question with some of your potential questions and people can maybe give you some pointers of how to make them more on topic.
This is exactly right. Questions related to admissions exams, specific coursework, etc., are off-topic; however, anything related to how to do research would be very much on-topic.
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887 | The question you are asking appears subjective and it is likely to be closed
I tried to post a question on the main site with the title "How to compare recommendation letters" or "How to grade recommendation letters" and some similar titles from the view points of a selecting or hiring committee. But each time a blue box appears telling that
The question you are asking appears subjective and it is likely to be closed
For this reason I didn't post my question, as I felt that the question is not appropriate for this site. My question is that is there a website on stackexchange or elsewhere, where I can ask this presumably subjective question?
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1847 | Poor writing style in questions. What can be done to improve it?
I notice that a large proportion of questions are poorly written. By "poorly written" I mean both poor English grammar and usage, and also poor composition. I realize that many questioners are not native English speakers and writers, but if these questioners are in academic programs where English is the primary language, then it is imperative for them to be able to express themselves effectively in English.
My question is: What can we do to improve the quality of question writing in Academia.stackexhange.com?
Yes, the "edit" option is useful for people who have enough reputation points and have the time and the willingness to take the time to rewrite questions.
But it would be better if there was some way to help people as they were entering their question.
For example, it should be possible to use NLP software to determine whether the posted question actually includes a question. I should also be possible to use NLP to test the sentences for grammatical correctness. If these can be implemented, then I can imagine that there would be a feedback cycle where, after the user posts the question, that they would see a "feedback" page where their English grammar and question composition structure is evaluated. If the post does not pass some minimal score, then the user is prompted to improve their question, with guidance: "Your question does not include a question sentence. Please add a sentence that starts with 'My question is...' and ends with a question mark."
My question is: Why would you like to read thousands of questions starting with "My question is"? How boring! You know, there are other ways to introduce a question. Moreover, there are indirect questions too.
@MassimoOrtolano I would happily risk boredom if we could gain comprehension and effective communication.
While I would certainly love to see a higher level of quality in the writing here, I'm not in favor of an approach that places more restrictions on the form of the question, in addition to the content-related restrictions that are already difficult for newcomers to navigate. To quote from a related answer on main meta:
If you start telling people what words they may or may not use, you're gonna find words that are a lot worse than txt-speak coming your way. It'll make the list of Things Not Allowed On Stack Overflow even more intimidating without really improving the quality of questions and answers. I'd rather have a thousand good questions with questionable grammar, spelling, and usage than a thousand perfectly composed bad questions.
Thanks. I'm not suggesting an approach that tells people what words they may or may not use. To the contrary: is it too much to ask that a question post should include a sentence that is actually a question? I think that this is completely reasonable as a minimal threshold for anyone that posts to academia.stackexchange.com. To simplify my suggestion, we could offer this template on the post-a-question page: 1) Context statement; 2) Background; and 3) Question statement. 99% of acceptable question would fit this template.
The people posting questions are graduate students! (for the most part) Nearly all are in graduate programs where English is the primary language of publication. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to expect them to write in proper English. Put another way, I expect questions on Academia.stackexchange.com to be more like academic articles and letters, and less like Facebook or Snapchat posts.
@MrMeritology Don't forget there is a major selection bias in what we see!
@jakebeal Yes, I realize that. Even so, it would be good if there were some mechanism to promote better writing in questions.
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3779 | Are questions about K-12 (pre-college) education on-topic here?
Subject line says it all -- I do not recall seeing any questions here about K-12 education here, but I also do not know if there is a better Stack Exchange site for that purpose.
No. Per the help center, only university-level education is within the scope of this site.
This site is for academics of all levels—from aspiring graduate and professional students to senior researchers—as well as anyone in or interested in research-related or research-adjacent fields.
If you have a question about...
Life as a graduate student, postdoctoral researcher, university professor
Transitioning from undergraduate to graduate researcher
Inner workings of research departments
Requirements and expectations of academicians
University-level pedagogy
... then you're in the right place!
There is a proposal on Area 51 that may be of interest to you: Primary and Secondary Education
Depending on the specific nature of your question(s), you may be looking for the Math Educators or CS Educators sites.
As those site names imply, though, they are about specific subjects, not all of K-12 education, and they tend to be more focused on the problems facing educators as people than issues relating to the field of education broadly.
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3990 | Reopening question about becoming a good advisor?
I recently asked a question which recieved some attention. But was closed as off-topic (Shopping question).
Basically my question is about training or which steps I can take to become a good advisor. As a "good advisor" is not clearly defined I tried to provide some skills I thought he/she should have. But I might have then lean into a shopping question.
I would appreciate further guidance on how to rewrite the question to keep it open and address my point.
A user suggested to split the question in two. I think that questions would be:
What skills should (ideally) a good advisor have?
Which I think is a shopping question, and
How to acquire the skills needed on to become a good advisor.
But before doing so I though better to discuss it here.
The votes are in favour of splitting the question?
The advice to split a question is always good advice, but in this case the split questions still do not work well. Both the questions What skills should (ideally) a good advisor have and How to acquire the skills needed on to become a good advisor seem like they lead to lots of answers with one, or more, skills/ways of obtaining them and each answer will be equally valid. This is often what we refer to as a shopping question. I am not sure the topic works for the SE model.
I agree, but then how I split the question in new meaningful questions?
There are some questions for which there does not exist a suitable way of asking on Stack Exchange. How do I become really good at [broad role]? is one of them. What [property] does a [broad type of object] need? is another.
These aren't even shopping questions though, they're just straight-up TB.
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4148 | The "controversial post" mechanism seems to facilitate the misuse of power and consequently I oppose its use
I noticed that this question was marked as a "controversial post." The text says:
Controversial Post — You may use comments ONLY to suggest improvements. You may use answers ONLY to provide a solution to the specific question asked above. Moderators will remove debates, arguments or opinions without notice.
I find this concept morally dubious.
To illustrate, here's a statement made in an answer that is EXTREMELY opinion-laden:
So, rather than trying to plead for another chance, rather than trying to "see what can be done," the solution is to recognize that you have made a serious error that cannot be rectified.
I strongly disagree with this highly controversial statement, and I note that it hasn't been "removed without notice," most likely because it fits with the politics or meta-philosophies of certain moderators.
Further to this, I imagine, there were equally controversial statements that were removed simply because they didn't fit with such meta-philosophies. If that's not the case for this particular question, then at least it's probably the case for other questions so-marked as controversial.
My point is this: the controversial post mechanism, which by its nature does not require the consistent removal of controversial or opinion-laden statements, but only gives moderators the option of removal, consequently confers inordinate power to moderators and allows them to impose their political views and personal opinions upon others to a much greater extent than can be considered necessary or morally sound.
Interfering with people's freedom of speech is already problematic from an ethical point of view, but when this interference is at the discretion of authorities and policing is inconsistent, it becomes orders of magnitude more problematic. For these reasons and others, I oppose the use of "controversial question" mechanism and I think that academia.stackexchange should search for more ethically sound ways of reducing interpersonal conflict.
Is there a question in here, since I can't find it. Further, your use of emotionally charged words (including attacking the morals and ethics of the moderators, who are elected by the members - including you) makes this come across as a rant.
@JonCuster there is more leeway on meta for discussion. The post is clearly expressing an opinion about how the OP believes the site should operate. While I respectfully disagree with the OP about the use of the post notice, the question is valid for meta and I think in fact provides a useful means of understanding how the community feels about the post notoce.
@JonCuster, this is not a question. I'm objecting to a mechanism that facilitates the misuse of power. And, I'm quite okay with coming across however you please, as long as mechanisms that facilitate the misuse of power are objected to.
Related: https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3853/do-we-need-a-post-notice-for-possibly-controversial-questions
Further to this, I imagine, there were equally controversial statements that were removed simply because they didn't fit with such meta-philosophies. If that's not the case for this particular question, then at least it's probably the case for other questions so-marked as controversial.
Your views here are incorrect. There are two deleted answers. One was deleted by the owner of the answer and one was deleted by the community bot in response to spam flags. The spam answer was clearly spam. The only things deleted by moderators were a few chatty comments (e.g., +1 great answer). A couple of comment conversations were also moved to chat and comments on those questions/answers have been repeatedly pruned since then. As we can only move comments to chat once, those additional comments were deleted.
The post notice is relatively new and while I have not gone back to every question that it has been applied to, I can assure you that moderators have not been indiscriminately deleting content.
My point is this: the controversial post mechanism, which by its nature does not require the consistent removal of controversial or opinion-laden statements, but only gives moderators the option of removal, consequently confers inordinate power to moderators and allows them to impose their political views and personal opinions upon others to a much greater extent than can be considered necessary or morally sound.
The post notice does not confer any power to moderators. We have the power to indiscriminately and unilaterally remove whatever content we want in the absence of the notice. We were elected mods because the community believes that we can use the additional moderator powers to improve the site and that when we make mistakes that we will take responsibility for those mistakes and make sure they get corrected. What the post notice does is remind users that if things get heated, a moderator might clean things up. Which of course we can, and do, do even if we haven't warned users.
Why was the post notice added You might be asking yourself if we don't delete stuff, why even add the post notice. I added the post notice because there were a large number of answers and comments on the question. This generated a flag which alerted me to the question. I protected the question, as we usually do with questions that have lots of answers and comments and are on the HNQ list. I also moved one comment chain to chat. I felt that the question would likely generate a large number of additional comments and even with the post notice and comment saying additional comments will be moved to chat, it has. Since we can only move comments once, I felt an additional warning that comments would be deleted was in order. At some point a moderator will need to read through the new comments and decide if they should be deleted. The post notice is designed, in my opinion, to cut down on these situations.
Note that I have edited the post in reaction to finding out another mod deleted comments after the comment thread was moved to chat. As you may have heard the comment moderation interface is not the best. I applogize for missing these comments the first time around.
Moderators do not delete or censor posts because they contain opinions we disagree with. If they run afoul of community guidelines—such as using obscenities, posting spam links or nonsense—that’s different. (The former is cleaned up as “lightly” as possible, the latter gets deleted.)
Even in the case of controversial posts, though, there is the possibility of discussing it in chat. Remember that part of the goal of SE is to provide curation for future users. Having long, tangential discussions that do not help understand, clarify, or improve the question do not help towards that aim. We do not typically resort to that designation—as I’ve gone on record, it should be used extremely sparingly—but from time to time it becomes necessary.
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3893 | Are recommendation for services for Statement of Purpose writing allowed?
I recently saw the question on Quora:
https://www.quora.com/I-need-help-editing-and-rewriting-my-statement-of-purpose-for-graduate-school-What-online-services-are-available
and thus it was unclear what were the actually good answers. Thus I came with up with the question that thought would be useful here:
What is the best online service for consulting in writing statements
of purpose for PhD programs?
is this an appropriate question for site?
is this an appropriate question for site?
Not at all. There are several problems with this question:
It is the nature of such services that most people use them exactly once in their life. Therefore almost nobody can vote for more than one answer. Of course, some dedicated study could do this, but I doubt that something like this exists in this domain. Moreover the quality of such a service is very subjective.
Self-advertisement answers will be very difficult to distinguish from honest answers.
It’s a shopping question. It would even would be a bad question for this site if you specified a subjective criterion (not that I have one to suggest).
The number of possible answers is very large.
I don’t know about this special kind of service, but I would not be surprised if most of them are not actually about advising you but doing the entire job for you – which would be unethical.
The Quora question you linked pretty much proves my points: There are a lot of answers and most of them are blatant advertisements, including some that overtly advertise unethical services. The question has essentially degraded to post your advertisement here.
What you can ask about here, is how you best choose such a service (without naming any particular one). Then all of the above problems would vanish.
ah ok, thanks! In what way are they unethical services? If I am looking for this I am now curious what part of getting help for the SOP is unethical?
@Pinocchio: In what way are they unethical services? – Well, they write the entire statement for you – which you should write yourself. So they are not just giving advice, but helping you cheat on your admission. (Note that I cannot evaluate all of these services, but some of the linked site overtly advertise doing this.)
This basically says everything I'd want to say on this matter. A question about evaluating such services might be on topic, depending on how it's written.
@Wrzlprmft thanks. I did not catch that, though that seems silly that anyone would use that. Regardless, I already have my own SOP and just want advice/consulting on it, not someone to write it for me. That can't ever go well. Thanks for the feedback! :)
@aeismail ah, thanks! that seems useful. What do you think would make it on topic that my original one did not?
@aeismail: A question about evaluating such services might be on topic, depending on how it's written. – Let me add this to my answer …
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4427 | Survey: reading answers before voting
Motivated by these questions:
Case Study: First Answer Bias and Are upvotes skewed towards the first answer to a question?
I propose a biased (biased towards people who use the meta site) study of AcademiaSE users to see how much of an upvote biases the first answer to a question gets (the "fastest gun in the west" problem) from "non-random" Academia users. To wit,
For questions you read which have multiple answers, do you typically vote on an answer before reading other answers? (Answer by up-voting answers below. At least for this question, please read the answers first and upvote at least one.)
There are several other effects that may generate bias. For instance, I frequently skip very long answers because I don't have enough time to read them. I may later get back to a few of the skipped answers if I know that the writer is someone whose style and ideas I like. I also seldom read long streams of answers, when there are 5 or more, or I read them selectively. Or I seldom read late additions. Again, I don't have enough time to read everything.
I typically vote on answers I like right after reading them but usually read several of the answers.
I typically read most answers before voting.
Other (vote before reading, never vote, ...)
Please explain in comments.
I upvote multiple answers if appropriate.
I typically vote on answers I like right after reading them and often don't read further answers.
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4587 | How are different disciplines represented on this site?
I am pure mathematician, and my impression (which I'm sure is not unique) from frequenting this site for some time is Academia.SE there seem to be a relatively large number of mathematicians on this site, as compared people from many other disciplines, especially social sciences. I suspect this is in large part due to a strong mathematical involvement with SE beginning with MathOverflow and to some extent with MathStackExchange.
Question: Do we have/can we get any rough estimates of a make-up community by field?
The idea behind this question is to get a more concrete sense of things like how much field-dependent bias there is to various posts on this site, as well as which communities we are serving well and which we are not.
A couple of simple ideas are: parse user profiles/SE network usage and/or look at what discipline tags people use. (As of now, the top 3 discipline tags by posts are: math (1494), CS (1064), physics (296).) Perhaps restrict to a weak notion of regular users such as has visited at least once/month for at least 3 out of the last 6 months.
Have you seen https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/467/academia-community-polls
@StrongBad Thanks for reminding me! I had seen that long ago and had even participated in the poll on discipline: https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/470/19607
Still that thread is several years old, and of course the poll is biased to people who use meta.
@Kimball - this is a meta-worthy topic, we tend to keep this sort of stuff off the main site. That said, it's been quite a while since that poll, and the site has changed a lot. May be worth repeating that poll-style question again.
I can probably already guess the result of the poll for the field of metrology: 1 user (me) :-)
@MassimoOrtolano You would be wrong. :-)
I think it's fair to say that we have a bias towards natural sciences, maths and computer science, and don't have so many arts or humanities people. Not sure about social sciences. It's probably also fair to note that that correlates with the fields that use programming more as part of research. But I'd hesitate to be more specific than that. A repeat of the Really Old Poll would be interesting to me :-)
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3871 | Why am I allowed to undelete someone else's answer?
I was looking at What are good strategies for not losing sight of the novelty and nontriviality of one's work? and there is a deleted answer, with a score of 2, which says "deleted by owner" yet I am allowed to vote to undelete it. (In this case, the owner is a new user, with rep 1.)
Why should I be allowed to vote to undelete it when the author apparently wants it deleted?
Under what circumstances should one vote to undelete an answer which was deleted by the answerer?
In general, once a user has contributed content to this site, they grant SE an irrevocable license to use that content (according to the terms of the license). From the terms of service:
You agree that all Subscriber Content that You contribute to the Network is perpetually and irrevocably licensed to Stack Exchange under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license. You grant Stack Exchange the perpetual and irrevocable right and license to use, copy, cache, publish, display, distribute, modify, create derivative works and store such Subscriber Content ..
So if the content is valuable, trusted members of the community are allowed to vote to restore it.
The scenario where this often occurs is when someone rage quits the site and deletes all their content, including very good answers to old questions. This is unfair; had they never posted an answer in the first place, then someone else would have probably supplied the same answer they did. But since they did post the answer, once they delete it they leave behind a question where the remaining answers are incomplete (often just expanding on points made in the now-deleted answer, so they don't even make sense anymore out of context) and this has a negative effect on the overall quality of the site. In this scenario, I will undelete the answer.
(The author of the post can always ask for it to be dissociated, so it won't be linked to any user account.)
I had a question regarding your deletion, but it was longer than a comment, so I created a question in meta for it. https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3873/allowing-questions-that-warranted-a-deletion-but-has-an-answer-that-addresses-t
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4610 | How many users state preferred pronouns on Academia?
Now that The code of conduct has been changed, I found myself wondering to what extent non/gendered pronouns are a concern for people on Academia.SE. Do we have any data/rough idea about how many users of this site state preferred pronouns?
(Maybe the percentage of such users will skyrocket with the new CoC, but that also might be interesting to know.)
The reason I ask is that I wonder how much of a concern pronoun usage is on our site. In the event we have no data, I would be happy to hear anecdotal evidence (preferably from current or former moderators) about to what extent gendered pronouns and more generally language is an issue for our users.
Note that this raw number may mean nothing: more than half of our users have 101 reputation or less, which is the amount that you get just by subscribing with the "has reputation on other SE sites" bonus. Essentially this means that they never made a post, or that made only posts with negative score. More interesting is "what percentage of the posts here was made by users with stated pronouns?"
Not a dupe, but linking an old, related, discussion for reference: https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3484/gendered-pronoun-usage/
@Laurel's idea was excellent, but the specific query checks only for the three most common pronouns and gets a bunch of false positives. If you query specifically for "pronoun", it checks for neopronouns as well:
select aboutme, id as [User Link] from users
where aboutme like '%pronoun%'
From this, as of this writing one finds the following 46 results:
False matches, generally profiles talking about pronounciation: 7
He, she, they, or "don't care" preferences: 25
Preference for a neo-pronoun: 2: 1 ze/hir, 1 ne/nim/nir
People being obnoxious, mostly clearly because they are upset about the recent code of conduct changes: 10
"englishisnotaconlangyoudontgettoinventnewpronounsanymorethannewtenses"
"we" (evidence: post about CoC change)
"the one who respects LGBTQ++, lavander, pink, blue, green, and everybody else, but considers the new SE CoC rules on gender pronouns an absurd and harmful stupidity"
"His Most Eminent Gracious Majesty"
Spivak pronouns, but "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter"
"His majesty, the infallible genius"
"–æ–Ω, –µ–≥–æ, –Ω–µ–≥–æ, –µ–º—É, –Ω–µ–º—É, –∏–º, –Ω–∏–º, –æ –Ω—ë–º"
"old fart"
"My third-person pronouns are I/me/my/mine. Use them or get banned, twansphobes."
"Voi use voi/void/voids/voids/voidself as pronouns" (evidence: comments about CoC change)
Confusing statements: 2
"Preferred pronouns: none. Please use alternative sentence structures to avoid gendered and gender neutral language when referring to me."
"Preferred pronoun: The gender-neutral "it". As I'm an alien and my race doesn't have any sexes ..."
Furthermore, of the obnoxious or confusing profile statements, precisely one has any significant activity on this site.
Bottom line: respectful pronoun use on Academia.SE should currently be easy.
Thanks for looking into this, and for giving a detailed breakdown of the types of professed preferred pronouns. BTW, I don't find the first of your two listed confusing statements confusing---while I of course don't know that user's motivations, I think it's an understandable point of view.
@Kimball I think that what confuses me about the statement is how to refer somebody without either being gendered or gender neutral in the language that I use. That seems like a logical exclusion to me, so either I'm not understanding something or else it is a deliberately impossible request.
I understand that avoiding 3rd person pronouns may be inconvenient in some contexts, and more so for some people than others, but I personally do this often without much thought for the level of 3rd person user references I make on this site. Often names (e.g. user1234) and descriptors (e.g. the OP) suffice, and they can be supplemented with other relative references (e.g., that user, that person).
That said, I completely agree with a widespread sentiment that SE could help with this a lot by more open discussion with users to find out how they are comfortable interacting with each other, and clarifying what is deemed to be acceptable and reasonable to a sufficiently large fraction of users. In particular, clear guides for how to interact with people with various preferences.
Thanks for this. To avoid any doubt we should be clear that every single user deserves proper treatment, so this CoC policy is important even if only one person is affected. However, these numbers indicate that the specific scenario being hotly debated around SE is very hypothetical. And I think that partly explains why it is so hard for people to agree.
FWIW, aboutme like '%pronoun[^c]%' should take care of most of the false positives related to pronunciation.
If the about me is the only thing we look at, then not very many (~64 although I’m not sure if any are false positives or if I’m missing anyone). Run (and feel free to modify) this query:
select aboutme, id as [User Link] from users
where aboutme like '%she/%' or aboutme like '%her/%'
or aboutme like '%he/%' or aboutme like '%him/%' or aboutme like '%his/%'
or aboutme like '%they/%' or aboutme like '%them/%' or aboutme like '%their/%'
I’m sure some people mention their pronouns in their posts and comments, but it’s unlikely to be formatted as conveniently. And quite a few people people heavily imply what their pronouns are (e.g. by saying that they’re a woman).
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4395 | What happened to the winter bash hat polls?
Up until 2016, there were polls asking if we wanted to participate in the annual Winter Bash Hat Festivals. Why haven't there polls the past couple of years? I realize the votes have been overwhelmingly in favor of hats, so they might seem pointless, but being pointless is not a reason for not doing something (otherwise, we wouldn't have hats in the first place).
Was there some discussion? Laziness? Forgetfulness? Have we given up on any semblance of democracy?
I guess I will formally chime in. The 2018 Winterbash FAQ says:
Why are you doing this to us?
For sites that have hats on by default, your moderator teams or your communities indicated that hats would be a fun, lighthearted thing to do. Why did we offer it in the first place? Because we thought it was a nice way to finish out another really amazing year. You can always decide you hate hats and turn them off.
In 2013, we had to tell SE if we wanted to be included (default was no hats). In 2014, they changed the default to hats, but asked us to respond either way. In 2015 and 2016, they did not even bother asking for responses to opt in and instead only asked for a response to opt out. In 2017 and 2018 they simply did not ask for anything. the idea was that support for hats was so decisive (most sites really love hats and a few really hate hats) that SE stopped asking mods if we wanted them or not.
There may have been some discussion regarding them stopping the discussion, but I really do not remember. In 2017, I asked moderators I noticed we did not get the standard email asking if we wanted hats or not. I asked other moderators from all the SE sites what they were doing and there was strong support that we probably did not need to poll users anymore. If someone else starts a poll and it becomes clear we don't want hats, I will let SE know that we don't want them anymore. In this way democracy is not really dead.
Thanks! (I didn't actually think that democracy was dead.) Out of curiosity, what sites really hate hats? (Is there a list of which sites opted out?)
@Kimball TeX, Japanese, and MO opted-out in 2014, but the certain thing is MathOverflow since the beginning.
@AndrewT. Thanks. Coincidentally I am a user of each of those sites. I wonder what that says about me? (At the least, that I don't pay too much attention to hats.)
@Kimball well, you asked the question...
In past years (2016 and earlier), site moderators received emails from SE announcing the upcoming Winter Bash before it started, and asking us to let them know before a specified date if our site wants to opt out.
There wasn't an email announcement this year (or in 2017).
In addition to ff524’s and StrongBad’s comments, I’d also mention the rate of support in most of the polls was well over supermajority levels.
However, the fact is that nobody got advance notice of the Winter Bash. I had forgotten about it until I saw I had been awarded a hat!
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4125 | Is this sort of blatant trolling common on Academia SE?
There was recently a deleted answer to a question of mine based on a blog post I read, to which I also attached a bounty. The answer in question is just a verbatim copy-paste from the blog post with a follow-up comment:
@Kimball-Since I have given a correct answer to your question,Please award me a bounty worth +100 reputation within 5 days from today – user92118
In addition I cannot click on the username so I presume either the post was created without an actual account and/or the account was promptly deleted.
Anyway, I don't recall seeing such blatant trolling on this site, but I was wondering: is this an isolated incident or does it happen with some regularity?
PS: I am new to bounties, but it appears I can actually award the bounty to this deleted answer (the +100 is highlighted when I roll over it). Can I? My second reaction to this post was that it was actually quite funny, and if there's no other answer I feel worthy of a bounty why not award it to this just to pile pointlessness on pointlessness (a la the "I figured 1 big pile of garbage was better than 2 smaller piles of garbage" philosophy).
Please don't feed the trolls.
By acquiring reputation points, one acquires also privileges. I'd thus avoid giving any point to blatant trolls lest they abuse the privileges and give more work to mods.
@StrongBad Normally I agree that sentiment, but if I am allowed to throw away rep to a non-existent account for a deleted answer, how can I resist? It's not even clear in what way this would be visible, so I'd don't think this would really encourage trolling.
@MassimoOrtolano But as far as I can tell, that account doesn't exist anymore (or maybe never dis).
Weird. Trolls usually go for disruption; chatbot testers wouldn't seem to be interested in bounties, especially earned through copy/paste; and account farmers wouldn't bother without potential profit, which doesn't seem to exist given their lack of a registered account. Dunno what to make of this. Maybe the folks behind SE are attempting to audit responses to simulated troll attempts?
does it happen with some regularity?
Yes, I saw it before. Copy and paste the answer from somewhere, leave a comment asking for bounty and then delete the account. Actually, this is how I caught it. The moment I saw it, I knew it's coming again. So, I took the first few lines of the answer and Google it and then found where it came from. I then flagged it.
I am going to provide another example of an incident of this kind. Hopefully, the Mods can tell us whether they are the same user or not.
A deleted answer for the question What to do when a good article is published in a predatory online journal that disappears?
The deleted answer was copied and pasted from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0917504017300217 as pointed out by @InquisitiveLurker at that time.
And as you can see the comment (now deleted) left by the poster
@Joe74-Now that I have given an answer to your question,please award me a bounty worth +100 reputation within 5 days from today
To me, if this is not the same user, then the user who trolled this time must be a copy cat (pun intended).
When you see them, just flag then as rude/abusive so the mods will can care of them.
@aparente001 Thanks for the edit. Please join me to flag another example just coming out https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/109090/546
@scaaahu - It just got more interesting. The troll is impersonating one of our fearless leaders!
This seems odd -- what does a troll get from accruing bounties if they're going to delete the account? Just the sheer joy of wasting other people's rep?
This is the first time I’ve seen such behavior as a moderator. However, we try to stay on top of getting rid of trolls as soon as they crop up. So please flag any such behavior and we’ll take care of it.
Please adhere to the following with these posts:
Flag as rude/abusive (it’s abusive of our community). Six such flags suffice to kill the post. Using custom flags or NAA/VLQ flags just slows things down.
If nobody has done so before you, leave a comment linking to whatever was copied. (This way, it only has to be searched once.)
Do not do anything else.
Why not downvote?
@TommiBrander: It doesn’t change anything, except that you get an untraceable +1 notification when the post is deleted. The post won’t be gone faster.
It will put the question down on the list of answers and eventually gray it out, thus reducing the exposure of other people to the bad answer. But maybe the deletion is so fast that this does not matter, in general?
@TommiBrander: Each R/A flag comes with a downvote from the system anyway, so unless you care about the order of negatively scoring posts or somebody upvotes the post, it doesn’t really matter. And as you already noted, these posts are hopefully gone very quickly anyway.
Okay. Thanks for the answers.
According to this question on the main Meta you cannot actually award bounties to deleted answers, even though the +100 button looks active.
Aw, schucks. Well, thanks for looking into it.
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1445 | Denote meaning of 'conference' in question?
I have read a number of questions that ask about papers at conferences. There is clearly a massive divide over the meaning of 'conference' in the sense of publications, and I think it is large enough to have a significant on the answer to such questions. Often there is a comment at some point mentioning the difference/assuming the wrong meaning, but this is not always the case. I've started to wonder whether there should be something to clearly denote which meaning is intended by the OP, both for those answering the question and for any readers who might not be aware of the difference (and might potentially act on advice that isn't applicable to them).
That is, should there be a method of denoting the intended meaning of 'conference' in a question? I am not aware of one currently in use.
If so, what should that method be? The best option I can think of would be to have two tags to use (conference=publication, conference<>publication), although this perhaps isn't the intended purpose of tags.
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1812 | Should we open a few more dedicated chat rooms?
I'm Max (Hiii Max), and I've not used the chat for a long time.
Well, maybe it's just me, but I have to admit that I find the SE chat pretty annoying from the point of view of the user experience (if it's just me, apologies to whoever designed the chat), and I find it hard to follow the threads or even the simplest announcements.
To reduce the possibility of overlooking important information about the daily life of Academia.SE, I'd propose to open a couple of dedicated chat rooms:
One dedicated to discussions and announcements about deleting, closing or reopening questions.
One dedicated to discussions about edits.
Would this be feasible and useful?
Feasible? Sure. Useful? Doubtful.
Most discussion surrounding post moderation, including large-scale edits, takes place in Meta, which has far more activity than chat. The question/answer/voting interface makes Meta pretty well suited to these needs. Even more so, you're far from the only person who isn't a fan of Stack Exchange chat; I know a few members of our community who never set foot in chat, no matter what. Given history, my perception is that making some minor changes to how chat is used—such as creating dedicated chat rooms as you suggest—would only solve a minor subset of the problems they have with the chat platform. (These people can definitely speak for themselves, though... not trying to put words in their mouth, just sharing a feeling I've seen shared before.)
Long story short, not sure that would be a useful addition to the community.
I like the idea of having diverse chatrooms in this website, but the problem is that the community here is not much interested in doing chats. At the time of posting my answer to your meta post on July 01, the last activity on the Academia's chatroom was on about nine days earlier June 22. That is why I think that the Academia's community does not find chatrooms useful indeed because it is not using it very often; so making more chatrooms seems not to be feasible.
Despite the fact that eykanal correctly mentions that most of the discussions take place in Academia's meta; I see no interest in organizing chat events too.
About your first question; at our current chatroom, unfortunately very few discussions happen about closing or reopening posts on our main site. Those are discussions usually made not by the people who vote to close/reopen posts, but by the users who think that their post should not be closed/edited.
So, at our current state opening a new chatroom will not encourage users to join chatrooms just to discuss moderation activities which happen on Academia's main site.
These are the signs that bring me to the point that although your suggestion is perfect, the community seems not to be interested in doing chat in Academia.
However, in order to improve our community here, we can think about how we can attract more people to the chatrooms (for example, by organizing events, which I suggested before but never received enough attention by our community: Event Proposal: Decide on Unanswered Questions) or think about why people here are not really interested in doing chats compared to other Stack Exchange sites.
After chatrooms had a minimum number of users who think that chatrooms are useful on Academia, and discussions needed more specific moderation attention, then it will be feasible that we make more chatrooms.
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1309 | What is the main site's background color?
I would like to use the main site's background color on my personal website.
#FFF, #000 and #EFF appear to be in the home page's source code. Thanks to color-hex, I found those colors to be black, white and light blue respectively. I don't know anything about code except how to search through it by using Ctrl + F, so in addition, please tell me how to find the color value. Also, I am looking for the hex value.
By the way, a straightforward way to find out such things is to take a screenshot and use the colour-picker tool from your favourite graphics software.
It is #fbf8f3. From the style sheet:
html,body{… background:#fbf8f3; …}
Hmm, I wonder why it didn't come up when I searched for it...
Thanks, I was too lazy to do this. Wondering why its in disagreement from the tool, though...
Using the Digital Color Meter utility, the RGB values are as (25,246,240) (see image below), which translates into #FAF6F0.
Which is interesting since it doesn't agree with the other answer.
@StrongBad: Not really. Different colour spaces; these are not sRGB values. And even if you asked the Digital Color Meter to show the sRGB values, you won't (necessarily) get the right value. (Instead you get something like the closest approximation of the original sRGB values converted to some native colour space and then back to sRGB, with roundoff errors and possibly some clipping.)
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5317 | Strike stopgap -- will this work, and is it OK?
I've seen what I consider a few abusive questions that would ordinarily attract moderator attention and possible deletion. Does flagging them as abusive trigger an auto-delete, if there are enough such flags? Is this OK to do? In today's SE, would that be preferable to flagging for moderator attention?
What is the limit between moderation and censorship?
You have no idea how tempted I am to write "this is" and delete your comment. :-)
Does flagging them as abusive trigger an auto-delete, if there are enough such flags?
Yes. See: What are the “spam” and “rude or abusive” (offensive) flags, and how do they work?
Is this OK to do?
If they are abusive, it is OK to flag them as abusive. The link above defines abuse, including: "As a rule of thumb, everything that would be out of place in polite discourse is rude or abusive."
In today's SE, would that be preferable to flagging for moderator attention?
A few points:
As you note, the automod is working during the strike. So, this is the most efficient way of dealing with abusive behavior. Even outside of the strike, using R/A flags against R/A content is good practice.
On the other hand, if the auto-mod deletes the post, the flag is considered handled. So, it's possible no human will ever look at it. And it's generally good for humans to look at rude/abusive content, since we can and do send mod messages and suspensions if there is a pattern.
Personally, I view the presence of rude/abusive content on the network as a good example of why moderation is necessary, and why staff should not malign their moderators to the point where we resign and/or strike en masse.
Indeed, the auto-deletion of posts or comments that receive a lot of flags helps get rid of content that just needs to be removed, but it doesn't really address the people behind the content or help to explain rules and policies here. Just removing the content is probably sufficient for blatant spam and slurs, because the posters behind them understand and just don't care and aren't really welcome here in the first place. But, we have a lot of rules that impact people who could fit in here, and they need a human response that automatic deletion doesn't provide.
Haven't seen "resign en masse" happening. People seem to want to keep access to mod account as well as make a show of "being on strike"
Talks are ongoing; to me it would seem silly to resign if the situation can be resolved satisfactorily. We shall see where we are when the talks finish.
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4377 | Please help me correct my question
I removed the GRE and focused on the US specifically.
For the average pure math US PhD program, what are essential topics after basics topics of complex analysis, abstract algebra and topology?
Unfortunately, your question is about the content of a specific discipline, which is off-topic here. From the help center:
Please do not ask...
about the content of research and coursework rather than the processes of researching, teaching, and learning. [...]
I don't see any way on how to make your question on-topic.
What can you suggest for a similar question that is on-topic? Thank you.
@jackbauer: probably nothing -- you could try to ask a completely different question maybe?
@JackBauer maybe some version of the question would fit over at matheducators.se, but I am not really sure of their scope.
@JackBauer In addition to this answer, I'd say that your approach looks a bit like an XY problem: I think you've settled on a 'solution' and are asking about that rather than starting from your actual question. I suspect your actual question is too individualized for StackExchange also, but even so, I think starting from the solution you came up with is the wrong approach.
@BryanKrause I just want to confirm things that I've inferred about the US based on things I've heard about the US. Based on these confirmations, my real question will be "Should I try the US, or study for country A?" which I will not ask on stackexchange. Stackexchange's role is to help me know if there's a decision to make in the first place. There is no decision if most US universities are like country A in the way that I described. Otherwise, there is a decision. I just want to know whether or not there is a decision to make. I am not asking for advice on the decision to make, if any.
@BryanKrause I simply want to know if there is or there isn't.
@JackBauer Then why not ask something like "how do admissions prerequisites in (discipline) compare between the US and (other country)?" I'm not sure that's necessary a good question, because the answer will still be "it varies by institution" but it is a much more direct way to ask the question you seem to be after. Alternatively, just apply to institutions you are interested in in the US, or network with people from your country who have pursued similar programs in the US and ask about their experiences.
@BryanKrause "Alternatively, just apply to institutions you are interested in in the US" This takes time, and my ultimate question is about whether or not this is a good investment in time. Time spent applying to US could instead be used for time spent studying for re-application in Country A. "network with people from your country who have pursued similar programs in the US and ask about their experiences" One of my recommendation letter writers was the one who told me about the GRE subject test, but why just one person instead of a forum with peer-reviewed answers?
BryanKrause Why don't we have the answer as "just the topics in the GRE" simply because the GRE is meant for applicants to average pure math PhD programs in the US, or is it not? if more than half of said PhD programs required algebraic geometry, then we expect the GRE to include algebraic geometry, don't we?
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4090 | What's the deal with this ducking duck?
Not sure how unique it is to Academia.SE but it didn't show up in MathOverflow. To get rid of it, I had to click on it which involved giving it access to the microphone. How do I know this website has relinquished this access after I dismissed the duck? I think the duck should go or at least be presented in a more informed way, with opt-in, not opt-out.
And tomorrow is 1st of April, isn't it? ;-)
@MassimoOrtolano I guess I fell for it.
@FelipeVoloch It comes up on MathStackExchange even though I no longer have an account there. Yay for MO exceptionalism, I guess
If you have ublock, the following rules stackexchange.com##.c-pointer.js-quack-btn:nth-of-type(1) > g > path:nth-of-type(3) stackexchange.com##.js-step01.js-step.step.ws-nowrap.p12 stackexchange.com##.c-pointer.js-quack-btn:nth-of-type(1) stackexchange.com##.quack-popover--arrow will hide the duck
Why do you hate the duck? He is helping me a lot.
The duck never accesses your microphone, even if you say that you have one.
Think about it: If it could access your microphone without a browser-site confirmation, so could every other website, which would be a privacy nightmare.
Further reading on Meta.
I've seen it on multiple sites, so that suggests this needs to be brought up on the main meta site.
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5121 | Are questions related to college preparation on topic?
I had a question about the existence of college prep style schools in Europe, but in reading the on-topic list it's not clear to me whether I can ask such a question.
This question here clearly indicates that only higher education is on topic, but since college prep style high schools clearly prepare students for college and academia, it's unclear to me whether or not they should be off-topic.
https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic says "Please do not ask":
about undergraduate admissions,
about education outside an academic setting, i.e., in high schools or similar.
Prep schools are education outside an academic setting, as they are a type of high school. Questions about prep schools as related to undergraduate admissions are also explicitly off-topic.
Thanks! I think the use of the word "academic" in this sense is what was confusing me, as I often find it associated with all levels of education, not just academia.
@Michael If you wish you can drop your question in the chat, maybe someone can give you some indication anyway. However, beware that most Europeans probably don't have a clue on what a "college prep style school" is, so you need to explain a bit the topic.
By the way, the reason for this is that "career academics" (e.g., professors) have no real expertise to offer when it comes to high schools or undergraduate admissions (or college prep style schools). We would be only marginally more informed than the public at large. Perhaps some day they will open a new stack dedicated to college admissions and high schools.
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3698 | Is this the right forum for a "grad school related" question
background:
There is a masters program that I am very interested in attending (remotely) and they want letters of recommendation. Previously I had asked former professors, and they did most of the structural work in the letter, but when I asked peers, managers, and coworkers in industry they are asking me to provide a draft. It is really hard for me to "toot my own horn" - that is one of my biggest challenges in the annual review process, or in making a resume.
question:
Is this the right forum to ask questions on that topic?
In particular I would like to ask something like the following:
What resources are available for guiding an appropriate letter of recommendation that isn't plagiarism, that evokes the words and perspectives of the recommender?
While this is a valid question, there is a very comprehensive question that exact topic here: What does it mean if a professor asks you to draft his reference letter for you? I strongly suggest that you check that out before posting a similar question.
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4700 | How can we better react to askers who are having a mental health crisis?
We regularly get questions from people who describe symptoms of depression or anxiety. These are very common mental health problems. Some askers explicitly say they are depressed or anxious and it is disrupting their lives. Others only imply it.
Often, but not always, these questions are closed as unclear. This makes sense. It's hard to ask a good question when you are distressed.
Is there a way we can direct these askers to appropriate help? I think it's pretty clear this site is not the help these askers need.
I think we should refer them to Reddit Academia because they provide more personal and in depth answers regarding personal opinion
This meta question is not about "personal opinion" questions. Reddit doesn't seem like the place for mental health assistance.
@SSimon: No remotely similar Internet platform can provide you with personal answers because they cannot get to know you personally. They can provide personal opinions, sure, but that’s not a great feat and rather dangerous because their assumptions or experiences may not translate. For the vast majority of questions we close, it is not a good idea to ask them on any similar Internet platform. The main difference is that we acknowledge that.
@SSimon: It’s a bit like good fairy vs. bad fairy. The bad fairy gives you what you want; the good fairy gives you what you need.
@wrzlprmft yes that is my point we should refer them to websites that provide this. Since this website don't.
Or we can add new tag psychological help? But will moderators approve?
@SSimon: that is my point we should refer them to websites that provide this. Since this website don't. – My point is that those websites do not provide the help these people need. They may answer their questions as they are, but that is not a good idea. These websites certainly do not provide professional help. These websites are bad fairies, not good ones. (We at least aspire to be good fairies or no fairy at all.) — Or we can add new tag psychological help – That would be grossly irresponsible. We cannot provide psychiatric help. No open platform on the Internet can.
Discussion about Internet support groups and psychotherapy has been moved to chat.
@AnonymousPhysicist Could this post be modified to include some questions which bear these markers? I would like to see this topic get substantially more attention!
Related: https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1588/is-the-seemingly-high-prevalence-of-clinical-depression-cases-in-a-se-askers-nor?rq=1
@Dawn: Could this post be modified to include some questions which bear these markers? – I am not sure it is a good idea to give such questions that kind of attention they get when being linked on meta. I intentionally refrained from linking examples in my answer as well.
@Dawn In my experience giving examples is more of a distraction than helpful. Certain users will just start a debate over the irrelevant details of the examples, or dispute that they are examples at all.
First of all, we should not relax our rules for these questions out of pity or fearing to fuel the crisis by our rejection. When we cannot reasonably answer a question, the asker being in a crisis won’t change that – it will only make the damage done by answers worse. For example, consider questions closed for depending on individual factors due to making life decisions for the asker: Answers to such questions (other than: “it depends”) are dangerous because they suggest that we (random people on the Internet) can make such a decision. This is exacerbated if the asker is in a mental crisis, because they may be particularly responsive to these suggestions and the stakes are even higher.
However, we should not bluntly reject the asker, but acknowledge their pain, explain why we cannot answer their question (if any), and guide them to getting help, be it on our site or elsewhere. One interaction on this site that I am most proud of is turning a mess of a question by a suicidal asker into one that could be reopened and got answers that probably actually helped the asker.
Here is a lists of points to follow with such a question:
Always flag for moderator attention. Even if no further action is required at the moment, this makes us moderators aware of the question so we can keep an eye on it and take swift action if necessary (e.g., when somebody posts a rude comment).
Try to salvage the question: Is there anything in the question that we can answer? Or is there any valid question that straightforwardly arises from the asker’s situation? If yes, edit the question to focus on this and explain your edit in a comment.
Otherwise, always flag or vote to close if necessary. If such questions are answered prematurely, it only makes it more difficult to sort out the mess. The earlier they are closed, the better.
Leave comments to help the asker:
Show your compassion for their situation.
Explain why their question is not answerable in its current state (or explain your edits). If you voted to close as a duplicate, explain that if the duplicate does not help, they should edit their question to explain why.
Encourage them to seek professional help about their mental-health issues (unless they haven’t clearly indicated that they already did this). If the asker is suicidal, you can find some ready-to-use comments here.
Make an extra effort to guide the asker to salvage their question:
Make it very clear which information is missing.
Think very hard about alternative valid questions the asker may have about their situation and suggest them.
Follow the question so you can quickly respond to edits, potentially rude comments, etc. Remember that you can retract your close vote.
If you see such a question make it to the hot network questions, raise a flag so moderators can undo this according to our policy.
"Encourage them to seek professional help about their mental-health issues" This is what I think needs improvement. The close messages don't, and probably shouldn't, meet this need.
This is what I think needs improvement. – What do you mean by this? Should the system provide something for this? Or should we just leave more comments in this direction?
I'm not sure...
I think it can be appropriate to give very generic suggestions when people seem to be disturbed in a manner that suggests they might benefit from seeing a therapist/counselor/psychologist. Even many people who have no long-term mental health issues can benefit from these sources of support; I think suggesting them is fine but be supportive rather than pushy.
What is, in my opinion, NOT APPROPRIATE is to offer your diagnoses. Don't say "you have depression, get help", don't diagnose someone's obsessive compulsive disorder, don't diagnose someone's personality disorder or the personality disorder of their professor or anyone else they are interacting with. It's never necessary to do so.
Good point! It is not appropriate to diagnose someone on stack exchange because diagnosis requires in person examination by a properly trained person.
However, if the asker is stating their symptoms/diagnosis, it would be inappropriate to pretend they are not real. Acknowledging that someone is experiencing real symptoms is probably a good way to help.
Also, diagnosis done properly is a good thing that will lead to treatment. The idea that diagnosis is bad is rooted in the wrong idea that mental illness is the patient's fault. Avoiding diagnosis because "if you get diagnosed with mental illness it will reveal you are a criminal" is as wrong as "if you get diagnosed with cancer it will reveal you are a criminal."
@AnonymousPhysicist I partly posted this answer because I specifically saw A) this meta post, and some time later B) you posting a comment saying "I think you have depression" (sorry not an exact quote... I just know you said someone had depression though). That bothered me. It's fine to acknowledge someone is going through a hard time, but the problem with diagnosis is not that it's bad but that SE is not the right venue. I'm not advocating getting rid of diagnoses, I'm advocating getting rid of diagnoses via anonymous psychologists, physicists, lawyers, and politicians.
(and if that comment isn't clear..."It is not appropriate to diagnose someone on stack exchange because diagnosis requires in person examination by a properly trained person" in my opinion is in conflict with posting a comment saying someone is depressed)
I said "It sounds like you might be experiencing depression. You should seek help from a licensed mental health professional." It could have been better phrased as "It sounds like you might be experiencing mental distress. You should seek help from a licensed mental health professional." But I think that it was clear in the initial comment that it was a hypothesis, not a diagnosis.
@AnonymousPhysicist Better to not try to diagnose people with depression.
So we agree. ...
@AnonymousPhysicist More like...there isn't nearly enough in that post to assume someone is experiencing depression so...maybe just leave that out of it? Nothing in the question asked for a diagnosis, and if it did it would be off-topic.
I don't see why you are messaging me after I've agreed with you.
@AnonymousPhysicist Because your comments do not indicate agreement; I am specifically saying your comments are a problem.
I feel like you are just repeating yourself. Are you referring to a different comment from the one I corrected above? Or are you disagreeing with my suggested improvement?
@AnonymousPhysicist Idk how to make it more clear..."It sounds like you are experiencing depression" == "I am diagnosing you with depression". I think people on Academia.SE should not do that.
Are you disagreeing with my suggested improvement? I don't understand why you keep posting.
I think what Bryan dislikes (at least from his comments on my answers/comments) is the specific mention of any particular disorder (OCD, anxiety, depression, etc.) - but I think this is usually very helpful. I like to mention specific disorders because the OP can google them and see that their symptoms match and have extra incentive to actually seek the mental health treatment.
This is just one option: We could have a question
Where can I get help if I am feeling anxious or depressed?
This question could be used for closing questions that cannot be salvaged by marking them as duplicates.
Ordinarily this would be an off-topic question.
Make that “Where can I get help when I am feeling anxious or depressed?” and it would be an valid question, except for broadness, but then canonical questions may be a bit more broad in my opinion.
I strongly agree that this is needed. I am seeing more and more questions where people are using words that suggest that they would benefit from mental health screening. I am always surprised when I get pushback for suggesting screening.
There has been considerable discussion about how to handle suicidal users, both on academia.SE and elsewhere on SE. Your question is about a mental health crisis rather than suicide, but I think Shog9's answer from the first link applies to both:
I hate to sound callous about this, but... This isn't a support group; y'all probably aren't trained to deal with the outpouring of grief and despair of someone you've never met [...] there's a decent chance that leaving a post like this around could end up just making things worse.
Shog9 then describes a (now widely-adopted) procedure [for suicidal users], which Strongbad summarized in the second link as:
(1) close with an appropriate message, (2) flag for mod attention, (3) mods (or users) call in CMs.
I would suggest using essentially the same workflow here:
Close. If there is an on-topic, answerable question, we can answer the academia-related question while acknowledging that there are likely additional mental-health-related issues that need to be addressed but are beyond our expertise. If the mental health is the primary or only issue, we can close the question.
Flag. For more serious issues, or if we are concerned that the post itself will lead to harm, flag for moderator attention. Mods will review and can lock, close, or delete the question as appropriate.
Call in CMs. CMs are spread thin right now (and for the foreseeable future), so we would generally resort to this for only the most serious issues.
"close with an appropriate message" The default close messages don't seem to address the "crisis" aspect, and I'm not suggesting they should. I forgot about the "Other" close reason, which is possibly what should be used.
I would like to add that Shog9’s answer that you quoted is from [softwareengineering.se], a site where mental health, personal issues, life decisions, etc. are much further from the scope than here. Any question touching these issues is clearly off-scope there (and on most other SE sites), while there may be something we can address here.
@AnonymousPhysicist: You do not have to address the crisis in the close reason. Better do this in a separate comment. (Also note that the close-reason system has received a significant overhaul and adapting our close reasons to it is a work in progress. More on this in a few days.)
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4864 | Are any of these questions about working hours duplicates?
Can I be a good scientist if I only work in working hours?
Stay in academia or become professor without overworking, is it possible?
How hard do early-career academics in the United States work, really?
Is it normal for professors to not have families or not spend time with their families over the holidays, due to pressure of work?
Is it true that PhD students need to work 10-12 hours a day every day to be productive?
Is it normal for an advisor to expect >80 hour workweeks from PhD students, and threaten them with dismissal?
Thanks for finding this, certainly seems like it merits discussion.
I would suggest that the first two might indeed be duplicates, in that both ask about whether one can become a professor without overworking. Indeed, the first one has already been flagged as a duplicate of the second and is still working its way through the close-vote queue.
The next two seem to ask a very slightly different question, about whether it is normal for professors to work long hours. I see this is a bit different than the previous group, since the previous group wants an assessment of a particular strategy's viability, while this one seeks a measure of normalcy in the current state of practice. As for whether #3 and #4 are duplicates of each other: it does seem like they "boil down" to the same thing (working hard), but #4 focuses heavily on the "family" and "holiday" aspects. This is reflected in the answers: #3 agrees that long hours are typical, but #4 says that working over Thanksgiving and neglecting family is not really normal.
Similarly, five and six ask about long hours for PhD students, which makes these two distinct from the other four. In this case, #5 is about whether long hours are required to be successful (similar to #1, but for PhD students rather than pre-tenure professionals), while #6 asks about whether it is abusive for an advisor to demand long hours. There is also this question, but it has a flavor of "how can we change it?" At an earlier stage, we could have edited these questions to avoid rehashing the long hours discussion, but at this point, such an edit would invalidate the existing answers.
TL;DR: I think #1 should be closed as a duplicate of #2. The others do have some overlap, but I don't think they are close enough to be retroactively closed as duplicates.
And some of them are for "US-style careers", some are.more general.
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4731 | Why am I getting a message about citations from reputable sources?
Want to improve this post? Add citations from reputable sources by editing the post. Posts with unsourced content may be edited or deleted.
This message appeared on one of my answers. This is on a question which has many answers that do not include citations. I have never added citations to my answers in the past. Why am I seeing this message? I do not remember seeing it before.
I am looking for information about how this message is used and its purpose. I am not asking for feedback on this particular answer.
I didn't see it before, but now I see I also got a related message from the moderators, but I don't think that message answers this question.
That message can be applied to so many answers on this stack - why isn't it? But perhaps it should not be used at all as so many of our answers are based on our experience...
The answer reads like it is based on some statistic (for which country?) In the comments, some person was named who was responsible (?) for the statistics. This is indeed a case where the statistics should be linked as it is not based on experience as in @SolarMike 's comment. I know, you have the strange policy "No references unless one pays my consultancy fee" - if this is the case (which I don't find appropriate for this site), please add how and how much one should pay into the answer -- maybe someone pays the fee..
Re: "I have never added citations to my answers in the past." You seem to have provided references before, at least here, here and here. For what it's worth, I think those answers are better for it.
@Anyon I am not perfectly consistent. Those are far from being my best answers, and only one of those includes references I didn't have memorised before the question was asked.
This message appeared on one of my answers.
That message is a post notice. I'm the one who added it. There are several types of post notices. The most used in our community is probably the controversial post notice, but it's not the only one existing.
This is on a question which has many answers that do not include citations.
The other answers actually cite personal experiences or make a reasoning around what it's written in the question. Your answer is quite different. It makes claims about correlations and probabilities of certain events without citing any source for these claims. For instance,
The probability of defaulting on student loans is inversely related to the amount of money borrowed.
Where does this analysis come from?
I have never added citations to my answers in the past.
This is an unfortunate attitude in a community dedicated to the academic world which, if too widespread, would put us exactly at the same level of anyone spreading fake news on Facebook. Many users do their best to provide citations for the claims contained in their answers, exactly as they would do in their professional capacity, because this allows everyone to analyse the origin of the claims, verify if there are issues in the way in which the claims were derived etc.
Indeed, we can do better. It's true, there are still many unsubstantiated claims around this site, but from what I observed along these years, many users respond positively when prompted, integrating their answers. When this does not happen, a post notice can warn the readers of the issues of the post. As I said in this comment, other sites, like Skeptics SE, are stricter about missing references and an answer like yours would be probably deleted without a second thought. We don't have such a strict policy and we usually don't delete such kind of answers, but I think that users have their right to demand citations when needed.
Why am I seeing this message?
You're seeing it because several users complained about the lack of citations in your answer, which even received a flag for this. It doesn't happen that frequently.
I do not remember seeing it before.
Yes, it was used before, for example attached to this question (italics mine):
Want to improve this post? Provide detailed answers to this question, including citations and an explanation of why your answer is correct. Answers without enough detail may be edited or deleted.
I don't see the point in making this site referenced like an academic journal or Wikipedia. If that's what users wanted, they would use those things.
So is the line that anecdotes do not require a source, but evidence does?
@AnonymousPhysicist: And if users wanted a site without references, they would use Facebook instead.;) But seriously, how could users ask in an academic journal or Wikipedia if one should recommend a student to drop out and pursue other careers? Both academic journals and Wikipedia are not Q&Asites for academic experts, but this site is. So users cannot use Wikipedia and journals instead IMO.
@AnonymousPhysicist: I think everythink that can be sourced should be sourced. Anecdotes (as in "these are my experiences"), by their nature, mostly cannot. What you describe could and should be sourced.
@user111388 "how could users ask in an academic journal or Wikipedia if one should recommend a student to drop out and pursue other careers?" You can at least answer that question in a journal: https://libguides.usc.edu.au/c.php?g=508261&p=3478734 And I know some of my colleagues are working on papers on that topic.
@AnonymousPhysicist: But people come here to ask questions and want answers. Do you really think that there is no difference between this journal and questions here who are on topic in this journal? Can I ask in the journal my question and get 20 answers from experts? Can I just post "profs should never suggests students to drop out, here are references" in this journal and it gets published immediately? Isn't that too less for a reputed journal?
@user111388 The difference between this site and a journal is that in a journal, people usually publish careful original research with citations. Here people usually post information they can provide with little effort. Journals answer hard questions. This site answers easy questions. On this site, the questions are not the important part; it is the answers. You can ask questions in a submission to a journal too, but they usually only get published if you also submit the answer(s) with the question. And you can have as many coauthors as you need to get all the answers you want.
@AnonymousPhysicist: So you have the answer: People ask question on this site and get quick answers. So they cannot use the journal instead. Thus, it makes sense that they want references and cannot get the same value from the journal.
@user111388 "People ask question on this site and get quick answers. So they cannot use the journal instead." This is not logical. We use both, but only need one at a time.
@AnonymousPhysicist: At the time where I want to ask a question and want a good answer with references, I cannot use the journal. At the time where you want to give a good answer with references, you cannot use the journal (as it is maybe not hard enough for the journal and would take months to be peer-reviewed). So we both cannot use the journal you propose as an alternative. Thus, I don't see your argument "If people wanted references, they would use a journal instead."
@user111388 That's just not true. I can always use a journal, and so can you (possibly with sci-hub). Of course both this site and a journal could be missing particular content.
@AnonymousPhysicist: If I have a question and need an answer with references, I cannot use the journal to find an answer. If you have an answer with references, you can most likely not post it into the journal. So we still need the forum (and cannot use the journal instead, as you say in your first comment).
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5152 | Is this question about printing an e-book on topic?
Is it legal if I print PDF files of Springer books for personal use?
Short answer: I think it should be left open.
Longer answer...
It would be helpful if you provided the reason why you think it might not be on topic. Questions are presumed to be on-topic until deemed otherwise. As it is, I'll have to guess....
(1) Because it is a legal question.
Our stance towards legal issues has been discussed before. The top-voted answer states that:
questions asking for general legal background about a particular academic issue should be considered on topic here.
We later clarified that questions "focusing only on the law" that "require a precise technical answer" are off-topic; this is where we draw the line. In this case, the asker seems to seek a "general legal background and so I think the question is okay.
(2) Because it's not sufficiently specific to academia.
Personally, I think it is. There are only a few other professions where people are given institutional logins to download and possibly print copyrighted material in PDF form. Even in comparison to lawyers and doctors, the academia setting raises some issues ("educational use", "research/prototyping use", "fair use") that might not be present in other settings.
Reasonable people might disagree with the above paragraph. However, (1) the question has been very well received, and (2) it is similar to historical questions like this one, which have also been well received. Since most of our user base seems to regard these questions as interesting and useful, I would be reluctant to suddenly "crack down," absent a consensus that we need to do so.
(3) Because we are not capable of providing useful answers.
Personally, I find this to be the most compelling reason (though it's probably not the one you meant). In particular, I think very few of our "regulars" are capable of providing a good answer to this question, but many might provide a less good answer along the lines of the below (N.B., I have not read the existing answers and so am not criticizing any of them):
Specious answers. This question contains many thorny legal issues; a well-meaning academic armed with Google is likely to make many specious arguments (which, by definition, will be difficult for most readers to distinguish from correct answers). This is really a question that calls for some specialized knowledge/training (or, perhaps, by referencing an easy-to-read text written by someone who does have that training).
Common sense answers ("I dunno if it's legal, but my family has printed Springer articles every Christmas morning for 20 years and it's never been an issue..."). Such answers are not really helpful in this case.
Location-specific answers. Even if we do happen to get a brilliant answer from a qualified author, it will probably cover only one country's legal system. OP asked about Canada specifically, but future readers may be interested in different countries (and they probably want a definite answer, not just "it's okay/not okay in Canada so it's probably the same here.")
While this issue does concern me, I do not believe we have ever closed a question for this reason (and I'm not proposing we start now).
1 and 3 are not valid close reasons anyway. I don't see the relevance of "institutional logins" to the answer to the question. While some aspects of fair use are specific to academia, this question does not involve any of them. You are right, though, that the question got a lot of votes and answers.
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5138 | Why was this answer marked as "spam or rude or abusive?"
It seems unremarkable to me.
https://academia.stackexchange.com/revisions/183046/1
Question:
Invitation to a new conference: possible scam?
This particular site spams us a lot. If you see links to this site please report them, as they are likely also spam.
@BryanKrause That's probably the answer I was looking for. The marking might have been caused by a pattern of behavior I cannot see.
Because it is spam.
The included link contains referral information that can be used to track the origin of the link visits, and maybe reward the author.
On a general note, sometimes spam may not be so evident from a single post, and normal users might be puzzled by certain deletions, but it becomes evident when there is a pattern of posts linking to the same website.
+1. Just to add that this seems like a rare case where we could have salvaged the answer by removing the last paragraph; however, there is an SE-wide policy/guideline that one should never edit spam.
I don't think "utm_campaign=editage--academia_stackexchange" is sufficient to make something spam. If some company's marketing department wants to pay people to post sensible answers, that's not spam.
@AnonymousPhysicist Undisclosed affiliation to a linked company website is spam.
The top voted answer in this meta question disagrees with you: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/260638/what-is-the-exact-definition-of-spam-for-stack-overflow
@AnonymousPhysicist This is not StackOverflow. But if in doubt, it's fine to raise a custom flag if you are wondering if a post is self promotional.
@AnonymousPhysicist See https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/promotion "However, if you mention your product, website, etc. in your question or answer, you must disclose your affiliation in your post"
This is not stack overflow but this is quite similar: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/58032/what-are-the-spam-and-rude-or-abusive-offensive-flags-and-how-do-they-wor
@AnonymousPhysicist From the answer to the faq you linked: "Lacks disclosure of affiliation means that the author is clearly affiliated with the product but does not disclose their affiliation. Note that a simple “my” may suffice. However, the disclosure must happen in the post itself; the author’s username or profile do not count".
And, to be honest, i don't understand the purpose of your discussion: do you want more spam on Academia?
I don't think you've read the link carefully. I think Bran Krause gave a much clearer explanation than you did; namely that there is a history of spam linking to this "Editage" site. Your viewpoint seems exceptionally arbitrary.
"A post should be marked as spam only if it promotes a product, service, or similar; and is unsolicited or lacks disclosure of affiliation." The given post meets this criteria, ergo it is spam. That it has happened regularly makes deletion more justified, but is not required; doing it once is still spamming.
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3905 | Equal treatment of comment sections in a question/answer page
This question Should I answer this question about diversity? got both positive ("Use the opportunity") as negative answers ("Leave it blank").
Now comments sections have been replaced with
Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.
This indicates clearly that the comment section is not for (extended) discussion irrespective of reasons, no matter if they are good or bad. This is something we could all live with.
But if take a closer look, there is something strange.
Positive answers:
+22 accepted by xyz123: 13 comments starting with Dec 12th.
+14 by Anna SdTC: 17 (!) comments starting with Dec 12th.
Negative answers:
+104 by kingledion: Comments section moved to chat, started with Dec 12th
+8 by Nat: Comment section moved to chat, started with Dec 12th.
Elizabeth Henning has also a positive answer with +33 which have been moved to chat, but she was also criticized in the comments.
Every (!) answer so far who was negative or where the comments showed strong criticism over the diversity engagement had its comment section removed while positive comment sections were unscathed. None of the comment sections has any difference in starting time etc. which would explain this behavior.
Again: The given reason for removing a comment section is that is not for (extended) discussion irrespective of reasons, no matter if they are good or bad.
So if there are comment sections which are comparable in length, I suggest that we are treating them equally. The presented behavior really looks like that a moderator could abuse his power to foster opinions (s)he likes and suppress opinions (s)he dislikes by treating comment sections differently.
I really did not pay attention to whether the answers were positive or negative, when moderating the comments section. At 00:30-00:40 on December 12, I moved all the long comment threads that existed at that time to chat.
Here is what happened that day: I opened up the moderator section of the site. In the diamond moderator interface, it shows flags that have been raised by ordinary users, grouped by post (so if many flags are raised for a single post, or comments on a single post, it shows them all together). There were a large number of flags on that diversity post. (I don't know how many there were at that time, but as of now, 29 flags have been raised on that post and its answers, which is a very, very, very large number for a quiet site like Academia.SE.) I clicked through to the main post, moved all of the long comment threads to chat, and that was that.
You mentioned two "positive" answers where the comment threads were not moved to chat. I moved comment threads to chat on December 12 between about 00:30 and 00:40, according to the timestamps. I didn't move comments on xyz123's answer because it wasn't posted yet then (the timestamp on that answer is December 12 at 8:54). I didn't move comments on Anna SdTC's answer because at the time there were only two - one from the OP, and one by Anna directly addressing the OP's comment:
Thanks. I am the opposite - high GPA but totally bombed my Biology GRE. So I'd like to take any opportunity - like this one - to boost my application. I just felt that this question really wasn't intended for me. But I guess you're right. Congrats on your success – user84325 Dec 12 at 0:01
I am not sure if you can or want to repeat your GRE, but of course take any opportunity to boost your application, such as mentioning that you learned early on to be responsible. That is absolutely relevant to the process! – Anna SdTC Dec 12 at 0:05
the other comments on that thread were added later - the third comment, by Dilworth, was posted Dec 12 at 01:06. (I prefer to leave the OP's comments, if productive, and any direct response from the author of the answer to the OP's comment. I also left undeleted the OP's comment on Elizabeth Henning's answer.)
Edited to add: I have since gone back and moved other comment threads on that post to chat. As a general rule, diamond moderators mostly moderate comments that are brought to their attention via comment flags, either flags raised by individuals or the automatic flags mentioned by StrongBad. If you're concerned that some comments on a post were deleted/moved but others that should have been deleted were not, please flag the comments that should be deleted for moderator attention, using the "flag" button.
The community bot raises an automatic flag when a question or answer receives 20 comments. I almost always move the comments to chat at that point. The only time I tend not to is when the question is on hold or has multiple votes to close and I think the comments might help resolve things.
In the absence of the auto flag, I almost never move the comments to chat.
When moving comments to chat, ideally I will read through them and maybe hand select a few to save that seem important for improving the question/answer. More often then not, by the time I see the flag, things have gotten so out of hand I just bulk move everything.
I like to think my decision to move things and which ones to save have nothing to do with my personal opinions of the comment content, but rather if the comment is secondary discussion or not.
Looking at the timeline od the specific question shows that a number of flags for rude comments were raise around Dec 11 23:59. At that point a moderator ff524 moved almost all the existing comments to chat. It does not appear that post had the auto comment flag, but it did have flags raised by users. When dealing with flags on some comments, is basically the case where I might move other conversations to chat in the hope of keeping everything working smoothly.
+1.The problem is that I was personal witness that the comment section of kingledion was removed with less than 10 comments and many comments were completely removed. While I normally abstain from presume intent, it was so drastically obvious that this should be addressed now.
Thanks for admitting that the section was moved before hitting 20 comments, but sorry, I still cannot let the moderators off the hook. The kingledion section had highly upvoted comments and I know that some of the missing comments were not flagged, so I must ask how the moderators discern "inappropiate content". If you look also at the xyz123 section...if that is not secondary discussion, I do not know what "secondary discussion" means. I mean, it really, really stands out.
@ThorstenS. I checked the timelines some more. Basically a mod came in and cleaned house. She move almost all the exisiting comments at that time. From the flags and existing comments and past history it was clear the question was going to lead to discussion in the comments. So everything got moved independent of the content.
Many of the comments "showing strong criticism over the diversity engagement" were repeated comments coming from a few individuals which contributed nothing to the discussion. There were also many abusive and inappropriate comments, some of which used vulgar language. In other words, this is not about politics, it's about bad behavior.
Again: I do not want to debate diversity here. I saw the discussions and I have other opinions about it. It might be shocking, but saying "You are wrong because A" is not abusive and inappropiate. "You are wrong because A" does contribute something to the discussion even if you suspect or even know that A is false (it can be corrected then). And I observed that both you and Nicole Hamiltion are insinuating that opponents do not understand diversity correctly otherwise they would strongly support it, which is quite bad style: Contra principia negantem non est disputandum.
No, I believe that most "critics" of diversity don't understand it, which is the converse. Non sequitur.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.595109 | 2017-12-15T21:04:52 | {
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1054 | I need help finding questions that have a similar to theme to what I am thinking of (juggling a part time job with a research position)
I need to juggle a part-time programming job, along with a research position. Why? Well, because my research position doesn't pay much, and I have a lot of (student) debt to cover. I have only recently begun to "bloom" academically, so I don't have the history of performance required for a compelling scholarship application just yet either.
I am having trouble switching between "work" and "research". Going from "research" to "work" is pretty easy and painless, because work requires almost no "mental preparation". I put mental preparation in quotation marks because I am not sure if it's something that exists, but to me it seems that the longer I have been immersed in a "research phase", the more productive I seem to become. My mental picture of the problem gets clearer in my mind and grows organically the longer I have been immersed in the "research phase", naturally letting me understand what I have to learn/do next. Switching to work-mode disrupts this mental picture, and I have to spend time re-building it when going back to research, which leads to lots of procrastination. There isn't a comparable mental preparation state when it comes to doing my job. Thus, going from "work" to "research" is not so easy, while going from "research" to "work" is painless. It also seems like work doesn't give me the time to "mope" when research isn't going well -- and I have come to value seemingly unproductive, semi-self-hating moping sessions, because they allow me to suss out what it is I am unhappy with in my current approach.
How has this problem been dealt with (successfully, or unsuccessfully) by others? I am having trouble finding questions which seem to address this directly, but perhaps I am just tired today and my search-fu is not up to par. In any case, I am sure many questions with such a theme have been asked...
Could you help lead a horse to water?
One question that is similar in theme: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8747/is-it-possible-to-work-full-time-and-complete-a-phd/8762#8762
Why is this question in meta? It seems to be just a regular SE question (sans the "help me find similar questions" part of the title).
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4349 | Why there is only one option in Closing > Off-topic > Migration?
I want to close this question as belonging to another Stack Exchange site:
But when I click on it, there is only one option to choose:
Is this normal? There is no information stating that I can only VTC a question as belonging to Academia Meta specifically, according to the Privileges page:
Totally normal. When I am not on my phone I will find the relevant question on the main meta. You can always flag it for
mod attention and we can migrate it.
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4222 | What does consensus mean if there is no action?
This is quite funny, because although whether the original question about the OSF system is reopened or not, I think the meta series is more interesting. First, let's recap:
Are questions asking technical issues on academic services on-topic?
Is there a consensus if there is only indirect evidence?
Should this question on the OSF system be reopened?
As of today, it is clear, in principle and in specific, that the original question is on-topic and should have already been reopened. Yet it's not. People only vote, but don't act.
My questions are:
What does consensus mean if there is no action?
If the mods are the representatives of the consensus, then what should they do, when people who can act don't act?
I must say that my intention to ask any of those meta questions (except (3) when it was asked by another) is to aim at the big picture, not the specific original question about OSF
The question "Should this question on the OSF system be reopened?" only has 4 positive votes. The original question has, in its lifetime, received reopen votes from 4 unique users.
It doesn't seem like most "people only vote, but don't act"; it just seems like the specific question does not have enough support from the community to be reopened. (The threshold is 5 reopen votes from users with the reopen vote privilege, which hasn't been met here.)
My interpretation of what the consensus opinion of our community is, is slightly different than yours. I believe that Are questions asking technical issues on academic services on-topic? has led to a consensus that in general questions on technical issues are on topic. I also believe our community has expressed that a consensus opinion can be formed from indirect evidence based on Is there a consensus if there is only indirect evidence?. I think you agree with those two statements.
Where I think I disagree with you is what the voting on Should this question on the OSF system be reopened? means. I think you think it suggests that a mod should be called into action to reopen the question. Mod intervention for opening and closing questions in our community is usually limited to cases where an unedited questions gets repeatedly opened and closed and a mod has to decide if the final state is open or closed. In general, at most a simple nudge (e.g., a comment in chat), is enough to get our community to reopen questions that it is interested in. After nearly a month and numerous posts in meta and chat and trips through the review queue, the community was unable to generate enough support to reopen the question. I see nothing in the voting on Should this question on the OSF system be reopened? that makes me think the community wishes are not being fulfilled and hence have no desire to wield the mod hammer to reopen the question.
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4039 | Double suggestions on comment
Problem:
Question: How do researchers ask others for comments and advices for their research?
The reason is that there are two accounts with the same display name and they both commented under your question. It might be the same user who created two accounts (maybe they lost the credentials of the first account): it's not forbidden.
I added a comment suggesting the possibility to merge the accounts, if they wish.
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4042 | Should the question looking for ArXiv alternatives for math and physics be reopened?
What are pre-print repositories for math and physics alternative to ArXiv?
As the question is focus on math and physics solely, it isn't a dupe of the other question. Should it be reopened?
I agree with your assessment, and a few others also seem to agree as well (based on "reopen" vote count). It's been reopened.
I wonder why it doesn't attract much attention after my edit to get reopened sooner.
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2109 | Two 'textbooks' tags
I think we should burnimate the latter.
textbooks is already a synonym of books. It serves a useful purpose: if someone tries to add textbooks to a question, the question will be tagged books. What's the benefit of eliminating the synonym?
I though that if the textbooks tag is already a synonym of the books tag, then it won't show as a separate tag when I search for it. No?
@Ooker that's not true, as you've found out. The point of synonyms is to help people who might search for a tag using the alternate name.
I know, but when I type text(book) instead of book in the tag field (which is the case of "who might search for a tag using the alternate name"), then it should only show the books tag, right? The books tag already have the line also: textbooks at the bottom.
@Ooker: That sounds like horrible UX. If I type references into a search field, I will be somewhat confused, if I see citations popping up and it usually takes me a while to notice the also note. This is particularly irritating, if my search yielded a lot of tags.
@Wrzlprmft I prefer your explanation. If you make that into an answer, I will accept that. Otherwise I will happily accept this answer.
@Ooker: Accept this one. My comment explains why synonyms work the way they do, nothing more.
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1713 | Are question about job outside academia but related to on topic?
I would like to ask a question about seeking for a job. This job is outside academia, but require many academia skills (such as math, able to deep research, etc). Is this kind of question on topic here? If not, is there a site should I ask instead?
Could you perhaps say a bit more about this job? It's hard to answer when it's so vague, since you could be talking about anything from industrial labs (clearly on topic) to marketing (clearly off topic).
It can be labs, or R&D that require to have satistic background.
If you're looking toward an R&D career, it generally counts as academia for this site.
jakebeal is correct. However, if in doubt, you can post a sample version of the question in the chat room—or edit your question above to include the draft text of what you want to know. We can tell you what's likely to happen on the main site. . . .
@aeismail It seems that no answer gets a significant number of votes, so I don't really know which one the community choose so that I can accept it.
As a rule of thumb, I think that if a job entails publishing in academic journals or work that supports or eventually will lead to that goal, then it's on-topic. Anything that isn't at least tangentially related to that it probably isn't on-topic.
If you are looking help regarding to an R&D job in which people engage in many of the same actions as academia (e.g., scientific research, peer-reviewed publishing, research funding applications), then that job is likely to be considered part of "greater academia" for the purposes of this site.
is analysis data considered to be scientific research?
@Ooker It depends what you're analyzing. If you're analyzing a marketing campaign or planning trading for a hedge-fund, then no. If you're analyzing scientific data, then yes. In between, maybe you can give a little more information rather than being so vague?
If I know which one are good for me, then maybe I don't need to ask anymore. But I think that I should research deeper before asking. Thanks for your help.
Broadly speaking, questions about job-seeking outside of academia are not on topic. You may want to try checking out Workplace.SE.
I'm sure there are some counter-examples where questions like this were on topic; if you find any that you want to have clarified, feel free to post in the comments and we can discuss.
is the job on this list are on topic? And what about R&D?
@Ooker Some of them are and some of them aren't.
@eykanal: We have established that research careers outside of academia are the main exception to this general prescription.
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5294 | Would question asking about using the code of a research project be on-topic?
Here is the draft of my question:
The WE1S (WhatEvery1Says) project is so resourceful and well documented that I really want to use it. Unfortunately, I still don't know where is the repo that the Workspace documentation referring to? I search for the new_project.ipynb file in the whole organization and yet the string only appears in the doc repo. I asked on both their GitHub, Facebook page and Twitter, but yet received a reply.
Would this question be on-topic?
No, because questions about the content of research and coursework rather than the processes of researching, teaching, and learning are off-topic?
Yes, because questions asking technical issues on academic services are on-topic?
Now, you may argue that this project is not a service, but if you spend some time to read about the project, you will see that it tries really hard to serve people. I must say that I'm very impressed on its effort to make tools, documentations and reports for others to use. And even if you still classify this project as a research, then I can make an argument that asking about the tools it used is more about the processes of researching, not the content of research.
Though I'm not completely convinced that "processes of researching" includes tools of researching. It's more about the interactions with the people and institutions
To me this seems like it's essentially a Python framework and so it would be off-topic here. By the same logic, it seems like it should be on topic at a number of different stacks, including StackOverflow, though I can make no guarantees.
Even if it's arguably not off-topic here, I suspect it would be poorly-received. Only a tiny fraction of our users follow the latest Python frameworks, so the odds that someone here writes a useful answer seem very low.
Finally, I should register my amusement at the way this package is "so resourceful and well documented" that you can't find the equivalent of the on button, and it "tries really hard to serve people" but they have been completely unresponsive after you pinged them on three different channels.
Yeah it's essentially Python, but any technical issue should be on-topic here as long as it's an academic service. So our focus should not be "it's a technical issue", but "is it an academic service?". Whether it's popular in here should not be a question. I know it's ironic, but a true service with lots of documentations can still be hard to setup by someone, and be unresponsive when someone asks for help
This is a slightly weird one to me. You're not really looking to ask a technical python question, nor one about the content of research itself. Instead, you're asking about the structure of a given software tool, or about locating certain files within it or for it. I am rather ambivalent to whether that is on- or off-topic.
In a comment you write:
any technical issue should be on-topic here as long as it's an academic service. So our focus should not be "it's a technical issue", but "is it an academic service?"
That is inconsistent with practice. Quite a few questions about Google Scholar, for example, end up closed with a comment to the effect that "we're not Google's help desk".
Anyway, if you're truly just looking for the new_project.ipynb file, per WE1S' Research Tools Overview, it seems to exist in a Zenodo deposit and (currently!) also in the we1s-templates GitHub repo. (Seems you already noticed the Zenodo repo.)
I would look to close this question, because you are asking for technical support for a specialist tool - hence the only sensible answer is to ask in a tool-specific venue (which I realise you have tried)
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4323 | Link to view all possible badges on the site
It seems that with a user interface update, we no longer have a link to view all possible badges available on the site. The only way to view the possible badges seems to now be to click on a badge I have earned, then click on the badges link to the right of the page. It seems that this link should be more accessible.
If you go to the Help Center and search for "badges", you'll find the "What are badges?" page, which links to the complete list of badges. Hope that helps!
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3481 | We need a closing tag: ASK YOUR ADVISOR
We need an option for closing questions that simply states: ASK YOUR ADVISOR.
The one that states that it involves individual institutions rules/customs is close. I know we're limited in closing options so we may not have this type of flexibility.
What problem would having that close reason really solve?
An academia equivalent of RTFM. I like the idea!
If a question really is so situation-specific that it can only be answered by the OP's advisor, we already have a closing reason that applies:
The answer to this question strongly depends on individual factors such as a certain person’s preferences, a given institution’s regulations, the exact contents of your work or your personal values. Thus only someone familiar can answer this question and it cannot be generalised to apply to others.
I don't really see why we need another close reason for this.
It's very broad. A lot of the issues we see could be simply resolved by better communication.
@RoboKaren: You can only fit so much information into a close reason, which is why I proposed a FAQ to be linked there.
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3457 | Why is citation style on topic?
Why are questions on citation style on topic? They are mechanistic rules that only tangentially have to do with academia.
Whether you choose to have sentence capitalization or word capitalization, use a comma instead of a colon, or have the citation inside the quote or outside -- the answer is the same: look at your style guide.
They are mechanistic rules that only tangentially have to do with academia.
While I agree that they somewhat differ from the majority of questions here, citation style is something that primarily concerns academics. Hence, I do not see why it should be off-topic. If you specifically do not want to see such questions, you can simply ignore the tag.
Whether you choose to have sentence capitalization or word capitalization, use a comma instead of a colon, or have the citation inside the quote or outside -- the answer is the same: look at your style guide.
Taking a brief look at the questions tagged citation-style, I found none that looked as if it could be answered with “look at your style guide”. Rather the questions are, e.g., about handling rare cases not covered by some style guide, the rationale behind certain styles, or the exegesis of a popular style guide.
If a question could only be answered with “look at your style guide”, I would indeed consider it a case for closing as depending on individual factors.
Yes, there are a lot of rare cases that are quite fun to consider and sometimes troubling to some people. Someone, somewhere, surely has tried to figure out how to cite a box of slides, a ham radio transmission, or a town crier. The "standard" answer is to find the closest thing actually in the style guide and then try to mimic that style as close you can, making appropriate changes, but that certainly can lead to discussion as to what the closest thing is and how to adapt it. For example, is a box of slides more similar to a filmstrip, a movie, or a book composed entirely of illustrations?
They are mechanistic rules that only tangentially have to do with academia.
Preparing the list of references is certainly a major task when writing an academic publication, whether a report, a paper or a book: thus, I would not consider citation style only tangential to academia.
the answer is the same: look at your style guide.
Here you assuming that every university or every journal have a style guide, and that that style guide covers all possible citation cases. Both assumptions are generally false: many universities around the world don't have a style guide (as many universities don't have policies on certain aspects of academic life, or don't have a student health office, psychological help etc.), and many style guides, even journal ones, don't cover all cases.
Thus, I think that questions about citation style should be on topic.
If there's no style guide available, how are we random internet strangers able to then give a conclusive answer?
@RoboKaren We have lots of answers here that are not conclusive, because many questions don't have a conclusive answer at all. Nonetheless, we can give good answers and guidance on the basis of our experience and practice on writing academic publications (and on other subjective topics like relationship with the advisor, with lab members etc.).
… not to forget rational thinking. Citations serve a purpose after all, and answers can be given on the basis of what possible choices suit or defy that purpose.
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2001 | Asking a question anonymously
I would like to ask a delicate question on the main site. This question involves professional issues at my department which border the personal level, and involve what you would call academic "politics".
It would be fairly easy for anybody to find out my identity and professional details just by having a look at my profile here on SE. I would therefore be a lot more comfortable asking my question anonymously, so that the people involved cannot be identified (or find out I wrote about this issue on the internet).
I was wondering if it is possible to do so without the need to create another account?
FYI: Ability to ask questions anonymously but still get notifications
I would always assume that whatever you post will get linked back to you. If you do not want people to know, do not post it. As for posting anonymously, you can log out and just post as a guest. There is no need to create a second account. As a guest, you will have limited privileges. After you post, you can log back in.
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4851 | Was the edit removing religious aspects OK?
I was reading an answer to a question (https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/160520/15446) when it got edited to remove the religious aspects.
The answer is very poor and does not bring anything new (with or without the edit) so it should be just downvoted to oblivion.
Removing the religious aspect changes the answer considerably, though.
I usually edit when there are typos, the formatting is wrong, to break walls of text. The other case is when I add some links to references (without changing the reference), or add something minor to the answer because it is better (say, an exception to an otherwise good rule (in math for instance)).
I avoid making substantial edits that change what the author had in mind, I ask in comments before.
In the case of that specific answer, I would just have downvoted and flagged it.
Was the edit OK by the rules? (the editor explained clearly the reasons for the edit and the edit made sense - so my question is rather about making such large changes that remove 80% of the content)
I would read it as a sign that this website probably shouldn't be taken too too seriously.
It's true that that edit may be a seen as too invasive and deviating from the original intent of the post (to use the words of an edit reject reason), especially without a specific explanation for the user (a new user might not notice the edit comment in the revision history).
It's also true, though, that that part is really irrelevant to the question. I also think that this does not depend on its religious content, which I wouldn't consider controversial. Reverting the edit is thus possible, but it wouldn't add anything to the answer.
Therefore, I haven't reverted the edit, but I've added a comment hoping to better explain the reason to the author (suggestion for refinements are welcome):
Hi and welcome to Academia SE. Your answer contained a long part which was totally unrelated to the question. Please recall that, unlike forums, Stack Exchange sites are not built for general discussions, but as repositories of answers to well-defined questions. It's thus important to keep the answers focussed, and for this reason the irrelevant part has been removed. I kindly invite you to have a look at the Tour and at the Help center to see how this site works.
Massimo, thanks for the comment there and the reply here. As an editor and an involved party, I did not want to force my views with a comment under the post as well. But you are totally right that the edit comment might not be too visible to the post author.
@AntonMenshov: as I mentioned - your edit makes complete sense for me from the perspective of answering the question. My question was more about proportions of edits (in general)
@WoJ yep, your question is more than legit and justified.
In the past, moderators have deleted poor quality answers. Why didn't that happen here? @cag51 deleted an answer on the same page. I think that even if the asker had specifically requested an Islamic viewpoint on the situation, this is still a very poor answer.
And why has this question not been closed for "individual circumstances?"
@AnonymousPhysicist You should know how closure works and you should know that moderators close questions unilaterally only when they are clearly off topic. That question is borderline, and there are certainly other similar questions that have been kept open. So we leave to the community to decide. As you can see, someone has now cast the fifth close vote and the question is closed.
I did not ask why the moderators have not closed it unilaterally.
@AnonymousPhysicist Then, I don't understand what you mean by "And why has this question not been closed for "individual circumstances?"": When you wrote the comment there were 4 votes out of the 5 needed to close it. And it's Christmas break, participation is probably reduced.
A very large number of people voted for my close vote explanation (the first comment). My confusion is about why a similar number of people did not vote to close. Probably there is not a good explanation. If people had voted to close, this whole discussion could have been skipped.
@AnonymousPhysicist Not all people that can upvote a comment can vote to close.
My preference, actually, is to leave such things in place. The only reason I can see for removing them is that they were attracting such a negative response. But that is the "fault" of those with down votes and negative comments. That part makes me sad.
In some ways, an answer appealing to "higher powers," as it were, might be soothing to someone like the OP of the question who sounds a bit depressed. So the answer was, in some way, a personal response, not a technical one.
But it was sad to see all the down votes there and here.
I have read your comments and here is my explanation for my answer. BTW I have already posted this in the comments section but just to make it clear. All what I was to do is to actually give the OP a hand both by affirming what other people said and by advising what approach I take to solve the issue myself.
To us Muslims, and I think should be to everyone else, an academic setting, a medical setting, an emotional setting, or whatever setting you can think of is a part of a human's life and counts towards the decisions he makes in his life. Allah says in the Quran, which I really advice myself first and everyone else to take a look at often, in 75:36 " Does man think that he will be left neglected (without being punished or rewarded for the obligatory duties enjoined by his Lord Allâh on him)?" in other interpretation: left without purpose? in another interpretation "alone, unquestioned?. This means that the everything in the life of the human being revolves around his relationship with Allah, his creator, because he will stand in front of him on the day of judgment. And if you look with an objective eye you can see that what humans believe in, good or bad, true or false, affects every move they make in life whether that is publishing a paper, performing a medical operation, dealing with other people or even using the toilet! FYI the main reason why muslims use water after using the toilet is because Allah commanded us through his messenger Muhammed peace be upon him to do so. Of course such daily actions have an affect on human life in all aspects because we believe they are from the creator and giver of life so who else can give you better advice. ِAllah says in 67:14 How could He not know His Own creation? For He ˹alone˺ is the Most Subtle, All-Aware. So this is actually pretty academic work!
**note: After I wrote the answer below I realized how long it is and hence thank you for reading it in advance. Looking forward to your questions or concerns.
Just a quick question to all participating as admins specially those in such an academic context: why is religion out of question when it comes to science although religion brings forth science based evidence to a matter? Is it because religion, due to the media, immediately raises all the flags to some people? I mean the only reason why science exists is due to the observations of what is out there done by the creator right? If you think no creator exists, well you still do not have a good argument yet to not believe that and base science on it. As far as I understand science is based on observation, so what you see is what you note down right? But hold on, if the creator "out there" decided to hide himself from observation does this mean he is not there? No it means we just can see him or we maybe not using the right tool. A very small example is the invention of the telescope and microscope, people did not know what was out there until we had the right tool at hand. Well we have perhaps the greatest tools to find out. Allah says in 16:78 And Allah brought you out of the wombs of your mothers while you knew nothing, and gave you hearing, sight, and intellect so perhaps you would be thankful. and in 2:164 Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth; the alternation of the day and the night; the ships that sail the sea for the benefit of humanity; the rain sent down by Allah from the skies, reviving the earth after its death; the scattering of all kinds of creatures throughout; the shifting of the winds; and the clouds drifting between the heavens and the earth—˹in all of this˺ are surely signs for people of understanding. But also Allah says in 50:37 Surely in this is a reminder for whoever has a ˹mindful˺ heart and lends an attentive ear.
Thank you for reading this far.
People should really be careful when giving advice or stopping it. We sometimes can not help people out due to our weakness as humans. Should'nt we at the least direct them to ask their creator for him? A very profound hadith, or statement, of the prophet Muhammed peace be upon him is this
Let him who believes in Allah and the Last Day speak good, or keep silent; and let him who believes in Allah and the Last Day be generous to his neighbour; and let him who believes in Allah and the Last Day be generous to his guest. This hadith is reported in the two most authentic hadith books to muslims.
As I said in my comment: No, OP's question was My question is how bad is it to present a failed attempt at something like the development of a device, from an academic perspective. I do not think that bringing a deity into the answer will be helpful at all. In other words - this is not an answer to the question.
As I also said there: this is a fine answer, it's just not an answer that's appropriate for this question in this venue. This is an answer about what to do about failure of any sort, not a question about what to do about a particular kind of academic failure. The resistance to this question is not (IMO) anti-religion; we would react similarly to an answer that told the OP about the options they had for different kinds of counseling and therapy to help them deal with failure.
@BenBolker second that.
First of all, thank you very much for your replies and patience to explain. I guess, the rules are more clearer now. And inshAllah ( if Allah wills) next time my answers will be more to the point. Who knows maybe someone will ask about general failure question so I guess the answer will be more appropriate there. Thanks again and hopefully this was some how beneficial. FYI, no offence taken for those concerned.
Although, I still think the context was appropriate and the comment was not way off track but thanks again though.
I fail to see how being a Moslem or otherwise should affect the way that people treat you- or that you expect people to treat you. But those like me in a secular culture can find it deeply offensive when somebody attempts to flaunt adherence to their chosen religion, particularly when it's "off topic", and most especially when it's already been pointed out to them that it's not the Done Thing. Having said which, I think it would have been more appropriate if somebody had pointed out to you that you risked upsetting the community, and gave you the opportunity to tone things down yourself.
When you say "us Muslims", what authority do you have to speak on behalf of all Muslims? Islam is no different from most other religions - there are many different sects, some of which regard other sects as heretics or infidels.
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5125 | How to deal with a plagiarized answer?
The answer at https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/182163/15446 is a copy/paste from https://www.modernintimacy.com/13-tips-for-how-to-heal-from-a-toxic-relationship/ (as noted in the comments by @Nobody).
I was confused on what to do (let's assume that the content of the answer is fine in itself)
downvote? → I do not think so because the answer is fine (per assumption), it is the behavior of the author that is not
flag? → not sure for what
edit to add "source : https://..." ? → This sounds best for me, though it does not address the issue
edit to add "OP: provide your sources: http//..." ? → this is an answer, not education about authoring
I believe flag it as abusive is the answer. Let's wait for the mods to answer this officially.
This answer is an answer to a meta question similar to this meta question.
When you see this kind of stuff, just flag it as rude/abusive as explained in this answer. This is the fastest way to get rid of it (either the system or a moderator will take care of it).
If you're unsure, you can also flag for moderator attention explaining that it's plagiarized with a link to the source.
In any case, once you flagged, you don't need to take any other action (no need to downvote, edit or whatever). This is true also for other posts: e.g., if you see this in a question and not in an answer, you don't need to vote to close either.
Thanks. My main concern was about the distinction between the content (which, even if plagiarized, may be a good answer), and the lack of sources on itself - your response is clear; On another topic - what is that you measure? :) (and absolutely have a look when you have the opportunity at my favourite birrificio in Torino: http://www.birrificiosanpaolo.it/)
@WoJ I measure electrical impedance, quantum Hall effect devices and noise ;-) Ah yes, I've heard of it but I haven't had yet the chance to go. So, if you happen to pass from Torino, contact me and let's go for a beer there!
Will do. I spent some time in Torino some 20 years ago (including at the Politecnico) and made very good friends there, especially one who decided to go into beer production :) Talk to you in real someday.
@WoJ Beer production is much better than engineering :) There are now many good microbreweries in town and all around the region.
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1576 | What is the difference between these two tags?
It is hard for me to understand what the exact difference is between the graduate-admissions and application tags. What are the differences between these two tags?
Despite what the tag wiki says, some of the [tag:application] questions are about job applications. It seems like a confused tag.
@StrongBad It is confusing indeed. May we can have it renamed to job-applications. Then we have job-applications tags for questions about academic jobs and graduate-admissions for questions about applying to masters and PhD levels.
We already have [tag:faculty-application] and [tag:job-search]. I think it is just a case of cleaning them up.
@StrongBad Good idea.
I interpret application as being about the package of documents you submit in order to be considered for a job or for admissions. Whereas graduate-admissions is about the admissions process in general. (This is based on my observations of how the tags have been used so far, it doesn't say anything about this in the tag wikis or excerpts.)
For example, I consider the following to be in graduate-admissions but not necessarily application
How does a prospective applicant fail to qualify for RAship, but fit the bill for TAship?
Weaker chance of admit if classmate has already been admitted to graduate program?
whereas the following are explicitly about the application that you submit for consideration
Is there a standard medical fitness certificate format for applicants to European universities?
Is it acceptable to list unpublished papers in a PhD application for computer science?
Along the same lines, in job-search there are some questions that aren't about the actual application, and some that are.
It's a subtle distinction, which is probably why it's not applied very consistently. But I do see this difference in their usage at least some of the time, so I don't believe these tags are redundant.
(I also do find these tags to be reasonably useful in their current state, i.e. even though they are not applied perfectly. So I would use the distinction above to tag new questions, but would not be in favor of re-tagging old questions en masse.)
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1515 | Why is this such a censored environment?
Every time I make a comment someone deletes it without explaining why. I've seen instances where someone is being deliberately rude and every time I reply my comment gets deleted.
Why are we so quick to censor?
Rude comments should be flagged and ignored. Replying to them tends to generate a snowball effect that requires more cleanup.
When someone is being rude, instead of replying with a rude comment of your own, flag the comment as either "rude or offensive" or "not constructive." (I can see from your flagging history that you know how.) This is clarified in the Be nice section of the help center.
Specifically, responding to disagreement with comments like
You seem butthurt by my comment
and
If you don't like to have arguments with people you should try avoiding spewing insults in response to viewpoints that you don't agree with.
might feel satisfying to you, but that's not what comments are for.
These comments were flagged by other users as "rude or offensive" or "not constructive" and met the criteria for removal, so they were removed.
I am really wondering why this is being downvoted.
I'm with you on the first one to be honest (it was a twitch reaction), but my second comment was constructive. He told me to not argue and I pointed out that he started the argument.
@CaptainCodeman It's not constructive for purposes of Q&A, which is what this website is about. Comments that are about arguing (not about the content of the post) have no place here. Just flag and disengage.
But that's not a solution. People can just take pot-shots without repercussion, which leads to dissatisfaction. I provided a useful insight based on my experience, and some asshole came and told me I must be a failure. It doesn't bode well for the site if people can do this without repercussions; eventually anyone with a contrarian opinion will be pushed away.
@Captain Flag comments containing "pot-shots" and if there's something wrong with them, they'll be removed. Too many of such flags will lead to a suspension for the user who posted the comments. Those are "repercussions" that make the site better for everyone; engaging in argument makes the site worse for others.
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1101 | Tags edits and a question about excerpts
By a review on the tags lists, we see that some of the tags do not have any wiki or excerpts. I just want to know, which one is more prefered, a tag without any wiki or excerpt; or a tag with a wiki excerpt that just says "{topic}: this tag is for questions about {topic}" is better than nothing?
A tag wiki that does not add any meaningful information is not helpful.
An empty tag wiki at least signals that somebody should write a meaningful tag wiki.
Some words have a few different meanings or contexts.
IMHO a tag wiki is for disambiguating them, e.g. by providing synonyms or longer description.
Don't add "This tag is about..." (Even "Questions on..." may be redundant.). See tags from Stack Overflow as a good example.
I have never seen tags from Stack Overflow; they are good examples indeed.
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1841 | Should we raise a close vote when reviewing first posts?
It happens when I open the review page of the website, there is a question which is in both lists of First Posts and Close Posts. The problem here is that, if somebody first opens the First Posts review page, and he raise a vote to close to that specific question; when he continues his review to the Close Posts page and see the same question there, he will not have the option to agree with the raised flag for closing such question. The only option he will have is to retract his close vote which he raised in the previous review session.
When I faced such problem, I decided to first open the Close Votes review page. Because then I will not fail to review that question which is also on the First Posts page.
Also, the other strategy is that I do not vote to close a question even I find an off-topic question on the First Posts review page. I first, review such post for convenient grammar, title and tags, not being spam, etc; and when my review is complete, I go back to the question and vote it to be closed.
In these very rare moments, how do you decide on such question?
I think it's OK to vote to close a question when you review it in "First Posts." So far as I can tell, it then gets removed from your "Close Votes" review queue, which is OK.
The thing that I think is important when voting to close while doing "First Posts" review is to welcome the person to the site and make sure to suggest how to improve their post.
In the rare case, in which you cannot select the appropriate choice during a review because you already made this choice elsewhere, you should skip the review.
Note that this situation should only arise if engage multiple review queues simultaneously, e.g., if you go to the Review page and open all queues in new tabs. Going through the reviews one-by-one should avoid this.
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4204 | Questions about admissions procedure in different countries
Part of the questions on the Academia.SX mainly focus on admissions procedure in different countries. One of the best questions, succeeded to cover questions about application procedure in the United States, link; was previously opened and attracted huge amount of attention of the users.
What is the process for PhD applications and contacting professors in France?
Right time to start applying for PhD - Germany
Is it possible to be admitted to a masters in Germany with a 3-year bachelors from another country?
Can I get into an Australian PhD program in computer science without a masters degree, with a dual BSc degree?
My question is particularly about questions which have similar concept, but are mainly about application procedure in other countries, like France, Germany, Asian universities, etc.
As an instance, if somebody has question about application procedure for starting a PhD program in Austria, is it better to form his question as the above mentioned question (something like: How does the admissions process work for PhD programs in Austria, particularly for weak or borderline students?) or should he ask his question the same as any other normal question on this site and exactly point to his main point of question?
In my opinion, having similar format of question like our How does the admissions process work for PhD programs in the US, particularly for weak or borderline students? has some advantages and disadvantages, can easily lead users with similar questions directly to their point of vagueness which has brought them to our site, but can mislead users by wrapping many questions in just similar formats.
Not to mention that, this question should not lead to opening as many questions as we can (serial questions/ one question for each country!) and questions should specifically be written and opened if any user has indeed some problem during his PhD application.
Related, if not duplicate: https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3955/7734
Does this answer your question? Canonical question on how admissions works in different countries
If a question is about an admissions system that is replicated throughout a country, and it’s not covered by a canonical question, there’s no reason not to ask it, particularly if it’s a country not often represented. However, if it’s a feature covered in one of the systems here, we should point that out and refer the reader to the appropriate existing question.
If it’s about the practices at an individual institution (“How many recommendations do I need for the PhD program in Widget-Making at The University of Northern Southern Azkaban?”), it should be closed for being institution-specific.
I disagree. There are questions about admissions that are a good fit for the SE Q/A format and questions that are a bad fit. The SE model is to help people get good answers to the questions that fit and close the questions that don't fit. A while back, we decided to deviate a little from this model and create a canonical question about PhD admissions in the US. The canonical question is not a great question for the SE format, but it grew out of a meta discussion where it became clear that our community did not want to just close these bad questions as depending on individual factors (that is usually what makes the questions a bad fit) and instead wanted to do our best to help these, often new, users. The existence of the canonical question should not influence what happens when we get a good (i.e., one that works well with the SE format) admissions question, we still answer those.
I think my feeling is that we should continue to close highly specific admissions questions for which the answer depends on individual factors for countries other than the US. If at some point in the future we reach a critical mass of these types of questions for a particular, somewhat unified, system, then we can make another CW question, if we have someone who will answer it (creating a canonical question without an answer is not so helpful).
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4467 | Do we need to merge the tags about Asia?
Recently I was reading and answering the question Do I need to sit for TOEFL or SAT?
I searched for relevant tags and saw we have three tags:
Asia with 22 questions
South-East-Asia with 1 question: How should one advertise a program if it doesn't lead to jobs?
South-Asia with 1 question: Is being socially reclusive okay for a graduate student?
Since the last two tags are not really useful and identical to the first tag, should these South-East-Asia and South-Asia be merged in to the Asia tag?
Not a regular here, but based on reading Should europe tag be synonyms with eu?, I think I'd be careful when merging those tags because Asia is sooo big, and not all regions share the common culture... (my opinion is only about the tags, not if those questions need those tags or not)
No, the differences between South East Asia and South Asia are clear.
If a changes were to be made, perhaps removing the "Asia" tag as too broad would be an option.
There are some international differences in what these phrases mean. For example, AIUI in the USA, "South Asia" means "India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh" (maybe Nepal too). In other places that might be called "The Indian Subcontinent", and "south asia" might be taken more geographically.
I'm not sure whether "South-east asia" has similar non-geographic meanings. In my mind it refers to the peninsula that Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, etc., sit on, but that might not be true for everybody.
So, these meanings are different for different people.
I'm not sure what this means for the appropriateness of the tags, except perhaps that if they exist, the tag wikis need to be really clear.
They're common enough terms to be defined on Wikipedia: South Asia and Southeast Asia. (Apart from the countries you've mentioned, the latter includes several of the island countries, and the former sometimes is defined to include Afghanistan.) I guess the Wikipedia definitions would make for good starting points for clearer tag wikis.
Ah! Right. Still, I think these are terms that only have meaning in specific places (I'd never heard "south asia" until I came to the US.
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1114 | What are the Tag edit feature limits?
Is there any limit to the person who edits the tags? Limits such as the number of tag edits each person can do each day.
It seems that if the person has many rejected tags, he is banned of tag edit for seven days. The web site gives me the following message:
Too many of your edits were rejected, try again in 7 days.
That is correct. If many of your tag wiki edits are rejected (by community vote), your ability to edit tag wikis is temporarily suspended. The exact formula is:
When deciding on whether we should ban or not, we now look at your last 7 days of activity.
If (rejects - (approvals / 3)) >= 5, you will be auto-banned.
You should take this as an opportunity to review why these edits were declined, and learn how to improve your suggested edits. This FAQ answer explains how to see the result of your suggested edits.
Can you see were these rejected edits my recent ones or the previous edits? Because after some rejects to the edits I did last two days, I asked some questions in Meta about tag edit and tried to do better tag edits today.
@Parsa The suspension algorithm considers the last seven days of activity. You should review your own suggested edits to see which were rejected, and why.
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5458 | Tag [admission] is seemingly a synonym for [graduate-admissions]. Is this good?
I was looking for a tag admission, for a question which is perhaps related to the subject. Stack Exchange suggested the tag graduate-admissions instead. In fine print at the bottom, it said: "also: admission". I think this means that admission is a synonym of graduate-admissions.
My question may be related to undergraduate admissions, but is unrelated to graduate admissions.
Might it make sense to either:
A.) de-synonymize the two tags, or
B.) rename graduate-admissions to admission, or
C.) create a new tag undergraduate-admissions?
As stated in our help center, undergraduate admissions are off topic. The reason is that undergraduate admissions are typically not handled by academics or academic-adjacent folks, but rather by dedicated university staff ("admissions officers"). Thus, we have no real expertise to offer. Personally, I'm surprised that there isn't a "pre-college" stack to fill this need, but there isn't.
This being the case, I think the status quo makes sense.
It's ultimately up to the voters, but your question might be okay because it "could equally apply" to post-graduate students. For example, medical or law students probably face the same policy that you're asking about. But I do recommend removing the word "undergrad" from your title.
There might not be a Stack Exchange for this purpose, but there are plenty of sub-Reddits, Facebook groups, and other communities. You could check Area 51. Perhaps a pre-college Stack Exchange might already have been proposed, and perhaps you could upvote the proposal if it has.
Yes, no shortage of places to ask such questions on the internet. I have no personal interest in starting a "pre-college" stack, I'm just noting that (a) there is clearly some demand for it, based on the number of "what are my odds?" posts that slip through our nets, and (b) there is currently nowhere on SE where such posts would be on-topic. Maybe someday.
A former SE community manager had their next job at "College Confidential" in the same role (they've since moved on). I've sometimes pointed people interested in undergrad admissions there. Though I'll warn that the undergrad admissions community is an absolute zoo, a lot of unstable parents out there helicoptering. I think that's one reason it would never be a good fit for SE.
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4697 | Is asking advice from experienced people considered as off-topic?
This question entitled as "Leaving academia at 39" basically asks advice from people who had similar experience during their academic career. I believe that his question is highly relevant to academia, and very beneficial for people who have the same issues.
The most voted question in this site is How should I deal with discouragement as a graduate student?. Referred question is absolutely open-ended, the answer is based on purely personal experience, but nevertheless, it considers a very common problem among academics. Therefore, I believe that it is a valuable question and should not be closed ever.
Hence my point;
Why is a question which considers a very common, and very important thing in academic life is closed due to the reason being off-topic?
The title of your post has little relation to your actual question. "Advice" has nothing to do with any closures and isn't mentioned in the linked question.
I think the question we were hoping OP would ask is this one:
Is it common to leave academia after 40? What factors should I consider when deciding whether to leave?
I would that would be a great, on-topic question.
But instead, the question was:
Does anyone have managed [sic] to leave academia after 40? And are you happy with the change? I need to hear happy stories.
Our Q&A / voting format is not compatible with story requests (how would we vote for the "best" story? Or the "happiest"?).
If we had caught this at an earlier stage, I would suggest that we edit and reopen. But there are now half a dozen answers (including the top one) that provide anecdotes.
So, I recommend that OP (or someone else) asks a new, answerable question. We can then post a comment in the closed one linking to the new one.
Edit: Looks like OP has edited the original question along the lines of the above and the community voted to reopen. So, perhaps, problem solved.
What factors should I consider when deciding whether to leave academia?
This is off-topic because it is not about academia. That's implied by the word "leave".
The question is also should be closed as needing clarity because it does not specify the asker's goal. No career advice is going to help if there is no goal.
I am completely depressed
The asker appears to need a councilor or therapist, not career advice.
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1378 | self-plagiarism tag
I've noticed a number of questions about self-plagiarism, and since it tends to be a fairly distinct subject, I'm thinking it would be useful to have a self-plagiarism subcategory. Such posts would still be tagged plagiarism, but I think the additional distinction would be useful. Would others agree?
The tag definition for plagiarism already includes self-plagiarism in its definition. I would prefer that one or the other apply here. If it's plagiarism, it's not self-plagiarism, and vice versa. Otherwise, it'd be a tag synonym.
@Compass I don't think it's a synonym. I'm ambivalent about whether to remove the plagiarism markers, since I don't yet have a good sense of where this community falls on inclusionism vs. deletionism when it comes to tags.
Seeing some support and no strong objections, I've created the tag and started tagging things; I'll dribble in the marks over time to as not to slam the front page badly.
@jakebeal you can also add a tag wiki excerpt defining its intended usage - generally, it's good to do that immediately when creating a new tag, so people can see how to apply it properly.
@ff524 I thought that might be the case, so I did so with the first tag I created - it should be in your review queue now.
Wow... there are a surprisingly large number of questions that are about self-plagiarism. Dribbling in the edits will take quite a while...
Oi, should we be retagging self-plagiarism and removing plagiarism or just retagging? As in if it's one, it's not the other?
@Compass I don't feel like I have a clear understanding of whether removing the plagiarism tag is appropriate, so for the moment I'm acting conservatively and I'm just adding self-plagiarism tags.
I agree. The tag description for plagiarism currently reads
Plagiarism is the practice of taking credit for someone else’s work. Also included in this tag are questions on self-plagiarism, which involves redundant publication or reuse of one's own work in an unethical manner.
I think this is pretty awkward. The second sentence admits that the plagiarism tag includes something which is not part of the definition of plagiarism.
In fact I dislike the term "self-plagiarism" as it seems to muddy the definition of plagiarism, which I would like to be perfectly clear. If plagiarism is the practice of taking credit for someone else's work then it follows that you cannot plagiarize yourself. This is not to imply that there is not a class of academic misconduct involving improper use and reuse of one's own work: of course there is. I just would prefer a different term be used for it. However, "self-plagiarism" seems to have caught on and, as it seems to give people the right idea, I can live with it.
On a site like ours, distinguishing plagiarism from self-plagiarism seems useful (even educational). Creating a separate tag would be a good idea.
This also implies it would definitely be better to leave only the new tag for these questions, removing the original one entirely.
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1771 | Slow down "too broad" and "unclear" closing
Looking at our closure stats with the new moderator tool, I notice the following:
Over the past 30 days, we've closed more than 40% of the questions asked. That's a worryingly large amount.
Of the questions closed, approximately 1/3 are either "too broad" or "unclear what you are asking", few are edited, and almost none are reopened.
Sampling a few of these, it looks like they are typically being put on hold in ~2 hours, which is way too fast for most OPs to respond. I thus have a concern that we are being too fast on the trigger. Many of these may have a good question hiding in there, and a fast close may cause OPs to become discouraged and abandon their questions, particularly because reopening is typically much harder than closing on this site.
I would thus like to suggest that, just like we give comments a 24-hour grace period before flagging for obsolescence, we should give "Unclear" and "Too Broad" questions a 24-hour grace period before voting for closure.
To be clear: I am talking only about "Unclear" and "Too Broad" - I'm happy to see most other closures happening quickly.
To me it is not the fast closing that is a problem, it is that reopening is difficult.
@StrongBad I'm not sure whether that would change the OP discouragement aspect. I also think that the culture may be difficult to shift on reopening.
We have a 24-hour grace period before flagging for obsolescence?
@Wrzlprmft Grace period policy.
@Jakebeal: That’s for thank you comments, not obsolete comments in general. Most obsolete comments become obsolete because the person who really has to read them (the author of the post) has read them. There is no need whatsoever to keep such comments.
We can potentially use the academia chat for this. Linking the article in question for a reopen vote if it is valid by the first vote to reopen should allow additional 3K+ to vote reopen if it is necessary. I'm not versed at making bots, but I assume that someone somewhere can make us a bot that just spouts out Reopen requests.
@Compass I like that as a step toward solving the difficulty of reopening problem.
I strongly disagree. While I do not deny the discouragement that putting questions on hold poses, this detriment is clearly outweighed by the advantages.
Closeworthy questions should be put on hold as fast as possible so that they are not answered in this state. Otherwise we run into the problem of answers that get invalidated by an edit, long discussions about opionon-based answers, partial answers and so on. Remember that those questions are problematic because of the answers they receive and putting them on hold has exactly and only this short-term effect: It blocks answers.
If you leave closeworthy questions open for 24 hours, you rely on the community detecting this problem and not answering such questions. I do not think this can work. In particular new users are likely to ignore this, answer the question and thus very likely face discouragement due to a changing question or the inherent problems that made the question closeworthy in the first place. And new answering users are somebody I really would not like to see discouraged.
I would like to mention that the above is backed up with experience from sites which are less active and close much slower than we do.
Another, different problem with your suggestion is that the system is not designed for it. Shifting the culture to your proposal entirely is difficult, so somebody will still flag or vote to close. Then, if I encounter a closeworthy question in the close queue that is younger than 24 hours: What should I do with it? If I close it, we are almost back to the old system. If I leave it open, such questions may never be closed. If I skip it, I leave the decision to those who do not adhere to your proposal and we probably have our close queues crammed like on Stack Overflow.
So, what can and probably should we improve?
When voting to close a question, explain to the asker what is wrong and what they need to do. The close notice does this to some extent, but only to some extent and the asker only sees this after closure (of which they aren’t informed).
When encountering a question in the close queue: Before voting to close, ensure that the problems that put the question there have not yet been resolved.
When you notice that an asker amended a question, retract your close vote.
Reopen questions quickly and whenever you think that a question is now in a state that would not be closed in the first place. Do not vote to leave a question closed just because it is lazy, trivial or has other flaws (that’s what downvotes are for).
If there is a straightforward way to make a question not-closeworthy, do not vote to close, but edit. For example, if a question’s only problem is that it is many questions in one: Do not vote to close but edit it so that only one not-closeworthy question remains (and tell the author what you did and why). Note in particular that one edit from the close queue removes a question from that queue.
Your last bullet conflicts with the ethic that we generally have on this site about tampering as authorial intent as little as possible. How would you suggest approaching that conflict?
@Jakebeal: To take the example I gave: I do not think that splitting a question (or at least intialising it) tampers with authorial intent. The authorial intent is to have the three questions answered as they are; having them ansered in one place is not a part of this intent (at least for any sane person).
I also consider going against the authors intent to some extent acceptable, if that’s the only way to save the question. For example, if somebody posts a poll-like question (e.g., what do you think about X), I have no problems to replace this with the underlying concern (e.g., is X ethical?), if it is clearly identified in the question. That being said, if there are two ways to salvage a question and those depend on the author’s intent, I would not say anymore that there is a “straightforward way to make a question not-closeworthy”.
@jakebeal, I can't agree with your characterization of the site's ethic. I think this answer is spot-on. Editing a question to make it more suitable is normal and to be encouraged. See, e.g., http://academia.stackexchange.com/help/editing: "If you are not comfortable with the idea of your contributions being collaboratively edited by other trusted users, this may not be the site for you." and http://academia.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/edit: "When should I edit posts? Any time you feel you can make the post better, and are inclined to do so. Editing is encouraged!"
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4939 | Handling of off-topic content in an answer
In this highly active question about how to respond to misrepresentation of one's research, one of the answers dwells on the scientific substance of the matter rather than on the question of how to respond.
While "frame challenges" to a question are often appropriate, in this case there is (deliberately) not enough information to know what scientific content is actually involved, other than the broad area. Because passions are high around this subject area and due to the specific position taken by the answer author, it is unsurprising that this answer has become highly controversial.
I believe that @cag51 made a reasonable proposal for improving the answer by focusing it on the response to the OP's question, rather than the argument about research content. The author of the answer has clearly rejected that proposal by reverting the edit, however.
The leaves a question of what to do about the controversial answer, and per @cag51's comment, I think it will be useful to bring this to meta for discussion. I see three general paths:
Edit against the answer authors' wishes
Delete as being unsalvageable
Leave it alone
Personally, I think there is valuable content in the answer where it addresses the actual question of the OP, and that the discussion of the scientific specifics is what detracts from the value. This is not the venue for resolving a question about EUA processes: that would be better taken to Medical Sciences, per the standard policy of this site to avoid discussion of the content of research.
I'd like to see it salvaged, and there is recent community precedent for such an invasive edit. In that case, however, the answer writer did effectively assent to the edit.
I would thus propose that the path to take is to ask the answer writer to respond here and that the direction either be:
Edit to remove research content discussion, by the answer writer or with their consent, or
If the answer writer does not consent to editing, delete as violating the site's policy on discussion of research content.
It's sitting at -11, and greyed out. At that point, what's the major gain in forcibly editing/deleting it?
@BenBarden Same as for any other off-topic material posted on the site.
@BenBarden The current vote as of now is +18/-28. The net is -10.
@scaaahu yes? Vote totals do change over time.
@BenBarden My point is there are both upvotes and downvotes.
I think the positive votes should be taken with a bit of a grain of salt given the HNQ status of the question, which exposes the answers to far more people having upvote privileges than downvote privileges, and the voting may end up not depending much on the "academia" parts of the question.
"While "frame challenges" to a question are often appropriate" I think that should read "rarely appropriate." They are often used as an excuse to assume the asker is wrong without evidence.
In occasions like this it can be really easy to get distracted from the question and end up discussing the setup and that's often problematic for a variety of reasons - in fact, it happened in some of the answers to this question, too.
Many questions on sites like Academia are in the format of
Explain specific example that happened as a way of illustrating the problem.
Ask general question about what to do in this sort of situation (for future reference).
When people ask questions like this, it's important to focus on the second item and less on the first. So, when determining if an answer is actually answering the question, focus on whether the general case is addressed rather than the specific case. Answering the latter is important as the former doesn't help a broad audience - it only helps the specific asker.
So, to use the example provided, if the question is
What, if anything, should I do? I have not had any interactions with these people so far, but I'm concerned about my work being associated with them.
At the heart of this question is a simple problem - "my work is being misquoted and misused and it may impact my future in this field as people may associate my work with them." In reality, what that work is, is less relevant for the purpose of answering this question. As such, the bulk of the answer should focus on the question itself.
That doesn't mean that the specific example can't factor in to the answer. For example, if there is a specific solution that only applies in the case of COVID research, that can and should be included in the solution set but that shouldn't open the doors for someone to question the asker's description of the problem.
Could the question be edited to remove some of the shorthand phrasing that seems to have caused an answer to focus on that rather than the question at hand - absolutely. Does that mean that the answer's author should have free licence to argue about the terminology chosen in the question before actually answering it - absolutely not.
So, my recommendation here is two-fold:
(Optional, depends on the question) Edit the question to remove any judgement-centric terms that are causing the answer/s to focus too much on the specific example - this applies in cases where it may be an issue.
in this case, that means editing out "anti-vaxxers" and "conspiracy theory".
Edit the answer to remove the commentary that doesn't address the core question itself. If there's nothing remaining, delete the answer.
in this case, that means removing most of the first huge paragraph and the last section.
If the person answering doesn't like the edits, they have the option of removing the answer entirely should they wish. But I'd strongly recommend that y'all avoid allowing this platform to be used to argue about these sorts of issues that are tangential to the actual questions - y'all aren't (as general academia experts) experts in COVID or racism or religion -as a group. You may be as individuals but that's not what y'all are here to judge. You're here to be a resource for people asking about Academia, not these other subjects.
The distinction between the general aspects and their specific instance in a question is extremely helpful, and I agree that answers should focus on the first. But two issues come to mind. 1) Does this rule out any frame-challenges, even helpful ones? 2) We sometimes get questions that ask how to deal with harassment or discrimination; often those questions contain a specific example. Most of the time, these specifics contain information that is crucial for a helpful answer, so in removing parts of this information, surgical precision is required. (cont.)
(cont.) These specific examples of (alleged) harassment, discrimination etc. are always contested in comments and frequently in answers, so removing them would indeed reduce noise. However, I am pretty sure that once we remove them, commenters and perhaps answerers will still ask for "evidence" that discrimination etc. really happened, to which some will feel compelled to reply, and we will get the same noisy and unnerving discussion, and the thread will be derailed from an on-topic question to an opinion-based principled discussion on the defintion of sexism/racism/you name it.
@henning: One thing I intend to do on the long run is to have some rules or guidelines for frame challenges.
@Wrzlprmft that's a great idea.
I don't think that this prevents frame challenges entirely, @henning - If the question is "how do I do X" a frame challenge is generally going to be "you don't need to do X". So, if the question is saying "I'm being harassed by other students because we have different methodologies. How do I talk with my advisor about this issue to get them to stop?" The frame challenge wouldn't be "your methodologies are wrong, change them." it would be "You should talk to the students, not your advisor" or something like that.
As to the need to be cautious when editing, absolutely. I can probably do a better job of explaining in my answer - the issue isn't to remove anything that's necessary for the description, it's to edit to adjust any terms that people are getting hung up on that may be overly ... "triggering" ... to use that word. There are a lot of words out there that tend to cause people to take sides and they're often shorthand that causes more issues than it saves. You'll always have people trying to argue that something isn't harassment or racism or whatever, and that's where the optional comes in.
What it's important to do as users and mods of the site is to step back and be aware of what is causing the discussion - is it the question or is it disputing the facts of the situation. It's important to generally accept the premise of the questions in most cases. We're not the "Am I the asshole" reddit - we're not here to judge the situations, we're here to help people address the situation as they see it. Are there going to be cases where people pose questions where they're totally wrong? Likely. I don't have a good bead on how common that is, so I'd look to the mods for guidance here.
@Catija: By the same token, you will have people trying to argue that something is racism, sexism, etc., when it isn't (or isn't necessarily). The default position should not favour one side (e.g., OP is free to assert racism, sexism, etc., and no-one may challange that). Reasonable answers to questions on discrimination, etc., are often going to require analysis of the situation and evidence, so "frame challanges" need to be broad enough to do that.
@Ben the default position should not favor a "side", it should favor OP. I.e. frame challenges should remain exceptions, reserved for cases where it is absolutely clear that there is a misconception.
@henning: Favouring OP is already favouring a side. Part of our responsibility as academics is that no-one has a privileged position in argument. I don't agree that it must be "absolutely clear" that there is a misconception; sometimes the very uncertainty of the situation warrants academics pointing out possible counter-arguments to OP.
@Ben well, it's not a substantive side. If we had a question "How to deal with false accusations of racist hiring practices", I'd suggest the same.
@henning: Fair enough; I appreciate your consistency (and I'd also suggest the same --- i.e., you should be able to challenge both). I doubt that users on this site would restrict themselves to accepting OP premises in that case (and I doubt moderators would intervene when it is challenged). While both are possible, as a matter of empirical fact, many questions from young users make assertions of wrongdoing that are possibly correct, but possibly exaggerated/misunderstood, so I think allowing challenges is important. Again, a duty of academics is to challenge assumptions.
@Ben (veering off-topic here, but I'm not sure our main role and responsibility on this site is that of research academics. I see it more as a mentoring role, helping other folks in Academia to navigate it's culture, norms, and challenges. People come here with very concrete and practical problems they need advice on; they're not looking for disinterested ivory tower analysis.)
@henning: That is certainly a defensible view, and I always appreciate your viewpoint; I guess I take the view that we should always be "modelling" the academic mindset, even when mentoring/providing practical advice. I certainly agree that a focus on practical problems is appropriate, but an important part of that (in my view) is to engage premises; if there is a false premise in a situation, it is going to affect practical advice in a genuine way. I see questions on here (particularly from young users) that make assumptions that need pushback.
This is a tricky case; thanks for bringing it to meta. The existing answers seem to support option 3, so I'll make a case for options 1/2.
While questioning the premise of the question is often the right thing to do, there are two differentiating factors in this case:
The question is deliberately vague on technical details, so it is difficult to see how the indicated paragraphs respond to the question. It is as if someone asked "my physics teacher took points off for no reason" and the answer was "Is it really no reason? Physics is a complicated subject, let me explain why Newton's Laws are incorrect." Such a broad view of "on-topic" is inconsistent with our Q&A model.
This premise is entirely technical. If the premise is related to academia, then it makes sense for us to have a big debate about it (in the chat, preferably). But if the premise is off-topic, then we should avoid having an answer devoted to discussing this premise. Among other reasons, only a few of us have informed opinions on any given field, and so the risk of propagating misinformation is quite high.
I think this is the case for either forced editing or deleting. Among these, my concern with "forced editing" is that we may force someone to have an answer that they do not endorse associated with the account. So, I think the preferred resolution would be to provisionally delete and allow the post author to edit and request un-deletion if they so choose.
I believe the answer is on-topic. Questioning the premise of a question, with additional context information, is an accepted on-topic answer in many academia.SE questions. It's true that OP did not provide super-exact information - but maybe OP doesn't want to identify themselves; and it's not necessary to make the linked answer pertinent, or at least conditionally pertinent.
So, I don't think that it needs salvaging and can be left as-is - especially since it servers to temper advice in other answers which accept some implicit assumptions of the OP (the OP of academia, not the OP here on meta).
"Questioning the premise of a question, with additional context information, is an accepted on-topic answer in many academia.SE questions." I do not agree. Answers that do this in a way that assumes the asker is wrong without evidence are rude and should not be posted.
@AnonymousPhysicist: 1. They're usually not rude (and the answer in this case, in particular, isn't rude). 2. I believe they should be posted, and moreover, they often get positive vote scores, meaning that readers find them useful; and while that's not a guarantee of worthiness, it says something.
Since this meta answer was posted, I'd say that OP has substantially clarified the issue and made the side point raised in the answer that prompted this discussion moot, as far as I'm concerned.
@BryanKrause: That may be possible... but my answer was written before that happened.
The best way to address this answer, and similar ones, is to vote.
If you think an answer is not helpful, downvote. If you think it is helpful, upvote.
Remember that "helpful" needs to be defined by the question, not your personal desires. Content which does not address the question is not helpful.
I agree with this, except that I fear voting is often based on opinions rather than helpfulness, especially on "politically charged" questions that make it on the HNQ list. Nevertheless, voting did work at least in the case at hand, and it's the least bad option.
I've got some pretty biased concerns (as a former mod on Interpersonal Skills) about voting as the sole response to these sorts of answers. What can often happen is that an answer becomes more of a soapbox than an answer. This is particularly the case when questions end up on the HNQ list. If people like the soapbox, they're not going to vote in alignment of what's considered a good answer on this specific site. So, in the case of this example, people agreed that it should be downvoted. As @henning mentioned, though... this won't always be the case.
Agreed, @Catija, the thing is though, we have rules for what's an off-topic question, but not for what's an off-topic answer, and I don't know whether we should impose such rules. Better to opt out of HNQ (for all questions, IMO), thus making sure that the votes reflect more of an expert view than a soapbox view.
The problem I see here is that voting on SE ideally aligns helpful and correct: For most answers (those who address the question), those are strongly correlated. However, we also have the extreme of non-answers, which may be correct, but are completely orthogonal to the question and thus not helpful, but noise. For these answers, we have the NAA flag, because voting doesn’t work well, because voters have to decide between voting for helpfulness and correctness. Here we are somewhere in the middle, having one part non-answer and and one part answer.
@Wrzlprmft "voters have to decide between voting for helpfulness and correctness" Voting based on helpfulness is the helpful way to vote. Your "problem" is that some voters are not helpful. There is no changing that on a site that's based on voting.
"There is no changing that on a site that's based on voting" - and that's why I think this answer, while correct in the ideal (to paraphrase: "this should be handled by voting") may not be correct in the "real world". Especially when particulars like HNQ skew the voting further (the ratio of helpful to not helpful voters).
@BryanKrause This is not the real world, it's Stack Exchange.
@AnonymousPhysicist Alas, despite our preferences to the contrary, StackExchange remains closer to the "real world" than the ideal one.
@Wrzlprmft et al. If we take decisions on answers, and those decisions are not based on voting, what should they be based on instead? I see only three options: The first is moderator discretion. Mods are voted into office, so they have some legitimate discretion, but the bounds of their discretion are not so clear. The second option is to introduce voting on answers that were flagged as "not an answer". I don't know if that's technically possible, and it would probably reintroduce all the ambiguities related to voting on the question itself (cont.)
(cont.) The third option are rules adopted in meta on what constitutes an on-topic/off-topic answer. At present, we don't have those rules. But I'm not even sure that we should have them, because what's on-topic and off-topic in an answer is inherently subjective or at least easily contested; what for some is a "helpful and correct" frame-challenge, is a distracting and irrelevant opinion for others. In my view, this leaves voting as the least bad mechanism, and we should improve the quality of votes by getting rid of the HNQ list.
@henning: If we take decisions on answers, and those decisions are not based on voting, what should they be based on instead? – This is not necessarily only about executive decisions, but also about what the community and the moderators can do to guide users. If we have a meta post that says we don’t like long off-topic asides, this is something a (community) moderator can point to when nudging an author to shorten their answer. And we moderators have some basis for acting against users who post such problematic answers as a pattern.
So, just to make my criticism clear: By saying it’s the best way and not discussing alternatives, your answer implies that voting suffices to address the problem in question for “this answer, and similar ones”.
For the record, I am going to remove the argument about the word "universal" and accusations of trolling, and will simplify this discussion to the one comment above, which both sides seem to be okay with.
It is not off-topic --- it should be left alone
I am the author of the answer, so I will explain why the material is not off-topic. The original question refers to COVID vaccine sceptics as "anti-vaxxers" and so my answer spends its first paragraph putting forward an argument for why the OP should avoid using that term in the context of misgivings about the COVID vaccines. That is a legitimate "frame challenge" to an aspect of the original question. It is also an important (and on-topic) aspect of “how to respond” because it advises the OP that he is wrong to use a particular term to refer to his opponents in this matter. It is long-standing policy on Academia.SE that answers may challenge and critique premises of a question, and this is on-topic.
My argument for why the "anti-vaxxer" term should not apply necessarily delves into the differences between the process for the COVID vaccines, relative to the standard approval process for long-standing vaccines. The thrust of the argument is that there are substantial differences between the regulatory process and evidence level for the COVID vaccines compared to long-standing vaccines that have been the targets of people who could reasonably be called "anti-vaxxers", and so the term ought not be applied to people who show misgivings about the COVID vaccines but no broader misgivings about vaccination per se. The reasoning for this argument cannot be made clearly without referring to the differences between the two cases, and this necessarily entails giving at least some broad exposition on evidentiary/regulatory differences.
Now, the “controversy” of this answer is clearly rooted in substantive disagreements about the evidence and regulatory process pertaining to effectiveness/safety of the COVID vaccines, and not in any issue relating to SE site rules. The present complaint is a post hoc complaint that does not accord with the real reason for the controversy in the answer (and is flawed in any case). Indeed, one of the main reasons this answer generated “controversy” is that another user came on to the comment thread and asserted (in big bold lettering) that the relevant paragraph of the answer was "categorically false" and was "misinformation". I then patiently engaged with this user showing evidence of the fact that COVID vaccines have been distributed under "emergency use authorisation" (EUA) instead of the normal FDA vaccine approval process, and expert peer-reviewed medical literature saying that the EUA process is less stringent than the regular vaccine approval process. Readers can review the comment thread for the post and see the argument on this matter if they wish; it confirms that the assertions made in my original post are factually correct and backed by expert evidence, including FDA guidelines and releases, medical literature, and regulatory commentary.
Whilst vote tallies of the answer are not a valid basis for assessment of whether an answer complies with site rules (e.g., whether it is on-topic), at the time of this answer the vote tally is at +20 - 28 = -8 --- i.e., about 42% of voters on the answer have upvoted and about 58% have downvoted; hardly a sign of an inherently low-quality answer. The heavy downvoting is clearly motivated by substantive disagreement with the position (or in my view, with the “feel” of the position) rather than an assessment that the opinion is off-topic or breaches site rules.
Mere controversy of the answer is not grounds for removal, and I believe that I have shown that the answer is on-topic (responding specifically to an aspect of the framing of the original question) and is a legitimate "frame challenge". The alleged precedent for altering or deleting the answer here is not a precedent at all, since it involved assent by the author, which is lacking here. Removal would effectively establish the precedent that an on-topic answer (with +20 upvotes) can be deleted by moderators merely due to substantive disagreement by noisy users. The answer should not be removed.
Re the attempted edit (and any other suggested edits): As I noted when I reverted the edit by @cag51, I think he had good intent in that edit, and his substitute paragraph did not misrepresent my views, but it did strip out the reasoning for why I oppose the use of the term "anti-vaxxers" in this case. I sincerely appreciate his genuine attempt to deal with the matter without misrepresenting my views, and I have nothing but positive things to say about his actions here. While I am open to looking at other proposed edits, the "ship has sailed" on the downvotes/controversy, so I would not be inclined to support edits that remove the reasoning for the position against use of the term "anti-vaxxers". Obviously my position here is likely to lead to a stalemate, since any proposed edit is probably going to want to get rid of this part, and I think it is important that it stay, to show the reasoning for my critique of the premise of the OP. As I have noted above, the reasoning here is directly relevant to a premise challenge to the question that forms part of the advice of “how to respond”.
"his substitute paragraph did not misrepresent my views, but it did strip out the reasoning for why I oppose the use of the term "anti-vaxxers" in this case" - I don't see why your reasoning for opposing the use of the term anti-vaxxers should be part of an answer about how OP should respond. Maybe it could be a comment to OP, suggesting use of different language, but it seems like your description of the edit: one that has removed reasoning not necessary for the answer while preserving the answerer's (your) views, is exactly the sort of thing an edit should aim for.
I'll also quote from OP's comment in a conversation now moved from chat: "The discussion about the COVID vaccine here is moot: my paper is being used to support a very specific conspiracy theory, and at least some of these people self-identify as anti-vaxxers" I think this makes clear that OP is not conflating hesitancy towards vaccines approved under EUAs with "anti-vaxxer" positions, but is specifically referring to people who are anti-vaccine in general and who promote conspiracy theories about the COVID vaccines rather than reasoned hesitancy.
"The heavy downvoting is clearly motivated by substantive disagreement with the position" - and probably the heavy upvoting is clearly motivated by agreement with this position, rather than the part of the answer that responds to the question asked. Another reason it shouldn't be part of the answer.
Even in his follow-up commentary in comments, OP says that "at least some" of the people are self-identified anti-vaxxers, which by implication means that most are not. Consequently, whether he uses this reference to them remains a legitimate question.
One that is still irrelevant to the question as asked. OP has now made it clear this is about a specific 5G-related conspiracy. Do you think it's reasonable to include 5G-related vaccine conspiracy proponents in the group you feel is unfair to label "anti-vax"?
OP has said it is a specific concern, but he has not been specific to us about what that concern is. The very fact that it (apparently)relates to some mad belief about phone signals suggests that it is not a generic aversion to vaccines. As I said before, OP has referred to a broader group than this, saying that "at least some" are identified anti-vaxxers, which again, implies that most are not. Consequently, whether he uses this reference remains a legitimate question.
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1573 | Preserving 'original intent' in closed questions?
In this community, there is often a sense that authorial intent is important, and that editors should strive to change an author's words as little as possible. I strongly agree with this sense, but have noticed what I think is an exception case when editing in an attempt to salvage a closed question.
First, let me note that such editing is spurred by the general stack exchange policy towards closed questions: eventually, most should be either edited and reopened or deleted. Some really crappy closed questions draw very good answers, however, and what I have noticed is that those answers often seem to focus on an answerable "heart" in the question. If we ignore authorial intent, then such a question may be converted into an answerable state.
Examples where I have done this recently:
Should I add the “presenter certificate” to the paper presented at a conference?
Is there a recommended font and size for a job application?
Are there any research careers except professorship for a person holding PhD in pure mathematics?
Comparing a career in medicine vs. medical research?
My question: should authorial intent be preserved when editing to salvage a closed question?
I provide my own answer below, to see if it agrees with the sense of the community
Also see Should we edit questions to match how they were answered
When considering authorial intent vs. the fate of closed questions, I see the following probable cases:
The original poster returns and cleans up their own question, unimpeachably secure in their relationship to authorial intent.
The question is edited to align with its good answers, but likely bending authorial intent.
The question gets deleted, taking the valuable answers with it.
We collectively decide that the question is a special edge case and leave it be.
If a question is fairly recent (within a month or so) or was asked by a fairly active user, then I think that it should be left alone, since the OP may still return and give us the ideal Case #1. For a neglected question of an active user, a comment is a good "heads up" tool for spurring this.
I strongly dislike Case #3. I tend to be very inclusionist in my thinking, and don't like to see anybody's valuable work being deleted.
My problem with Case #4 is that with asynchronous community moderation, it very easily collapses into Case #3. If a few high-rep users happen to drive by and vote to delete, the question goes away, even if it's over a rather long period of time.
Thus, I feel that for closed questions that have clearly been abandoned by the OP, it is better to bend authorial intent and edit.
I don't see anything particularly objectionable here. Moreover, since it's normally possible to "unwind" changes, there's little chance of long-term damage if the OP later wants to "reclaim" the question.
I do not like the question losing its original intent. You have edited a question when the OP was not offered a PHD, because he accidentally badmouthed his supervisor. I had to rollback, because his emotional update on his kicking out, was to me more important than the answers given.
Number 2 is something to be very careful of, because the original author's name remains on the edited question. I have, on other sites, asked mods to remove my name from questions that I had started because they had diverged so radically from anything that I would want to be associated with.
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1435 | Why is this question not being reopened?
This question on differences between two types of German doctoral programs was originally rightfully put on hold as being unclear. The original poster then added information, and the question edited such that it appears to me to now by a quite clear and useful question. Its reopen vote, however, doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Is there a reason for this?
I don't know why people where not voting to reopen it. Sometimes the process is slow and you just need to alert people, on either meta or chat, to issues. The question had two reopen votes, and I added mine to reopen it. I think your edit made the question much clearer.
Note that five users voted on this post in the review queue, so the review was marked "complete" and the post was removed from the queue. Here is the review history.
First of all, let's go back to the Revision history of the question linked to this meta. See https://academia.stackexchange.com/posts/34431/revisions
I was the one who cast the first Reopen vote after the OP edited the question. Then jakebeal edited it again to make it better and voted to Reopen. Then the question just sat there until StrongBad, one of our mods (I was going to say our excellent mod, but all of our mods are excellent), reopened it.
The reason I casted the Reopen vote was because I am a regular Review queue user. I saw it in the Review because the OP edited it. I examined it and decided to vote to reopen. I believe jake is also a regular Review user. He probably saw it in the Review and then did the Edit and Reopen.
Now, here is the problem I have observed. Not too many of our users use the Review queue. As far as I know, only a handful are regular non-mod Review users. You can check the stats for each Review category. For example, only Peter Jansson and I have three digits number of Reopen reviews. I believe this is one of the reasons the subjct question stayed on limbo stage for so long. Had many users seen it in Review, it would be reopened (or left closed) without mods' intervention.
My answer here naturally raises a question, how do we encourage our users to use Review which is a very good moderating tool? I don't have a good answer for this question. I just keep doing Review myself.
That's not really accurate. Actually, another three users saw that question in the review queue and voted to leave closed. At that point, the question had been reviewed by five users, the review was considered "complete," and it was no longer in the review queue. Here is the review history.
@ff524 My rep is not enough to see that review history. So, I didn't know that part. That's why I said in the answer: Had many users seen it in Review, it would be reopened (or left closed).
Also of interest: the review by five users was completed in 3.5 hours (not long)
@ff524 Yea, I now know. However, I rather leave my answer here for the discussion purpose. This meta question turned out to be more complex than I thought. Now I question that should we reopen this question after Review "complete"?
Also, I just successfully opened that link in another window where I was not signed in. I don't think you need any rep to see it. You can see the outcome of any review you voted on in your profile; click on your decision (e.g. "leave closed") for any post and it'll show you all of the votes by all reviewers of that post.
@ff524 Thanks. I learned something very useful today.
Well, the reason is that the whole close -> improve -> reopen strategy is not exactly working well all the time. In my opinion, the strategy comment -> edit -> problem solved works better. It is just necessary to decide whether you prefer some good questions staying closed or some bad questions staying open. I prefer the latter.
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5346 | Why was this answer about IEEE CPS deleted?
On this current question about IEEE CPS, an answer that looks pretty good to me has been deleted by @Wrzlprmft with no explanatory comment (deleted answer visible only to high-reputation users). Since it was deleted by a moderator, I cannot vote to undelete.
I was thinking about writing an answer, but the contents of my answer would be much the same as the deleted answer, so I'd prefer to see it undeleted and upvote it, unless there is some moderation-related reason that the answer was deleted.
Could @Wrzlprmft or another moderator with knowledge of the decision please comment?
The deletion was not related to the content of that specific answer, feel free to write your own and don't worry about any conceptual overlap.
Thanks, @BryanKrause. That gives me the information that I needed.
Usually, when there is a reasonable chance that well-meaning users repeat the “mistake” that led to the deletion of an answer, we moderators leave a comment under the question or similar to avoid this. After all, only 10 k users can even see the deleted answer to learn from it.
I deleted the answer in question because the circumstances of its creation made it very likely that there it was deeply problematic for reasons that are not immediately obvious when looking at the answer. I won’t describe this particular situation in detail for several reasons, but you might compare it to the following: A user without positive contribution creates five posts in quick succession of which three are clearly plagiarised. Then I will not spend much effort in finding out whether the other two posts are also plagiarised, but just delete them. The odds that these posts are proper are so low that they don’t deserve the scrutiny.
Thank you, @wrzlprmft! I understand it's an unusual situation, and just wanted to make sure I wan't misreading it.
Thank you for the hard work (I do know how hard it was).
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3999 | Ability to filter by career stage on academia stackexchange
Coming to Academia StackExchange from StackOverflow, I am a bit confused about being the frequent lack of tags allowing to best sort the questions for relevance to me. Whereas on StackOverflow almost every question is citing a programming language and a framework - two factors critical for relevance and filtering, only a minority of Academia StackExchange questions use tags indicating the career stage (undergrad, PhD, Post-Doc, faculty) making filtering questions hard to impossible.
Is there a way of working around it, for instance with search option? If not, are there plans of modifying a behavior? Or are there usage patterns allowing to work around it?
Given the variability of the academic environment around the world, I'm not sure whether this kind of filtering would be useful: in Italy or in the US, C++ is C++, but a postdoc position can be quite different.
A second level of tags (country) was actually my follow-up suggestion/request. French/German systems are particularly opaques for those who haven't done their PhDs / post-docs in those countries. In the same way the PhDs in the US (6-8 years) have a very different nature than the PhDs in Europe (3-4) or undergrad research experience in countries with undergrad advisors (US; UK) is very different from countries where this is not the case (France, ...). Both of these tags are critical for judging the context of the question.
There is a limit of five tags allowed per question.
However, there are tags for a number of different systems, including in particular tags for France and Germany. So it is possible to propose edits to tags if it's necessary. It's also more likely that if you're looking for specific questions to find it via the search bar, in case someone hasn't tagged the question the way you'd like it to be done.
Many of the questions are not tagged by career stage because the stage is identified in the topic of the question (and thus can be searched for), or because the question might be relevant across multiple types (and therefore is not helpful).
And many times we have difficulties in convincing people at adding the proper country tag.
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4262 | Are questions about research administration on topic?
I think it's clear from the Help and actual questions/answers here that questions about the academic side of research are on topic. However, are questions about research administration on topic?
By "research administration" I mean things like:
Interpreting uniform guidance regarding things like allowed costs for federal grants
Submitting or preparing grant applications
The IRB approval process and standards
Disclosing industry partnerships and conflicts of interest
How to handle intellectual property and business interests that stem from research
It's less clear to me whether these are on topic. On one hand, they are related to academic research. On the other hand, the Help says this site is appropriate for academics and these questions may be more appropriate for people with professional experience in research administration, rather than academics themselves.
All the example you give are probably very specific to the US and the answers to some of them would probably change with the institution. I'd thus consider most of those questions too localized, unless you find a way to generalize them for a broader audience.
I think research administration should certainly be on topic since it is a big part of academia, but I agree with Massimo's concern about localized questions as well as several of the bullet points you raise leaning towards legal questions that are often unanswerable in a broad sense.
@MassimoOrtolano - the only issue that might be US-specific is the IRB one (and even Europe has analogous regulations on human subjects, right?). The bigger problem is that the resolution of such issues is intimately dependent on university/local/state/federal/EU interpretations...
@JonCuster Other countries do not have "federal" grants, and the allowed costs of government funded research can be completely different. Also the way in which grant applications are submitted and prepared can be different.
@MassimoOrtolano - Individual countries in the EU most certainly do fund research, separate from the EU mechanisms. But, we agree that the mechanics of how it all happens can be quite specific.
As a general rule, the best way to make a question a good fit is to ensure the question could be asked by someone else not in your exact situation. Asking about very specific details of policy manuals is probably not a good idea, but if the question could be expanded to cover different agencies or cover different research areas, then it’s usually OK.
But there’s certainly nothing wrong a priori with research admin questions.
Research administration is certainly on topic.
Notably, practically every academic starts as their own research administrator. Even if you are provided shared staff with this specialty, you must check everything as you learn the strengths and weaknesses of those that support you. I think learning good research administration is as important to achieving success as good research design. Sadly, possibly more so...
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3275 | Should I ask about graduate school recommendations on Academia.SE?
I would like to ask about recommendations for graduate school in a mathematics (combinatorics).
Can I ask about this on Academia.SE? Or, would this be an Math.SE question?
A very closely related question, "I've been admitted to various Ph.D. programs, how do I choose between them?" was chosen to receive a canonical answer: http://meta.academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3269/canonical-qa-suggestion-ive-been-admitted-to-multiple-graduate-programs-how which provides great suggestions for this type of situation.
No, this would be off topic on Academia. Questions asking for recommendations or comparisons of graduate programs would be closed as a shopping question, per the help center.
I don't know whether or not it would be on topic on Mathematics. I suspect not.
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1916 | Saying thanks to comments and answers?
Hope that my question fits to this site (as it is the first time that I ask a question here.)
I feel guilty when I don't say thanks to a very good comment or answer given by users on academia.stackexchange.
I know very well that some questions are protected for saying thanks, me too ! etc.
But does it really matter if I don't say thanks ?
How users on this site consider this issue ?
Since this is you're first time posting on the meta site, you should note that downvotes here are a way of saying "No, I disagree," not "this question is bad."
From what I understand the SE community (at least academia) is not supposed to be like everyday speech when phrasing your question, answer, or comment.
Every question on this SE is not just a resource for the OP but also for anyone with a similar question (hence why no duplicate questions are allowed) a person with the same issue can refer to the original question to see the context and refer to answers to possibly find a solution to their own problem. A comment such as "Thanks" may be polite but it has no value to the question or the answee for someone looking back at the question.
Instead of saying "thanks" I phrase my comments as "+1 for ..." to show appreciation for the answer or a unique part of the answer that other members may not have addressed.
I think the general SE policy is against trivial "thanks" and "me, too!"-type comments. If you want to add information about why you like the answer, or explain what's relevant in your own case, you're adding information to the system, which is a different matter.
This is helpful. I have been writing thanks when I feel a strong need to, but feeling guilty; now I can relax a bit and enjoy the good feeling.
This site is a resource not only for you but for others. Part of what makes the site so useful is that the signal-to-noise ratio is high: there's a lot of useful information, and it's not cluttered up with other stuff.
So, the etiquette on Stack Exchange sites tends to be: Don't write "Thanks". Don't write "+1". Not even "+1 for the second sentence." Instead, thank the answerer by upvoting their answer, and accepting the best answer that most helped you. That's the most effective way you can thank them and help others.
It might seem polite to write "Thanks" for "I really liked your second sentence", but when you take into account that your remarks will be read by many other people other than the answerer and you are effectively wasting their time by cluttering up the page, arguably refraining from posting such comments is actually the more polite thing to do.
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3504 | My advisor is using and reading academia.stackexchange, how safely I can ask questions?
Few days ago my advisor shared on social media this platform, and also recommended for everyone at my uni to use it as a source of information and how something should be done in academia.
I am wondering how safe my private data and locations are here? do I need to delete my account? Is someone with experience in CS can break into StackExchange server and pick location and IP information?
Do you think I should use from now on only anonymous question option and not to use account?
Most of the time when folks get into trouble here, it's because they're doing something stupid and hoping that it won't get traced back to them. So, for example, avoid posting publicly about how you're knowingly violating your university's policies and are looking for help to avoid getting caught. Probably also avoid referring to staff publically as "those jackasses" and the like. Otherwise... Consider complementing your advisor on their taste in websites!
Thank you Shog9, I dont really plan to do anything illegal in future, but I am afraid that some discussion can be interpreted as talk behind back. I never imagined that it is possible for stackexchange ( academic part ) to be so popular on every level, it look like new form of syndicate.
" I dont really plan to do anything illegal in future" curioser and curioser
I am wondering how safe my private data and locations are here?
Your private data should be safe. Moderators and staff can see it, but must not share it. Then, you give a location publicly. But maybe that's a false flag.
Do I need to delete my account?
That's impossible to answer.
Is someone with experience in CS can break into StackExchange server and pick location and IP information?
Well, likely there is no system of which one can say it is absolutely impossible to break in. But then, SE is sizeable and in that business for quite some time with plenty of users with "experience in CS." Thus, I'd say it should be as save as most anything. Why not worry about your emails instead? (Some info did leak in a encrypted form via the autogenerated indenticons, as it was the hash of some personal data, but this got plugged via salting the data.)
Do you think I should use from now on only anonymous question option and not to use account?
That's hard to tell. If your name is actually Simon and you are actually in Macau, then this could help to identify you a lot. Thus, if it is important for you to be not identified, then you might change this.
You should also keep in mind that the content of your posts could be identifying that knows you or was part of the conversation. "Yesterday, my advisor said: {Something distinctive}." If your advisor reads this they might recognize it whether your account is anonymous or not.
Actually, think about it, specifically this post suffers this problem! It is rather self-defeating.
I am Simon and from Macau :D
thank you for your answer, so my location and IP is collected and guarded by moderators. Who are they? How can I contact them?
The moderators of this site are the users listed on the moderator tab For how to contact them see this post. Depending on the nature of the inquiry, you might want to contact SE staff instead. Follow "contact us" link at the bottom of the page. (Technical questions are better addressed to staff.)
Looking over the questions you've asked in the past, I would say that you're significantly overreacting. Many people use this forum, including (possibly) your peers, your instructors, your collaborators, and your future employers. You seem to have maintained a professional air about you since you've started; keep it up and you should be fine.
In the event that you do want to post a more sensitive question, simply log out before posting it.
On a related note, feel free to visit (and upvote!) this question on the main Meta site.
thank you, thank you for analysis.
but why that question is downvoted??? so much?
@SSimon - My guess is that while this is important to sites like ours, many other sites—the main SO include—have little need for it. Its important to us but not that important overall.
How can we demand this option ? @eykanal
@SSimon - You can't "demand" anything, but you can sign out before posting. Alternatively, you can simply use stackoverflow without logging in at all.
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3676 | I cannot find my question of chat. Please help
In chat I asked about effects of H2B on academia in USA,
my question was kindly forwarded to some other part of StackExchange, I think it was more a year ago.
what should I do? I tried to google it, but it was so many months ago. I cannot find and navigate my chat history.
For a second I thought you had asked about the impact of the HB2 law on academia in the USA…
I believe you are looking for Does the H-1B visa program cause a net decrease in the employment prospects of skilled U.S. job applicants in STEM fields?.
In general, you can click on your own user card in chat to see your chat profile. That page includes a "search for messages containing" search fields where you can search for e.g. messages you have written containing the word "job" and then click on the link to the relevant message to see the chat transcript.
thank you, how long chat histories can stay? are these chats erasable? how long it will last on stackexchange
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2100 | Is it allowed to ask a question about specific university and department on stackexchange?
Dear members and moderators, are you allowing questions in this forum about specific PhD programs and scholarship offers? Is it appropriate and ethical to raise a question about some specific department and research members of a PhD program, anecdotal experiences of members on that department, insight of the situation and working environment there, quality of research, professors, students. Scholarship options and working contracts. Can I explicitly mention names, programs, department and discuss about them here?
To answer your questions, I would say (1) no, (2) definitely not, and (3) VERY definitely not.
You can peruse the on-topic and off-topic FAQ sections to see what we look for in questions. We definitely don't want anyone to publicly call anyone else out. We are a community where you can seek advice, but we cannot take any action... we're just strangers on the internet. You can ask questions here about what direction to take but please keep them anonymous and as factual as possible. "He said she said" or "I'm ticked off because" will rarely improve a question.
If you need action to be taken, you should go to your university administration.
I understand, anyway many of you use real life photos or names,
@SSimon: There is a huge difference between voluntarily revealing private information about yourself and having that information unsolicitedly revealed by others.
If I use my real name for obtaining any sort of information about specific institution @Wrzlprmft how that not give me right to "call anyone else out?" if I want to know more about specific institution and I dont mind anonymous profiles, why is not aloud to ask this question?
@SSimon - (1) We're not discussing what is your "right", we're discussing what is acceptable behavior. We expect full professional courtesy from all members of this community. (2) Asking about specific institutions is difficult because any given academic is unlikely to know much about the specifics of one university, and the question is also that much less likely to be useful to other future visitors. I recommend you read the referenced FAQ sections.
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2124 | Where can I ask question about offshore USA medical school or colleges?
I would like to know which part of stackexchange is most suitable for posing a question about credibility of offshore medical schools, their accreditation and acceptance in USA and if it is easier to get in residence program via them faster and easier in contrast to regular outside of USA graduate procedure? DO YOU think maybe expat forum or medical forum can be suitable?
Medical school is a form of postgraduate education that is certainly within scope of this site. Asking for evaluation of particular schools would not be, nor would asking something highly opinion-based like "which is better?" or highly personal like "which is easier for me to get into?" Accreditation and acceptance in the USA would be on topic.
Note that your questions might not be answered as quickly as PhD-centric questions, but that should be no barrier to asking them.
So concretely, accreditations of medical USA offshore schools, if someone had experience with these kind of institutions and how they menage to recognize their studies back in USA. What is law and regulation regarding off shore departments in general? This would be my question, do you think it is opinion based?
"What is law and regulation regarding off shore departments in general?" would be too broad, since it's not clear which of the many possible issues you're asking about.. "Are there significant barriers to getting offshore medical degrees recognized in the US?" would probably be fine.
thank you! "Are there significant barriers to getting offshore medical degrees recognized in the US and if there are not, is it beneficial for residency application? Is this ok question? I will than further explain about why students decide to apply for off shore departments and how they validate their diplomas for residency entrance more quickly in contrast to foreign diplomas...blabla...in global, this can be acceptable question and explanation of question?
@SSimon I would recommending one question at a time, rather than making compound questions. Sometimes, however, compound questions are OK.
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4215 | I cannot find question, is it deleted?
there was a question about problem with industrial partner in Marie Curie program,
I tried search menu, but nothing came out both times.
Can anyone help me find? thank you
Do you mean this question: Should I quit if I'm having problems with the Marie Curie industry partner?
I found it via google using the search term industrial partner in Marie Curie program stack exchange.
As a rule, google indexes posts on StackExchange rather quickly, so if you can't find it using the internal search tool, google often helps.
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4250 | why my question have star?
Is putting a star contrast with close vote?
How to deal with people in academia that have anti-science or opposing views from mainstream science?
I am a little confused ...
The only star I am aware of if the one below the downvote arrow. This star is used to favorite a question. The linked question is currently a favorite of 3 people. You only need 97 more and then you will get a stellar question badge. Beyond a way to earn badges, favorites also show up in your profile. For example, you have marked 17 questions as your favorites:
https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/41198/ssimon?tab=favorites so you seem to be familiar with the concept. There was a slight site redesign recently, so maybe the new look confused you.
The star has nothing to do with down votes or votes to close.
ohh!! yes, when the website change? It is such a quick design change
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4073 | Two questions close without any notification? Why?
I dont understand, there was an attack on my profile while the whole controversy about the election when some of my questions are closed although edited and approved by the moderators jakebeal and others.
Negative downvoted was reversed but these closed questions are shocking to me, Does this imply that I am ineligible to apply for this grant?
The question you link to was closed March 2 - its closure doesn't seem to have anything to do with the election at all
If you think that you should be notified when your question is closed, I agree with you and here is the pertaining discussion on [meta.se]. If you want to dispute the closure of a specific question, please elaborate why you think it should not be closed, but please first read the close reasons and the links it contains. If you think that individual users are targetting you, please provide some evidence (and consider flagging for moderator attention as there is no point to take this out in the public).
@Wrzlprmft can you tell me the date when those questions are closed? and how I can see that?
@ff524 what about other one?
What other one? You only seem to have linked one question.
@SSimon: The dates are in the close notice.
@TobiasKildetoft https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/62176/is-there-a-concept-of-qualification-examination-in-u-s-ph-d-programs-and-how-d?noredirect=1#comment148193_62176
https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2194/edited-question-but-reviewers-refuse-to-reopen-it-why @Wrzlprmft thank you
@TobiasKildetoft I thought moderators can see all closed queestions, in which is easy to notice that most of them are close in time of election
@SSimon we can see things if we know where to look. It is helpful if you provide links to tell us where to look and a clear description of what we are looking for.
@StrongBad I am sorry, I didnt know that I assumed worngly, please take a look on the question linked in comment and qustion where I tag you. the one closed on 3rd march and 12th march. I appologize for inconvinience
The SE system has a bot, a program running in the background, that attempts to handle "revenge" down voting and other inappropriate actions. The bot sometimes misses things and moderators, or even the SE team, need to step in and try and figure out what happened. In order to do that, we need a clear description of what we are looking for and why you think it is inappropriate.
Personal attacks are not allowed and claiming that your profile has been attacked is a big deal. Please provide us with the information we need so we can understand why you feel you were attacked and determine if it is in fact a target attack against you.
one is close as of topic, which is clearly not, I mean two moderators were involved in that question, one answered other one edited. non of them seemed to agree, other one was close after many years. I dont understand why since jakebeal did good job in editing
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3756 | Shouldn't certain privileges depend not only on reps on academia, but also other SE sites?
Perhaps this is a meta meta question, but I wonder whether experience and reputation on other SE sites should not be taken into consideration when granting certain privileges, such as those to review close votes, for example.
Consider, for the sake of argument, a relatively new member of Academia SE who is a long serving academic and also a high-rep member of another SE site, where they possess, say, review privileges and know the general gist of SE very well.
One way to implement this would be to use a formula based on a combination of SE sites, say Academia SE rep + 10% of rep elsewhere on SE.
Could the downvoter please suggest how the question could be improved?
Voting on meta is different with down votes often meaning No and up votes meaning Yes. This of course makes things confusing when someone asks a good question for which the answer is no.
@StrongBad Then why does the meta upvote icon say "This question shows research effort; it is useful and clear" and the meta downvote icon "This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful"?
@DavePhDd must likely poor design. See https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/whats-meta
I like to think of the privileges granted by reputation falling into two categories: participation and moderation. The system provides a 100 rep association bonus to users of other sites. This seems to allow existing SE users to fully participate in a new site immediately, but only provides limited moderation privileges (a new user can flag things). As sites should ideally be able to handle the moderation load with existing high rep users, it doesn't seem like there is a need to provide other privileges. Is there one that is obviously missing?
Hmm. Perhaps I got used to participate in moderation that I find this distinction somewhat artificial.
@Walter There are moderation privileges because SE sites need them, not because it's fun for the users to have them. So there is no problem for SE sites if you can't have fun with modding privileges, as long as enough people have them. It would only be a problem if that made using the sites unfun for enough people to result in a dearth of moderating users.
There's already a mechanism that gives privileges to "high" rep users of other sites. It's called the association bonus:
If you are an experienced Stack Exchange network user with 200 or more reputation on at least one site, you will receive a starting +100 reputation bonus to get you past basic new user restrictions. This will happen automatically on all current Stack Exchange sites where you have an account, and on any other Stack Exchange sites at the time you log in.
This bonus unlocks nearly half of all the privileges (notably upvoting, commenting, and flagging).
I think it unlocks only so much for a reason. Close voting in particular makes sense as a privilege. If a question needs closure, a user with 101 reputation can flag it, pushing the question into the queue where other users can decide if it should be closed. If the question shouldn't be closed, the flag gets declined, and enough of that gets you flag banned.
Consider this: I got the ability to close vote on one site through nothing but a single answer (because the site is in beta and the question I answered was in the HNQ). As a new user, I'm unfamiliar with the meta discussions where the site decided what's on and off topic. There's nothing to stop me from voting to close the wrong questions, with little to no feedback that I'm doing it wrong. My experience on other sites doesn't change any of this. That's why I don't vote to close on that site at all.
Also, people have discussed making it so that the bonus doesn't count towards upvoting, although nothing has been decided or done yet.
I'd also note that, in my experience, moderation style doesn't transfer between sites nearly as well as the basic Q&A format, so it's possibly useful that you can't moderate until there's a little bit of "time served" so to speak.
@Fomite I actually think that's the most salient point. A high-rep user from, say, Stack Exchange proper may, without any prior exposure, find almost every question and answer here too subjective.
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1975 | Is this a good place for beginners to seek information as they learn or is that type of discussion completely (or mostly) discouraged?
Title says it all, and I don't have privileges to post on the meta forum. If there's a better place to post this, it'd be really helpful to hear about.
I suspect that you will not get a satisfying answer unless you specify what you mean with beginners.
If the "beginner" questions are within the scope of the site as defined in the help center and also are consistent with the general guidelines on what not to ask then yes, this is a good place for them.
We have quite a few questions from people who are obviously inexperienced when it comes to graduate studies, publishing, attending conferences and so forth.
I am extremely confused by this question, but here goes.
Is this a good place for beginners
Yes, definitely. I would say most of our questions are asked by relatively junior academics (assuming that this is what you mean with "beginners" - if you mean beginner in another sense, you should clarify).
to seek information as they learn
Isn't that what most questions are about? Of course, as per Stack Exchange standard rules, you will need to do some basic research on the topic yourself first, the question needs to be generalizable to others, it needs to be in scope topic-wise, and it cannot be a duplicate of an existing question.
or is that type of discussion completely (or mostly) discouraged?
All "discussions" are discouraged here. This isn't a forum. It is not supposed to be a back-and-forth between the OP and the community.
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4669 | Can we have a "show your work" close reason?
Many of the citation-style questions, some of which are erroneously tagged citations, show little or no research effort and can be answered by consulting the appropriate style guide. Some recent examples:
Bibliography format with multiple citations from same book? (APA)
In APA, how would one cite the same source repeatedly with differing page numbers?
How to format the in-text citation of a Book's title, its authors, and its publication year?
Sorting Title of APA style reference
How do I cite an article with no page numbers and only a DOI number (APA format)?
I would love to be able to flag these for closing for lack of research, but Academia.SE doesn't have this close reason. English.SE has the following close reason:
Please include the research you’ve done, or consider if your question suits our English Language Learners site better. Questions that can be answered using commonly-available references are off-topic.
Would it be useful to have a "What research have you done?" type of close reason on Academia.SE, with a link to a meta Q&A that explains the level of research expected?
These questions will still be bad questions even if work is shown. Downvote.
Yes, they're bad questions, which is why I want to close them faster. I know dv on meta don't mean anything, but I'm not sure why a proposal to close bad questions faster gets a dv.
Summary
The ease of research is easily underestimated and we can produce valuable answers to such questions.
Therefore, we should not have a close reason or general policy to close such questions.
Instead, we can use existing mechanisms to deal with these questions: comment, downvote, and (in extreme cases) close as unclear.
Canned Close Reasons
We can only have three custom close reasons.
Since the proposed close reason would be needed much less frequently than the existing ones (shopping, individual factors, generic off-scope), I would not touch this.
That being said, the canned close reasons exist to ease reviewing and provide more information for askers than the usual comments would.
They do not limit what we can close:
We can close questions for something other than a canned reason, in particular if we agree on this on Meta.
So, for the remainder of my answer I will be addressing the question:
Do we want to close citation-style questions that do not show prior research?
In general, prior research is not a strict requirement for Stack Exchange questions anymore.
Stack Exchange aims to be the thing that you find when you search the Internet for certain questions.
Still, single sites can decide that they do not want certain types of questions without evidence of prior research.
To take the example you mention, on language sites (like English Language & Usage or German Language, which I moderate), the asker has to argue why a dictionary did not help (in most cases).
This is not because we want evidence that the asker consulted a dictionary (they usually have); this is because we cannot give them a helpful answer without knowing why the dictionary did not.
Otherwise we can only create or cite a dictionary entry, which is pointless:
Dictionaries already exist and do a far better job at it than Stack Exchange sites.
Finally note that bad questions that can be answered by a dictionary are a major problem on language sites.
I do not think this translates to questions about applying citation style guides:
It is a real no-brainer to find something in a dictionary, in particular a digital one. Finding something in a style guide is far more difficult. You may still consider it easy, but then you probably know the relevant keywords, etc.
A concise summary or application of a style guide to a specific case makes the Internet a better place as it allows people to get the desired information quicker than otherwise. Replicating a dictionary entry doesn’t.
We are not overrun by citation-style questions, let alone those without prior research. In fact roughly half of the questions you cite at least mention some prior research (though it could be more detailed).
Finally, there is a meta reason to avoid this kind of closure: It will be misunderstood and abused by some close voters (which happens frequently on language sites). For most questions on this site, it does not make sense to require of prior research.
What can we do instead?
Downvote. That a question that could be easily answered by a quick look in the pertinent style guide is a valid reason.
Leave a comment asking the asker to edit their question to elaborate why their research did not help them. Keep in mind and mention that this is to better understand their problem and thus be able to better help them.
In extreme cases, e.g., where the asker already provides a quote from the style guide that appears to answer their question: Close the question as unclear.
Note that, sometimes, if not frequently, people who downvotes by saying that a certain question can be easily answered by a quick look to the pertinent style guide, actually never try to have that quick look, otherwise they would easily find that a quick look may not answer the question so easily.
Let me give a less "formal" answer than Wrzlprmft's one.
In my experience, style guides are seldom complete, and are frequently of not-so-easy interpretation, especially for novices. I saw people advocating the closure of questions about style by saying "read the style guide!", when the style guide doesn't even exist, or is either incomplete or seldom respected by the journals that should adopt it (along the years, I had a few fights with copy-editors who, in the first turn of proofs, made changes which were against their own journal style guide).
I would love to be able to flag these for closing for lack of research, but Academia.SE doesn't have this close reason.
What you would love, in view of the above, would be a very bad idea for this community, leading to its impoverishment. A lot of us have spent many years reading style guides, interpreting their nuances, and seeing them applied by the copy editors: I think we should be willing to share this knowledge, without the constraints of a bureaucratic close reason.
A middle ground might be to ask that OP provide some evidence of effort to show that they've at least attempted to find the answer in a style guide, by quoting from or linking to a related source that is incomplete or unclear.
@BryanKrause I've tried asking "What did the style guide say?" and "What did you find in the style guide?" but apparently my clue-by-4 isn't big enough.
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2059 | Why is Academia only for higher education?
High School students need help too and I don't understand why only higher education matters. Why can't academia support the questions of high school students too?
high school is simply not considered to be part of academia, in the sense that academics use the word "academia". different subject entirely.
Downvoted - this looks more like an advertisement for OP's Area51 proposal than an honest question.
@djechlin OP's proposal is linked in a comment below, and they also gave an answer recommending it (the answer was later deleted by a moderator) Unfortunately I cannot check the exact time of the proposal creation on Area51, but this does look like what you call a "devious ploy" to me: OP's "I have just proposed one" comment is their first Area51 proposal, and it comes 2 minutes after ff524's suggestion of creating one. That seems barely the time to locate Area51 without a weblink, check how it works, searching for an existing similar proposal, make a new Area51 account and a new proposal.
TL;DR: It's not that high school questions are unimportant. But they target a different group of experts than questions about higher education, so they need a different site.
The Stack Exchange model is based on the idea that a high-quality Q&A site should have a dedicated user base of experts in that subject, who spend time contributing high-quality answers to the site.
The group of "experts on academia and higher education" and "experts on high school" are distinct groups with not much overlap. So it makes sense to have separate SE sites for higher education and high school - the expert user base will be different. Academia is the site for higher education. There is currently no SE site about high school, but you can check Area 51 to see if there's a proposed site, and propose one if there isn't.
Thank you and I am aware of that. I have just proposed one.
http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/92854/high-school?referrer=sVPX4oDZwMD9Q7-mfO81Tw2
@KeyanKazemian if you agree with this answer, how about to accept that?
Sadly it looks like all proposals for things like "highschool" or "K-12 education" stackexchanges have fizzled. I am very surprised by this, because I think the pool of potential users must be larger than even that of this site, and it really seems like there ought to be a need for it.
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3227 | comparison between the admission of a degree in two countries
Is it really off-topic to ask a comparison between the admission process of a degree in two countries ?
Are you referring to non-US PhD's with extensive course work? I have to admit, I cannot understand what you're asking there, so I can't really say whether it's on topic. "What are my best options" is not really an answerable question.
Regardless, I definitely don't see how you're asking for a comparison of the admissions process of US vs Europe from that question. The post doesn't seem to ask anything about admissions processes. If that's really what you were trying to ask, you should edit that post to clarify.
Admission processes might vary a lot also from university to university within the same country.
@ff524 i was not exactly referring to that qstion. The exact admission processes may vary in each university, but there can be common rules or procedures for different countries or regions.
A general comparison between admission processes in two countries might or might not be on-topic, depending on the nature of the question.
For example, we have a question on the general process of admissions in the US. A question on how to compare the admission processes of specific universities (e.g., UT Austin vs. TU Delft) would definitely be off-topic, as discussion of the unique policies of specific universities is generally off-topic on this site.
From your question, though, I am actually quite unclear what you are attempting to ask, however, so I am not sure how to suggest you refine it to be answerable.
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2119 | Answered apparent question, turns out to have misunderstood it after comments - remove?
I read a question which I misunderstood in one specific way (it was, I believe, a legitimate interpretation) and answered it. Turns out, it was meant in another way, after discussion with the OP. Do I delete my answer? Others may read the OP's message in the same way as I did and the answer may be useful to them.
What's the best practice here?
Have two distinct questions, one for each interpretation. Delete all answers that do not match their question and repost them to the other question. Link the questions to each other to highlight the differences and make them easier to find.
Usually, it’s best to ask a new question for your interpretation, but if there are already many answers and similar based on your interpretation, it may be better to encourage the OP to ask a new question.
Your second case already happened. The second answer understood it the same way I did, so, obviously, my interpretation was not so foolish.
In that case and if there are no further answers, I suggest editing the question to your interpretation and encourage the OP to ask a new question and hope that the OP is fine with this. Unfortunately, this is always a delicate situation.
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4449 | Why is this unclear when it is perfectly clear?
This question was marked unclear, but is a good, clear and concise question with great answers. Does closing a question like this a way to get it out of public view more?
Why are academics not paid royalties on published research papers in IEEE, ACM etc.?
I think Dirk's comment covers it pretty well
I voted to close as "unclear what you are asking". The title asks why academics do [not] get get paid royalties on their papers, the body asks other questions like "shouldn't publishers not charge that much?" Or "what can be done?". This post seems to look for discussion, and not for answers.
We don't close questions to stifle particular views, but we do close questions to get them out of public view so that the OP can hopefully refine the question so that someone can provide a great answer that is useful to the OP and others.
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4201 | Can I mention the name of a potentially predatory journal in an academia.SE question?
In the following question, I describe how I believe to be the target of a possibly predatory journal:
Can an academic journal with low reputation be a scam?
I was informed in the subsequent answers about several online lists that mention predatory journals and publishers, and the journal and its publsiher were not listed there.
Should I and could I mention the publisher and the journal name from my case in this academia.SE question? It was mentioned that this could perhaps help me clarify the situation for me, if someone on here knows specifically about this journal, and also help others, but that I should first discuss this publication here, on meta.
Possible duplicate: https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1297/should-we-name-names-when-talking-about-bad-publishers-and-researchers
Chat might be a better place to bring up a specific journal?
Please don’t. This would degrade your question into a shopping question, i.e., the evaluation of an individual journal, which is something we really do not like to here. The information you give completely suffices to answer your question.
Given the plethora of journals out there, it is very unlikely that somebody here is familiar with that specific journal even if it is reputable.
Thus all we can do, is to study its website and make a judgement from this.
Answers based on this are dangerous, since they can become invalid once the journal turns bad or is similar – and this site is not suited to be a database for the reputability of journals.
On the other hand, your question without the specification of the journal is much more general and useful to future visitors.
+1. I think it would be more useful to share other pertinent information about the journal rather than just its name, since that information would be more generalizable.
I don't see the evaluation of a given journal as a shopping question. Asking for recommendation for a better journal could be seen as a shopping question.
@CapeCode: Unless I am mistaken, this goes all recent Meta consensuses on this topic, and particular contradicts the close reason and FAQ for shopping questions. If you think that this should be different, please ask a separate meta question.
Yes. There is no reason not to include additional pertinent information.
To answer the question in the title ("Can I [...]?"): yes.
To answer the question in the text ("Should I [...]?"): probably not.
The answer from @wrzlprmft gives an excellent reason not to (it turns it into a shopping question). Another is that a journal publicly accused of being predatory would probably have grounds to sue for defamation, and several have tried. For example, the OMICS group tried to sue a librarian in the US for $1 billion for including them on a blacklist of predatory journals he curated. Although the legal article under which the case was brought has since been struck down by the Supreme Court of India, other countries may have similar laws allowing such cases to proceed.
@wrzlprmft also mentions that journals may 'turn bad' - I'd suggest the opposite is more likely; a journal with low standards and flawed reviewing processes which charges high fees might not be intentionally 'predatory', it might just be managed badly, and could potentially tighten things up with a new editor etc. I can't think of many examples though - and in line with my own advice above would be reluctant to name them anyway :)
I'd suggest the opposite is more likely – For low-quality journals, this may apply. For predatory publishers, I consider this extremely unlikely. They do not even have real editors to begin with and even if, anybody within their right minds would rather set up a new journal than continuing with that reputation.
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4019 | Should I remove my answer which has been invalidated by an edit to the question?
For the question Should I report a PhD student’s incompetence to their supervisor? I gave an answer based on an assumption that the OP and a supervisor were based at the same institution - information which was not originally apparent. Since then, OP has clarified that my assumption was incorrect, and this invalidates my answer.
Should I now remove my (substantially upvoted) answer which does not address OP's exact situation? Or should I leave it to stand on the basis that it may be helpful to others in similar but not identical situations? In any case I will add a note to indicate my incorrect assumption.
I may be a bit biased (being the OP), but please leave your answer for exactly the reason you were noting (it may help others).
I don't think you should delete your answer. Even though it doesn't address the OP's situation exactly, it's a good answer that can be useful to others experiencing a similar situation within their institution. The disclaimer you added should be enough to warn the reader.
This. With the addition of a disclaimer, I think the answer is a useful one for posterity.
The purpose of Stack Exchange is not merely to provide immediate answers to people with immediate questions, but also to allow people who have similar questions in future to benefit from the answers that have already been written. If the Question is one that would likely be found by people seeking the answer for the question you answered, your answer would be of benefit to those people whether or not it is of benefit to the person who asked the original. If the Question has changed so that it would no longer be found by such people, it may be worthwhile to post the question which you had answered as a new Question, copy your answer to that, and remove it from the original where it no longer applies. Moderators may have tools to migrate answers without having to delete and re-post, but I don't know how that would be done.
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4283 | Could we reopen this question ("unreasonably severe teacher")?
Could we reopen Is there anything I can do about an unreasonably severe teacher??
According to the help center, questions about "Requirements and expectations of academicians" are specifically on topic. The way I see it, this fits squarely into that category. It doesn't seem to fit into any of the off-topic categories either (although I realize that doesn't mean specifically that it's on topic).
I just edited out the undergraduate references and hit it with a mod hammer. Seems like a perfectly fine question to me and I am guessing it got closed by the contingent that believes any question asked by an undergraduate is off topic.
I absolutely agree, in fact I had voted to reopen shortly before your action. Notwithstanding the now-no-longer-new policy about undergraduate questions, we still get questions closed for mentioning the word undergraduate. I propose to make it a taboo word for this site: the u-word!
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4904 | Should I answer a question that is likely to be closed?
We get many questions on Academia SE which are closed because they depend too much on the individual who is asking and thus cannot be sufficiently generalised to be helpful to a wider audience. However, these questions often can still be answered, usually with a small amount of (perhaps) generic advice, especially if it's clear that the asker doesn't know much about how academia works and needs a quick helping hand.
A recent example of what I'm describing is here: Is My Mentality Good for Academia / Grad School?
In this case, the question is about the OP's personal mentality and therefore seems an obvious candidate for voting to close due to dependence on individual factors. The answer given basically boils down to "your mentality is similar to most academics", which is to some extent opinion-based and could be a comment rather than an answer. However, the answer may still have been helpful to the OP.
My question is: is it better to try and maintain the Stack Exchange ethos of hard questions and answers (more difficult on a "soft" site like Academia anyway where there is often no right answer) and therefore refrain from answering questions which are obvious candidates for closure? Or is it better to try and help as many of these individuals as possible by trying to answer before the question is closed?
I often wonder about doing the latter, especially if the user is new to SE or clearly inexperienced in the academic world and obviously not receiving guidance from peers and mentors in their own circle. But will this erode the purpose of SE over time?
This is my first question on Meta so any feedback, tag edits etc welcome!
There's some related discussion in: Closure while writing an answer – can it be delayed?, and Should we discourage simultaneously answering a question and voting to close?
Interesting, thanks @Anyon.
General piece of advice: in any case, I suggest everyone to not answer and vote to close at the same time, because this could be confusing to the questioner, especially to newcomers. Better act coherently.
On meta previously I said we should preserve "comment answers" that address some of these circumstances: cases where a question doesn't belong here but you can still help OP by, for example, suggesting where they should take their problem (some examples would be "ask your advisor" or the advice of a mental health professional). Reaction to that suggestion was decidedly mixed, though I stand by it. I don't think the answer box should be used in that case.
(in part, I see these sorts of "comment answers" as part of explaining why one is voting to close, which makes them different from other sorts of answers in comments)
Usually, no.
The "ethos" of SE, as you mention, is that questions are either not a good fit here (and should be closed precisely because we can't provide good answers, and we want to prevent people from adding bad answers), or they are good questions that we should leave open and answer properly. In the abstract, at least, it is not logically consistent to say that a question should be closed because we cannot provide good answers, and then to also provide an answer. In fact, I recently was surprised to learn that other stacks have resorted to suspending users who refuse to stop answering questions that should manifestly be closed.
More concretely, the challenge with answering closed/closable questions is that our quality control measures do not work as well. If I add a bad answer and then close it, then my bad advice is the only advice that OP will see. Leaving open or closing-without-answering avoids these issues.
Finally, note that closed questions with no answers are automatically deleted after a period of time. Questions with upvoted answers cannot be automatically deleted, and will usually remain on the site forever. So particularly for very low quality questions, adding answers is a bad practice because it prevents deletion.
But there may be exceptional cases.
As I wrote here, we should first remember that there may be a real opportunity to help someone here. We should not become so obsessed by our rules that we lose the human element or close interesting questions. Still, the rules are there for a reason and we make exceptions at our peril.
Ideally, questions should be edited and left open. But for questions that cannot be salvaged, we must weigh the cost of making exceptions and having reduced quality control against the cost of remaining silent and giving a bad experience to an (often) new user. My experience moderating Academia.SE is that we give users wide latitude; we do not typically remove answers (or even answers-in-comments) on closed questions with few views.
To emphasize the last point: If you feel really bad about a question being closed, there's IMO nothing wrong with heavy editing after the closure (and then voting to reopen). The question at hand might be salvaged by generalization. Rather than "is my mentality a good fit" one might ask "Are thriving academics driven mostly by external validation or by intrinsic motivation?"
Please do not post answers that are the same as a close reason. For example, please do not "answer" with a statement that the answer strongly depends on individual factors.
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5298 | What is the best way for high rep users to support the moderation strike?
I'm way behind the curve because I just found out today about the moderation strike (I don't visit Meta much...). I'd like to know what actions or lack of actions are best to take in order to support the strike and help the strikers achieve their demands?
I can see a number of possibilities, of increasing "severity" in terms of how they relate to moderation:
refrain from asking questions
refrain from answering questions
refrain from commenting on questions
refrain from voting on questions/answers
refrain from flagging questions/answers
refrain from visiting the site altogether
What's best?
Looking at how things are going "refrain from visiting the site altogether" seems to be the best way to show solidarity right now
The strike letter has a list of activities that are "officially" part of the strike:
https://openletter.mousetail.nl/
These include both raising and handling flags, closing/deleting posts, and handling review queue tasks.
They do not include asking/answering, commenting, or voting up/down.
Personally, I've also stopped answering and all voting (might have slipped and voted here and there; also I have not stopped activity on Meta sites) and restricted my comments to an occasional handful. Some moderators around the network are still doing most of those things, others are avoiding use of the site completely. One of your elected moderators here at Academia.SE has resigned entirely. There is a userscript for "read-only" mode that some people are using:
https://stackapps.com/questions/9739/stack-exchange-in-read-only-mode
There is no "enforcement" of the strike like a typical paid labor action might involve, we're volunteers on the site and we're volunteers in the strike. Everyone can participate to the extent they feel is most useful, and some participants may feel certain actions are too important to avoid.
Most importantly, the strike does not involve only moderators, but also curators and any other users of the site that want to participate. As of now, 121 moderators, 19 former staff and former moderators, and 1251 regular users have signed on to the strike. The best action to take for people who support the strike is to sign the strike letter. The next best action I would take would be to spend some time to become an "informed citizen", there are some useful links at the meta post mentioned in the question:
Academia.SE Moderation Strike
There's an update post on Meta (though this has now also aged a bit):
Moderation Strike update: Data dumps, choosing representatives, GPT data, and where we’re holding
Former employee and moderator Jon Ericson has a blog that has recently focused at lot on the strike and associated issues, he has a very interesting perspective as a former insider:
https://jlericson.com/
There's the announcement and then retraction of the Stack Overflow "formatting assistant", released during the strike, that feeds questions into ChatGPT with a prompt asking to format them as if they were written by someone who knows how to write SO questions. The results are...interesting...and not surprisingly hit on many of the issues strike participants previously expressed about GenAI:
https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/425162/we-are-seeking-functional-feedback-for-the-formatting-assistant
In addition, there is a main meta post related to the question asked here:
Would the striking moderators welcome a user strike? Should we, the users, go on strike?
I thought one of the things SO/SE company wants is to retain (or not to suspend) users who use AI to generate posts. If we don't raise flags against those AI-generated posts, do we actually help the company ?
@Nobody It's fine by me to continue flagging anything you feel like. I'd rather prefer we help the company by keeping AI generated content off their site to keep it useful, but what do I know, the CEO who doesn't participate here seems to like it. Who knows what will convince him otherwise.
@user13267 I'm not understanding the meaning of your comment.
sorry my bad...
"The best action to take for people who support the strike is to sign the strike letter" How so? Isn't not participating more effective?
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3726 | Should this question have been kept discipline-specific?
The question How do academics with teaching responsibilities, etc. find the time to do research? was originally asked on mathoverflow in the context of the working life of a professional mathematician, and was then migrated to academia.SE. (I am not wholly convinced that this was the right decision, but so be it.)
The question has been edited significantly now, so that it is a generic question. I wondered what the community's feelings are, on whether this was the right move or not. My concern is that there are some features of a mathematician's research life - priorities, opportunities, teaching loads, likely career path - that are not always in line with other STEM subjects, let alone what happens in the humanities.
Is there a case for having a question like this which is specific to math(s), or at least to STEM? There were some initial answers by mathematicians which seemed useful/relevant in the specific context, but are probably less applicable to academia as a whole.
PS I will have limited opportunity to respond over the next few days, so I apologize in advance if you offer rebuttals or suggestions and I don't respond
Almost anyone thinks that their own field has some specific idiosyncrasies. I'm in a STEM field that I can certainly claim to be different by any other STEM field: should I ask the question: "How do (the 2-3) university metrologists find the time etc."? No, better keep the question general.
I edited the question to its more "generic," current form. Full disclosure: I am an engineer, not a mathematician.
My main motivation to edit the question was that the answers in place prior to my edit seemed to apply perfectly well to me, too, and the question in its original form only mentioned mathematics as a bit of extraneous information; all of the other details in the original question seemed to apply to a wide range of academics, not just mathematicians.
If my edits are way out of line, feel free to rollback the question to its previous version. Then we can have a meta discussion about why we need a version of this question for every discipline :-/
fair enough - thanks for expanding on your reasoning. It seems there is no desire from the community as a whole to revert the question, so I will not press for a rollback :)
@YemonChoi Upon further reflection of your meta post above, I think there may be some benefit in restricting the focus of the question to STEM fields (but not sure if there is any momentum on that front to justify making the edit now).
If the answers to the edited question turn out to miss something fundamental to mathematics, then I guess you could ask a new question specifically about mathematics.
If you do so, you should
link to the original question
explain why the answers to the more general question are not satisfactory; in other words, what is the peculiarity within mathematics that makes a separate question worth it.
Alternatively, if the answers simply miss something important that is present more widely, than adding a bounty is one way of emphasising the missing thing.
Editing the scope of a question with plenty of answers is probably not ideal.
@YemonChoi If you look at time stamps, you'll see that the question was migrated at 16:22 and the first answer was posted at 17:08. Thus, none of the answers originated from MO. I also clearly recall no previous answer when the question arrived here.
@MassimoOrtolano Thank you for the correction - I have deleted my erroneous comment. However, is it not that the case that many of the answers predated the edit which removed specificity?
@YemonChoi Yes, but, really, none of those answers have anything specific to mathematics. The most upvoted one starts with "How does anyone "find the time" to do anything?" (emphasis mine) and then continues with "The answer is that mathematicians don't "find the time", the time is already there and they make use of it", which is something that could be said of mathematicians as well as of engineers or of philosophers.
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3801 | How to handle "questions" which "beg the question" or make false presumptions?
I was going to flag Is it considered normal to publish job offers inviting candidates to apply based on their gender and / or race in academia? for moderators' attention, or attempt an edit myself, but then I wasn't sure if I would be acting correctly.
I will try not to get bogged down in the specific topic of that question, which seems to be contentious (and now it's hit the non-academia SE sites and Twitter, natch). Following observations by Dan Romik in his answer and various commenters on chat threads, I think it is objectively true that the question has the following structure:
Title: Why is it normal/acceptable for A to happen?
Preamable to question: Some description of circumstances A.
Question(s): Why is B acceptable?
Here it seems to be assumed that A will either lead to B, or has been set up in order to lead to B, or that A and B are the same.
My own question: instead of arguing against the apparent motivation for the question, should users or mods instead change the question to one that is more neutral? Or is this too intrusive against the wishes of the original author?
Sorry if this is too nebulous: I am trying to find a point of principle or practice that it might be useful to sort out, rather than get overly focused on the rights and wrongs of a particular question.
I would not recommend changing the question. In general, I think we as a community limit edits to grammar/readability, tags, adding content from comments into the question/answer, and rewording the titular question to provide better information on the front page. Trying to change the question i think is too invasive. That said, working with the OP to improve the question through comments and chat (and possibly a mutually agreed edit) is encouraged.
As for what to do with these difficult questions, I suggest flagging, and when you have the reputation voting to close. Often these questions are unclear and/or opinion based and not a good fit.
I think, in most cases, that questions of the form "A is True, Therefore B, Why?" where there is either a false presumption or that the question itself is a sort of rhetorical device rather than a question have a valid answer of "It Isn't".
This doesn't even necessarily need to be controversial questions. Consider, for example, my answer to Paper rejected. Should I appeal against biased reviews?
I will say that it's unlikely the answer will be accepted if the OP isn't posting in good faith, but community voting enables disagreeing with the OP's premises in an answer.
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3295 | Would it be appropriate to ask for advice on personal planning?
The question I have in mind is something like this "Is this plan of university life appropriate", where I describe my current conditions as a student, and then describe the "outline of my life" in university including things like what to do about have little work experience and how to become a researcher etc.
By appropriate, I mean the following:
Is this a question on topic for this site?
Is it likely for me to have unbiased, constructive answers?
Would no amount of information be enough for a good answer?
This question would almost certainly be closed if you posted it exactly the way you described. However, you might be able to modify it in such a way as to make it on topic while still getting useful answers.
First, you have to ask a specific, focused question. You can't just ask for general feedback on your life plan. See "Here's my situation, any suggestions?" is not an answerable question for details. You should also avoid asking a question that is very broad, e.g. don't ask "How to become a researcher?"
You would have to make sure that you aren't asking more than one question in the same post - otherwise it will probably be closed as "too broad". For example, if you ask "How can I get a job as an undergraduate research assistant in physics given my lack of physics coursework?" and "Will undergraduate research experience in physics help compensate for a lack of relevant coursework in graduate admissions?" in the same post, you should split it up into separate posts, since those questions have independent answers. See Write one question per post or more information.
Then, you'd have to extract the fundamental situation in each post that isn't specific to you. From the help center:
Can I ask questions about my specific situation?
You should not ask "a question that will help only me," but rather "a question that will help people like me." If your question is so limited as to be useful only to you, consider broadening the scope so others can learn from your question as well. As a general rule, if you're asking about a particular institution, course, or journal, it's likely your question is too limited in scope. Try to extract the fundamental question from the specific problem at hand.
So, instead of asking "Can I get into Harvard astronomy PhD with a 3.21 major GPA but As in biology and physics?", you would ask something like "Do good grades in other science fields help compensate for a poor major GPA?" Also see Think about how to make your question a useful ongoing resource for the internet.
Finally, you'd have to make sure not to ask questions that depend very much on the regulations of your particular institution, the requirements of graduate programs you plan to apply to, or your own personal preferences. Otherwise your question would be closed with the following reason:
The answer to this question strongly depends on individual factors such as a certain person’s preferences, a given institution’s regulations, the exact contents of your work or your personal values. Thus only someone familiar can answer this question and it cannot be generalised to apply to others.
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3826 | Are upvotes skewed towards the first answer to a question?
We often see that upvotes are skewed towards the first answer to any question. I have observed the following reason in this regard:
There are many random visitors -- They just click upvote for the first answer (even sometimes without reading it fully) and move on to something else.
To avoid this, can the answers be shuffled in a semi-random fashion.
This would avoid the extra upvotes by random strangers even though answer is not okay. Am I correct?
This is well-known under the name Fastest Gun in the West.
See https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3763/sorting-according-to-the-score-introduces-an-unwanted-bias
Despite the title, I think this is actually an exact dupe of the question that @StrongBad links just above. And of the meta.se post, of course.
Possible duplicate of Sorting according to the score introduces an unwanted bias
Ironically, I agree with your solution but not some of the reasoning.
Are votes biased toward the first answer?: I suspect the answer to this is yes. I say this partially because it's flattering to myself, where many of my answers are decently voted, but neither the first, nor top voted/accepted answer. But I also suspect it's true - and indeed catch myself doing it from time to time, especially on CrossValidated.
There are many random visitors -- They just click upvote for the first answer (even sometimes without reading it fully) and move on to something else.
I am not convinced at all that this behavior is confined to "random visitors", nor that if we had fewer random visitors this wouldn't be a problem.
This would avoid the extra upvotes by random strangers even though answer is not okay. Am I correct?
Your proposed solution would not avoid extra upvotes - it would just distribute them randomly. Essentially, every answer to the question would get a share of "random visitor welfare votes" instead of concentrating them in the first answer.
Whether this would help decrease the votes to "not okay" answers would depend on whether or not first answers are more (or less) likely to be lower quality. I'm also not convinced this is true.
TL;DR: I like the idea of randomizing answer order, but I think some of your underlying premises are flawed.
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3775 | Getting points or reputation for comments on academia.SE
In academia.SE the upvotes of the questions and answers have some points associated. However, there are no points associated with the comments on the questions or the answers.
Why am I asking this question?
Few answers just combine the ideas mentioned in the comments and those answers keep getting upvotes there by increasing the points of the user.
Though comments get many upvotes, no points are being awarded to the user.
This is demotivating for the new members of academia.SE site.
What could possibly be done? (any one of the following would do.)
Award at least 1 point for each upvote of a comment. This will keep the users entertained and motivated to give their best in answering the questions from corners of the world.
Award some point (nonzero) to the user with a comment with 5 upvotes.
Award a bronze or silver or gold reputation badge based on the number of upvotes on comments.
-1 and a reminder that voting on meta is different.
@StrongBad I have asked a question related to academia.SE, not meta. Is this question not suitable here?
It is very suitable and a well written and reasoned question. As the link I provided says On posts tagged feature-request, voting indicates agreement or disagreement with the proposed change rather than just the quality or usefulness of the post itself.
@StrongBad Yes, thanks. This is my first question. I understand.
This proposal runs counter to the entire StackExchange model. Further, you should move this to the Mother Meta, since the model will not be altered for just one site. You should peruse the Mother Meta site first however, and find that this suggestion won't get very far.
Comments are often abused. There's no agreement on how to use them and they often end up playing host to side discussions, critical commentary, or (more often than not) memes. On the moderating side, comments are treated as ephemeral... once a discussion topic is over, there's a good chance off-topic comments will get deleted.
To that extent, rewards for comments simply encourages what is often bad behavior. The system is designed to encourage good questions and answers. Everything else is just there to help that first part work as well as it can. As such, I don't think this suggestion is a good idea.
Although I see your point, I can think of a few heavy users with a strong record of useful comments, but very few full answers (for whatever reason). I think some intermediate solution could be beneficial.
@ShakeBaby - Rather than adapting the system to suit those few users, I would much rather encourage those few users to work within the existing system.
Two points:
This is demotivating for the new members of academia.SE site.
I don't think so. A new user can't even comment on anything except for their own questions and answers. Commenting is a privilege that has to be earned (50 rep). You only need 1 rep to answer or ask and this emphasizes what this site is for: Useful answers for relevant questions.
There are two badges for comments, namely
Commentator [Bronze]: Leave 10 comments
Pundit [Silver]: Leave 10 comments with score of 5 or more
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3316 | Are Science Fair Questions On-Topic?
Are questions about middle and high school science fairs on-topic? Of course, they wouldn't be about the content, they would be about the process of doing the research in the fair.
In particular, how would a question about middle school science fairs be related to life in academia (graduate school, master's level or higher). Is there some relation, for example, "will participation in a middle school science fair affect my children's future prospects in succeeding in graduate school?" will be on topic, however, most questions about high school science fairs will not be applicable to academia.
It will strongly depend on the particulars of the question.
Questions related to science fairs per se will generally be off-topic as being undergraduate or below.
Questions related to the specific topics of research will typically be off-topic on this site but on-topic on another StackExchange site (e.g., Biology.SE).
Questions about general research process and presentation, whether to mention your success in a grad school application, etc., would generally be on-topic here.
"Questions about general research process and presentation" are only on topic if they could also apply to graduate-level researchers, according to the help center.
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