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3352 | Questions comparing publications between different field of research?
Is a question such as "which current fields are producing the most research?" appropriate? For Example, I am primarily interested in comparing the different 'amounts' of research (publications?) being done, for example, in bio-medical research vs civil engineering. I am curious in this question because it seems that certain industries/research fields (for example, computer science) are much more active than other industries. Is this an appropriate question for SE.Academia, and is there a way to quantify the amount of research being done for a given field of study? Thanks.
I don't personally find the question too interesting, but it seems on topic based on some other questions I've seen here. My one suggestion would be to try to make it as answerable a question as possible (e.g., define your measure, counting number of publications in a field, and possibly what you mean by field---or counting memberships in professional societies, which I think should be doable).
Have a look at this answer from Federico Poloni: http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/69716/20058
There are tools available on your favorite publication database. But, how relevant, really, is such a question? Yes, different industries/sectors/whatnot have different amounts of research. There are good economic (and political) reasons for that. But, the path to getting the data is very straightforward. Start with you nearest research librarian...
I believe that this would be an appropriate question to ask (with a little bit of refinement):
Is there a way to quantify the amount of research being done for a given field of study?
The answer, of course, may not be too useful. The answer is essentially: yes, lots of them, and none of them are any good. It's much like the question of how to compare the research productivity of individuals, which also has no single good answer, and which is why many researchers live under a tyranny of "Impact Factor."
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.611631 | 2016-06-22T21:14:11 | {
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3456 | Are questions about the Vitae Researcher Development Framework on-topic?
I have a fairly specific question about how a common activity for academics (reviewing grants) maps onto to the Researcher Development Framework run by Vitae. Is this too narrow for Academia? Vitae claims to be "the global leader in supporting the professional development of researchers" but I don't really have a good feel for how widely they're known within or outside the UK; we only started using the RDF recently.
The answer is "it depends." What are you actually wanting to ask?
Reviewing grants, as it says in my question. Essentially, "Where does grant reviewing fit into the Vitae RDF"? The only area I can find that seems to match is phase 1 of C3 "Income & funding generation" ("I understand the processes for funding and evaluation of research"), but I would say reviewing large grants from multiple funders is typically something you aren't invited to do until you're fairly well established and have some reputation in an area, so I would expect it to map onto phase 3 or 4 somewhere.
It might also fit under 3-4 of this topic ("I understand funding complexities and the variety of sources for funding") but this still doesn't really seem a good match for grant reviewing, which is odd as I'd consider reviewing grants a core activity for researchers. Both of these seem more intended to relate to your own grant applications.
I could identify a few other possible matches, but that doesn't seem appropriate for Meta - this is turning into the actual question now.
I think this question would be OK, as long as you make it clear that you're trying to understand how to fit yourself onto this framework (or whatever the motivation is), not asking for an authoritative interpretation.
Okay, thanks - I'll give it a shot on the main site. Do you want to expand that a bit and post it as an answer?
I have thoughts on an answer, but they'll require a little more looking at the source material.
Gah - never mind; just noticed peer review appears as a phase 3 activity under 'reputation and esteem'. I am an idiot (although in my defence the RDF site could do with a better search function).
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.611809 | 2016-09-15T08:46:55 | {
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3332 | Asked question with wrong account, deleted, and now can't repost
I posted a question with the wrong account by mistake (because of an SE bug, actually, but that's another matter) and immediately deleted it. Now I want to post it as a guest but I can't, since it says it's a duplicate of the one I posted before (even though it's deleted!).
Is there a way to post the question?
Can you give a little more info?
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.612333 | 2016-05-15T17:00:54 | {
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4285 | Links to Beall's List are broken and need to be fixed
Beall's List was an influential list of predatory journals, but it doesn't exist any more (and hasn't since mid January 2017).
You might already know that, but did you know that there are over 60 posts that link to "scholarlyoa.com" (the place where the list was hosted), a URL that now redirects to another site showing Japanese job listings?! These links all need to either be edited to update the links to archive.org links or to remove the references to Beall's List entirely (after all, it is dead).
Unfortunately, my reputation is too low for me to conveniently fix all of these posts, since each of my edits would need to be reviewed by two other users. Thus I'm asking anyone who's linked to this site to fix their posts and anyone with full editing privileges to help fix the rest. And I'm not quite sure what we should do with comments (which at this point can only be fixed by moderators or deleted).
For reference, here are some searches:
All posts that link to the site: url:scholarlyoa.com
Your posts that link to the site: url:scholarlyoa.com user:me
(Due to the way archive.org URLs work, these searches may turn up posts that only link there and not to scholarlyoa.com.)
Should we replace these links with the online and not-entirely-sure-if-correct self-proclaimed archive?
Related: Is there a website for rating and reviewing journals openly?
The url posted by @eykanal
https://beallslist.weebly.com/
includes the original Beall's list, and at the bottom of the page new additions. It is a reasonable replacement.
(Among the names of these publishers, my favorite is the "WIT Press" one, that bets on confusing it with the "MIT Press" of course since a "W" is just a "M" upside down, right?)
Some urls discussing the whole issue from various points,
https://www.nature.com/articles/544416b
https://www.the-scientist.com/opinion/opinion-we-need-a-replacement-for-bealls-list-31083
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1069&context=gc_pubs
There exists also Cabbel's blacklist which is not free but for a fee,
https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2017/07/25/cabells-new-predatory-journal-blacklist-review/
I don't like links to a random blog which doesn't even warn about the actual owner, copyright owner and maintenance status until you click contact (https://beallslist.weebly.com/contact.html ). If you want to link an archived copy, use the wayback machine which is just for that.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.612408 | 2018-08-22T21:45:11 | {
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3344 | Is asking for guidance in completing a thesis on-topic?
Imagine a graduate student who is struggling to complete a thesis. The subject of his/her thesis is a relatively new subject in the field and is yet to be discussed widely. It even lacks a scientific model.
Is it alright for him/her to turn to Academia.SE to ask for guidance on where to begin the research.
Is it OK for him/her to ask for resources?
How is your comment related to the process of research and not the content of your research? The question you will be asking It will be only useful to other researchers if you can answer this question.
Going by your description I find it quite likely that your question is a typical off-topic question. However, without knowing your question, it’s impossible to be sure and there is a small chance (let’s say 10 %) that your question is a good fit for this site. Even then, I consider it very likely that you will obtain better results by asking your supervisor.
Please consider the following:
If your question requires any knowledge about your specific field, it is off-topic.
Question on this site should be requests for information. If your question is asking for a decision, it is not a good fit for this site. So, instead of asking “Where should I begin?”, rather ask, e.g.,: “What are possible approaches?”
If your question can be expected to have plenty of answers, it is too broad. “What are possible approaches?” is very likely to fall into this category, if you do not narrow it down.
Yes, questions about the process of doing research are allowed, while questions about the content of your research are not allowed. When you ask about the process of performing graduate level research, this will be applicable to many newcomers who may have the same question. Questions about the content of your research will be of little value to most people, and this is the type of question to work with your advisor.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.612617 | 2016-06-12T17:51:24 | {
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4355 | What's the difference between "supervision" and "advisor"?
It's clear that you could reasonably use supervision without using advisor, but I'm confused as to how one would use advisor without using supervision as the advisor's job is to provide supervision (as seems to be noted in the description of supervision). How would you pick whether or not to use both or just one when referring to advisors?
For example, how would you tag a question like How to have productive meetings with Ph.D supervisor? (Context: I submitted an edit to add both tags to this question.)
Although I have not looked at the posts using each tag to see how the community has actually used them, I think it's important to note that one tag is supervision and not supervisor.
The tag descriptions make it sound like they are overlapping, but I would argue that advisor makes more sense in the context of a student asking how to interact with their advisor in some way (communicate something, choose an advisor, etc.) whereas supervision seems more appropriate for an advisor asking about how to supervise their students.
Of course someone could also make an argument for the inverse.
I think the terms are used interchangeably here. Usage differs by field and by place, but both terms seem to be used by writers for the same thing. In some countries doctoral study is actually a job, so "supervisor" seems more natural. In others it is purely an academic relationship. I doubt that it is worth the effort to try to make a strong distinction as the writers will write what they write in any case.
Note that, say, a post-doc could supervise a PhD (or masters or undergrad) student, but would not be their advisor. While an advisor is a supervisor, the reverse does not necessarily hold.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.612776 | 2018-11-13T05:18:22 | {
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4433 | Should we have a tag for degree revocation questions?
Related : Should we have a canonical question about degree revocations?
Considering the high number of questions on whether, how, and when degrees can be revoked, would it be helpful to have a degree-revocation tag? This could help with tracking how many degree revocation questions we have, with identifying potential duplicate targets, and guiding question askers who might have a similar question.
I cannot find a FAQ about how to request a new tag, but I think https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3573/proposal-for-a-new-leniency-tag is a really nice format ...
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.612927 | 2019-02-11T16:50:28 | {
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3841 | can we ask questions about books in academia?
As informed during tour of Academia site of stack exchange, we can ask questions about actual problems faced in Life as a graduate student, postdoctoral researcher, university professor.
But some times we don't face problem but want to know about some topics, like
Where can we find impact factor of journals?
Why recently some books have their acknowledgement in the back as opposed the common practice of having acknowledgement in the front pages?
for which we don't find a dependable answer online.
So is it valid ask such questions on Academia site??
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.612991 | 2017-10-21T16:00:02 | {
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3414 | How does someone ask a good question on StackExchange Academia?
I like asking questions on random sites to figure things out and pick other people's brains, but I'm new to this site so I'm trying to figure it out so I don't get my questions shut down all the time.
Perhaps migrate / re-ask the question on the meta Academia site?
OK, I'll figure out what that is.
So what exactly is the Academia Stack Exchange supposed to be about? Just the inner workings of academia?
Read Welcome to Academia.SE.
Read What topics can I ask about here? in the help center.
Go to top questions.
Sort by votes.
Read the highest rated questions and see what they have in common.
???
Rep points!
The highest voted questions basically have in common that they were featured in "hot network questions" and got a lot of views and thus, a lot of votes. Not necessarily the best way to figure out how to ask a question.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.613066 | 2016-08-16T17:22:38 | {
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3742 | On defending truth, or respecting opinion of answers
A highly rated answer was given to the question How to Cite Hardware in Scientific Articles? In part of his original answer, the author stated (emphasis mine):
The digital camera you took pictures with? Nobody mentions that.
This is incorrect, and quite simple to prove by presenting a contradiction. I edited the answer, adding a reference where the make and model is clearly identified. The paper in question is open access and can be easily accessed for verification.
The digital camera you took pictures with? Generally not mentioned, unless some sort of image/color processing is involved.
Digital images of NAA-DBRs were acquired by a mobile phone Sony XperiaTM Z3 Compact equipped with a camera of 20.7 MP (5248 × 3936 pixels) and autofocus function.
Chen, Yuting, et al. "Rational design of photonic dust from nanoporous anodic alumina films: a versatile photonic nanotool for visual sensing." Scientific reports 5 (2015).
This edited was rolled back, with the reason being that (emphasis mine)
my opinion was changed in the post and that you should have commented instead.
I'm puzzled. I find it difficult to understand how this is opinion based. How exactly should the edit button be used? And when stuck between defending (objective) truth and respecting people's opinions, where should we draw the line?
Related comment (emphasis mine)
Provide some documentation if you can, and format your answer for easy reading.
Related questions:
Taking care of argumentative discussions
People denying the situation in the questions instead of answering
Dealing with “In my experience…” answers
I believe that the specific word "opinion" here is somewhat misleading: the issue is more one of authorial voice.
The convention that has emerged on this site is to hold a strong respect for the "voice" of the original author (unlike an environment where authorship is de-emphasized, like Wikipedia). Thus, if you disagree with a statement in an answer, the preferred first step is to either:
Voice your disagreement in a comment, or
If it's severe, down-vote and/or create a new and better answer yourself
Many of the users on this site respond well to new information provided in the comments, and will update their answers to reflect it. In fact, in this case the original author did in fact change their post precisely to reflect the new information that you provided in the comment---but in their own words.
In this case, from the perspective of process, I believe the key mistake was not yours, as you are relatively inexperienced on the site and it's understandable you may not be familiar with all of the conventions. Rather, I believe that the users who reviewed your edit suggestion made a mistake in approving it, rather than rejecting the edit using the standard reason: "This edit deviates from the original intent of the post."
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3526 | If the the readers of every kind of BOOKS (scientific, tech, humanistic etc) finds something to clarify; how to find help or even to contact authors?
I think, many of us, as students or researchers or even as simple intersted persons, during reading of Scientific, technical or humanistic books, (academical or not academical) find often something not clear. So I suggest to create a section where is possible to ask questions related to part of books which create doubt or curiosity to the people reading. Even if it's possible to find someone who know how contacting the authors to ask directly...
P.S. downvoting on meta signifies "I don't think we should implement this suggestion", not "this is a bad question." It's a perfectly good question, just an unpopular suggestion :)
That's not what this site is about; we're about the culture, ethics, procedures, etiquette, etc of academia. Not about the contents of every field of study.
In general, questions about something that is unclear in a book about a specific topic may be posed on the Stack Exchange site for that topic. For example, a question about something that is unclear in a mathematics book may be suitable on Mathematics.SE, about something that is unclear in a political science book on Politics.SE, etc. The subject-specific sites have users who are subject matter experts, who answer questions about their own field on the site about their field.
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3543 | What can I gain from this area, Academia?
I just joined Stackoverflow today. And this area, Academia is the first section where I just came into. As I know, Stackoverflow is for Q&A among users, such as a coder.
-What is the difference between 'Asking something I want to know in a Q&A section' and 'Asking here'?
-What can I do here exactly?
Welcome to AC.se. each stack exchange site caters to a different community. Take a look at our [help].
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3597 | Is a question of form "What are some good universities to do a PhD in topic X?" legitimate to be asked in the site?
Sometimes, one ask what are some of the good institutes in some particular speciality that have a good staff in a particular branch of science. Is this site a good place to ask such questions? If not, where is the appropriate place and how can one get some information about this?
Welcome to AC.SE. As you may know, voting on meta is a little different than on the main site. On meta a down vote on a question generally means No and an upvote means Yes. So in this case, despite your question being a great question for meta, I have given it a down vote.
Your undergraduate advisor or other mentors are one place to look for answers. Any answer given here may well become invalid next year if key staff move somewhere else.
No, as per the help center, this would be considered a "shopping question" and would be closed with the reason:
"Shopping" questions, which seek recommendations or lists of individual universities, academic programs, publishers, journals, research topics or similar as an answer or seek an assessment or comparison of such, are off-topic here.
There is also more information about shopping questions on the main meta site. See for example Why are "shopping list" questions bad?
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4574 | Is this question about citations on-topic or off-topic?
This question was first closed as off-topic and then reopened. The edits did not change the topic of the question, they only added and removed details. So if the question was off-topic, by keeping the same topic it remained off-topic.
Is the question on-topic or off-topic?
If you think that the edits changed its topic, please explain in what way exactly they changed its topic.
I would consider it on-topic but in need of clarification. I definitely find it unclear the meaning of
influenced how strongly by a certain academic author X?
How do you evaluate the strength of the influence between authors? Could you please expand in the question about this?
Paradoxically, the question has been closed while it was formulated more precisely, and it was reopened while it had the formulation you cite.
@root I haven't voted on that question, but the first version was definitely clearer and better to me. Take into account that the reopen votes might have started to accumulate before your edits.
You talk about "need of clarification", whereas the close reason was "off-topic". Also, my current meta question is about "off-topic".
@root As I said, I'd consider the question in its original form as on topic, and I'd disagree with the close voters. However, in its current form is unclear. I'd revert it to the original form.
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3953 | Why is the content of my question out of scope?
What are the criteria for effective academic journal websites?
This question was put on hold yesterday, the reason being: "This question is not within the scope of this site as defined in the help center. Our scope particularly excludes the content of research, education outside of a university setting, and undergraduate admissions, life, and culture." – Mark, scaaahu, user3209815, Coder, Florian D'Souza
I would like to improve this question so that it is within the scope of the site. I am not clear why the content was decided to be excluded. So, I would appreciate any assistance in identifying why the content is not within the scope of the site. I'll then rectify the problem, and update the question so that it can be reviewed and opened again.
There weren't any comments added by the voters to close.
I wouldn't have voted to close as out of scope. But I would have voted to close as primarily opinion based, because it's basically a poll. See the help center.
(In fact, it got into the close vote review queue in the first place after someone flagged it as "primarily opinion based".)
Thanks, I think that is a fair reason, why was the current reason chosen?
@Penanghill: The first close vote may have been mistakenly chosen, and people do tend to “glom on” to the first reason chosen when casting additional close votes.
@aeismail Thanks I guess so. Oh well. Probably pointless trying to re-word the question then.
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3634 | Pedagogue or Tyrant
How can someone ask a question regarding research in academia without being accused of "shopping"? To my knowledge, academia is a broad category that covers many topics with education. Dedicated to research, education, and scholarship. So it would seem to be a reasonable conclusion to post a question asking for articles or sites for research on a thread for academia. To me it seems that academia has become a group of self righteous, condescending, tyrants who refuse to help anyone who has a question unless it fit into "their mold". So is academia filled with pedagogues? No. Academia is filled with hypocritical tyrants. End Rant. Ban me if necessary, put the post on hold or close it. It will only prove my point more.
Like all sites in the Stack Exchange network, this community focuses on the subset of questions that we believe we have the expertise to answer really well. Therefore, questions that are outside the scope of this site will be put on hold.
In particular, although we are academics, we do not answer questions about every field that is studied in academia! For answers to questions about Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Math, Computer Science, English, Cognitive Science, Finance, Economics, Politics, etc... you will have to go to their respective Stack Exchange sites. Instead, on Academia we answer questions that are not about the content of the field of study: questions about applying to graduate school, about the process of submitting a paper to a journal for publication, about applying to postdoc and faculty positions, about teaching at the university level, and other things like that. Thus, your question was outside the scope of this site.
As with the other Stack Exchange sites, you can find out more about the scope of the community in the help center, on the page titled What topics can I ask about here?. This page lists some of the categories of questions that are welcome here, as well as some of the categories of questions that are not. Every Stack Exchange site has a page like that; you are encouraged to peruse it before posting.
Thank you finally giving me a straightforward answer. To my knowledge, I was aware that because it was a research type question I was able to post it. As I had seen other post of similarities that had been posted. The exact guidelines that are set up for academia are misleading in a way and are up for interpretation in my opinion. And perhaps having a more clarified and specific list would help clear up future confusion as what is and is not allowed.
@Lorena Please feel free to propose a change to the "What topics can I ask about page here?" in a new meta post (see What is meta? How does it work? - note that you'll need to earn a few points first) Best to be specific about what proposed change you have in mind - after all, it's easy to say "This is confusing" but not so easy to come up with a better way!
As soon as I can obtain the necessary amount of points I will suggest a change. With an explanation on how I find it confusing and how I feel it could be more specified. Thank you again
To my knowledge, academia is a broad category that covers many topics with education.
Academia.SE is a community that covers a number of topics related to the academic world. Not all the academic topics, though. And the list of accepted topics can be modified with well crafted proposals. I let you judge whether yours is a well-crafted proposal or not.
So it would seem to be a reasonable conclusion to post a question asking for articles or sites for research on a thread for academia.
We do not substitute advisors, colleagues and research work. And for specialized topics many other communities give suggestions or articles, books etc.
How can someone ask a question regarding research in academia without being accused of "shopping"?
To take your particular situation as an example:
How can I find out about recent changes in a particular field?
A similar question already exists and in fact we have an entire tag for similar questions. However, “ask on Academia SE” is not an answer to this question. Note that this is crucially different from asking for specific resources for your particular field, which would be off-topic – as it is not about academia but about a specific academic field. As a litmus test questions that can only be answered by somebody in your particular subfield are off-topic here (and should be asked on a Stack Exchange pertaining to your field instead).
Moreover, asking for specific resources would be indeed what we call a shopping question, because it effectively asks us to evaluate resources, which is something that we do not like to do as we would like to keep a neutral stance on such questions, there is no definite answer (and what is a good answer is opinion-based), such questions tend to attract tons of answers, and some other problems. As many other Stack Exchanges have similar rules regarding such questions, it is possible that asking for specific resources will not be well received on the Stack Exchange for your field of interest.
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4055 | Is my question really too broad or is it something else?
I asked a question about the proportion of BAs vs BSs awarded in anthropology and linguistics (Do more people earn BAs or BSs in Linguistics?). It was almost instantly put on hold by several people with the explanation that it was too broad. I immediately restricted it to linguistics only and in the US, and yet several days have passed without any change.
I'm perplexed to start with that this was considered too broad, because there are absolutely far broader and vaguer questions up at pretty much all times that end up with many upvotes, so I'm starting to think that it's not actually too broad and that the real problem is something else, perhaps that it's considered a "polling question"? If that's the case, what is the appropriate way to ask a question that can be answered with demographic data?
I don't think so. If it asked about math someone would pull the AMS data and be done. I think it is a somewhat boring, but perfectly reasonable and answerable question.
I think that with the added country tag it's a reasonable question, and I voted to reopen. At the moment there are 4 reopen votes, so there are chances that it gets reopened.
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4922 | Is this question about studying techniques on topic here?
I'm a moderator on Medical Sciences.SE and I encountered a question today that is off topic for our site, but I believe it would be on topic here. However, I notice a lot of "how to study" questions here have been closed, so I want to be sure before migrating it.
Would this question be considered on topic here?
Thanks for asking. I would not recommend migrating it, as I cannot think of any formulation that would bring it firmly on-topic:
"How to study efficiently" is far too broad to be answerable, and there is little we could add to the mountain of advice that already exists online.
"What are good study strategies for anatomy?" is a little better, but it's not clear (to me, at least) why studying anatomy would have different considerations than any other subject.
"How to remember veins and arteries" could conceivably generate good answers (e.g., mnemonic devices), but is too subject-specific for this stack.
Glancing at our archives, the well-received "how to study" questions are all asking about how to mitigate some particular, well-defined impediment (e.g., anxiety, insufficient background for the class, or bizarrely-behaving instructors).
Okay, thanks. Your answer doesn't surprise me in the least so glad I asked first.
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4828 | Comment templates
I know some Stacks have comment templates to leave when a question or an answer has a problem. For example, Interpersonal Skills has this Meta question with comment templates for several common situations. I've tried searching for something similar here but wasn't able to find it. Does Academia have something like this, and if not, should something be created?
I think the advantage would be that the comments will be uniformly informative with possibly links to relevant answers. It's important to note that at some point users at IPS were annoyed by the canned comments only, so personalization should still be applied, but I think this would make sense, and also for new users it could be a useful guide in formulating comments on problematic questions/answers.
Especially in combination with something like this user script this can save time when reviewing questions.
What common situations do you have in mind for this site? I'm generally not a fan of that type of canned comments. I have a few canned comments that I use for moderation purposes, when e.g. I delete non-answers from new users, but apart from this I prefer to write specific comments when needed.
Personal preferences aside, for what concerns close reasons specifically, take into account that there are now audience-specific texts and that Wrzlprmft did a great job in preparing guidance to post owners with links to the relevant FAQs.
For other stuff, moderators can also add post notices (you may have seen a few of them here and there):
Therefore, overall, I don't think we need comment templates.
This was mainly because I saw this question: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/158530/what-should-i-do-when-i-have-a-bad-programming-teacher
We've had questions before from high-school students that are not really about academia. I spent some time looking for the relevant meta question, and commented that it didn't fit the scope. Not too much work, but I was wondering if there was something in place that I wasn't able to find. I did not know Wrzlprmft's post by the way, thanks for that one.
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4519 | How does one differentiate from question writers and trolls?
If a question provokes a large no of viewers to comment it gets upvoted or downvoted more often. Isn't this similar to trolling? Pardon me if I have hurt any feelings.
raising controversial questions isn't trolling.
Trolling can be described as intentionally provoking negative feelings and reactions based on them. Provoking thoughts, debates, and similar is something different.
Sure, some people pose questions just to troll, but that’s only a small portion.
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3967 | Do questions become unclear if the asker rejects the answers given?
While going through the review queue, I just noticed two questions back-to-back that were flagged as "unclear". These questions seem well-articulated on their face, and have answers that align with my expectations, but in both the questioner is expressing vehement dislike of the answers in the comments.
How much weight should authorial intent of the questioner be given in these cases? Does the questioner wanting a different answer mean that they necessarily asked the wrong question? Or are there other reasons to close these questions?
If I read the question (implying an interpretation of what is being asked), and there is what I consider an answer addressing how I interpret the question and the OP rejects it as an answer, well, there clearly is some lack of clarity in the thinking of multiple people about what the question means.
Did the OP of the first question vote to close their own question as unclear? Bold move
I think your second example is a good indication of why this close reason is appropriate in these cases: it compels the OP to revise their question or have it closed, and hopefully helps avoid clarifications that get lost in the comments. I don't happen to think that the clarification actually helped much in that case (because the answerers would still answer the same way), but at least it seems like the system of close-voting was applied correctly.
No one was flagging the first question as unclear. All four votes to close are for "Shopping". Although I answered the question, I do see why people are voting to close it. I'm not particularly active on this site and sometimes forget how broadly "shopping" is defined here. I do think it's shopping, but feel weird about closing a question I've already answered and so have refrained from voting so.
@StellaBiderman, oops, I must have gotten confused somewhere, I could've sworn I saw an unclear vote there. But in general I'm still interested in thoughts on how to deal with these situations, as I do think the answers have value that ought to be preserved, and there is less value in prodding the OP to reformulate their question until it gets them the answer they want to hear...
@BryanKrause Questions that have already been answered shouldn’t be revised in ways that invalidate those answers.
Do questions become unclear if the asker rejects the answers given?
No, they do not. If a question is posted that is reasonably interpreted to mean X and answers to X are posted, but the author insists the question means Y, then the only unclarity is in the author's mind. We vote on questions, not authors.
If Y is also a reasonable interpretation of the question, we don't need to do anything. The author should edit their question to clarify, as long as they don't invalidate the existing answers. (Within reason; if there's just one short answer, it's probably not a big deal if that gets broken; if there are thoughtful answers that have taken time to write, they shouldn't be invalidated.)
If Y isn't a particularly reasonable interpretation, then the asker should be encouraged to post a new question that clearly articulates Y. The existing question isn't unclear; it's just not the question the asker wanted. However, questions dont belong to the asker. If the "wrong" question is still on-topic and useful, we should keep it. The fact that it is not useful to the asker doesn't mean that it's not useful to our community as a whole.
+1 "That's not what I asked!" // "It may not be what you wanted to ask, but it is what you actually did ask." // "So I should change the text then!" // "No, you should not. Next time, post on meta to get help or think about the text first."
Do questions become unclear if the asker rejects the answers given?
By definition, no; rather, they lose some false clarity. Without the rejection people have apparently mistaken the question to mean something it didn't. The question as-is may or may not be unclear.
How much weight should authorial intent of the questioner be given in these cases?
It means the world, and at the same time nothing at all.
That is, a question author is entitled to an answer regarding the issue s/he is facing (to the extent they are entitled to anything). At the same time, if a question, as asked, has an answer according to some interpretation which people feel is useful, then regardless of what the original question' author wants - that question + answer combination should exist for the benefit of readers overall.
So essentially I'm saying the question should probably be split off in some way or another.
Does the questioner wanting a different answer mean that they necessarily asked the wrong question?
Let's say they failed to make a clear enough distinction between their own question and another pertinent question for which they got an answer. (Albeit not necessarily pertinent to them).
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5215 | Should we allow answers that suggest bad-practices even if they're "technically correct"?
This answer is technically correct.
However, it suggests to the author that they adopt practices that are harmful to acadaemia as a whole purely for their own career advancement.
This doesn't sit right with me. Should we allow answers like this?
I think we should be realistic. Certain practices, whether one likes it or not, are common across many fields and actively encouraged by certain selection criteria, and by not recognizing and accepting them in answers, we would just promote an idealistic view of academia that doesn't exist in practice, possibly damaging young researchers.
And I'd like to stress further the last point: for a well-funded tenured researcher, it's easy to promote the best ideals, but this should not be done at the expenses of younger untenured researchers, who typically have to face and advance in a much less-than-ideal world.
So, yes, I think we should allow answers like that one because they're anchored to reality.
Personally, I think that just serves to perpetuate these behaviours though, when we should be doing our best to stamp them out
@ScottishTapWater If one is in a certain position, they should fight certain behaviours from that position first, without affecting those who are at the beginning of their career.
For instance, in my country hard publication parameters are quite significant in the hiring process, to the point that promotions are linked to reaching certain thresholds (see e.g. this answer of mine). Should I sugar coat the reality by telling a young researcher to not carefully planning their publication record? I'd do quite a disservice to them.
@ScottishTapWater: Adding to this: This site is about how academia is not about how it should be. Our contribution to perpetuating these behaviours is negligible to that of the mechanisms that reward them. E.g., it’s not like we are advising hiring committees to overly focus on publication count.
The question was about suggesting adoption of harmful practices; I do not see how this answer addresses that.
First, we don't moderate like this. We don't delete answers for being wrong, that's what voting is for. Each user gets a lot of leeway in how they use their votes, as long as they vote for content rather than users. Your judge of content is your own; if you want to downvote answers that suggest doing things that you think are bad, that's your prerogative. The tooltip on the downvote button for answers states "This answer is not useful" - you decide what "useful" means.
For this particular case:
However, it suggests to the author that they adopt practices that are harmful to acadaemia as a whole purely for their own career advancement.
I disagree; this answer tells the question asker how their applications will likely be evaluated, and makes clear that this is not an ideal state of things.
I expect the same user would give a very different answer if instead of a postdoc asking how to make their job applications competitive it was a hiring committee member asking how they should evaluate job applications.
I'm not sure I agree that "we don't moderate like this" is necessarily applicable here. If I was over on DIY SE and I suggested someone wire up their house in a way that might cause a fire, it would be flagged and removed. I don't see this as being any different to the profession. Clearly, people don't seem to agree with me though
@ScottishTapWater I think there's a pretty clear difference between an answer that puts personal safety at risk and one that gives a job applicant advice for navigating a hiring process that creates perverse incentives. I'm also a moderator at Biology, Psychology&Neuroscience, and Medical Science, and all three of those sites have variations on a policy against questions requesting personal medical advice, because answers to those questions are likely to present personal safety risks and it's not reasonable to have volunteer moderators with unknown credentials decide which are okay.
I understand where you're coming from, but I'd argue that the increasing businessisation (couldn't think of a better word but I'm sure you know what I mean) of academic research is far more dangerous to the future of humanity than one person's house getting burned down
@ScottishTapWater Probably the future of humanity would be made best by about 90% of peoples houses getting burned down with them inside, with an assumption that human-caused calamities like long-term climate impacts or nuclear war are most likely with a large population, but it wouldn't be appropriate to start that process by giving dangerous electrical advice on StackExchange.
it suggests to the author that they adopt practices
You are mistaken. The answer does not advocate for any particular course of action.
An answer that did suggest adoption of bad practices should be down voted. Deletion would only be appropriate if there was a possibility of immediate harm.
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5241 | Canonical answer for "can I message X about Y"?
I recently made a rather misguided attempt to make a canonical answer for all of the questions that take this form.
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/192370/can-i-contact-x-person-about-y?noredirect=1#comment519890_192370
Apologies, I was unaware of the process by which this is usually managed.
Do we think this needs a canonical answer? If so, what should the canonical answer be?
It's worth noting that I make a huge distinction between "can I" and "should I", this question only concerns the former. While the latter would, in my opinion, have broadly the same answer, that does have some more nuance that would make a canonical answer far harder.
Short answer: My personal view is that you should keep thinking, you may be on to something here. But, I don't think the proposed canonical question and answer is the right one as-written.
Longer answer...
These questions all boil down to the same thing. Can I contact this person about this thing?
I agree there are (to paraphrase one amazing comment from several years ago) many questions on that site that say "How do I tell Joe I don't want to wibble anymore?" and the answer is always "Just say: hey Joe, I want to stop wibbling!". The trouble is, there are also many questions that don't fit the pattern. For example: "How do I tell my student that they are terrible and should drop out of grad school?" seems like it matches the pattern, but it actually doesn't.
So, trying to come up with a one-size-fits all answer is fraught. It may be possible to come up with a canonical question here, but I think it would have to be narrower than the one in your title.
I make a huge distinction between "can I" and "should I"
This is one option for making the question narrower, but I don't think it's a good one. While the questions are different, the intent of the asker is usually the same. If the question is "Can I ask Steven Weinberg to review my physics homework?", saying "you could do that..." would not be terribly helpful, even if technically correct.
Finally, note that we already have How should I phrase an important question that I need to ask a professor?. This could be viewed as another attempt to identify a narrower version of the question.
I'm not sure I agree with your point about "the intent of the asker is usually the same". I feel like "can I" implies whether it's acceptable within the confines of academia to email someone about something. The answer to which is basically always yes. Whereas "should I" takes into account whether or not that's the best approach for whatever the reason they want to make contact.
Steven Weinberg passed away last year, so it might not be technically correct.
Darn! All the “household name” physicists I can think of have passed away….
I said last year, but 2021 is no longer last year... Anyway, yeah, it's hard to think of household names.
If you pare this down to "Can I contact a professor about ..." then the vast majority are covetable with a canonical answer.
Could be. In that case, I think we'd have to list the most common cases and discuss them one-by-one; I doubt we could give a useful answer that merely gave high-level principles. I personally am not sure we want to go down the road of making a massive canonical Q with dozens of sub-questions, but maybe I am in the minority.
My two pence is that, yes, this needs a canonical answer. This is because there is one simple answer that covers every scenario that I can think of. Although, I'd happily be proven wrong. That answer is:
Yes, you can contact any person, about anything, for any reason, at
any time.
Just be nice, polite, and avoid being demanding. They are under no
obligation to answer you.
The obvious exception of this is when you're not supposed to be able
to work out who the person you want to contact is. Don't go trying to
break anonymous review.
"Dear advisor: I'd like to take two years off to tour the world. I assume you will keep paying me." "Dear advisor: My medical records are attached. Please keep my therapist's comments in mind when interacting with me." "Dear Terrence Tao: I cannot exactly understand. What is a derivative?" "Dear professor: Could you please give me an A in the course? I will pay you whatever you like." None of these e-mails are impolite or demanding, but some are ill-advised and should not be sent. For an actual example, see here.
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5320 | Are purely hypothetical questions allowed?
I recently ran into the following question: What happens if one of your committee members die after your initial submission?
My understanding is that open-ended, hypothetical questions are not permitted on Stack Exchange sites. So, what should happen with this question?
Are purely hypothetical questions allowed?
Mostly no, but also yes. :-)
Purely hypothetical questions are likely unanswerable. For example, this question posits such a far-fetched situation that most answers would be wildly speculative and not terribly useful to others.
On the other hand, some questions are technically hypothetical, but still answerable. To use my own example, this question about doing research without an IRB was not inspired because I had personally transgressed; rather, it was a topic I became curious about after reading some other posts on this site. And I think it was a good question.
So, what should happen with this question?
This question does seem a bit poorly-motivated because the professor is already on the committee and there's nothing to do except wait. And if he does die, the way it will be handled will vary widely from department to department. There's no real decision we can advise on; we would only be trying to predict the future.
On the other hand, consider this slightly different question: "I am forming my thesis committee now. I want to include Dr. Bob, but he is 80+ and in poor health. If I include him and he dies, is this likely to delay my graduation?" This one seems eminently answerable -- it's a real dilemma OP is currently facing, and while the handling will vary from department-to-department, we can still give a general answer.
Given this, I personally would leave the question open. While the current formulation is not so good, it is "isomorphic" to a well-formulated question, and I would not want to split hairs. That said, I think voting-to-close is also defensible.
This one seems answerable, but only but people in this student's program aware of their own rules and procedures. I'm going to VTC, because it depends on the particular case.
Yeah, that's fair. Personally I think we're a bit too pedantic about that close reason. The answer to "how much do STEM grad students get paid in the US" should be "usually between 20K and 35K", not "depends on the program." But other people will see it differently.
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5353 | Is a question requesting an endorsement (or other similar benefit to the OP) spam?
I recently encountered a question that was just a request to be endorsed in arxiv. I flagged as spam on the basis that it's not a real question, just "pure" self-promotion. Was that the correct action on my part?
Image for <10k in case it gets deleted:
Validated spam flags cause the user's account to be fed to automated systems that limit/prevent future posting.
In the case of the post you describe, I deleted the post to reduce the potential benefit of this behavior (it was already closed by 5 votes), but I didn't validate the spam flag.
While I do think the post and others like it are accurately described as "spam", I didn't feel like it was necessary to apply the additional spammer penalties to this user. Unlike traditional spam accounts that exist only to spam, this appears to be a person involved in academia who is within the target audience of this site; it's possible they'll choose to contribute in other useful ways after learning this sort of post isn't allowed here.
I'd probably recommend a custom flag in these cases (same for people promoting their papers) noting the self-promotion, rather than a spam flag, but if a post seems especially blatant a spam flag is okay, too: one validated spam post won't permanently punish a user, and unless a post gets hit by the community's anti-spam service (Charcoal) it's very likely a moderator will be manually handling the post anyways.
I assume you can't confirm whether this happened or not, but it does seem like a moderator warning is merited here (even if the "hard" spam penalty is not applied).
@EJoshuaS-StandwithUkraine I thought the comments on the post by users were sufficient to explain what was going on.
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5472 | nominate long comment threads for movement to chat?
Several of the comment threads under this question are getting long (although I don't see anything problematic in their content). As a non-moderator, what is the recommended etiquette for this site in this situation?
leave my own comment suggesting that users move the comments to chat?
flag one of the last comments in thread (with a "something else" reason) to attract a moderator?
mind my own business?
(something else?)
A flag is automatically raised when 20 comments have been posted (including deleted comments). The question you asked about has 19 comments. So if you do nothing, it'll probably be flagged on its own pretty shortly.
That said, you certainly can raise a custom flag at any time. This is particularly helpful if the longer discussions are likely to go off the rails (insults, debate, excessive back-and-forth conversation), or already have. As a general rule, we really don't mind looking at flags; even if we ultimately resolve the flag without taking any action, it's usually good that at least one of us is aware of a potential problem. So while I wouldn't go nuts flagging everything, I certainly wouldn't discourage sending a flag when you think there's something we should maybe look at.
As for telling users to take it to chat: as far as I know, there is no easy way for users to create a chat room (other than by typing a string of back-to-back comments and prompting the dialog). On the other hand, if a mod has already created a chat room, you can remind users to use it (and warn them that we cannot move comments to chat more than once, so they might want to cut-and-paste into the chat room before their comment gets nuked).
By the way: if you care about your ratio of helpful flags, you should flag the post rather than a comment. We can mark “helpful” on the post flags even if we don’t delete anything, whereas there’s no way to do this on comment flags.
Regarding this question in particular: it's a bit of a mess because the question (in my opinion) should be heavily reformulated or else closed. As such, I am inclined to provide a little leeway to those who want to discuss it in the comments, since maybe they can salvage it or otherwise help the OP. For a better question, we would more proactively edit the useful clarifications into the answer (help doing this is always welcome), after which those clarifications are no longer needed (and can be flagged), and we can also nuke the answers-in-the-comments (help flagging these is always welcome). And that would organically help control the comment length.
@Fe2O3 ideally, users should not doing discussion on the comment thread though...
Yeah, that's really not how the SE model works. If you can improve an answer, post a comment. If you disagree with an answer, post a better answer. If you post a better answer and it doesn't get many votes....well, that's a feature not a bug.
I understand your opinion, however I don’t think we will ever agree. Though in fact, this thread is a good example of why we usually try to avoid long comment chains: they often consume much effort and lead to inflamed feelings but rarely resolve anything.
Re nuking: after the chat room is created, the discussions (which while technically shouldn't happen, let's be realistic, they do) are supposed to continue in the chat room. If a comment gets nuked afterwards, it's also a feature and not a bug.
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4357 | On the generality of answers and the targeted reader.
Proposition: The targeted reader of an answer isn't necessarily the OP who asked the question and therefore a general answer may be appropriate.
Background: Some commenters (and down voters) object if an answer is much more general than the question calls for or even orthogonal to the question. I write such answers quite often, and while the down votes don't disturb me, I wonder if some clarification of the purpose of an answer and of this site generally would be useful.
My belief is that the purpose of this site goes beyond just helping the person who posed a question. For that, any simple mailing list would be sufficient. It seems to me, however, that this site wants to be (claims to be, actually) something more, giving guidance to people who visit in the future and who may have related, but not identical questions.
For this reason, I believe that an answer that isn't directed at the OP, but gives background information and guidance to others is entirely appropriate. In particular, If a student has some particular issue in dealing with some administration, then in the future a person who has some control over changing administrative policies might read a thread and use it to design a better system. Having too-narrow answers won't really give the necessary guidance, I think.
I sometimes label my "beyond the horizon" posts as such, but not always. But a lot of readers, even some who have been here a long time and have accumulated quite a lot of rep, seem to object to such things.
As an example, see this post, for which my answer is clearly of this sort. Clearly beyond the horizon. In fact, I wasn't directing it at the OP, as tried to say so in the post. Some commenters, however, seem to think that such answers that don't directly address the OP's needs are entirely inappropriate.
I can, of course, stop writing such things, but I think it would do damage to the site overall. I wonder what the community consensus is on this issue. It isn't a reputation issue, for me, but rather one about how the site is perceived, which affects the kinds of questions and answers that will be given. If it is only narrowly viewed, then it will be less useful IMO than otherwise.
It's true that the best answers help more than just the OP.
However, this is first and foremost a Q&A site, not a discussion site, so answers should answer the question. It's OK (even good) to include stuff that generalizes beyond the OP's situation, but not to write a post that doesn't address the OP's question at all, or that primarily addresses a different situation.
If an existing question inspires you to think about a related question and answer, you can always post the related question and also self-answer it. Just make sure the related question is a real, practical question, and not a "discussion prompt". For example, the answer you wrote would be appropriate (with some modifications) as part of an answer to the question "As an instructor, should I ask students to save all questions until the end of the lecture?"
Or you may find that (with modifications) it is appropriate as an answer to an existing question, like maybe this one in the case of the answer you were wondering about.
(I'm writing this with my user hat on, not moderator hat. This isn't some decree from on high, just my personal opinion.)
In general, I think generalizing answers is good, especially if they make explicit their generalization. I have argued elsewhere on Meta that the purpose of the SE model is specifically to produce a Q&A that is helpful to more than the individual question-askers.
An example might be to pose an alternative circumstance that would change the content/direction of your answer.
I am also supportive of "frame challenge" approaches to questions that help the OP recognize that they may be asking the wrong question or taking the wrong approach from the outset.
However, I think the particular example you pointed out is a bad example of generalizing or frame challenging, and to be blunt it is probably my least-favorite answer of yours. It really seems like you are just taking an opportunity there to tell an autobiography that does not directly relate to the question asked: it addresses beneficial aspects of question-asking in class and the problem of large class sizes. The OP's question was how to approach a possibly delicate situation where another student's accommodations are unfortunately impacting the rest of the class negatively.
Therefore, I'd like to frame challenge your meta question here: I think you are perceiving a displeasure from some in the community about generalized versus narrow questions, whereas I think the criticism of your example post is instead about an answer that neither answers the narrow nor the generalized question that was posed, and does not represent a relevant frame challenge.
It was certainly the most extreme example of mine, I think. I like to push people's thinking, as you have probably noticed.
@Buffy Yeah, I have no problem with pushing people's thinking, but for sake of rhetoric if you want to push towards more generalized/broader answers I think you are probably using the wrong example answer to base that argument on. Rereading what I wrote here I might have been more critical than I meant to be but it seems like you've understood my intent anyways.
I take no offense. And like I said, I don't worry about the down votes except that they make it less likely that a post will be read. Sometimes I say things here that people really don't want to hear as their question seems to be begging for a particular (wrong) answer. Not the case with the question from my example, though. But some things need to be said that people really don't want to hear. I could give examples, but probably won't (be nice rule). Some copyright questions are like that. "please please please don't tell me this is wrong."
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3928 | Where can I ask to help me to look for resourses like books, scientific articles and so on?
Where can I ask to help me to look for resourses like books, scientific articles and so on?
For example, if I want resourses on a specific topic (Does oxygen induce coagulation?), what tag I have to use? Maybe literature-search and literatue?
Thank you so much for your time.
If you want resources on a specific research area, that is considered off-topic on Academia.SE, since the site is devoted to questions about academic practice, not the specific content of research. You might be able to ask such a question on a content-specific SE site, but most likely such questions will be poorly received.
Honestly, I think your best bet is your local university librarian. Helping people find relevant literature is part of their job description.
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4486 | Tag badges and closing questions
I have a gold badge for the phd tag. I'm not a moderator. But it seems that if I vote to close a question tagged with phd (at least as a duplicate), I can do it on my own, without votes from others.
I think this is probably a mistake as it gives a non-mod more power than we should have.
I vote to close a lot of questions but consider my votes as only recommendations, not the final answer. I've also complained when mods close questions with no other votes if I consider the question borderline rather than clearly off topic.
Is this intended behavior? If so, could we be warned before casting such votes that the vote would be definitive?
If you want to propose a warning to remind gold-tagged people about this you could propose it on the main meta. I think it would make some sense because unlike moderators, for whom insta-close is the norm, it's a bit less obvious with the tag privilege since it only applies when that tag is present. That said, the main meta tends to favor more liberal use of question closing than some individual communities seem to have.
@BryanKrause they would never go for it, but it seems like the main meta needs a small site or not SO tag.
It is not a mistake, but rather a privilege: Increase close vote weight for gold tag badge holders
It only works on duplicates so it should only impact things that are generally less controversial. If you don't want to unilaterally close something as a duplicate, you can always leave a comment.
Following my comment suggesting you ask at the main meta if anywhere, and in agreement with @StrongBad's intuition that it would be unlikely to be fruitful, I decided to check what else has been said on Meta on this topic...
In an answer to a question asking How Do I Opt Out of Privileges? referring to this particular privilege, Shog9 points out that users with this ability also have a gold-tag ability in the opposite direction. If you've made a mistake and marked something as duplicate and had it closed instantly when you were actually unsure, you can reopen it and your reopen vote is also binding.
But note that the rule of "only voting once to close" still holds. I've found it problematic in the past that I've voted to close for what I later thought was the wrong reason. But when I cancel my vote I can't then VTC for a better reason.
@Buffy You could raise that on the main meta too, but I think it's already been raised and dismissed. Ultimately it just doesn't matter that much. If you've chosen the wrong close reason but still think it should be closed, keep your vote, let the others overrule you or jump on the bandwagon and have an incorrect close reason - not the end of the world, the main point of closing is to prevent poor questions from accumulating answers before they can be fixed up. If you're often closing things and regretting it later, maybe you could pause a bit before making the decision.
Past that, there are more than 5 people here. If you can't vote on a question because you've retracted your vote, and it should be closed, it still will be, just a brief bit later. If something is somehow dangerous or needs immediate action you can flag for a moderator, but that's what you would do anyways.
Not especially worrying, but just a pain in the ...
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4991 | Moderator-only tags, such as "canonical-question"
Some (perhaps many) questions get asked over and over and we have an informal concept of a canonical-question. I've been trying to think of a way for people to find those more easily. I'm terrible at it, though that might just be me.
One of my thoughts was to have a tag for this, but my fear would be that it would be overused if anyone could apply it. If the concept of such a tag is useful at all, then the concept of tags that can be applied only by moderators might also be useful and possibly used for other things.
Another option, probably less desirable, would be a class of tags that could only be applied by high-reputation users. But, mod-only would probably work better since mods have back-channel communications open to them that others don't.
Maybe some other device could be found (or already exists) for canonical-questions that would make searching for them easier. And maybe more thought needs to be given to the general concept of mod-only tags.
Related, most likely a duplicate: https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4097/68109
And a useful thread linked there: What potential duplicate targets should I know about as a reviewer?
@GoodDeeds, lots of overlap. Thanks. But how about the mod-only tag idea. I don't see that anywhere. And one of the comments on the linked question was about making things more visible.
Agreed, it's not covered there. But I am not sure it's even possible to have mod-only tags on the main site (at least, I don't recollect seeing any such instance anywhere). So it would probably have to be a feature request to SE. Edit: just realized that is also mentioned in the linked post.
But what's the issue with using the existing meta question that collects a list of canonical questions from the main site?
@GoodDeeds, the problem is visibility for the average user. Tags can be searched easily. There isn't an obvious way to point people to the canonical list. Question askers often have rep 1 and no experience. Answerers, might not remember where to find it. I admit that is my own issue. The list of "similar questions" provided on the main API isn't always useful, nor linked to the canonical list.
@GoodDeeds, I also don't find meta especially useful, since there is so much there that the things you want are hard to find. Maybe the whole issue can go away with a better help section and faq. For all my rep, I have a hard time navigating.
I wonder if any of the current mods have anything to say, since it would be an additional task for them.
Mod-only tags exist only for meta, and so the creation of mod-only tags for the main site would require a network wide change.
@MassimoOrtolano, yes, I figured that it would need escalation, but who better to do so than yourself. ;-)
My thought is that, even if well-received, it could take years for them to implement mod-only tags. What would you think about just creating a regular tag called "canonical"? I doubt that new users would often misuse a tag with this name, so it shouldn't be too difficult to maintain. Let me know whether this would scratch your itch; I can write it up as an answer if so (or someone else can).
@cag51. I actually do think it would be overused. If the canonical list is huge it defeats the purpose altogether. It might lead to tag wars if it is over-applied. Unlike the current list, which is a central location, it would result in more dispersed information. Maybe a discussion about it among mods (and higher levels) would be useful to have. This is really why I raised the issue.
@Buffy - OK. Well, I have no objection to mod-only tags, but it seems like most of the upgrades coming out now were requested 5+ years ago. So, it's too bad if we can't think of any way to grant your wish without needing to request new upgrades.
I think there could be some usefulness to this and there are definitely times I've wanted an easier way to find some of these questions, but I think given https://stackoverflow.blog/2010/08/07/the-death-of-meta-tags/ (despite it being quite old) it might be an uphill battle.
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5150 | Tag Wiki review. Help wanted
I've taken a pass over all of the current tags on this site and provided some wiki for many of those that were without any. Unless I missed one or two, I think every tag now has something. For a few, I didn't supply the extended version.
If someone is better at finding recent changes than I am, it might be worth a look to see if my additions can be improved. There were a couple that are a bit sketchy, and some that had inconsistent usage. For the latter I didn't try to write a wiki covering all questions, but considered the majority. This leaves some questions badly tagged, of course.
Recent changes since the last SEDE refresh - there are some problems right now: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/378546/295232
Here are some SEDE queries which can be useful for finding edits to tag-wikis - and other tag-related things: https://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/2496/2022/4/1 (BTW would perhaps the tag ([meta-tag:tags]) be suitable for this question?)
Thanks for the work, this is great!
If someone is better at finding recent changes than I am, it might be worth a look to see if my additions can be improved.
I couldn't find any way to list the recent changes either. Here are the recent changes since the last SEDE refresh (thanks @Glorfindel). I have not reviewed in detail, but in general, something is better than nothing, and I'm sure your changes were reasonable.
There were a couple that are a bit sketchy
Agree, we should probably handle "sketchy" tags directly; I would not recommend writing descriptions for them (only because your work would be lost if they end up getting nuked). GoodDeeds made a nice meta post some time ago where a number of bad tags were listed and eventually addressed. Anyone is welcome to make such a post with some suggestions -- or list a few here in the comments and if we get a critical mass, we can compile them into a new post.
This leaves some questions badly tagged, of course.
Yupp, this illustrates why your work is so important -- there will be fewer bad tags in future now that the tag is well defined. As for the past ones, no big deal, we can fix them as we come across them.
Starting a list here with some tags that we might want to consider nuking / merging: network-analysis, minority, linkedin, hyperlinks, faculty, instructor
Linkedin could be made a synonym fro social-media, I'd think.
Perhaps not too much of a stretch to make hyperlinks a synonym for citations.
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5131 | On closing questions that Google can answer immediately
There are some questions on the site that can be answered with a few seconds spent with a search engine such as Google or Duck Duck Go. There is no obvious way to close them that I can see. Here is an example: Digital object identification in arxiv
A comment "Use Google" is sufficient, but leaves the question unanswered. An answer "Use Google" is probably more suitable as a comment.
Should "Use Google" be a site-specific option for voting to close such questions. The boilerplate comment for the close could say "Use Google" or similar.
I think you have misinterpreted the question. Christian gave the answer I think the asker wanted.
There has been some tension on this across SE. One view is that as a repository of questions and answers, the entire point of SE is to be the most useful/top Google result for whatever question you would ask. Even if you can get the answer on Google easily, if it isn't on SE yet it should be because this format is thought to be the best way to get people to the information they need from the question they have. Certainly for many programming questions SO serves that role well; other SE sites fall at different points.
Another view is that askers should put enough effort in their question such that if it's easily answerable from some simpler references they haven't really put in that effort. This has been a big issue on the other sites I moderate, Biology and Psych&Neuroscience, in part because those sites are also trying to avoid being "homework cheat" sites and give students answers that they can write on their assignments directly when they should be learning how to find the answers independently (paradoxically, it's not as big of a problem if the way they find an answer is through an existing Q&A post). I think that specific issue isn't as important with the sorts of questions posted here, of course.
I don't think there's a need for a "let me google that for you" close reason. I'd recommend using the "needs details/clarity" option when an asker has not sufficiently supported the basis of their question, for example by explaining why a dictionary definition wasn't sufficient for them to understand in a particular context. I'd recommend using the "depends on individual factors" close reason when the answer is some form of "look it up on that institution's website" (or use a broader search engine to find it directly).
The downvote button is labeled "Does not show any research effort." Use it for questions that can be googled easily.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.618146 | 2022-02-22T14:37:23 | {
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5463 | Should the recent "Last Author" question be canonical?
A recent question asks about the meaning of "last author" in a publication. Should it be treated as canonical?
By treat it as canonical, do you mean slap a [tag:canonical-question] tag on it and make it community wiki?
@Anyon yes that is the intention. The scope could also be expanded to include author order in general by field.
We already have a canonical question that covers most of this ground. Rather than trying to maintain two different overlapping lists, my suggestion would be that we:
rename the original post to: How does authorship ordering work in field X?
if there is any info in the new post missing from the canonical question, edit to add it in, and
close the new post as a duplicate of the canonical question.
P.S. Glad to see you back on the site, hope all is well.
Still recovering from serious surgery. Only partly engaged here. I should have caught this myself.
@cag51 as your suggestions seems to meet with approval - will you be taking care of things or should we help?
@Sursula: thanks for the reminder. I did steps 1 and 3 just now. For step 2, we may want to give a day or two to see if any of the original authors migrate their answers themselves. After that, we can start migrating anything else -- help with this is very welcome.
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3855 | Is this post appropriate for the main site?
I'm a high school student from India, I got a question regarding SAT Subject Tests but I'm not sure if I can post it on the main site. Is there some other site where I can get help? My post is below:
NOTE: I do not have any intentions to offend anyone. I'm in no way trying to insult the US education system so if at any point my post suggest that I'm, I apologize.
I have a SAT Maths II and Physics Subject Test this Saturday(4 Nov), I just bought Barron's Books to preparation and to my surprise, the test felt way to easy. It's like too good to be true so my question is; is it really that easy or I'm being trolled by the book?
Talking about Physics
I checked a full length paper on cracksat.com too. The questions are mostly conceptual which is nice cause calculator is not allowed but even then they are really easy. Time is surely a problem, I mean 75 ques in 60 mins, is mad.
But are SAT Subject Tests made this easy?
Take a Look at this for example
In addition to Massimo's answer, questions pertaining to high school students that are not research-oriented are automatically considered off-topic.
Okay but could you at least recommend where I can get some help? It’s imp. for me
Sorry—I'm not sure what kind of forums out there handle such questions. I'm sure they're out there, though, and you could probably search for them.
As is, your question would be quite probably considered off topic, because we don't assess the quality of tests, books etc.
A general question about the difficulty of standardized tests could be potentially interesting, but it would be too broad or too much opinion based.
For what it's worth, I find the linked questions from the test rather depressing.
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3794 | Thesis publication
I have been trying to publish my Master's thesis, I am sure It's an idea that what spreading. I would like to know if i can publish the thesis here on this site, and if so please how can I go about it?
No, you cannot publish your thesis here. Please see the [help] for more information about this site.
This is a question-and-answer site, not a publishing platform.
If you want to publish your master’s thesis, the best way is to convert it to a proper journal article (or conference paper, if that is a thing in your field). Your supervisor is probably the best person to advise you on this.
Or, especially in the humanities, publish it as a book. If you just put it on the web, you will be in the company of all the kooks who do that, too.
In addition to the amazing answer by @Wrzlprmft, I have the following to make you aware of few things:
Many publishers, mostly 'unknown' and 'business oriented' ones do take advantage of the weak situations of the Graduate students by claiming that they would publish the whole thesis as a book.
One such example is Lambert Academic Publishing (LAP) whose status to be called as a legit publisher is highly questionable. Even I was about to get trapped by them. Have a look at the following questions:
Is Lambert Academic Publishing a reputable company?
Be alert: LAP s[c|p]am
Your Thesis and the Predatory Publisher (you must read this)
Another example is OmniScriptum. Read the blog here.
Be careful, it is your hard work produced as a thesis. You might lose copyright, ownership, and then left with nothing. Look how much they are earning from your hard work (a sample e-shopping site).
If you want slightly faster publication (i.e. the time to get published), target high tier conferences in your field. (I am assuming here that you belong to Engineering fields)
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.618762 | 2017-08-06T11:46:32 | {
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4409 | Why was "I slept with my advisor's daughter" reopened?
I slept with my advisor's daughter and she is blackmailing me now. What can I do? was reopened even when the poster desperately wants the question deleted (see edit 5).
This is a very personal question without much impact for others and it should probably rest in peace instead of being reopened. What is the value in possibly bringing the OP into trouble (even when the username was removed)?
Sex sells? ;-) But seriously, I think it is a little unkind to leave it up, even with username change. Don't buy the "damage done" argument. Lots of people have had stuff on the net that harms them but try to minimize its impact going forward. And although it is a funny question, it's not like we are dying to have it here and miss so much by not having it.
You have to distinguish between deleting and closing here:
Closing mainly prevents users to add further answers to the question. This is the method of choice for questions that we consider a bad fit for the Stack Exchange format or this community. Whether this applies here is indeed debatable, but this is another discussion – because closing does not make a post less visible and thus does not solve any possible privacy issues.
Deleting is intended for posts that have no lasting value whatsoever or are causing other severe problems. This would indeed make the post considerably less visible. Note that on Stack Exchange deleting is not the method of choice to deal with posts where the author revealed too much. As it stands, the answers may still help somebody in a similar situation and therefore I see no reason to delete the question.
In this particular case, we (i.e., some moderators) redacted the question’s (and some answer’s) revisions to remove a considerable amount of irrelevant but identifying information and it was disassociated from the asker’s account.
There shouldn’t be any publicly available information that allows to identify the asker anymore (if we missed something, please flag it).
There are probably thousands of people who could be the author.
All this happened almost four months ago.
We haven’t heard of the asker since then, so he either was satisfied or escalated the issue to Stack Exchange without success.
As a final note, given that this question has been up for almost four months now, if it has done any damage to the asker, it already did, most likely before the asker even wished to delete it.
I think the question has little value for others and it has a chance left to cause harm. Why shouldn't it be deleted? What's the value for SE to keep it? It was a personal question (with little value to the general public) from the start and probably only attracted interest because sex sells as guest said in the comment above. Now the poster wants it removed and it even gets reopened. I think SE should show a little respect and just delete it.
@allo: I disagree with most of your assessments (please also see my edit). How can this question cause harm? In particular, note that the asker doesn’t want to delete the question now; he wanted to delete it a few days after asking it.
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5095 | On answers to reference requests that do not provide references
I have noticed several instances (and there have been a few flags) where the question says quite clearly something like:
I am looking for references about [some topic]. I'm not really interested in anecdotes or opinions; I am looking for data or studies.
And yet the top answer (often quite upvoted) is:
Well, I don't have any references, but I've observed this too. One time, there was an [anecdote].... It seems to me that [opinion and speculation]....
To me, this is particularly annoying when the asker states that they are an "expert" (e.g., the reference request is based on an observation from many years of teaching) and the reply is "common sense" (e.g., a student's opinion or reasoning).
Relying on downvotes to handle these answers does not seem to be working (particularly on popular questions where far more people have the upvote privilege than the downvote privilege). And to be fair, often there are no studies that anyone is aware of, and so if we delete all answers that don't contain solid references, the question will go unanswered.
So: I am just trying to get a sense for how people feel about this. Is this a problem/annoyance/sub-optimal behavior that we should move towards discouraging or disallowing? Or is it fine and there is nothing to see here? I'll add some voting options to make this slightly more concrete, but feel free to add your thoughts in an answer.
Let me suggest that providing both a positive and a negative answer to such meta questions is confusing. It is harder to interpret voting on the pair. One answer, with a positive slant is easier to evaluate and interpret.
Voting only up or down on a single answer creates a false dichotomy, since there is only one score on one axis and zero nuance available, and false appearances of support, since anybody can upvote but only those with a constructive main post can downvote. Using multiple answers and ignoring the negative votes is a far more straightforward way of polling (since it's how almost every election, survey, and poll everywhere works...).
Do you want to rule out frame challenging answers? Are we a research service only?
Can you give an example of such a question? It doesn't need to have one of the answers you're asking about, but I'm having issues picturing an on-topic question of the sort you're talking about.
only those with a constructive main post can downvote What do you mean? The reputation threshold? If that's it, I don't think upvotes from low-rep users appear in the count.
How many questio/ns do we actually have where an answer provided peer-reviewed studies? Like, two
Jon: well, first, this is just a discussion, I don't "want" any particular outcome. But of course frame challenges should be allowed....what I'm asking about is, for example, if someone asks "Is there any published research, or other solid evidence, showing that holding exams on Friday is helpful or harmful?" and the response is "Speaking as a student, I hated having exams on Friday, since I'd rather have the weekend to study." This answer providing one data point and a common-sense argument is not really helpful to the OP. Perhaps this (made up) example also addresses Scott's question.
Azor: I think two is a bit pessimistic, but indeed people rarely give sources here. Sometimes this is the nature of our site; much "academic lore" is unwritten. But in other cases, this seems to be a problem.
@cag51 I've always thought of that as the reason why we exist - there's not citations for a lot of these things, and so we do supply that by having experienced academics answer, and we can see if other experienced academics disagree. That commenter seems to have missed the point. On the other hand, is finding pedagogical references part of our mission?
There's a difference between supporting your own answer and not supply a reference when the questions asks for one.
@JonCuster This site is emphatically an opinion service, not a research service. That's why we vote instead of doing experiments.
The association bonus allows anybody with 200 rep on any other site to upvote anything here, without ever making any contribution at all. Such users are also more likely to vote by what sounds good or what they agree with, because that's how they got here in the first place ("a HNQ, ooh shiny, I have opinions about that!"). Being able to downvote however, requires having made a more than token effort. As a result, any question that gets to HNQ will almost invariably attract a wave of upvotes, but nowhere near the downvotes necessary to balance them appropriately. @FedericoPoloni
Downvote and add a comment to make it clear what the problem with that answer is.
Hmm...this is currently the top answer, but another answer stating that things "should be decided by upvotes/downvotes, as now" got heavily downvoted (-4 as I write this). Difficult to know how to interpret that.
@cag51: My interpretation is that this answer reflects the minimum that almost everybody can agree on. People who vote for it do not necessarily consider it to advocate that downvoting and commenting is the only thing we should do (because otherwise it would have said so and that’s what makes this answer different. Thus I do not see this answer in conflict with the current second ranking answer.
@cag51 I voted as you described because usually upvoting is the wrong answer and often commenting is the correct answer.
These answers should not be allowed. We already have flags for "not an answer", and a response to a reference request that doesn't provide a reference is certainly "not an answer" to the actual question. Thus, under existing policy, such answers should be deleted. There is no need for "zero-tolerance" -- flaggers and mods can handle cases individually -- but in most cases, such answers should be deleted.
These answers should not be allowed, but we should not delete them retroactively and for new questions we should first notify the post author with a post notice.
In case we decide to no longer allow these kind of answers, I think it would be unfair to the answerers of the already existing questions to delete their answers after the policy has become effective.
For newer questions, I think that before deleting an answer, moderators should invite the author to add references by adding the following post notice and wait a few days before deleting:
My only concern about the second part is that most questions get most of their attention in the first few days; waiting "a couple of days" and then deleting it means deleting a lot of highly-upvoted answers after the discussion has died down.
For post notices: what I'd really like to do is to have a post notice similar to the "controversial question" post notice, where we explicitly say "this question is a reference request; answers that do not provide references may be deleted without notice." But AFAIK, we're stuck with the canned post notices, no way to change them (let me know if I'm wrong on this).
@cag51 Apparently, if we have a strong enough case, we can ask for a custom post notice.
The appropriate response depends on the "hardness" of the reference request, which depends on how the tag is interpreted.
"Hard" reference requests give clear reasons why an experience-based answer is not acceptable, as in this well-received example. In the case of a "hard" reference request, an answer without a reference is not an answer and should be downvoted and/or deleted.
"Soft" reference requests bundle "have there been any studies?" in with a larger question that can often be answered without references, such as this example where my answer was accepted with no references. In this case, references are optional and reference-free answers are entirely reasonable to consider.
The distinction between "hard" and "soft", however, is a matter of interpretation and may change as the question is edited.
I did not downvote, but I am not 100% on board with this. We often get low-effort answers; I fear that this concept of "soft questions" may encourage them. I don't want to give people the message "go ahead, tell us quickly your opinion on this topic without thinking about it too much, in the end this is only a soft question". (This does not apply to the answer you linked, which in my opinion is a very good one.)
@FedericoPoloni For myself, I think that low-effort answers like that are well dealt with by down-votes already.
Questions which request references should be checked to see if they question is about the "content of research." If it is, then the long-standing practice is to close the question.
Note that many questions on the site have partial answers and even answers that don't, precisely, follow the instructions of the OP. Too many questions, IMO, are of the Yes/No variety, so, technically, a one word answer would follow the OPs instructions, and be useless.
But the site isn't intended as a resource pool like a library is. It is a site that offers advice to academics on their questions and often enough the question they ask are subtle enough that explanation is needed, even redirection. Academics have misconceptions like anyone else.
I'll admit that I'm one of the "offenders" here. I try to label my answers as partial or advisory when they aren't technically answers. For such resource requests I might answer when I think that the existence of the resource is very unlikely but that orthogonal thinking might resolve the OPs need for the resource.
I think we are fine without disadvantaging such answers. The OP can ignore them, and others with similar concerns might benefit from them.
Agreed. It feels like overmoderation to me. Further, the type of question occurs with low enough frequency that a policy simply isn't necessary.
These answers should be decided by upvotes/downvotes, as now. Upvotes and downvotes will reward and punish the best answers. Often the answer to a reference request is "there are no references," and so empirical answers are the best we can do. Of course, flaggers and mods can decide on cases individually -- but in most cases, we should not delete such answers.
I don't understand downvotes on this answer. Normally downvotes on an answer imply disagreement with it. I agree with this. Should I vote it up, or down? Note that other meta answers have similar characteristics
In other words, is a down vote here to be construed as an upvote on the OPs other answer? And should we be able to vote on both, doubling the impact.
@Buffy I don't understand what confuses you. If you disagree, downvote. If you agree, upvote.
@FedericoPoloni, I don't think everyone voting sees it like that. Nor do I think everyone understands they get two bites of the apple with these two early answers. So the vote totals are less meaningful.
Up/downvotes on Meta usually have a different meaning than those in the main site, and it's not uncommon to use them as a "popularity poll" on how the main forum should be run.
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4632 | No “academic writing” tag?
I was just editing tags for a question with only the “untagged” tag, and I noticed that there doesn’t seem to be an “academic-writing” tag. Given that a number of our questions seem to be about the process and contents of academic writing, this seems to be an oversight; I’m wondering if it was deliberate, or if we should create an “academic-writing” tag to cover these sorts of questions.
It looks like there is a writing tag already, with the description:
Academic writing is intended for a critical and informed audience, based on closely investigated knowledge, and posits ideas or arguments.
Would "academic-writing" be a better name or synonym for this tag? Given the nature of the site, I'm inclined to think that the "academic" qualifier is implied. After all, questions about non-academic writing wouldn't be on-topic here.
Don't see any reason not to make it a synonym
In addition to cag51's answer, there is also a writing-style tag. I think that the two tags cover the range of questions we get here about academic writing.
We can maybe create the tag synonyms "academic-writing" and "academic-writing-style" (for symmetry). However, the writing tag has already the synonym scientific-writing. I'm not particularly keen on having a proliferation of tags, maybe it's better to rationalize a bit on this one.
Also on writing.SE, we handle writing questions, including academic ones, technical writing ones, and other non-fiction, so migrating to that site may be a useful option? (Not like Writing has any mods left, of course.)
Hi, we discussed this possibility in this meta question. Maybe you can post a contribution also there on the basis of your experience on Writing SE.
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3878 | How can I donate money to Academia Stack Exchange?
Recently my uncle passed away and left me with a rather large inheritance, much of which I do not anticipate ever having a need for. How can I donate money - in USD - to Academia Stack Exchange - its employees, top contributors, and moderators? Note that I desire my donation to be specific to the Academia site and not to the whole of Stack Exchange.
Please advise, and thank you.
As a sceptic: This sounds like an example of the scams I receive by email. (Admittedly it reads better than most examples.) Especially as the OP is a new user, as of today.
I do not know the scams you speak of, @user2768; further, I am not aware of any other forms of communication with Academia Stack Exchange other than through asking a question.
@user83000 You might well have honourable motives. Equally you might not. We simply cannot know. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you%27re_a_dog.) My comment serves only as a warning.
@user83000: there are a number of deposit and refund scams that all start with strangers saying "hey can I give you some money."
@user2768 if you were planning to ask a question similar to OP’s, wouldn’t you create a new user for this purpose? I know I would, rather than advertise my intentions publicly with my current academia.se (and in my case, my real-life) identity. This may or may not be a scam/hoax, but the fact that OP is asking as a new user says nothing.
Here is the contact page for the StackExchange company: https://stackoverflow.com/company/contact. I’m sure they’d be happy to discuss your philanthropic ideas.
@DanRomik I don't disagree. That said, the post caught my attention. It is the first such message I have seen on stackexchange.com. If the message is indeed a scam, then a new trend might well follow and it is worth identifying.
@user2768 there is a first time for everything. And I know from experience that there are a lot of people out there with good will towards academia (and by extension, it’s not a stretch to imagine some of that good will being directed at academia.se specifically). My department regularly receives fairly large donations from kind individuals. Anyway, I don’t see why we shouldn’t take the question at face value.
This seems extremely strange. Money is power, and when it comes to donation, the central question is how to apply that power for the betterment of some cause. Simply "I want to give people money I just got through inheritance" doesn't sound like a real human thing, and on the off-chance that this is a sincere offer, it would be inappropriate for SE.Academics to accept it; rather, you should be advised that merely throwing what little money you have at people is a poor path toward effecting positive change (which is why it's not typically done in the first place).
If you actually have come into a large sum of money that, for whatever reason, you're determined to give away, then it'd probably be wise to first hire a financial advisor who'll discuss your objectives and the best way to achieve them, even if that desire is to advance some cause by injecting it with cash. Large sums of money are able to help bring about significant good, but only if applied wisely; so if you're honestly trying to do something good, get a professional to help you determine how to do that well, rather than blow the opportunity on some frivolous gesture.
Stack Exchange is a for-profit company, it cannot legally take donations (as far as I know, but I am not a lawyer). There are also no employees specific to the "academia" site. The contributors and moderators in question could presumably receive a gift (not a donation, and especially not a tax-exempt donation) if you asked them individually to divulge their financial information, but they have no group structure that could receive or manage money.
You may be able to buy some site contributors a coffee, but you won't be able to support the functioning of this website with a donation.
(There are also various pitfalls with introducing money into a community that works essentially as a gift economy, so IMO you should look for other worthy causes.)
Well, I assume there is no group structure. If there is in fact a secret cabal, feel free to correct me, moderators ;)
Thank you for your answer - I shall wait for clarification from the moderators.
I think none of the objections you raise would be really problematic if the sum of money that OP wanted to donate were large enough. E.g., many for-profits have non-profit subsidiaries that do charitable work in keeping with the parent comoant’s mission. OP could approach StackExchange with an offer to give money (say, to endow scholarships for graduate students) and ask them to help administer the funds or even to add their own matching contribution. Again, if there was a common interest I think they might be cooperative (though I have no formal affiliation with them so I can’t say for sure).
Endowing scholarships for graduate students sounds like one of those "other worthy causes" I endorse. I don't think going through Academia.SE is really a good way to achieve that, though...
Also, your comment made me realize that we are picturing vastly different sums. I was thinking of maybe $10k, tops - what would a bunch of people who like answering questions even do with that much money? - but that only buys you half a year of a graduate student. OP, how much money are you willing to spend, and what is your goal here? Would you simply like to support the site to continue doing what it is doing? Reward the contributors for being good people? Something else?
Requests like this should be made directly to the Stack Exchange team. Contact information is listed on this page, which I found on the footer of this page. Thanks!
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3886 | Request to Repost After Accidental Deletion
I have a question about my Academia Stack Exchange post: Applying to Ph.D. programs: Should I include my master's degree transcript?
I think I accidentally deleted my question, as my question was transferred over from the math stack exchange (no one told me) and I didn't want to post the same question twice, so I wanted to delete it from the match stack exchange, but ended up deleting it from here. Now I am not allowed to repost it.
The question is incredibly important to me, on topic, and likely important to many in my same position. May I repost?
Done. Welcome to AC.SE. In the future, you can also flag the question for moderator attention.
Usually you would be able to undelete your own question, but in this case I think something funky happens because of the migration. No big deal.
Thank you! You were very helpful.
@Daniel just to get into the SE state of mind, upvotes and accepting answers are the way we say thanks. When you get a chance take a look at our [help].
I definitely tried. It won't let me (too little reputation to up vote).
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4041 | Should I delete a bad answer even though I don't understand why it is bad?
Example: The question and my answer. I was writing a lengthy post about "Why downvotes? Please explain so I can improve!" but I noticed it had a very nagging character. Instead, let's do it more professional!
So image I have posted an answer that isn't well received by the community, getting below score of -5 and some comments pointing things out I may have missed. I reacted to the comments explaining, but the community seemed to agree with the other commentators (e.g. 12 upvotes on one) but almost always disagree with my answers (no upvotes), or they simply didn't read them, I don't know.
So since I'm a beginner academic (if anything) and can be easily influenced by nature, I'm starting to believe I either made some grave mistake in the answer I cannot recognize because of my lack of ability to do so, or I have some extremely unorthodox point of view that is frowned upon (or both), but I don't know which and asking the community on meta feels like nagging and inappropriate. Either way, the community convinced me to believe that my answer is bad. Should I now delete it, even when I can't understand why it is bad? On a technical note, having answers with heavy downvotes is likely to decrease my answer score and I may face repercussions from the site?
I should mention, on Math SE I'm usually either wrong about what was asked, my solution attempt was wrong or I didn't explain well. In that case given a comment I can either improve my answer well or, if I realize I actually don't know an answer, I just delete my answer, because I can see that it doesn't help anyone. But here at academics, I'm at loss.
Related Meta-Post.
If you are a mathematician, you might find the following paper of interest: https://www.google.it/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.logic.univie.ac.at/~ykhomski/ST2013/Hodges.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjP7Mq4h-jZAhUK6KQKHakwADoQFjAAegQIBxAB&usg=AOvVaw1i3e3NtkEfqO6wjq7JQe2s
You can delete it if you want. You are not required to. Neither are you required to keep it. But I think the key concept here is you say your answer was downvoted but you don’t know why, yet you also mention that there are a series of comments explaining why (ie critiquing your answer), at least one of which has 12 upvotes? Epistemologically speaking, I do not see why you simply aren’t considering that your answer is wrong for the reasons people are telling you it’s wrong, or at least the majority perceive that to be the case, and maybe it’s worth reflecting that there’s a reason they do.
@DanBron Simply because I argued against it. It started with "It isn't even a theory" and arrived at the conclusion " you're wrong about relaxing our epistemological principles to some lowest common denominator" That doesn't mark my answer as wrong, but just possibly naive as Massimo put it. I perceive it like I said something like "To improve the world, we just need to be nicer to each other." which I can see as clearly naive. Anyway, your first 3 sentences are a fine answer I think. Yes, there is a key concept, but I wanted a question that doesn't only apply to myself, in the spirit of SE.
I think skepticism of the presuppositions of a question is appropriate and valid. I see two reasons for the downvotes: 1) I think you shared that skepticism in a poorly received way, and 2) The original question contained sufficient detail and coincides well enough with crackpottedness that most people (perhaps with more experience) had no issue with accepting the question on it's face, and therefore your answer came off as a defense of treating crackpots as equals, even if that was not your intent.
As an example of the dangers of crackpottedness and the extent to which scientists who actually have really powerful ideas are willing to go to show they are not crackpots, Darwin dedicated a decade of his life to studying barnacles (ordinarily not the sexiest of creatures to a lay audience) just to build the scientific credibility in the biological world to not come off as just some crackpot geologist.
@BryanKrause Your comments are interesting. They sound like an answer, to me. Perhaps you should post it as such.
@Discretelizard, they sound nothing like an answer to me, they sound like an explanation of why the answer may have been seen as bad. Could you explain how Bryan's comments address "Should I delete a bad answer even though I don't understand why it is bad?"
Well, I think they address part of the actual question asked. My answer is "People don't like your answer because X". I think the pair of comments I refer to give another (though perhaps less focused) answer to that question. No-one here is actually answering the question from the title
Please don't delete. It is interesting and valuable.
I think the main reason your answer is rather massively downvoted is that in addition to the naïveté you're a bit too positive about people academics call 'cranks' and also that your first phrase sounds like an accusation and immediately triggers an emotional response (retracting the accusation doesn't retract the emotions I'm afraid).
So it's mostly the severe cultural mismatch (with academic culture) and lack of neutral tone in the answer that gives the downvotes, I presume. I can edit the post to be more neutral and more 'culturally fitting' if you'd ask. (I propose this here instead of editing myself, as this would be (at least likely perceived by reviewers as) conflicting with 'original intent')
Although actually, that likely won't remove the downvotes. You could consider deleting your answer and starting over with a new one, rewriting it from scratch with what you learned here and take care to be neutral on this slightly sensitive issue where your view can be easily seen to be controversial. If you do that, I don't think you'll reach as much downvotes again.
This. The "Conclusion" section of your answer was useful, but the opening and closing commentary asking people to acknowledge their epistemological fallibility was far too broad. That is, by my read of the question, the outline-writer was not directly challenging existing science, but rather did not seem to understand existing science ("electrons being defined as the antiparticles of protons") enough to helpfully critique it. I agree with your spirit of treating the outline-writer kindly. (FWIW, I saw existing downvotes and did not pile on.)
@cactus_pardner Just for the sake of clarity, by 'your answer', you refer to SK19's answer, right?
Yes, thanks for clarifying that! I wasn't quite meta-enough in my comment!
I think that your answer is not bad but a bit naive, as coming from someone who hasn't really seen how much time and energy a crackpot is able to drain if one tries to be understanding. During the newsgroup era there were crackpots who went on for years with the same arguments. But I also think that your answer doesn't deserve so many downvotes, and there's no need to delete it.
+1. Also note that once downvoting starts its not uncommon to get a "pile on" effect, I wouldn't worry about them.
Since your reputation balance is not very high yet, if I were in your shoes, I would delete it. That's what I personally would do. However, if you want to leave it up, that would be fine too. If your reputation goes too low you lose certain basic functionalities and that would not be fun.
I disapprove of massive downvoting (except perhaps in Meta). So, for me, another reason to delete would be to stop massive downvoting in its tracks. To me, massive downvoting is like chicken pecking. Once the chickens have smelled a drop of blood, they all have to descend on the poor chicken with the drop of blood, and have at him themselves. I'm not happy when I see Academia SE participants behaving in such an uncivilized way.
Now, in general terms, if you've written an answer that you think is going to be helpful for someone, then you might want to leave it up despite the damage it's doing to your numerical rep (and your street cred reputation).
Some small suggestions to facilitate more successful communication here: use a spell checker. Work on your English, outside Academia SE. Until your English is more reliably understandable and less annoying to read, try to stick to simple sentences. (Think Hemingway.)
If one really wants to look at the reputation, that answer has 4 upvotes and 15 downvotes, and the overall rep balance at the moment is positive.
@MassimoOrtolano Exactly! I have a -7 post on Meta.SE that yields me net positive score. Users really overestimate the effects of their downvotes :)
Was your last paragraph about spell checker etc. a general tip or critic of my post? I can't tell :/
I am trying to help you have a more satisfying, rewarding experience with StackExchange. Communicating with strangers over the internet is fraught with challenges. Make it easier, for yourself and others, by using a spell checker. It's so easy to set up a browser to spell check.
One final remark. Suggesting self-censorship is very bad advice! There is a reason downvotes have only a minor rep impact!
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4051 | There is a proposal for a paranormal SE
It would be interesting to learn what is the viewpoint of Academia.SE community on the following situation.
There is an Area 51 proposal for Paranormal Phenomenons.
Please follow the links from this question to read further details, but to keep all discussion in one place, I suggest to express your opinions as answers to this question here. I was recently involved in a discussion about cranks in science, so I'm very intrigued what you think.
(Blatantly copied in parts from this question to make sure to stay on-topic.)
Sorry, but I think there is a substantial difference between your question and the linked one: the latter asked whether the questions of the proposed Open Science site, which was going to close, would have been on topic at Academia. Your question, instead, asks to discuss a site which has nothing to do with Academia. I thus voted to close.
@MassimoOrtolano That's okay. If possible I would have posted this on a meta site of academia meta. Maybe the question is better for chat anyway.
Yeah, it's definitely better for the chat.
What does this have to do with Academia?
@JMac I thought when something pseudoscientific like this rises up, the best place to discuss it is Academia where scientific people from all branches meet.
@JMac 'Cranks' and how to tame them. See my answer.
Feed it to Skeptics.SE!
First of all, I'm not sure this question is really appropriate, but that's just my opinion. I do think there's no reason to be vehemently against such a proposal without seeing how it'll turn out.
In my opinion, 'paranormality' is actually a sort of 'parareligion'. Since we have serious sites that manage to seriously and objectively discuss Christianity, Buddhism, Islam or theological matters, I don't see what prevents serious and objective discussion of 'paranormality'.
Anyway, this site is still in the definition phase. Many sites don't even get beyond that phase. Only a minor fraction of all proposals reach the beta stage. So I wouldn't worry. Just sit and wait. You might consider mentioning in chat when (if!) it reaches public beta.
Also, I do think there is a tiny overlap between academia and 'paranormality': 'Cranks'. Questions about cranks and how to deal with them (for some academic) are very much on topic here. Paranormality appears to be a 'field' with more cranks than non-cranks, so I think 'dealing with crank questions' might appear on that site (although most likely from the cranks perspective). Still, experts from Academia.SE could share their expertise their. The serious, scientific investigation of 'paranormality' (Yes, it exists!) might overlap a bit, but I think that leans a bit too much towards 'questions inside a field' than questions about academia itself.
My personal opinion: I'm... baffled that something like this exists. I mean, given human nature it was sure to happen eventually, but still... Wouldn't such a site only serve to strengthen superstitious believes of people? Isn't this necessarily a bad thing? I mean, I'm not saying such people should not allowed to express their opinions on the Internet, but for that purpose using Stack Exchange, a site that, forgive my enthusiasm, strengthens scientific and expertise knowledge around the world, seems just... wrong... to me.
Well, it doesn't exist, really. Its just a proposal
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5408 | Why the reopen queue takes a long time to clear?
I've noticed that the reopen queue typically takes longer to clear than other review tasks. Because of that, this queue often accumulates more questions to be reviewed than others (see the figure below).
What could be the likely reason for that?
I was wondering the same thing, it seems to be stuck in this state for a couple of days now
@Sursula Right now we have two questions pending votes to be reopen or kept closed.
Relevant: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/338688/383809
Because it takes time to check the original question, the modifications to it, the discussion around it, and the original reasons put forward for closing.
Reviewers may find the reopen queue to be the most demanding and skip reopen votes more often due to the difficulties in figuring out the proper decision.
I understand, so less people are eager to review them.
@TheDoctor I am not sure if they are necessarily less eager, I often find that I am unable to come to a satisfactory decision and skip the "reopen" cue much more often than any other review cue. I find it is the most difficult of the cues. Also because sometimes there is some crazy editing going on with the "reopen" questions that doesn't make it any easier.
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3899 | What is unclear about my question?
My question about the application process at the CNRS has been "put on hold" for being "unclear". I am truly at a loss regarding what is supposedly unclear about it. I'm asking what is expected about the reports on past and projected work: their level of detail, their length, their structure. I'm struggling to find a way to put this in simpler words.
To be quite honest the experience of asking a question on this website has been less than stellar. First I had to deal with a vindictive user who fought teeth and nails because they did not know what CNRS is and thought it was a single small research center instead of a national institution which employs and funds people in most French labs, even opening a meta question on which I can't even comment. And now my question is "put on hold" for no visible reason with no explanation from the people who did it. Two different moderators looked at it and saw nothing wrong with it, but all it apparently takes is five random users to deem my question "unclear", presumably because they, too, don't even know what the question is about and should perhaps reserve their judgment...
I have been on StackExchange sites for years and am still reluctant to ask questions. The community can be a bit fanatical at times. Try not to take it personally and don't let it prevent you from asking questions in the future.
Welcome to AC.SE. I am sorry your first exposure has been so difficult. Please give us a shot, things usually work much better. Things seem to have gotten a little out of hand this weekend.
I think your question about the application process for jobs at CNRS is very clear. Not knowing anything about the CNRS in particular, I have a hard time judging if it is a good question for our community and therefore do not feel qualified to up/down vote on the question or vote to close or open the question.
My concern is related to this meta question in that I am not sure if your question is about a narrow set of intramural jobs at the CNRS or something broader. The US and UK funding agencies that I am familiar with (e.g., the US NIH and UK MRC), have intramural jobs, but don't really offer extramural jobs. I think a question about how to get a job at the NIH would be closed as too localized (SE speak for not being interesting to enough people) just as a question about the application process at Big State U would. That said, employment in France is very different from the US and UK and it sounds like the CNRS has a different model where you apply to and are employed by the CNRS, but work at a university.
My lack of understanding of the CNRS, and the potential that it is different from the US and UK (end even likely the German system) led me to suggest someone asking about the CNRS. This question was not what I had in mind and is way too broad.
"sounds like the CNRS has a different model where you apply to and are employed by the CNRS, but work at a university" Yes, that is precisely the case. France is a very centralized country, and besides the few "CNRS-only units", almost all researchers are in fact working in a university, with the option to move every 8-10 years. All the research in France is done in "research units" which are either with CNRS or another national agency. I think my question would be interested to anyone applying to the CNRS.. a set which is almost equal to the set of people interested in working in France.
@YoungPostdoc that is very helpful to me, but to be clear, anyone capable of answering the question would known that so I don't think that info would need to be added to the question. As I said, the question is clear and from your description (and the little reading I am doing now) seems like a great question for us.
For this question, the first (closed) version looked like this:
The competitive application process for CNRS jobs has opened this week, and part of the required documents are a report on past work, as well as a project for future work (together with a list of CNRS labs where this work could be done). There is not much information about what these are expected to contain; the instructions only specifies "Report on research completed" and "Proposed research program".
More specifically, for a "chargé de recherche" (junior scientist) position, how much detail should be given in these two documents? How long should they be? Is there a typical structure that one should follow for them? It is my understanding that the national committee members may not (and in my case are not, I checked) experts in the specific domain of the applicants, there is e.g. a committee for all of sociology, another for "brain, cognition, behavior" and so on.
I will try to write the unclear parts one by one:
First, there is no introduction.
What is CNRS?
What does it stand for?
Who are you?
How is CNRS related with you?
After that, you mention some reports out of nowhere.
What are those reports?
Which instructions specify those reports?
In the second paragraph, it gets worse. You start with more specifically, even though there is not a tiny bit of specification (see 1-4). After you ask multiple questions about those documents mentioned in the first paragraph, you suddenly jump to the committee members.
What committee?
How are those members related to your question?
How are their area of expertise related to your question?
You cannot assume that people know the answers to all nine questions listed above. Usually, four or five of them makes the text unclear. In your case, you had nine.
For this question, I believe nothing is wrong with people. The question seems to be asked at random.
What is CNRS? It's supposedly a research center somewhere in Europe but it's been asked about a few times already on this site. I hope that asking this question is going to clarify things.
If it was asked a few times, why do you ask again? Just upvote the question and wait for an answer. This alone is a reason for closing the question because it is duplicate. Also what things do you want to clarify? Do you assume everyone reads this question also read your first question? Again, this question is not clear at all to me.
Just something popped into your mind and you asked in Academia.SE. As an example, this question also got several downvotes.
The answer to your question is a matter of Google search and reading through the results.
As a side note, it would probably be to your best interest to drop "I'm doing everything right. What is wrong with these people?" and move to "how can I improve my questions?"
I would consider your points 1–9 fundamentals of a given tag ([tag:france]) that do not need to be explained. I do not expect everybody asking about GRE, NSF, statements of prupose, or tenure tracks to explain what they are either.
For this question, I believe nothing is wrong with people. The question seems to be asked at random. – Have you seen the original, unedited question?
Original question has the following phrase: Not sure that asking this question is going to clarify things but let's try.
@Wrzlprmft the OP asks "what is unclear?" and here I answer exactly that. I don't agree that 1-9 need not to be explained. It says that the question is related to France. But a user who's not from France can look it up and answer if the question is posed well. In this case, it is unclear to me (and several others) what the OP asks either because we're not from France or we're not familiar with the topic.
the OP asks "what is unclear?" and here I answer exactly that. Okay but just that the question is unclear to you (or even most other visitors), does not mean that it should be closed. The crucial point is whether it is clear to the respective subcommunity familiar with the French academic system. — But a user who's not from France can look it up and answer if the question is posed well. – That’s not a reasonable standard for questions IMHO. Most people ask questions here because they cannot easily look up the answer. Also, the answers to all your questions can be easily looked up.
Padawan, how many people who ask questions about NSF, GRE etc. explain explain the meaning of these terms? Should I vote to close each one of those questions just because they are not familiar to me?
@MassimoOrtolano the abbrevation is only one part of the question being not clear. The question itself is not posed well. If this question is clear enough, then I do not which one is not.
To me, it is as clear as any other question about admission processes to institutions I know nothing about (actually, virtually all questions about admission processes).
@padawan: 1,2. are self-evident (just like NSF, DARPA, IIT), even if the tag 'France' hasn't been applied, which it was. 3,4. are self-evident: "an applicant to CNRS", 5,6. were specified in the instructions linked by the OP (admittedly in French), and 7,8,9 are quite clearly "the admissions committee". You might have simply said "Many of us don't know much about the CNRS admissions process, please link something in English". But in any case, many of us here equally don't know much about (say) MIT's admissions process. Please do not actively make Ac.SE unhelpful to non-American users.
As to the inappropriate tone mixed in with false claims, "In the second paragraph, it gets worse."... "In your case, you had nine [unclear].". False claims. Replace the phrase "I don't understand X" for "You are unclear". *" As to "What is CNRS? It's supposedly a research center somewhere in Europe... I hope that asking this question is going to clarify things.", the question was tagged 'France' and even if not, CNRS is a well-known acronym and trivially Googlable. And finally, "As a side note ... drop "I'm doing everything right. What is wrong with these people?" is too meta for words
@smci "obvious enough" and "self-evident" are not objective statements. It might be self evident for you, and for many people who are familiar with the institute, but not for everyone. A quick search brings out that the mentioned question is the only one that assumes the background knowledge. france tag only indicates that the question is about France, and again, not everyone from France is, or must be, familiar with CNRS. This is precisely what you accuse me for: making Ac.SE unhelpful for non-French users.
A simple intro such as "CNRS is a such and such institute and I would like to apply for some position. The admission process is like this and that" would've solved the unclearness. Also, I have no idea what NSF and DARPA stand for. And IIT might mean Indian Institute of Technology or Illinois Institute of Technology or Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, which is again, ambiguous and hence unclear.
@padawan: "obvious enough" and "self-evident" are extremely objective statements, when the answer is in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th Google hits. (Didn't even have to type "What is CNRS?") To people unfamiliar with the terms NSF, DARPA or IIT, would you advocate closing similar questions? I'm from Ireland and France's CNRS is well-known, and that was just at (European) high-school level, before I ever did a postgrad. Are you conjecturing on behalf of French users of Ac.SE? If you polled what % of French users of Ac.SE don't know what CNRS is, you'd see how absurdly meta your comments were.
I believe you either did not read my sentences careful enough or you're just trying to undermine my reasoning. I deliberately state that the percentage of the users does not effect the clarity of the question. And this site is not only for French users, so correct comparison would be percentage among all users, whcih is, again, does not matter.
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4906 | Would asking about the rigor of the CDC fall under the "inner workings of research departments" scope of this site?
I wanted to ask a question about why this page on the CDC does not have rigorous citations (but only generic content sources) that I would expect to be part of a scientific organization:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-health/reinfection.html.
I am not quite sure which exact stack exchange to ask it on, but my question was going to be this:
"Why does this CDC page on reinfections not have directly sourced citations?", and I wanted some input on whether this was in scope for Academia stack exchange.
Thank you for you input.
CDC says
As the nation’s health protection agency, CDC saves lives and protects people from health threats. To accomplish our mission, CDC conducts critical science and provides health information that protects our nation against expensive and dangerous health threats, and responds when these arise.
I think only questions about the "science" part of the operations would be considered academic and potentially on topic. Other aspects of CDC operations are not academic. Your question is about the "health information" and not the "science."
Many other organizations also have both academic and nonacademic operations.
I do not think that question falls under our scope. Those CDC pages are advice for broad public consumption - they are not journal articles that would use citations. Further, how a US Federal agency chooses to write on their web site is not in scope for Academia SE.
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5457 | I have a question on US elementary schools. Would it be on topic?
The question I have in mind is inspired by this article.
Would it be on topic? It deals with teaching at a US elementary school, so not at tertiary level, but presumably many users here are familiar with US elementary schools and will be able to answer the question.
Have you checked https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic ?
Or: Why is Academia.SE only for higher education?
@cag51 that's the funky thing. The linked question would actually suggest that it's on-topic (because high school questions is only off-topic insofar as the "user base of experts" necessary to answer the questions is not here). But teaching at high school level is within scope (ex: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/152273/will-tutoring-calculus-be-worthwhile-experience), which makes the lines blurry and unclear.
We also do not have the "user base of experts" for elementary school (we may be parents, former students, etc., but we are mostly not elementary school teachers, principals, reading coaches, etc.). As for the linked question, that is only on-topic because OP is asking about strengthening their PhD application.
@cag51 I'm sure there are more examples, e.g. https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/104193/what-can-phds-offer-to-high-school-teaching-that-masters-graduates-cant, which certainly looks in conflict with the stated "education outside an academic setting, i.e., in high schools or similar" in the list of topics that one should avoid. But if I find more examples the natural result is you/other mods will close more questions, and I don't see how that's productive.
Closing off-topic questions certainly would be productive; however, I have always tried to err on the side of leaving borderline questions open, especially when they are interesting (and I have encouraged close-voters to adopt this view on many occasions). The question you linked this time is also on-topic because it is not only about high school; there is also a component about the value of a PhD degree. That said, I agree that further iterations of this example-finding-debate would not be productive; I have nothing more to say on this topic.
I don't see the relevance of bringing up high school when the article was about elementary school. There is a huge difference between teaching elementary school and teaching high school. Indeed, the progression/distinction elementary school -- middle school -- high school seems to me about the same as high school -- undergraduate work -- graduate work.
Would it be on topic?
Definitely not. See the help center. We don't even take questions about undergrad admissions or culture; elementary school is thus a fortiori proscribed.
presumably many users here are familiar with US elementary schools and will be able to answer the question
Presumably many users here are familiar with driving cars, but such questions remain off-topic.
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5370 | How does this question have 2k views in spite of not being a HNQ?
How can an independent researcher publish a well-written research paper / proof in a respected mathematical publication?
I'm curious how this question has 2k views in spite of not being a HNQ & being only 2 days old. It seems very unusual - usually only HNQs reach 2k+ views this quickly. It's not the only one however, this question also reached 2k views in a few days without being a HNQ.
This question that I stumbled upon a few days ago has 12k views although being closed and having a negative score. I also felt that is quite a lot and was wondering how that happend, it seems much to high. It was closed after a day.
Not sure there will be a way for anyone here to answer. https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/36728/how-are-the-number-of-views-in-a-question-calculated gives a more general look at what "views" means, or is supposed to mean.
Probably got linked somewhere, not sure how to figure out where though.
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4254 | Should I ask a separate question instead of awarding a bounty for the Brexit question?
I started a bounty recently for this question. The reason is explained in the bounty notice: most of the answers are passionately anti-Brexit. However if the answers provide the entire story, then there shouldn't be any scientists who support Brexit. Since there are - a minority, but still present - I suspect something is missing among all the answers.
I've already started a bounty, but am having second thoughts that perhaps a separate question is better, especially since I've already accepted an answer. I don't mind just awarding the bounty now and asking a new question. Should I ask a separate question instead of awarding a bounty?
"However if the answers provide the entire story, then there shouldn't be any scientists who support Brexit." This is a logical fallacy. How about the hypothesis that scientists who support Brexit may have based their vote/stance on arguments that are flawed, or may have voted Leave not expecting Leave to win? You seem determined to go and find some supposed reasons/claims why Brexit would be OK for British science, and not very interested in the arguments given why Brexit as it is likely to be carried out by the actual people in UK politics and UK HE will be bad.
You also seemed strangely insistent that a 50-50-ish split among the total vote should translate into the same kind of split among British scientists, when this seems completely bizarre statistical reasoning (why should British scientists be representative, for better or worse, of those eligible to vote in the referendum?)
Finally: many of the points you pre-emptively raised in your question have a very strong tone of: "people say X will be a negative consequence of Brexit, but I don't see why X logically follows from not being in the EU". This seems to ignore the possibility that scientists are against the actual Brexit that is likely to happen, not some theoretical best of all worlds Brexit; and moreover, it is possible to believe that UK science need not in principle depend on UK membership of the EU, while still believing that the process of leaving could be hugely disruptive.
May I also ask: if you don't have "skin in the game", why the dogged desire to find countervailing views to some of those who do have "skin in the game"?
@YemonChoi do you like drawing conclusions having heard from only one side of the story? I don't. If these other reasons exist, I want to hear them. If they don't exist, I want to know why some scientists voted to leave anyway. No, I'm not "strangely insistent" that scientists are split 50-50. If you read the original question there's a source that clearly states that scientist are overwhelmingly pro-remain. I should know since I put it there. But that percentage is not 100%.
As for process of leaving: I don't know about you, but when I make decisions I look at the end goal and figure out how to get there. The process of leaving is less important. That's why the question asked about fundamental damage to British science. Also, when the vote was held in 2016, all the things that have happened since has not happened yet, so anyone who voted to remain because they knew the process of leaving was going to be painful is surprisingly prescient.
Finally: is there something wrong with "wanting to know"? This is a very strange question coming from someone engaged in blue skies research. You're making it seem like if you're asked to review a proof which sounds reasonable, you will not go through it with a fine-toothed comb because you "don't have skin in the game" and so shouldn't have a "dogged desire" to find flaws in the proof, if they exist.
It sounds like you want the opposite answer from what the question asks. I think you want to know what the upsides of brexit is for UK science. The answer to your original question make it clear that this community believes that on the whole brexit is bad, but the question does not really ask for the upside, it only asks for the downsides. If this is in fact what you are after, you should ask a new question.
However, I think the OP should be prepared to accept graciously that someone will post an answer along the lines of "there's no upside, it's a terrible idea", especially since the vast majority of British scientists are against Brexit. Such an answer is useful, if only as a default against which evaluate other answers. In fact it might be a good idea if the OP posts this answer him/herself
@DenisNardin I can't post an answer to a question I don't know the answer to. I could suggest it in the question text though. And yes, if someone gives that answer that's fine.
Here we suggest the OP to ask a new question, and when they go on asking it, the question gets closed. Admittedly, we might give the impression of an incoherent if not schizophrenic community.
@NajibIdrissi For the improvement of such a community (the fact that it's a commercial product is irrelevant), It would be useful if those who participate in reviews (close-voting, editing etc.) could take the time to participate also on meta (at least reading the meta discussions) and if there is a meta discussion about a specific question vent their objections there before taking decisions on the main site.
@MassimoOrtolano if the question was closed as a duplicate, that would be a clear problem. In this case, the community is saying the exact details of the question make it not a good fit. I don't see any inconsistency between my answer saying ask a new question on that topic and the community saying that the specific question asked was opinion based.
@StrongBad Generally speaking, I think it defeats the purpose of asking on meta. If, as sometimes happens, we invite users to ask on meta or in chat about the acceptability of a certain question and then, once said go on asking (your answer here has 8 upvotes), we close them for whatever reason, what's the purpose of asking on meta?
@MassimoOrtolano I agree to an extent. I believe asking on meta does not give a user a blank check, but should provide a little extra leeway. Let me re-read the question to see how I feel about it.
@MassimoOrtolano having re-read the question, I don't think the way it is worded is a great fit, but it is good enough that it should stay open given the entirety of this meta question. If you see it closed again, just flag it and I will hammer it open.
Do you think it's better to write "Why did some scientists vote for Brexit if it has no upsides"?
I would suggest asking a new question, something like 'What are the upsides to Brexit for UK scientists?', and further ask if there's a reason that scientists appear to have an opinion opposed to the larger electorate.
This will make the question seem less loaded, and hopefully draw in more views from across the spectrum.
Fair enough - I was going to write something like "Are there any upsides ..." but that sounds more loaded (in the other direction).
Remarkably, this question, which simply replaced “downsides” with “upsides”, has been closed for being opinion-based while the other remains open.
@knzhou Both were closed at first. The "downside" one was reopened later. Now, the "upside" one was reopened also. You can see this info if you click on the "edited" history.
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4311 | If the original poster of a question wishes to delete it, do we delete?
The relevant question is this one.
The OP tried to delete it, but was reverted. Should we delete it, or leave it as is (with potential negative consequences for the OP if identified)?
The Network-wide canonical post regarding deletion, which covers what can be done in this exact situation, is: How does deleting work? What can cause a post to be deleted, and what does that actually mean? What are the criteria for deletion?
Related question on Meta SE: What to do when the OP mutilates their own question?
I think this may be an unusual case deserving of extra consideration however. It is an overly-specific and (arguably) low-quality question that quickly rose to a hot network question, and which is still attracting low-quality answers 5 days later.
The top answer to this related question on Physics Meta, might be relevant here too.
I'm surprised that none of the answers given up to now mentioned the CC-BY-SA license, which is the relevant regulation here.
@FedericoPoloni Maybe you could explain why you think it's relevant?
@FedericoPoloni Both of my answer's links are directly tied to the implications of the license all posts are made under, and the license gets mentioned at some point within them.
@BryanKrause Because it's the license under which OP released the text of his question for Stack Exchange to reproduce it. For instance, its text reads "the license granted here is perpetual", which means that OP has no legal right to have his post deleted if he changes his mind.
@FedericoPoloni That only addresses the question "do we have to delete," not whether we do or whether we should. The meta post that the answer by zibadawa links at the very beginning does in fact reference the license as part of the broader discussion, but also goes much further.
Would it be possible for the "OP" to disassociate him/her-self from the post?
@JosephDoggie Yes, disassociation is available through SE, and specifically a right under the CC BY-SA 3.0 which the author has. The first comment here links to the main meta, which mentions disassociation as an option. It's also mentioned in the answer below.
Licence is not the only thing to consider. There are privacy laws and laws on personal content as well, which affect if it is legal to deny the removal request. You cannot just insist on the licence when discussing a post containing a personal story. For example as a European citizen I could retract such a story under the right to be forgotten (and some other laws probably as well) and SE would have to remove it.
OPs do not in general have a right to delete their posts, though in limited circumstances where the question has essentially received no positive attention they will have such an option available to them. Once something positive happens, the option to delete is gone, and deletion only happens for substantial breaches of site policies, or automatically by the system when certain specific conditions are met. Upvoted but off-topic, upvoted but otherwise bad, or personally awkward questions are generally not worthy of this, as they still serve a useful purpose for the overall maintenance of the site.
The OP could be asked if they wish to have the post dissociated from their account. Everyone has that right under the license every post is made under. The post could also probably be anonymized a bit. It contains a fair amount of rather specific and unnecessary details, and prototypical panic phrasing. With some effort I think someone could strip it of a lot of the particular details and fix the phrasing to something less emotional. A flag for moderator attention could then be raised, requesting that the revision history be scrubbed/redacted (else we wouldn't actually be doing much to prevent the OP from being identified from the post's contents). If existing answers contain significant amounts of quotes or other restatements of the original posting then things get complicated, but perhaps that would be the poor and helpful mod's problem. But there's a limit to what we can achieve to protect an OP from making a bad decision and saying too much: there are other ways of figuring out who the original poster was, and what the post originally said, no matter how much the mods try to scrub the evidence from the site itself.
Even if a thusly-modified version of the question was left closed, this still serves a useful purpose for this SE. We can use it to close similar questions as duplicates and not really have to force ourselves to explain and fight about why it is or isn't off-topic.
[…] someone could strip it of a lot of the particular details and fix the phrasing to something less emotional. A flag for moderator attention could then be raised, requesting that the revision history be scrubbed/redacted – Sidenote: This is actually something, we moderators do rather often on this site: Remove irrelevant and identifying details from a question (and its history).
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4714 | Why is this comment not deleted?
Link to comment in question
I've already flagged the comment, but it's still there, so I'm guessing the moderators decided it's acceptable. I don't see why. It effectively associates World Scientific with predatory publishing based on no evidence (the scenario described by the question-asker certainly does not look like predatory publishing to me).
I suppose the reason Anonymous Physicist even drew the connection in the first place is similar to Debora Weber-Wulff's reasoning: "World Scientific" seems like an awfully broad name for a journal. Problem with that is that World Scientific isn't a journal, but a publisher. One could argue that the name still implies the publisher is predatory, but this publisher (see link) was established in 1981. That's well before predatory publishing existed.
The way I interpret it, the comment is similar to answering every university-related question with "first make sure you're not attending a degree mill", or every professor-related question with "first make sure the professor is actually qualified to teach this subject". These statements may be true, but they're also rude, and should not be said.
Can the moderator who declined the flag please explain his/her reasoning?
Note that I moved the entire ongoing debate about World Scientific to chat now (not singling out any comment).
Moderator’s Notice: Please take any debate about the actual reputability of World Scientific here. Any comments and answers debating this will be deleted. Use this question and answers for debating whether such comments should be deleted. For the purpose of this question, it should not matter whether we are talking about World Scientific, Elsevier, Wiley, Springer, etc. Or: If your opinion of World Scientific could be deduced from anything you post, it does not belong here.
@Wrzlprmft if we generalize to include all publishers then the comment is even more inappropriate since it insinuates that every publisher is predatory.
The moderator's notice could be interpreted as implying that I claimed the publisher was predatory. I would like it to be clear to those who cannot see deleted text that I do not make any such claim. I think we all agree that claims of predatory behavior which are not factual would be libelous.
This was me.
Background: Moderation. According to StackExchange's Theory of Moderation, moderators are supposed to do "as little as possible." In particular, we do not delete bad answers, only pointless noise. The power belongs to the community; we are only "human exception handlers" (or, perhaps, garbage collectors). Further, we generally "assume good intent," though I don't think this is codified any longer.
Background: Comments. There are various reasons why comments can be deleted, but we try very hard to avoid adjudicating issues and deleting the comments from the losing side. We certainly don't think censorship is what the community wants. In cases like this, I would suggest that you instead post a rebuttal comment (take to chat if it leads to a long discussion).
This case. In this case, your objection seems to be about rudeness/libel: you feel that the poster should not have raised the issue of predatory journals when there is no indication that the (named) publisher is predatory. While I share your concern about "associating [the publisher] with predatory publishing," you are suggesting that we should have single-handedly deleted the comment. For a comment to be deleted by a moderator on the grounds of rudeness or libel, the comment needs to be manifestly unacceptable.
In this case, however, we do not really know why the poster decided to raise a concern about predatory publishing. It could be because of the publisher's name, as you suggest. But it could also be for some other reason altogether, that has nothing to do with the publisher. Perhaps the comment author surmised (fairly or unfairly) that OP's "real question" was "Did I submit to a predatory journal?" and chose to provide some links that might be helpful. Or perhaps the suspicion about being predatory was because of the one-week turn around (this would indeed be suspiciously fast for peer review to be completed, though it's not suspicious for a desk rejection, which is probably what happened here).
Conclusion. I am certainly not endorsing this comment -- it could well be completely unhelpful, or merely confuse the issue. But I believe this is the sort of thing that the community should discuss, not the sort of "exception" that I should smite with my mod-hammer. I stand by my decision, and would encourage you to post a comment on the original post vouching for the publisher's credibility. (Another option would be to edit the question to remove the publisher's name altogether).
Commenting on the original post vouching for the publisher's credibility would be introducing something unrelated though - the question doesn't touch on disreputable publishers at all, and it would be like commenting asking what the OP's gender is just to make sure the (probable) desk rejection isn't due to gender bias, etc.
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3972 | Deleting comments versus moving them to chat
The banner for controversial posts that was recently introduced 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.
It says that the comments will be removed. The question is: Should such comments be removed by deleting them, or shouldn't they rather be moved to the chat?
By default, there is a message saying that "Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat", but in a recent post, the comments - although relevant for the topic - did not seem to be "moved to chat", but simply deleted. A moderator recommended to "raise the issue about comments on Academia Meta", which I'm doing now...
Could you please link to the post you mention in your final discussion? Or, at least, specify if comments had already been moved to the chat once or deleted altogether?
@FedericoPoloni I wanted to avoid linking to the post here, to avoid the "meta-effect", but it won't make so much of a difference in this case: In https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/102698/86692 , comments (particularly for the current top answers) have repeatedly been removed instead of being moved to chat.
Unfortunately, moderators cannot move comments to chat more than once per post.
If people continue to engage in discussion after there's already an automatically-generated comment that says "Comments are not for extended discussion" with a link to the chat room that comments have been moved to, the only moderation action that is still available is deletion. So if those comments are flagged, they'll be deleted.
If you think moderators should be able to keep moving comments to chat, please support the feature request here.
To be fair, on posts where the comments have already been moved, I delete comments that I see even if they are not flagged. An alternative to multiple moves to chat would be to turn commenting off once the comments have been moved.
That explains the observations, +1 for the feature request (I wonder what the intention was behind limiting the ability to move comments to only once). Of course, one could even consider letting the "add a comment" link lead directly to the chat, but giving the moderators the ability to (bulk) move comments would also make sense.
@StrongBad So you're saying you delete those comments even if there is nothing wrong with them? That is problematic, in my view. There are legitimate uses for comments.
@FedericoPoloni Agree here, it's a pity. One has to assume that basically the same comments will be posted over and over again, because nobody knows that similar ones have been posted before....
@FedericoPoloni no. I leave good comments. I am willing to act unilaterally on what I view as bad comments that are attempting to start the discussion again. Comments requesting clarification or attempting to improve the post, I leave
@Marco13 rarely do comments get deleted and then someone else reposts the same thing (except for chatty comments where people are trying to make the same point).
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1586 | Is my question inappropriate for Academia S.E.?
Next September I will be starting the most important part of my Ph.D in Mathematics: the "go and do something original!" part. To be honest, as someone who never did reseach before, I am a bit scared about it. As I am sure there are many many people in my situation, I would like to ask a question on Academia with the purpose of compiling a list of some of the most important things one can do to increase the chances of succefully going through (and completing) a Ph.D. Of course, I am not looking for general things like "work hard everyday"; ideally, it would be more specific and helpful things.
I am sure that the large experience of the community members would make this possible, and that some valuable tips would certainly arise; but is this question too broad and/ or too opinion-based to fit here?
From the help center:
Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.
There are entire books that (attempt to) answer this question. For example: Steven Krantz's A Mathematician's Survival Guide: Graduate School and Early Career Development.
I would say that there are entire books that address the question, if you take my meaning.
@PeteL.Clark: Good point, I didn't mean to imply that Krantz or anyone else has all the answers. Edited.
oh! perhaps this is just the thing I was looking for. thank you!
In its current form, I do think this question is too broad/opinion based.
You write
Of course, I am not looking for general things like "work hard everyday"; ideally, it would be more specific and helpful things.
But in order to avoid answers like that, you need to draft a more specific, focused question.
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3749 | Are questions on research methodology on topic?
This question about whether (in this case statistical) research always needs a hypothesis made we wonder: Are questions about research methodology on topic?
In general, questions on specific research problems are considered off-topic and frequently migrated to the respective 'sister site' that deals with substantive problems (e.g. biology.se).
Does this rule also apply to research methods (as opposed to substance)? For some issues related to statistical methods, crossvalidated.se seems a more appropriate place. For other, mostly qualitative or experimental methods, there is no dedicated 'sister site' (but perhaps physics.se accepts questions on experiment design).
Note that I wrote 'methods' and not 'process'. Process might include things that are clearly on-topic here, such as how to frame a research problem in a particular kind of publication, funding, collaboration etc. Whether the linked question is really about methods or process is a separate but also relevant issue.
Possibly relevant: Should we be more welcoming of “technical” questions?
I like your initial idea! Thanks for bringing this up. Could you, however, give an example in your post? I have difficulties to imagine a meaningful question in which users can be of help (without reading pages of specific research design or methdology for project X).
@Stefan_W There are various examples in the methodology tag, like this and this question. I'm not sure what you mean by "your initial idea".
Thanks for the examples. Initial in the sense of "Should we discuss methodology?" and I say definitely "yes!", but how to go from here is my concern. The question on 'second hand data' is for me foremost an ethics question &I don't know how the other one is related to methodology?! By 'methodology' I mean "the general research strategy that outlines the way in which research is to be undertaken and, among other things, identifies the methods to be used in it. These methods, [...] define the means or modes of data collection or, sometimes, how a specific result is to be calculated." (wikipedia)
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4823 | Is there a canonical answer about selecting a journal for publication? (If not, should we have one?)
Every so often we get a shopping question (e.g. this one) about finding a suitable journal to publish some specific paper in. It's a good thing to close these as off-topic. However, can we also point the asker to the on-topic question about ways to find suitable publication outlets in general? Could this serve as canonical answer, or should we open a new thread from scratch?
https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2038/defining-shopping-questions
Short answer
I would vote no. I think "canonical answers" only make sense when the canonical answer addresses (a) the user's actual question, or (b) some generalization of the user's question. Telling askers that their question is a "duplicate" of some vague, seemingly-unrelated question will only infuriate them. If we want to improve the status quo, we should provide the asker with a clearer explanation of why their question will not be answered.
Long answer
I think the particular "shopping questions" you identified are a good example of the sort of issue identified by the above cartoon:
Someone wants to know where they can publish their article about jubjub birds.
They post here in the hope that we have an ornithologist (or anyone in the life sciences) that can recommend a well-regarded journal at the appropriate level of selectivity. They take the time to write out a clear, detailed, specific question.
It....does not go well.
So what should we do in step #3?
I think the best thing we can do is to say "sorry, this forum does not recommend journals." In this way, the asker clearly sees why their question, no matter how reasonable or well-posed, will not get an answer here. They may not understand why we won't recommend journals, but there is no miscommunication or ambiguity.
On the other hand, closing as a duplicate of an unhelpful question is infuriating for the asker. Common reactions will be:
"It is not a duplicate; this is super broad, my question is super specific. Did you even read what I wrote?"
"Of course I could ask my advisor! Do you really think I hadn't considered that? But my advisor doesn't know / is a jerk / does not exist!"
"I'm a professional researcher with decades of experience, of course I know everything on this list. What I need is subject matter expertise. Are there really no biologists on this forum?"
"Argh. How can I rephrase my question to get an actual answer?"
In this case (requests for journal recommendations), we are not going to create a giant ontology of journals, so we don't have anything helpful that we can link them to. So, I would suggest that best practice should be:
Close as a shopping question.
Add a comment explaining "sorry, we don't recommend journals".
If OP is a student, it might be worth further saying "sorry, we don't recommend journals. But this is really the sort of thing you should discuss with your advisor." (In fact, perhaps we should have a canonical meta question about "When and why do we refer students to their advisor instead of just answering their question?" that commenters could link to.)
I like your last bullet
That makes a lot of sense. Thanks!
"Close as a shopping question." This is the main reason why we should not have such a canonical question.
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3975 | Do we need a canonical borderline admissions question for MA programs?
We do have one for PhD programs, but, as far as I know, no canonical question exists about the admission to MA programs with an emphasis on "weak" students. We frequently have questions like this one, asking whether it is worth applying to an MA program with low GPA. It would be useful to direct these to one canonical answer and close as duplicate. At the moment the linked question has three close-votes, but none for being a dupe. (One for "shopping", two for "individual factors", which I don't really agree with.)
A general canonical question would not be possible because in many countries the admission to an MA program it's straightforward once you have a BSc degree (and the GPA threshold is usually not demanding). Maybe it's better to specialize your proposal just for the US.
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1737 | Are questions relating to academic blogging/website advice off-topic?
A lot of prof and people in mathematics(and other fields too) have their own webpages. Now there can be a lot of questions that relate to academic blogging such as "Should there be a like button in your academic webpage or blog?"
I think questions about academic websites are solidly on-topic. In fact, we have several highly up-voted questions on this topic, with good answers:
Should I host my academic website under my institution domain or under a domain of my own ?
What contents should I put on my academic website?
The answers highlight significant differences between academic websites and other personal websites. For example, it is very common for your institution to host your website, and there are cultural expectations about what sort of information you should and should not include.
I think this needs to be handled on a question-by-question basis. There are probably some issues that could be considered on-topic, but some things probably are too generic and would be considered off-topic.
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3830 | Need more effective protection for protected questions
This answer is the motivation for my proposal that the threshold for contributing an answer to a protected question be higher than ten, which is a ridiculously small number.
I am in favor of supporting newcomers getting integrated into the site. However, I don't think allowing them to contribute an "answer" that should be a comment is helpful to the newcomer or to the site.
I actually think that is a pretty good answer.
I agree with @StrongBad. Would you please explain why that answer should not be there in the first place? (Either here or leave a comment below that answer so the OP of the answer realizes it.(Please excuse my English, I am not a native speaker)
But there were already two equivalent answers.
@Abra - Well, my answer isn't one of the earlier answers that struck me as equivalent to yours. I agree with you about avoiding bloat, and I think my answer was nice and short before I started adding stuff. Even with the additional notes, it's still sort of medium.... Anyway, my focus here was on the "me too" theme, and your answer was a handy example, but perhaps not the best example, of popular questions that get new answers that align closely with previously written answers. // I wish you a belated welcome to Academia!
I think the protection mechanism works pretty well with the low threshold. It dramatically cuts down on discussion in the comments and prevents lots of really low quality not-an-answer answers. Some low quality answers still make it through, but many of those come from high rep users. As a community we can handle these with appropriate up and down voting.
It is worth noting that most questions that get protected are on the hot network question side bar. They get there, and stay there, by having lots of answers (and other things). So protected questions are often questions that new and old users want to answer.
Can questions be protected prior to their placement in the sidebar? I have the impression the individual site has no control over which questions go in the hot network sidebar. Would it make sense for protection to occur automatically whenever a question lands in that sidebar? When I see a page mushroom quickly due to being in that sidebar, if I remember right, the protection mechanism can't be used as a preventive measure because there's a time lag built in. But the hot network effect can be very quick.
Any user with 15k+ rep can protect any question at any time. Other users should post something in chat or flag for moderator intervention when they see something getting out of hand. Auto protection (and variants) for HNQ has been asked for a bunch on meta. My understanding is it is status-declined.
StrongBad, I don't think we, 15k+ users, can protect any question anytime, but only if a certain amount of time has passed and/or if there VLQ questions.
@MassimoOrtolano you are right. I didin't read the manual. The question needs to be a day old. In which case, the advice is to simply flag the questions.
@MassimoOrtolano and StrongBad, I think I remember once there was a question that totally exploded. It was clear quite quickly that it needed to be protected but the moderators said they couldn't yet because it was too soon.
@aparente001 and StrongBad, a day old for normal high-rep users is not enough. From the faq, there should also be "at least one answer by a new user". Preemptive protection is therefore not applicable by 15k+ users. In fact, in the last months, I'd have liked to protect a few questions, which were then protected by a mod within a few hours, but I couldn't.
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2051 | Need "diversity" tag
I was recently advised by a friendly moderator that when I want to create a tag, I should not just go ahead and create it. Rather, I should bring it up at Meta.
However, there was a question about a "diversity" tag already, and there someone said, Just create it on the fly when the need arises. Which is what I did, since I think this one is a slam dunk. More and more universities are working hard to recruit if not diverse faculty members, at least culturally competent candidates.
This seems like a useful tag. It isn't already covered well by any existing tags (there is just a little bit of overlap with gender), and it can be applied to some existing questions on this site. For example:
Role of positions' geographical diversity in (US) academic career perspectives
What do admission committees look for in a diversity essay?
How to foster gender diversity as an organizer
What should go in a diversity statement if I believe I have had no relevant experiences?
Why are some research groups not so ethnically diverse?
I have created the following tag wiki excerpt for this tag, to clarify when it should be applied:
On the diversity of academic disciplines, institutions, or events, including ethnic, gender, socioeconomic, geographical, or other kinds of diversity. Includes questions about diversity statements, increasing diversity of participants in an event, lack of diversity, and others.
Could you add something about disability, please?
@aparente001 You can edit a tag wiki excerpt (or rather, suggest an edit), just like you can edit any other content on this site. Click on the tag and then click on "improve tag info."
The tag excerpt seems very obscure to me. "diversity of academic disciplines" to me means "people working on different topics", which is probably not what you mean here. Also, you do not really give a definition of diversity, but you just keep repeating that word many times (five times in three rows).
I have suggested a new excerpt for [tag:diversity]; it is currently in the peer review queue. I hope it is accurate, since diversity is mostly an US concept, and I am not an expert in these issues myself. Feel free to suggest other changes or improvements.
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3720 | Need help focusing question
This question has four close votes. Back when it had one close vote, I attempted to explain why it was not a duplicate of a similar question. I'd like to ask for some help editing it so it's clearer why it should remain open.
To start with, in my opinion, much of the question is irrelevant backstory. It might be cleaner to strip that out when thinking about the question. That said, as I will discuss below, I think it is a pretty clear duplicate, so it might be better to use the backstory to highlight why it is a new question.
In your question you ask
How hard would it be to apply to switch over to a math department (either in the same university, or a different one), assuming I had taken sufficient math courses, and done very well in them?
The duplicate question asks
For example, suppose someone has enrolled in a computer science phd program. Can he switch over to math(or physics) phd program in the same school later?
I find it hard to see how your question is not a duplicate. You argument that your question is unique seems to be that you would like to see a specific focus on the math/physics interface. I think this is covered in an answer to the duplicate
Other factors that can mitigate or complicate this process: if there's a standard procedure for doing this, if the two departments historically are comfortable with movement back and forth, if the departments are in the same college/school within the university, and so on.
In my opinion, there is nothing special about the math/physics interface. Math and Physics departments sometimes get along and sometimes do not get along. At that level, the answer is really going to depend on the actual departments.
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4135 | Here's an opportunity to think constructively about how to support diversity at SE
There was a recent SE blog post about promoting diversity and niceness at SE, and an associated SE Meta question.
Food for thought for us at Academia SE!
Could someone provide some recent stats regarding gender distribution of Academia SE participants? Academia has been male dominated for a long time (in some fields more than others; and although women are becoming more and more present as time goes on), and it's my impression that that imbalance may carry over to our participation levels at Academia SE. What do the stats say? I realize there are lots of participants who have not indicated their gender. But it would be interesting to see what is known about gender distribution here.
The blog post contains a brief survey questionnaire. I hope Academia SE participants will take part.
tl;dr- This post's a data dump for:
demographic data and other diversity facts;
links to SE content about diversity.
This post is a community wiki, so please feel free to contribute edits!
Demographic info, informal polls
Several SE sites have performed informal polls, though it should be understood that informal polls like these tend to suffer from strong sampling biases.
SE.Academia poll and corresponding discussion.
SE.TeX poll and corresponding discussion.
SE.ReverseEngineering, no corresponding discussion.
SE.Mathematica, no corresponding discussion.
Demographic info, for StackOverflow
Most SE sites don't collect demographic info, but the big exception is the annual developer survey for StackOverflow:
2015 developer survey;
2016 developer survey;
2017 developer survey;
2018 developer survey;
2019 developer survey.
Figures below are from the 2018 developer survey.
Geographic location
Gender:
Male: 92.9%;
Female: 6.9%;
Non-binary, genderqueer, or gender non-conforming: 0.9%.
Race/ethnicity:
White or of European descent: 74.2%
South Asian: 11.5%
Hispanic or Latino/Latina: 6.7%
East Asian: 5.1%
Middle Eastern: 4.1%
Black or of African descent: 2.8%
Native American, Pacific Islander, or Indigenous Australian: 0.8%
Sexual orientation:
Straight or heterosexual: 93.2%
Bisexual or Queer: 4.3%
Gay or Lesbian: 2.4%
Asexual: 1.9%
Demographic info, by field in American academia
Bachelor's degrees in the US, though probably reasonably reflective of graduate degree distributions as well as the student body academics at universities see everyday:
Key observations:
Computer Science and Engineering are both heavily male-dominated.
Health Professions, Public Administration, Education, and Psychology are heavily female-dominated.
StackExchange posts on diversity issues
Q&A about general diversity issues:
From SE.Academia:
"What is the purpose of women-only meetings, panels, conferences, etc. in academia?"
"Why are women even less represented in engineering than in other STEM?"
"What is being done to make the academic environment more women friendly?"
From SE.ComputerScienceEducators:
"Why did the percentage of CS bachelor's degrees going to women peak in 1984?"
"Why did interest in CS majors plummet in the United States after the mid-80s?"
From SE.Skeptics:
"Do biological males who were castrated at birth and raised as females often behave like stereotypical men?"
Q&A about StackExchange-specific diversity issues:
Related to the recent blog post, "Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming. It’s Time for That to Change." (2018-04-26):
This question.
"What examples are there for Not Being Very Welcoming?", StackOverflow.Meta
"Is Stack Overflow really racist/sexist?", StackOverflow.Meta
"Does Stack Exchange really want to conflate newbies with women/people of color?", StackOverflow.Meta
"Is the Implicit Association Test effective at determining an individual's biases?", SE.Skeptics
General discussion unrelated to the recent blog:
"Gendered pronoun usage", SE.Academia.Meta
"How do we feel about gender specific terms?", SE.Academia.Meta
Specific cases of reported issues:
"Apologies and parting notes", SE.InterpersonalSkills.Meta
I think a particularly valuable part of this question is the encouragement for everyone on Academia SE to take part in the SE survey, which allows a space for some short comments, as well as an opportunity to volunteer for follow-up research. The more that active users engage with that, the better a picture we'll get of what's working and what opportunities there are for change.
The more that this is qualitative research, rather than just counting people up in categories, the more useful I think this effort will be. That sort of user experience work can surface complex issues and potential solutions. On the other hand, it's hard to tell what benchmark Academia SE demographics should be compared to.
For instance, it's a worldwide site, so the meaning of certain race/ethnicity categories is hard to interpret.
People of South Asian and East Asian descent are 16.5% of the SE developers (according to Nat's great answer), but 35% of all people in the world live in China and India.
Should it be benchmarked against the world's English-speaking population? Maybe not, since most academics around the world are incentivized to work in English.
More deeply, asking about race/ethnicity is not based on some idea that all people who are white or of European descent are interchangeable or share a deep set of characteristics. Rather, the category provides useful information in the context of a given country; a particular race/ethnicity means they are likely to have been treated in a certain way or that we are more likely to be able to predict other correlated traits.
So far in the academic literature, I haven't seen treatment of how to ask meaningful world-wide questions about race/ethnicity, other than tailoring the questions to different countries/cultures to capture the distinctions that matter in that society. (I am very aware that many people find the idea of "race" itself offensive, particularly Europeans.)
SE users are self-selecting in a lot of ways.
I speculate that Academia SE users are more likely to be early career rather than late career academics, which might make the pool more demographically diverse. (Not sure the extent to which undergraduates and grad students are involved.)
Because SO and SE are built on programming questions, people who do programming and computational work are more likely to discover and sign up on Academia SE. I believe that even within academic disciplines in the U.S., more quantitative and computational work tends to be done by men. (Definitely my own experience; I believe I've seen documentation of this, and would edit in a reference if anyone has one off-hand.)
Are there elements of SE culture that are further causing self-selection? In bad ways?
A lot of measurements seem like their meaning should be self-evident, but that's rarely the case. It's also very easy for people to list statistics and for others to infer blame from those statements. Further, when people know stats but aren't used to social science or stats about people, it's easy to come up with calculations that are technically correct but misleading or misinterpreted. It may be most productive if we can agree on some basic descriptive facts and withhold normative judgment from those numbers alone.
When I saw this question, I became really worried it would explode into the conflict we've seen on other parts of the site in response to this issue. My initial thoughts were that the most productive way forward might be to not press the issue but to keep doing useful things, like Atlanta's rebranding itself as "The city too busy to hate."
I don't think avoiding the real problems people experience is the right thing to do, but in this case I think that those problems are better explored by people discussing their experiences, rather than reading into demographic numbers.
Edit: I took a look at the questions in the poll Massimo Ortolano commented about, and those seem like they may be helpful for Academia SE to understand its users.
Edit: Why am I hesitant about this conversation? Because it's being addressed in different ways across SE/SO. This answer on SE Meta covers a lot of it. Then there are various ones (responses to the blog post and others on the topic) that demonstrate how volatile these discussions can be:
SE Meta 1, SE Meta 2, SE Meta 3, Interpersonal Skills (IPS) Meta 1, IPS Meta 2, IPS Meta 3, SO Meta 1, SO Meta 2, SO Meta 3, SO Meta 4, SO Meta 5, SO Meta 6, SO Meta 7
Thanks for your thoughtful post. // "I am very aware that many people find the idea of "race" itself offensive, particularly Europeans" -- what's that about? If you don't want to take the time to explain that, could you suggest something to read (something not too long) -- I didn't know about this. Is this idea most commonly found among white Europeans, or is it ascribed to by a representative slice of the population in certain European countries? // "I became really worried it would explode into the conflict we've seen on other parts of the site in response to this issue." I didn't know...
... about that. If my question creates a mess at Academia SE, I apologize, that wasn't my intention. I found out about the blog post by accident, with a delay, and I thought that others might not be aware of it. But could you clarify, when you say "other parts of the site" -- do you mean other stacks? I didn't know about that either.
"I speculate that Academia SE users are more likely to be early career rather than late career academics": oh, well, there are a few old timers around too ;-)
@aparente001 I'm having trouble finding a good source about European hesitation to use the term "race," but this Wikipedia entry may help clarify; I am guessing that the norms are probably rooted in the aftermath of the Holocaust for Europe, vs. the aftermath of slavery for the U.S. Years ago I reviewed the comments on a demographic survey given by a large international website, with many people expressing the sentiment, "I am European and humans are all one race. It is heinous to imply otherwise."
@aparente001 and cactus_pardner: Some twenty years ago I was on my second trip to the US and one day I visited an Italian friend who was going to move in the US. He had to apply for the SSN and I went with him to the office to help with the application. The application form had a "race" field. We were both shocked and our reaction was: "Why on earth do they want to know your race?!" Write "human", I said. We eventually asked at the desk how to fill that field... So, yes, at least in my ears, the need to specify or speak about a race evokes disturbing ideas.
It’s not possible to report gender data, because it’s not something that Stack Exchange asks for or collects.
Maybe we can revive this old poll with a 2018 version: https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/467/20058
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4026 | Election questions
I wanted to do some copy-editing of https://academia.stackexchange.com/election but there is no "edit" button. How was the text generated? How may I contribute with some minimal copy editing?
We already have four moderators. Did Academia grow? Did it become a more boisterous community? Did some of our moderators' availability change? In other words, what triggered this election? (I already read https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/99515/287826.)
It looks like it is editable by mods. If there are edits you want, I suggest starting a new question with one clearly explained edit per answer. After a brief period for others to chime in and/or mods to reach a consensus, we can make the edits.
The election was triggered by us in a private chat room when I asked do we want another mod, to which the rest responded, probably wouldn't hurt. We then asked the SE team and they said sure. This was not the first time we asked ourselves about our moderating load, but it was the first time we all thought it was reasonable to bring someone else in. In answer to the other questions: Yes we have grown. There is a little more mod work. I wouldn't say there is a huge change in our availability, but less spare capacity to cover when other mods are busy.
I think the key thing is the current mods are all still very committed to our community and not going anywhere. We just wanted another hand to help out.
The site continues to grow over time. There is definitely more work than we had a year ago.
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4082 | Please help edit this question so it can be reopened
This question is about getting educational disability accommodations in the UK.
Come on, people. This is an area Academia SE needs to get stronger in. We have pretty good coverage about Section 504 in the US. This question is giving us an opportunity to start expanding our collection of know-how about how this is handled in other countries.
Please help edit the question so it can be reopened.
(Inexplicably, the reopen number is at zero, even though I voted to reopen.)
Your reopen vote "aged away" because it got three "Leave Closed" votes in the review queue and didn't get any more reopen votes for 4 days. See the help center.
@ff524 - Ah, thanks for explaining.
It has been reopened.
@NateEldredge - Yes. I'm not sure what to do here. I hesitated to accept the existing answer because it argued for non-mod reopening (which didn't work, and so I raised a flag on the question after the OP made some more helpful edits).
I've edited the question. I believe the problems were twofold: (1) the question was university-specific, and (2) too much was made of the housing situation. There's not much I can do about problem (1), but I did what I could about (2).
However, I think that even though a specific university is mentioned, other universities probably have special arrangements that are similar.
As a diamond mod, I can't cast a vote to reopen, since it will work unilaterally. However, I agree with the view we need to do more, and would support its reopening.
With all respect, aeismail, I think the moderators should go ahead and reopen the question.
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4103 | Please support development of new "Education" site
We get so many questions that are about education but that are off topic.... Well, I noticed that Site 51 has a proposed "Education" site. If this gets off the ground, we'll finally have someplace to send people with many of those off-topic questions!
To get started, the proposal needs "followers."
Check it out!
http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/117355/education
"We get so many questions that are about education but that are off topic.... " I don't know about those. Could you give some examples?
The Education proposal has been deleted due to inactivity at least twice (e.g., this was an earlier Education proposal). The Primary and Secondary Education proposal has been closed due to inactivity and will eventually be deleted. The only educationally relevant proposal that I see is Home Schooling which is an obvious edge case.
There have been a number of these education type proposals in the past and we have discussed these. See for example:
Just noticed a proposed "Education" .SE site
and
Should we create a site to help teachers with classroom technology?
Thanks for the two links at the end of your post. I had found the first; it's from five years ago. I hadn't found the second (which is interesting but lacking in follow-up). // Suddenly, the Site51 proposal is gone. Strange coincidence.
@aparente001 I don't know what you mean by lacking in follow-up. There was a proposal, some of us followed it. It failed like all the others before it.
Please don't take my comment about lack of follow-up personally. I saw that there was a proposal discussed at https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1950/should-we-create-a-site-to-help-teachers-with-classroom-technology. It's clear that it died at some point, since it's no longer listed at Area51. I don't know how close it got or how much support accumulated, since there were unfortunately no updates posted at https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1950/should-we-create-a-site-to-help-teachers-with-classroom-technology.
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3951 | How can a question about TA workloads be asked?
In a recent question, an OP asked
Do I have to take courses before I can start doing research despite having a master and highly relevant skills for the topic in question?
I commented
Generally speaking German students embarking on a PhD are better prepared than many of their US counterparts. So, even if most US students concentrate on coursework and exam preparation during the first two to three years of the PhD, postponing diving into research, that doesn't mean that you have to do things that way. If the coursework and exam preparation don't take up all your time (on top of possible teaching assistantship duties, typically 20 hours per week), and you get connected early on with an advisor who won't hold you back, there's no reason why you couldn't dive right into research from the start.
In the ensuing discussion someone wrote
For schools that offer TAships, the TA load varies enormously by school and discipline, but 20 hours per week is at the high end.
and someone else added
Although students often unofficially work more than 20 hours per week, most universities set an official upper limit of 20 hours per week, and that's also the limit imposed by visas for foreign students.
So now I'm curious whether 20 hours per week is actually at the high end as the commenter claimed, and what the actual average is. But someone tried to ask about this not too long ago and the question was closed because it was a polling question.
I need some help formulating an acceptable question. Here's a starting point:
Reference request: I'd like to find a study that sought to find the average number of hours worked per week by grad student teaching assistants in the US.
Your suggested question seems fine to me. But I would go further and ask for not just an average, but any further data or statistics on hours worked. For instance: what fraction worked 10-15 hours? 15-20? 20-25? Information on week-to-week variance could also be useful.
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4617 | In support of Academia's moderator on hiatus, Eykanal
I encourage everyone at Academia to take a look at the proposed Day of Silence which some frustrated StackExchange participants will be observing for 24 hours, starting tonight at midnight (Eastern Standard time). You may want to join this action (inaction) as a way of supporting Eykanal and other moderators who are similarly taking a break from moderating.
For additional information about what's going on, please see Summing up the main issues (The Story So Far).
Oops, I missed this post, and ended up not knowing about the day of silence until it had already passed.
@FedericoPoloni - same here! I was offline most of last week, and I'm disappointed to see that things are unchanged pretty much (from what I can tell on meta.SE)
I've read several posts about this matter and I just cannot tell why anyone would care about it. I can understand that pronouns are important to people, but this doesn't even seem to be about pronouns... It seems like people are loosing sight of the big picture of Stack Exchange, which is that Stack Exchange is just a website.
@FedericoPoloni - Each Friday can be a silent expression of unhappiness with the state of affairs until things get unstuck. Please note that I was at a conference and am just starting to get caught up reading what's been happening this week.
@AnonymousPhysicist - There are quite a few volunteer moderators who do care about what happened.
@AnonymousPhysicist It's not about pronouns: it's about about the firing of a moderator and the way that happened and was subsequently mishandled.
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5417 | 2023: a year in moderation
It’s that time of the year again! As we wave goodbye to last year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.
As most of you here might be aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network are moderated somewhat differently to other sites on the web:
We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in that we amortize the overall moderation cost of the system across thousands of teeny-tiny slices of effort contributed by regular, everyday users.
-- A Theory of Moderation
That doesn't eliminate the need for having moderators altogether, but it does mean that the bulk of moderation work is carried out by regular folks — folks like you. Every bit of time and effort y'all contribute to the site gives you access to more privileges you can use to help in this effort, all of which produce a cumulative effect that makes a big difference in ensuring Stack Exchange sites remain a valuable source of high-quality content on the web.
So as we say goodbye to 2023 (and January 2024… ahem) and move into 2024, let us look back at what we accomplished as a community... by looking at some exciting stats. Below is a breakdown of moderation actions performed on Academia over the past 12 months:
Action
Moderators
Community User¹
Community²
All comments on a post moved to chat
124
0
0
Answer flags handled
903
2,075
0
Answers flagged
120
263
2,586
Bounties canceled
3
0
0
Comment flags handled
1,009
503
16
Comments deleted⁸
4,356
1,091
2,196
Comments flagged
79
15
1,424
Comments undeleted
136
0
0
Escalations to the Community Manager team
7
0
0
Posts bumped
0
321
0
Posts deleted⁷
329
2,233
663
Posts locked
3
1,191
0
Posts undeleted
34
0
70
Posts unlocked
2
1
0
Question flags handled⁶
826
4,714
45
Questions closed
450
772
12
Questions flagged⁶
89
178
5,333
Questions merged
0
0
0
Questions migrated
8
1
0
Questions protected
24
42
8
Questions reopened
17
14
0
Questions unprotected
0
0
14
Revisions redacted
6
0
0
Tag highlight language set
0
0
0
Tag synonyms created
4
0
0
Tag synonyms proposed
3
0
0
Tags merged
3
0
0
Tasks reviewed⁵: "Close votes" queue
1
83
3,426
Tasks reviewed⁵: "First answers" queue
0
74
1,070
Tasks reviewed⁵: "First questions" queue
0
139
1,870
Tasks reviewed⁵: "Late answers" queue
0
10
176
Tasks reviewed⁵: "Low quality posts" queue
4
14
581
Tasks reviewed⁵: "Reopen votes" queue
3
9
338
Tasks reviewed⁵: "Suggested edits" queue
40
168
1,688
Tasks reviewed⁵: "Triage" queue
0
0
0
User banned from review
0
0
0
User review-bans lifted early
0
0
0
User suspensions lifted early
2
0
0
Users contacted
60
0
0
Users deleted
3
0
0
Users destroyed⁴
361
0
0
Users suspended³
37
206
0
Footnotes
¹ This refers to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.
² This refers to the membership of Academia without diamonds next to their names.
³ The system will suspend users under three circumstances: when a user is recreated after being previously suspended, when a user is recreated after being destroyed for spam or abuse, and when a network-wide suspension is in effect on an account.
⁴ A "destroyed" user is deleted along with all that they had posted: questions, answers, comments. Generally used as an expedient way of getting rid of spam.
⁵ This counts every review that was submitted (not skipped) - so the 2 suggested edits reviews needed to approve an edit would count as 2, the goal being to indicate the frequency of moderation actions. This also applies to flags, etc.
⁶ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes). The community² can handle these flags by at least one person voting to close a question that has a close flag.
⁷ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.
⁸ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).
Further reading:
Wanna see how these numbers have changed over time? We posted a similar report here last year: 2022: a year in moderation
You can also check out this report on other sites
Or peruse detailed information on the number of questions closed and reopened across all sites
Wishing everyone a happy 2024! ^_^
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4668 | Community Promotion Ads — 2020
2020 has come! But… oops, where did the time go? It’s already March! Belated as it is, it’s time for a refresh of Community Promotion Ads!
What are Community Promotion Ads?
Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.
Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?
This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:
academic websites and resources
interesting campus story blogs
cool events or conferences
anything else your community would genuinely be interested in
The goal is for future visitors to find out about the stuff your community deems important. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are relevant to your own community's interests, both for those already in the community and those yet to join.
Why do we reset the ads every year?
Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. We reset the ads once a year, every December.
The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a year of exposure.
How does it work?
The answers you post to this question must conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored.
All answers should be in the exact form of:
[![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]
[1]: http://image-url
[2]: http://clickthrough-url
Please do not add anything else to the body of the post. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.
The question must always be tagged with the magic community-ads tag. In addition to enabling the functionality of the advertisements, this tag also pre-fills the answer form with the above required form.
Image requirements
The image that you create must be 300 x 250 pixels, or double that if high DPI.
Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)
Must be GIF or PNG
No animated GIFs
Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB
If the background of the image is white or partially white, there must be a 1px border (2px if high DPI) surrounding it.
Score Threshold
There is a minimum score threshold an answer must meet (currently 6) before it will be shown on the main site.
You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats here.
Is it an option to not use ads?
It is: simply don't use this thread at all :)
So, did we win and no ads now?
We reset the ads once a year, every December. Is this statement still accurate for this year, or did you leave it in by mistake from last year's post?
It is supposed to be accurate, @FedericoPoloni — I got delayed this time.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.629186 | 2020-03-05T11:24:41 | {
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5091 | 2021: a year in moderation
As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.
As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network are moderated somewhat differently to other sites on the web:
We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in that we amortize the overall moderation cost of the system across thousands of teeny-tiny slices of effort contributed by regular, everyday users.
-- A Theory of Moderation
That doesn't eliminate the need for having moderators altogether, but it does mean that the bulk of moderation work is carried out by regular folks. Every bit of time and effort y'all contribute to the site gives you access to more privileges you can use to help in this effort, all of which produce a cumulative effect that makes a big difference.
So as we say goodbye to 2021, let us look back at what we accomplished as a community... by looking at some exciting stats. Below is a breakdown of moderation actions performed on Academia over the past 12 months:
Action
Moderators
Community¹
Users suspended²
23
63
Users destroyed³
227
0
Users deleted
20
0
Users contacted
40
0
Tasks reviewed⁴: Suggested Edit queue
40
1,909
Tasks reviewed⁴: Reopen Vote queue
6
725
Tasks reviewed⁴: Low Quality Posts queue
4
705
Tasks reviewed⁴: Late Answer queue
0
322
Tasks reviewed⁴: First questions queue
1
761
Tasks reviewed⁴: First Post queue
2
2,354
Tasks reviewed⁴: First answers queue
0
435
Tasks reviewed⁴: Close Votes queue
29
5,988
Tags merged
11
0
Tag synonyms proposed
5
3
Tag synonyms created
8
0
Revisions redacted
5
0
Questions unprotected
0
41
Questions reopened
19
25
Questions protected
82
59
Questions migrated
14
0
Questions merged
3
0
Questions flagged⁵
71
1,573
Questions closed
467
1,512
Question flags handled⁵
746
883
Posts unlocked
7
16
Posts undeleted
17
74
Posts locked
24
356
Posts deleted⁶
495
2,518
Posts bumped
0
313
Escalations to the Community Manager team
14
0
Comments undeleted
256
0
Comments flagged
93
1,215
Comments deleted⁷
6,991
2,819
Comment flags handled
1,145
164
Answers flagged
178
1,855
Answer flags handled
1,481
552
All comments on a post moved to chat
185
0
Footnotes
¹ "Community" here refers both to the membership of Academia without diamonds next to their names, and to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.
² The system will suspend users under three circumstances: when a user is recreated after being previously suspended, when a user is recreated after being destroyed for spam or abuse, and when a network-wide suspension is in effect on an account.
³ A "destroyed" user is deleted along with all that they had posted: questions, answers, comments. Generally used as an expedient way of getting rid of spam.
⁴ This counts every review that was submitted (not skipped) - so the 2 suggested edits reviews needed to approve an edit would count as 2, the goal being to indicate the frequency of moderation actions. This also applies to flags, etc.
⁵ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes).
⁶ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.
⁷ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).
Further reading:
Wanna see how these numbers have changed over time? We posted a similar report here last year: 2020: a year in moderation
You can also check out this report on other sites
Or peruse detailed information on the number of questions closed and reopened across all sites
Wishing everyone a happy 2022! ^_^
Thanks to the site mods for a hard job well done.
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4407 | Community Promotion Ads — 2019
2019 is here! And with the new year, as usual, comes a new iteration of Community Promotion Ads! Let’s refresh these for the coming year :)
What are Community Promotion Ads?
Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.
Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?
This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:
the site's twitter account
academic websites and resources
interesting campus story blogs
cool events or conferences
anything else your community would genuinely be interested in
The goal is for future visitors to find out about the stuff your community deems important. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are relevant to your own community's interests, both for those already in the community and those yet to join.
Why do we reset the ads every year?
Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. We reset the ads once a year, every December.
The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a year of exposure.
How does it work?
The answers you post to this question must conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored.
All answers should be in the exact form of:
[![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]
[1]: http://image-url
[2]: http://clickthrough-url
Please do not add anything else to the body of the post. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.
The question must always be tagged with the magic community-ads tag. In addition to enabling the functionality of the advertisements, this tag also pre-fills the answer form with the above required form.
Image requirements
The image that you create must be 300 x 250 pixels, or double that if high DPI.
Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)
Must be GIF or PNG
No animated GIFs
Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB
If the background of the image is white or partially white, there must be a 1px border (2px if high DPI) surrounding it.
Score Threshold
There is a minimum score threshold an answer must meet (currently 6) before it will be shown on the main site.
You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats here.
Please upvote this comment if you wish that no community ads appear on academia.se pages.
Please, no ads!!!
This is a demonstration post to indicate how this should look when an ad is posted. It also doubles as your twitter ad, but it's up to you if you wish to promote it by voting
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.629606 | 2019-01-23T12:28:45 | {
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1810 | Not enough reputation to answer a closed question, but I believe I have a viable answer
A question about interpersonal interactions was closed due to low-quality answers. I do not have the required 10 reputation to answer.
The moderator did not state why the answers were low-quality. So I read all of the answers and the problem I detected is that the answers were based on non-verified assumptions.
If true, then I have an answer that works.
As a goodwill gesture, is there a way to email my answer to the person who asked the question? Their profile does not have any contact information.
You might have some misunderstanding about closed questions. No one can answer a closed question until it's re-opened. It has nothing to do with reputation.
Can you provide a link to the question?
http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/47646/how-to-deal-with-people-judging-your-overproductiveness/47775#47775
You seem to be confusing 'closed' with 'protected' questions - it would be good for the long-term usefulness of this thread if you edited the question title to reflect this. If that is the case, consider the possibility that there are deleted answers which are low quality and which you cannot see.
I am going to guess here. There is a different between closed/on hold and protected questions. Questions do not get closed because of "low quality answers",but we do protect them. The reason you do not see the low quality answers, is that they get deleted by high rep users and moderators.
The best way to be able to post an answer on a protected question, is to earn the required reputation by asking/answering other questions on the site.
You are right, I misunderstood. I reviewed the question and thread again, and it is protected and not closed.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.629813 | 2015-06-27T00:06:33 | {
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3744 | Modifying "What is PhD Level research?" to be less broad
Recently I asked the question What is PhD Level research? and it was closed as too broad.
I was worried about the broadness of the question and that's why I tried to limit the question to the "US context for Engineering/STEM fields".
However, it was still seen as too broad. Is this related to me listing my impression of the "standard" PhD process?
Before I posted I read the Meta post Is “What background do I need to do research in specific field X?” on-topic at Academia.SE? and was under the impression that, my question would be of a similar scope.
How can I do to modify the question to fit well in Academia?
The question at the end of that post seems like a duplicate of When you make a thesis in a field of physics and math is it supposed to be revolutionary and groundbreaking?. The question in the title of the post is, indeed, too broad to answer here.
The question starts very broadly with a overview of the entire PhD process from application to graduation. The question really seems to be about the meaning of
Independent research on an original topic
This still too broad and could be subdivided into what is independent research and *what is an original topic. Both of those are still pretty broad and really need refinement. Better questions might be about the process by which academics judge if a topic is original or if the research has been carried out independently. Of course, this might not be what you are after.
The question then goes on to ask about incremental improvements in methodology and groundbreaking research. This seems to me to be totally unrelated to the PhD process or evaluating if a topic is original.
In order to get good answers, we need focused questions. My guess is your issue right now is you are thinking too far ahead. If you focus the question on the thing you are trying to understand, that will help a lot.
Thanks for your feedback, I think your right and the question I am really after seems to be, "what is an original topic in the context of a Ph.D. thesis?" though that seems very open ended. Do you believe that narrowing that to STEM fields is narrow enough? or should it be refined further, e.g. to a specific field like CS or EE?
@MarkOmo it is not the lack of a field that makes it broad in my mind. Are you asking about how to develop an idea, evaluate an idea, argue that an idea is original. You need to understand what you want to know and why you want to know it.
Would "How do I tell if my research idea is original enough to be a Ph.D. topic?" be too broad? I think that could be rephrased as "what is a good Ph.D. topic?" and unsurprisingly There is already a question about that.. Thanks, for your help!
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.629990 | 2017-06-12T22:55:02 | {
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4801 | Policy suggestion: No personal advice
After getting enough of these, I am thinking maybe having a blanket policy such as the following would help:
We do not offer personal advice. Questions asking what to do in your own situation will be closed. Questions about how specific courses of action will be responded to are acceptable only if they are written about a generic person (not you personally) and the situation is sufficiently common that general answers can be made.
We already have a close reason for individual factors. So at some level it is policy already.
What problem do you expect to solve with this?
There is already a close reason which applies to the majority of those questions:
Strongly depends on individual factors
The answer to this question strongly depends on individual factors such as some person’s preferences, some institution’s policies, the exact contents of some work or the asker’s personal values. Answers to this question would be far too speculative, broad, or would primarily consist of: “It depends on X.” See this FAQ for details. Note that questions on the rules of institutions that operate at national or international level are permitted.
If you feel there's a certain type of questions which is not sufficiently covered by this close reason, you might want to suggest another wording for it, because to me (admittedly, a lurker here and no expert) it seems to apply.
I am seeking a more restrictive policy than this. In particular, I think it is beneficial to require people writing questions to write them in the third person.
@AlexanderWoo: What would be the benefit of that? As far as I can see, it’s just making people jump through hoops and making questions and answers harder to read.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.630229 | 2020-10-01T14:56:51 | {
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1854 | STEM Graduate School Accepted/Denied
I was hoping we could start a gradcafe style post for STEM Graduate Applications including:
School (or Description):
GRE: Q/V/W
GPA:
Major GPA:
Accepted/Denied:
Extracurriculars/Research:
I disagree with this because it isn't a question. This site is for questions and answers. Let's leave things like this for forums.
I disagree with this, because you'd need separate posts for each discipline, and the answers won't "curate" well—what suffices for acceptance one year may result in denial the next.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.630403 | 2015-07-21T16:20:21 | {
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3950 | Could we use an equal-contribution tag?
I have found 61 questions searching for "equal contribution". Since, I don't have the required reputation, maybe someone else wants to add this tag.
Since we already have "authorship" as a tag, it makes sense to make "equal-authors" a synonym for authorship ("co-authors" is also a synonym). I've entered this into the tag "dictionary."
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.630472 | 2018-01-17T15:00:29 | {
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4841 | Can I ask questions regarding products related to academia?
I am in search of a height adjustable hands free book holder in my country and searched a lot.
My search is unsuccessful. I can get height adjustable orchestral stands, height adjustable laptop stands, but not book/document/copy holders.
Since there is no stack website for product recommendations, I want to know whether this site is a welcoming one to get guidelines related to the product.
Questions about product recommendations are generally considered off-topic, and typically closed as shopping questions. The only exception is certain types of software recommendations.
Moreover, the product you want to ask about is only very loosely related to the academic work.
Note also that many products get out of market very quickly, substituted by newer models. That's why Stack Exchange sites are not well suited for product recommendations.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.630528 | 2020-12-13T07:36:28 | {
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4950 | Does intention of a question matters while closing it?
Recently I asked a question on our main site: Proper salutation in email for requesting a resource.
Today, it has been closed as a duplicate to another question: How should I phrase an important question that I need to ask a professor?
One can observe that answer of latter also answers the former question.
But, the intention of the both questions are different. Former is asking only for salutation and the later is regarding phrasing an important question to professor.
If there is a question A asked with intention X, got answers that also contain answer for question B asked with intention Y.
Can the question B be closed as duplicate of A even-though the intentions X and Y differ?
I think a more appropriate duplicate target would have been How to address a professor in letter? In fact, maybe we should merge the posts so that the answers to the new question (a few of which are quite good) are transferred to the old one.
To the title question, no, two questions are not necessarily duplicates just because an answer to one question can answer the other.
In this particular case, the relevant context is that we get a lot of questions that are variations on "How do I tell a professor that I want to wibble? Or that I don't want to wibble anymore?" We frequently close such questions as a duplicate of How should I phrase an important question that I need to ask a professor?, just so that we don't have to write a million variations of "tell them what you want clearly and politely." But your question does not really fall into this category; you are asking about the honorific, which I think is a bit different.
And, I have now updated this duplicate target to the more accurate one.
I disagree. If the questions should have the same answer, they are duplicates. Otherwise we end up with lots of copies of the same answer.
"There are generally no magic words or special formulas for talking to professors." from https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/90726/13240 is really the best answer to https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/12346/13240.
The question should remain closed because it strongly depends on individual circumstances. Different professors prefer different salutations.
It has been closed as a duplicate because that is more helpful than closing it for depending on individual circumstances.
There are cultural norms that inform the choice of salutation, (even) when we don't know what salutation the other person prefers. So it's possible to give generally applicable advice.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.630628 | 2021-06-26T01:40:43 | {
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3750 | Does Academia S.E. have an equivalent of SO's "boat programming" questions?
I'm curious about questions such as this one, which asks about the author of a particular academia-related quote:
Quote about recruiting academics – looking for original
I'm of the opinion that this is what StackOverflow would call a boat programming question. As they put it on the SO Meta site:
The fundamental rule is you can't just stick "for programmers" on a question to make it programming related.
My rationale for calling the above question a "boat programming" question is that it isn't about the meaning behind the quote, or the truthfulness of the quote. It's asking for the author of the quote.
Yes, I agree that the quote itself concerns academia. But that makes me question if asking for the author of any work (be it a book, poem, joke, etc.) related to Academia S.E. is on-topic. (Note: that could very well be considered a straw man argument, so please tell me if it is).
My question then is: what does Academia S.E. consider to be a "boat programming" question?
I still fail to see, what you consider boat academics about this. If you remove any notion resembling “for academics” from that question, it becomes completely meaningless, as you destroy the quote in question.
@Wrzlprmft: My issue with the question isn't the quote -- it's the question itself. If the question was, "what is meant by this quote?", I wouldn't have a problem. If the question was, "why are academics best left alone?", I wouldn't have a problem. But the question is, "who's the author of this quote?". If I started posting questions containing snippets of Feynman's lectures asking, "who's the author of these quotes?", would that be considered on-topic? It's about academia, the author is an academic -- but the question itself is utterly useless IMO.
that could very well be considered a straw man argument – Maybe, anyway that straw man is pretty sturdy, if you ask me: If a work is specific about academics (and not about academics of a specific kind) and you can ask a question about it (that is generally fit for SE), I would consider it on-topic. Of course, there are very few such works and most potential questions about them are too opinionated or too broad for SE, but that does not mean that the remaining few are off-topic.
If I started posting questions containing snippets of Feynman's lectures asking, "who's the author of these quotes?", would that be considered on-topic? – If that quote pertains to academia and makes sense without further context, yes. — the question itself is utterly useless – Why? It’s a known quote (at least I have heard it before) and knowing the source is relevant if you want to use that quote yourself.
My issue with the question isn't the quote -- it's the question itself. – Sure, but why label it boat academia? If you want to discuss that question using that label, please explain why this label should apply to this question.
@Wrzlprmft: I argue that this label applies for the same reason it applied on SO. Chiefly: just because a question concerns academia shouldn't necessarily mean it's on-topic. I guess this is largely a matter of opinion, and if such, so be it. I'm just interested in the community's opinion on this.
just because a question concerns academia shouldn't necessarily mean it's on-topic – That’s not the distinguishing feature of boat academia. A boat academia question would be one that is put into the context of academia without being about academia. Also, you can say that about literally every on-topic question on the site.
@Wrzlprmft: I think, based on your comments and on eykanal's description below, that I've misunderstood what a boat X question is, hence the whole problem. That's my bad!
Without citing things I'm just going to off-the-cuff say that, yes, we definitely do close "boat programming" questions here. We've closed a number of questions—some quite recently—for being not specific to academia but rather life/business/writing/social norms questions that apply anywhere.
That said, the specific question you mentioned was closed because it's a bad question, not because of boat programming. A very quick glance at the list of closed questions brings up two that are more along the boat programming lines:
Why interviewers sit at a distance from the candidate? – This applies to interviews anywhere, nothing specific to academia.
How to ask the committee about the schedule of the defense – This applies to scheduling meetings anywhere, nothing specific to academia.
Check the first link; there are a lot more out there.
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4010 | What should be done about this question predicated on the Rolling Stone rape article?
This question is predicated on the now-debunked "A Rape on Campus" Rolling Stone article.
As user Ben points out, this information isn't in the post.
Now that the reported rape at the University of Virginia has been thoroughly discredited and exposed as serious journalistic misconduct, I think it is worth adding a new answer to this question that reflects that updated information.
While his "answer" is certainly abrasive, it does merit consideration that the question should be changed to either reflect that the example didn't happen, or edited maybe to be about any other sexual assault that occurred in a frat:
From aeismail's suggestions:
Baylor
Yale
Wisconsin
Personally, I think changing the predicating assault is fine - or the OP Ben Crowell can weigh in.
The question, as is, asks the question: Given that a horrible gang rape happened in a fraternity event, what can and should the university do?
This question is reasonably independent of the actual university in question. Furthermore, even if no such events had happened, the similar hypothetical question would have the same answers, and would still be on topic.
The question is not part of an argument, and is not intended to be evidence for anything, and as such editing it to point to actual examples, with maybe a note at the end about the original question, is in my opinion unproblematic.
The current situation, where the question claims that there a happened a rape at a particular fraternity where such an event did not happen, is very bad: it makes a serious false accusation. At we should edit in a note saying that that the claim about the rape is false.
In fact, I went ahead and edited the question to include a note about the retraction and similar events. A false accusation should not stand uncorrected.
Academia.SE is not an advocacy group
This section mostly addresses a misconception by the user Ben. Academia.se is not a discussion group or an advocacy group. It is a site for asking concrete questions about academic life, and for providing answers to such questions. This is not a blog or a discussion forum.
The reason why this particular question contained misinformation for such a long time is because nobody who knew about the misinformation happened to read it and bothered doing anything to address the matter. It was a good thing for Ben to let the users know about the issue.
Thanks for editing, Tommi, but the point of making a meta post was for everyone to weigh in before anyone did anything - I haven't even seen a mod commnet yet.
@Azor-Ahai diamond moderators often chime in with our opinions because we are active members of the community, but ultimately, we are a community moderated site. Sometimes there are things that the community wants done that requires special privileges that only a diamond moderator has.
@StrongBad Sure. I just meant the only people involved in the convo up to this point are 3- and 4-digit rep users. I would expect input from higher rep users before anyone did anything, that's all. Not sure why you keep putting "diamond moderator" in italics.
@Azor-Ahai because I like to think of everyone as a moderator not just the few of us with a diamond next to our names.
@Azor-Ahai I figured that that noting the presence of false accusations is a priority here. I will not be bothered if another conclusion is drawn and the post edited to match, or the edit reverted.
Thanks to Azor-Ahai for making this meta-post. As the poster of the original criticism of the question, here is my two-cents on possible amendments/retraction:
In my view, it would be dishonest to alter or remove the initial claim in the post, or substitute it with another alleged incident of rape. The very fact that a false rape claim was used as the example is informative of the subject under discussion. (In particular, it undercuts the OP's claim of a "pervasive rape culture" and raises the issue of false rape claims.) Given that the question asks what can be done about fraternities, it is relevant that the example raised to justify the discussion is an example where the fraternity was falsely accused.
Replacing the incident in the post with another incident would be a classic example of cherry-picking and swapping-out of evidence. It would be highly intellectually dishonest. The question is predicated on the assumption that a rape accusation was correct, when it has subsequently been shown to be false. The OP cites this case as an instance of "entrenched rape culture", which is itself a highly controversial notion. By substituting the false rape claim for a true (or possibly true) rape claim, that would mean that the OP is able to put forward evidence, have it rebutted, and then change the evidence to ignore the original evidence.
So what should be done. In my view, the question should be edited with an update at the end, correcting the record. The initial claim could be edited with strikethrough so that the initial claim is visible, but the reader is alerted to the fact that it is now being retracted.
Again, this isn't a rape culture QA site, this is an academia site. I am not quite sure why you are so set on "shaming" everyone here by forcing the site to leave up an article that was later retracted. As to your second point, Ben C makes the argument rapes happen on fraternities, which are related to universities. A piece of evidence he used is now debunked. There is really no reason why he can't add more evidence to support his claim. Having one piece of evidence rebutted doesn't mean the whole idea of rape culture is thrown out forever.
Firstly, I didn't bring up rape culture, the OP did. Saying that there is a "pervasive rape culture" is a much stronger claim than "rapes happen". The fact that an alleged rape was cited, then discredited, is relevant evidence. The update to the post (that I have also contributed to and presently have no problem with) updated the reader with knowledge of the retraction, and also cites the new evidence that other readers suggested.
I am not sure why you think it matters who brought it up.
Are you serious? You just said to me (above), "this isn't a rape culture QA site". So I am telling you, that topic was not started by me, so I am not the proper person to direct that criticism to.
I am not criticizing the fact that you mentioned "rape culture." I'm suggesting that since this site isn't about rape culture it isn't as necessary to focus on the "undercutting" and "raising the issue of false rape claims" as it is to focus on the actual question, which is what the university can do to a frat where a crime was committed.
That is not the question. The actual question, which is there for all to read, gives a preliminary setting out of facts that include a false allegation of gang-rape, followed by a claim of "pervasive rape culture" in academia. The OP then asks what can be done to the fraternity to deal with this. In such a case, it is a perfectly legitimate answer to point out the falsity of the initial claim, and the implications of that.
We are going in circles here, so I'm going to drop this conversation, but I will point out to you that the retraction of a magazine article based on false allegation does not disprove the premise of the existence of a "pervasive rape culture" and I don't think repeated edits to a question on this site are the place to have that conversation.
Fine. It doesn't "disprove" it (and in any case, the onus of proof is on the person asserting rape culture), but it does constitute evidence against it.
@Azor-Ahai "this isn't a rape culture QA site, this is an academia site"...the two are not mutually disjoint categories.
I am at a little bit of a loss about what the question is about and how the originally cited incident and the other similar incidents relate. At the heart of the question, I think, is what can universities do to fraternities that do bad/awful things. But maybe the question is really about when the awful thing is rape. Then there is the part about a very minimal punishment (at least according to the OP). Did the other similar incidents also result in similar punishments? Does it matter?
Part of me thinks the question could avoid rape all together and essentially be be reduced to
Supposing for the sake of argument that they were willing to completely disassociate themselves from one frat, or from the frat system as a whole, would it do any good? I assume that the frats own their houses, and the schools can't actually shut them down.
but this would invalidate the answers which focus on the rape aspect.
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4790 | Is there any issue with this question?
Is there anything wrong with this question?
In particular, is there anything wrong in asking about an educated guess about the possible future impact factor of a new journal?
What niche is PRResearch supposed to fill that the other APS journals don’t already cover?
Please read the shopping-question FAQ and [edit] this meta question to be based on this. If you disagree with anything in that FAQ or fail to understand that FAQ, we can discuss this. But if you do not give us anything to work with, we can only close this meta question as a duplicate of the FAQ.
The problem is that future readers will learn nothing out of this except the direct answer. They will not learn sth. which applies to other journals, and thus, this would not give broadly applicable answers. Think conversely: If this question would be asked for every new journal, there would be a rather large number of questions only about that topic!
As an aside, https://journals.aps.org/prl/edannounce/PhysRevLett.102.060001 indicates that the editors at Physical Review know full well how to change their impact factor should they choose to do so. Of course, this makes predicting the IF a difficult thing...
The post in its original form contained the following question:
Moreover, PRResearch is rather new and does not have an impact factor yet. Do you expect the impact factor would be comparable to the PRA/B/C/D/E journals, or to PRL/PRX?
Such a question asks thus for an assessment of a journal, and can be thus considered a shopping question, but since it asks about our expectations on the future impact factor of a journal it can also be considered as opinion based. In both cases, it's not a question we can answer and should be closed as off-topic according to our current policies.
However, the post contains another question that can be answered and the edit from Wrzlprmft removed the unanswarable part, keeping and fixing the answerable one. In this way, the question can be salvaged and kept open.
So, you can essentially choose to have a closed question in its original form or an open question in the edited form.
I think it's very hard to try and make this not be a shopping question.
@AnonymousPhysicist: What exactly is this referring to? The question without the impact-factor aspect or the question for the impact factor.
It is not an assessment of the journal. It is not about good or bad or advantages/disadvantages. It is about an objective quantity, a number. I already rewrote the question once because Wrzlprmft censored it, so appreciate my effort.
@sintetico But would you agree that a question "What is the impact factor of journal X" would be problematic, since there are thousands of journals, and if journal X is allowed, all journals are allowed, and this site would be flooded in those questions - you could ask one for each journal?
@sintetico: The definition of shopping questions (as per the FAQ) explicitly includes ones with completely objective evaluation criteria. Such questions still have problems, which are explained in the FAQ. One of them is the one mentioned in the above comment namely that this site is not suited to be a database for this kind of information.
@user151413 Of course, asking for the IF of a journal is problematic, because one can answer this question just using google. But now we are talking about the future IF of a journal. This is different from "database questions". You are making a wrong judgement, and you are not willing to listen to my arguments. You are just ignoring my arguments.
@sintetico It's worse than a database question. It's a database question with opinions that will rapidly be out of date.
@AnonymousPhysicist Please articulate your thoughts. It is clearly not a database question because the answer is not contained in any database in the world!
@sintetico The existence or nonexistence of the database is irrelevant; we won't be creating it for you. It's an inappropriate question because there are a very large number of journals about which you could ask it; for each question the answer would be different "individual circumstances". It is also off topic for being "opinion-based." Further, it's a poorly disguised request for an assessment, which is off-topic as "shopping." Don't expect me to debate the rules with you.
@sintetico One problem with these questions is simply that there are lots of new journals. So you could flood the site with questions like that - which, moreover, would be out of date very soon, as soon as there is actual data available. This is simply not the idea behind SE sites (you don't have to think this is good, I'm not saying I do, but that's how it is).
First of all, a little foreword. I do not think that people who closed my answer have secret agendas, or malicious intentions. But I think that it is enforcing a policy in an extreme strict way, beyond the scope of the rules. I decided to answer my question because all other answers are pinpointing some issues, but not offering a solution. The point is, rules are here for a reason, but they should allow a genuine question to be asked. One should not forget that the first reason of existence this website is to ask questions. If (man-made) laws prevent any meaningful question to be asked, what is the whole point?
So, as everybody seem to agree, the original (non meta) question is legitimate, but there is discussion about whether the part about the IF is legitimate or not.
My answer is: The question about the new journal future IF can be formulated in a more general way. It is totally legit to ask about, what are the reasons why an established publishing company is starting a new journal? Does this publishing company have the power to predict, or to manipulate the future importance, impact, broad diffusion (eg., number of readers), reputation, and acceptance in the scientific community?
As a side note: I do not understand why this meta question is downvoted. The meta question is a totally legitimate question and does not violate any of the rules of Acedemia Meta stack exchange, even if there is a debate about whether the original (non meta) question is legitimate.
As a final word. Please be reasonable. Offering or suggesting a way of asking a similar but closely related question in a legitimate way is more welcome than just saying that a question and not legitimate and to close it.
rules are here for a reason, but they should allow a genuine question to be asked. – Nobody doubt that your question (for the IF) is genuine or meaningful. It’s just a question that is well suited for the format of this site for reasons that we have explained several times. (It has also the more general problem that every answer to it would be a very wild guess right now.) The rules in question were not created in a vacuum, but we noticed that a certain type of question consistently leads to problems. If you want an exception, you must argue that these problems do not arise.
It is totally legit to ask about, what are the reasons why an established publishing company is starting a new journal? Does this publishing company have the power to predict, or to manipulate the future importance, impact, broad diffusion (eg., number of readers), reputation, and acceptance in the scientific community? – I am mostly fine with those questions, but they are completely different from your question about the IF. To somewhat boil it down: “What does the APS expects the IF of PRResearch to be?” is fine (though possibly unanswerable); “What will the IF of PRResearch be?” is not.
@Wrzlprmft “What does the APS expects the IF of PRResearch to be?” is fine Then I will update accordingly, also including perhaps "Does APS (or other publishing companis) have the power to predict, or to manipulate the future importance, impact, broad diffusion (eg., number of readers), reputation, and acceptance in the scientific community?"
Downvotes in Meta imply disagreement with the question. And I have to agree - speculating on what the impact factor of some new journal is really not in scope.
@JonCuster "Downvotes in Meta imply disagreement with the question" is this your personal opinion? What does it mean actually? If I ask "A means B or C?" what it means disagreeing? You can disagree with a statement, but you cannot disagree with a question.
@sintetico - votes on Meta sites are different. See https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/47634/how-does-meta-stack-exchange-work/47635#47635
@JonCuster "voting indicates agreement or disagreement with the proposed change". I did not propose any change. Again, one can disagree with a statement, but one cannot disagree with a question. This is basic logic.
@sintetico The mouseover says "this question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful". That's why I downvoted.
@sintetico it is disagreement with the premise of the question. Don't be so literal - this is how it is used on all the Meta sites I am familiar with. And, to be clear, your question in essence proposes that we change this site's policies on what is on topic. So, yes, you did propose a change.
@JonCuster Nope, I never argued about a change, I did not even thought about that. I actually agree on the policy of forbidding shopping questions, I just think that mine isn't one. I am not being literal. But you are reading something that it is not there!
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1862 | How can I find out which Stack Exchange site is appropriate for my type of question?
I already know, that META Academia is not the perfect place to start, but my original question which I did not post yet is related to academia - to the specific research I need to make. The Academia is about the process of making the research, not the research content itself.
I would consider this question thus to be about the process of the research, because I am not asking about the research itself, but the process - looking for a way to continue the research Thus Meta Academia (asking about asking about research) seems to be at least partially appropriate place to ask.
So background to the question: I have a research in which I need to find a big amount of textual data, which have some type of content. In my case, I am looking for texts, that are written in aggressive way, to process it later. I am having severe difficulties looking for such content and I believe there must be an appropriate stack exchange website to ask for a suggestion on how to look for such content, or - directly - where such content can be found.
Question being - how can I find out which stack exchange website is appropriate to post such a problem? It is related to computer science since the texts will be algorithimically processed. It is related to linguistics, because the type of processing and purpose is natural language processing. It is related to Academia in the sense that I am looking for some research material and I do not know how to look for it efficiently... But none of it is quite a good fit.
Is it likely, that there is no such stackexchange page, that would fit this type of question? Should I just pick one and hope for not getting downvotes?
I just looked around for you. I found a question Where can I find free spatio-temporal dataset for download? on Data Science SE, which is similar to what you want to ask. You may want to post this question on their meta to see if they are the right place.
Thank you very much, I read through the names of sites but I must have (dis)missed that accidentally. Feel free to post it as an answer, so I can accept it.
You're welcome. Glad to help.
I just looked around for you. I found a question
Where can I find free spatio-temporal dataset for download? on Data Science SE,
which is similar to what you want to ask. You may want to post this question on their meta to see if they are the right place.
Are you saying that when in doubt, one could ask on the corresponding Meta, Is this the right place for such-and-so question?
First, there is not a stack exchange site for every question. If you cannot find an appropriate site, you can always propose a new site on Area51. It is a long process, but it is an option,
Second, you are correct that it does not seem like a good question for us. Looking through the list of all SE sites it looks like cogsci, data, linguistics, open data, and philosophy might provide a reasonable fit, depending on the specifics. You should take a look at their help centers and if you have questions about scope ask in their meta or chat.
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3843 | Deleting a Duplicate Question after finding Answers
I recently posted a question on methodologies and data reproducibility. After finding my answers, I wondered if I was in the right to delete my question given its duplicate nature.
Should people who realize that their questions are duplicates delete their questions?
Questions should only be deleted if they have no lasting value. Your question very likely has lasting value, however:
If you found a duplicate question and answer on this site, your question can direct other people having a related problem to the answer. After all you did not find the duplicate target easily yourself, and others may have the same problem. You can mark your own question as a duplicate without wasting anybody’s time via Flag → should be closed → duplicate of. If the target was difficult to find, also consider whether its 9indability can be improved, e.g., by adding tags, keyword, or a better title.
If you found your answer in some other resource, a similar thought applies: You did not find this resource easily in the first place and your question may help others having the same problem. In this case, self-answer your question. Keep in mind to credit the resources that helped you, refrain from extensive copying and pasting (rather summarise with your own words), and focus on your problem.
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3873 | Allowing Questions that warranted a Deletion, but has an answer that addresses the question
Very recently moderator ff524, deleted a question that I would agree was in bad taste after very negative commentary from the OP.
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/98902/is-it-a-good-idea-to-take-several-summer-classes-have-a-tutor-after-school-sinc/98903#98903.
But despite the negative connotations, would there be value in allowing bad questions (that are ultimately closed) that had an answer that effectively addresses the question?
Please excuse the potential bias as the person who answered the question. Although the cost was not great (15 minutes at most), I would prefer that the effort was not wasted.
Taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture, wouldn't there be reason to believe future authors of answers to bad questions would prefer that their efforts are not deleted either?
The primary reason I had for deleting this question so quickly was that the author had just posted another question that was also very off topic, with all the same problems. When someone abuses the site by repeatedly posting very off-topic questions (that are more rant than question), even after getting feedback that these are off topic, we prefer not to reward this behavior. Also, quick moderation actions (downvotes, votes to close, flags and deletion) help trigger a question ban, which prevents the author from posting more unwelcome content.
I do believe that those who answer very bad questions would prefer for them not to be deleted. But I think this community has an even stronger preference for not encouraging people to keep posting content that they've been told is unwelcome, i.e for closing bad questions rather than answering them. We rely on this kind of community moderation to keep the quality of the site high.
As a general rule, we do not like for bad content to hang around, because it lowers the apparent quality of the site both for regular users and casual visitors. If someone posts a question that can be improved, we would put in on hold and try to improve it; but if a question can never be made to be on topic, and is very low quality, we don't like for it to hang around.
Of course, there is a continuum - a question that is slightly off topic, but with very good answers, is often closed but not deleted. But extremely off topic or very low quality questions are likely to be deleted.
I would be happy to copy and paste your answer to a pastebin or something like that - it's not on topic here, but if there's somewhere else you want to post it, I'd be glad to help so your work isn't wasted.
Noted and thanks for the explanation. But in absence of an account deletion, wouldn't there be a risk that the individual would not learn that his/her questions are of poor quality? In other words, the OP in this case, would not come to realize that his/her viewpoint is not necessarily well-liked and not accepted and will continue with a viewpoint that well for a lack of a better term, false.
@Frank I'm not sure what you mean. The user got feedback that the questions were off topic: close votes that refer to the reason for closure, and down votes that signal to the user, "Hey, this content is not welcome here." Deletion is of course another signal to the user.
Let me frame it another way (in multiple parts): OP came to the site with a predisposition and notion that education policy should be changed because it is inherently unfair. I answered that OP shouldn't focus on the unfairness and instead focus on his/her work.
After some commentary between OP, myself and other users, OP revealed an alternative motive that education policy should be "the current system doesn't even help the top 20% of people and their talented is wasted making a deadweight loss. I'm more noble than the current system and not as noble as some communist idealist." Which I would disagree with on more than one level (ethical, moral and practical to name a few).
At that point the Question was deleted.
But since the discussion ended, the OP would continue with a firm conviction that his/her viewpoint is still the 'correct' one. There wasn't an opportunity for the OP to change his/her mind after reading arguments made by myself and/or other Academia users.
A future casual or regular user, who might have the same viewpoint and is curious as to what other think, would not have the opportunity to read this discourse and through the process of evaluating the opinions of others with their own, and come to a conclusion that their viewpoint may be false. (End multi-part response)
@Frank there are a lot of people that are wrong on the Internet, and lots of sites where you can discuss all kinds of wrong ideas with people and try to correct them. But Academia.SE is not one of those sites. (You are welcome to use our chat for this purpose, though, like someone else did with this same user.)
Great XKCD reference. Noted on the chat function. Not as public as a regular question in terms of format, but I guess it will suffice.
@Frank There are other sites that are not as strict about moderation - Reddit, etc. SE is deliberately different in its moderation policy, because we try to be a home for people who like answering high quality, on topic questions. But some of our users enjoy contributing to those other sites, too ;)
That leads me to another question... not in the same scope as this, so I'll open another meta question. Thanks for all your effort thus far!
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1882 | Determination of a off topic question
Academia says For academics and those who enrolled in higher education.
I just wanted to know that if I can ask a question related to How and Why to pursue a course (country specific) ?
Do you remember where you found the string "For academics and those who enrolled in higher education"? That's not the current tagline, and I'd like to update any inconsistencies.
Unfortunately "how" and "why" questions about a particular course are likely to be off-topic for the following reasons:
"How" is usually either exceedingly generic or else highly dependent on a particular institution's processes and regulations. For example, we cannot hope to tell you what to do in order to be admitted to a do Ph.D. in anthropology at Oxford.
"Why" is usually very opinion-based and individual in nature. For example, my reasons for pursuing a degree in computer science were quite different than those of my office-mates.
That said, there may be cases where something is answerable; it's hard to know without knowing more about the question that you want to ask.
Try to reword a question if it uses "how" or "why" and keep a few things in mind:
1). Is this only applicable to undergrads? (will be closed)
2). Is this question too broad? If there are a lot of working parts to your question or a lot of possible answers that could all be correct then you are likely to get closed (your question that is)
3).Is it opinion-based? @jakebeal did a good job at explaining this.
I have asked a "how" and "why" question before, but rewording the information and title is what kept me from getting closed. However, not every question that is a "how" or "why" question will be accepted even if it is reworded.
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3515 | Precedent of country that did teaching reform: reducing number of teachers and increasing salaries
I was wondering if following question would be a right fit here,
I am looking for a Precedent of a country that would have done a school reform: from many teachers with minimal salaries to a fewer teachers with bigger salaries and how did it work out..
What school? Primary? Secondary? High school? University?
Help Center -> What topics can I ask about here? : please do not ask questions about
•Undergraduate-specific issues that could not apply to graduate or post-graduate academicians
Not exactly what you look for, but Italy has done the following reform: from not enough teachers with minimal salaries to even fewer teachers with even lower salaries.
@MassimoOrtolano lol, I can predict how it worked out...
@scaaahu Hi, What school? Primary? Secondary? High school? University? University. But I am preeeety sure it would work out same way done at any level of education...
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3914 | Country-Specific Answers
A question was UK specific, but I wanted to know if it would be appropriate to ask an identical question but for US universities for a US-Answer.
It seems to me that only the answer is UK specific, not the question.
Huh, you are right. Question was not country-specific. Thanks.
This has been discussed fairly extensively on this site before. The general accepted practice is to use tags to label questions as specific to a given country. (FWIW, I gave a different answer in this question, but that was five years ago when the site was brand new... the times, they are a'changin'.)
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3923 | Recommend to be Protected
I am familiar with the privilege.
But for users without the rep, is the 'flag' function a viable means to recommend to a Moderator that a question should be protected, or is this not the right method?
What do I do if a teacher fails me after they said I'd pass?
You can also drop a line in chat: there there are frequently a couple of high-rep users hanging around who can protect questions (though 15k+ users should wait a bit more than mods to protect a question).
However, I'm not sure I'd protect that question right now, the situation doesn't seem so bad to warrant protection.
Short answer: Yes.
However, questions are generally protected only when they are attracting large numbers of junk answers or comments or other unwanted behavior by low rep users is taking place.
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3524 | Is it acceptable to ask for advice on finding a specific document online that you cannot find anywhere?
I need a specific text (a government document) that I'm hoping is accessible in an online archive somewhere. I've looked everywhere. Is it acceptable to ask this community for advice or possible archives? As someone who is moving into unfamiliar territory, this is now a regular occurrence for me.
(1) Did you ask a librarian to help you? (2) Is there any reason the document is not Google searchable and you think some of us may know how to find it? That is, what makes you believe some of us is actually better in finding the document than your librarian?
Just to reinforce what @scaaahu said -- most of the universities I've been at/visited/had friends attend have had research librarians who are dedicated to a particular topic (or set of topics). They're the "first responders" of academic research questions in my opinion.
The document is not google searchable or, if it is available, then it is hard to find. My hope was that someone might know of a repository that google does not show or which it does not catalogue. I think the librarian will be the next stop. It's not the first thing I think of -- I just automatically think 'internet' and am only just discovering the power of the librarian.
We have already at least a couple of questions on how to access "inaccessible" documents:
What do you do when you find yourselves with an unreadable/inaccessible paper?
Literature searches in publications when you have limited access to journals
If the related answers don't help you, I think you can certainly ask another question, but please address the following points:
What of the related questions and answers does not apply to your case, otherwise your question will be probably closed as duplicate.
Since you are asking about a government document, specify which country you are in.
I won't ask the question in the main forum until I've tried the librarian.
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3537 | Where and how to discuss choices of software workflow for academia use?
Disclosure: I recently posted a question on software recommendations on Academia SE, and got it marked as a "shopping question" perhaps quite justifiably based on the guidelines. I appreciate the in depth explanations on it.
However I see software and workflow solutions as a frequently occurring problems in academia, ranging from the choices and experience with citation management and workflow, calendar systems suitable for academics, online presentations, down to even creation and maintaining a personal webpage.
I understand that most of these questions don't have one correct answer but are a matter of taste, and therefore don't quite fit the SE format. At the same time I find that these are very useful issues to discuss. Unless you are at a very good university with excellent tech support that is constantly up to date and has the right priorities, these choices involve a lot of trial and error discovery.
Where and how could we perhaps best share our experience with different software and workflows? We will always be dependent on what is currently being offered, and what are our options (though personally I feel that there are reasons to take "free and open source" solutions as most fitting for academia contexts), so potentially these questions deserve periodic updates and may benefit at unpredictable intervals from new experience.
Is there some place or solution nowadays on the internet to discuss these questions. For SE I quite see that they might legitimately be 'shopping questions'. Perhaps there is a way to phrase them that it is more about the 'why' and 'how' instead of particular tasks. At the same time, recommendations for particular software would often be a really good thing to have!
Just thought I would propose the question. Thanks for your thoughts!
If you want to discuss something on Stack Exchange, there is only chat.
However, there is a specific Stack Exchange for software recommendations, which also has an academia and research tag.
Indeed, maybe this topic doesn't fit with SE then. I do imagine that the discussion results deserve a bit more permanent storage and access options. I didn't know about "academia" on "software recommendations" though. Thanks! Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be too active though.
@puslet88: Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be too active though. – Well, it’s just a tag. Also, it may not be even applied to all fitting questions yet.
@puslet88 there is also http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/research
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4228 | What should be done about highly controversial answers which attract many comments?
My answer to this question has been quite controversial, attracting several hundred positive and negative votes and a long thread of comments. An initial batch of comments was moved to chat per the usual site policy, and two subsequent long streams of comments were simply deleted with no public announcement or explanation.
Many of the comments that were deleted were very thoughtful and interesting and, in my (possibly biased) opinion, contributed greatly to furthering the debate on OP’s question and related ethics questions. The deletion of the comments thus seems quite detrimental to a high-quality discussion and contrary to the goals of the site. It not only frustrates users who have thought and attention to writing good comments, but also (more importantly) deprives the community at large of important follow-up content.
A moderator who left me a chat comment explained that they “had to” delete the comments because comments can only be moved to chat once and the comments thread was “getting out of hand” (or words to that effect).
My question: what should be done about the comments associated with questions or answers that attract a lot of attention, including long streams of comments, many of which are of high quality and highly relevant to the debate, and which continue unabated long after the initial stream of comments has been moved to chat?
If your answer is that deleting subsequent comment streams as was done in this case is the best policy, please explain why you think this best serves the purpose of fostering the most informed and high-quality discussion possible (or why it serves some other, even more important, goal that I’m not thinking of).
I had a FAQ about this in the making anyway which I posted in light of this discussion. It doesn’t answer your question (I will probably do so later), but it has potential to avoid this situation in the future and can be used as a resource for answers.
I personally feel that all debating comments are dispensable. Comments that highlight serious flaws or errors or those that question legality should ideally be kept in place. Moving debating comments to chat is fine as a historical piece but ultimately answers with their votes should stand on their own. I made one of the early comments to your answer which was relatively highly upvoted but it didn't bother me that it got moved. By the way, your handling of the questions and comments has been admirable.
@camden_kid thanks, appreciate it.
First of all
It […] deprives the community at large of important follow-up content.
Almost nobody wants to read a discussion spanning twenty or more comments.
This apparently even applies to comment authors – going by comments that add nothing to existing comments.
In fact I would wager that the only people who read all the comments on the answer in question are its author and some moderators.
The point of moving comments to chat is to make those comments visible that are the few ones that are of high interest to future readers on their own – be these existing or potential future comments.
Also, please remember that comments are mostly intended to be temporary, i.e., to be made obsolete with an edit or similar.
The main exceptions to this are relevant links, but even those can be edited into the post.
If you want to say something of lasting value, do not say it in a comment.
What should have happened
Ideally, almost none of the fifty-something comments following the initial moving to chat should have been posted as a comment but in chat.
This is not because those comments were entirely pointless, but these comments were either very likely to incite further replies or were only of value in the context of the entire debate surrounding this answer. (Please see this as to what kind of comments I consider worthy of being comments after comments have been moved to chat.)
What should happen in a similar situation in the future
In the future, moderators should include a link to this FAQ to every moved-to-chat notice.
If you post a comment after such a notice you have to live with the possibility that your comment is removed without warning.
If you do not like this, do not post a comment but in chat.
Comments that do not follow the FAQ above should be removed as soon as possible to avoid the strong broken-window effect that this situation has on some comment authors (“If that opinion deserves the honour of being a comment, so does my contrasting opinion.”).
What to do with the post in question
After the initial moving to chat, not a single message was posted in chat.
Any of the comment authors could have said or thought:
We are having a longer discussion here, let’s move to chat.
My comment is essentially a reply to a chat message (being a comment moved to chat); I’ll post it as such.
This comment will likely incite a longer discussion, I’ll post it in chat.
They didn’t – despite a moderator’s comment saying that comments are not for extended discussion.
On the other hand, we moderators are not completely without fault either. We could have intervened earlier or more clearly.
I exploited some special properties of the situation, abused quite a few features, and spent a considerable amount of time to move the entirety of comments into one chatroom.
This is a one-time thing. Do not expect this to ever happen again.
Great answer - thanks for that, and for your moderation efforts. The policy of issuing a strong warning that comments might be deleted makes a lot of sense (at least given the technical issues concerning chat and its interaction with the main Q&A part of stackexchange). Hopefully it will be followed in the future and everyone will be a bit happier.
@DanRomik it is really worth noting that the effort, contortions, and hoops that Wrzlprmft jumped through to merge the comments was pretty crazy.
It's something we already discussed, but I still think that a long stream of comments, if it's not bothersome for the answerer or the questioner and does not contain rude or offensive comments, can stay there for a much longer time and there's no need to block it immediately. In this way, given the limitations of the system, one can move most of the comments to chat. And in this specific case, it's clear that the stream of comments was not annoying for the OP.
@MassimoOrtolano: … but it can be annoying and even deterring for other users. Also, I see no reason why such a discussion cannot be had in chat.
@Wrzlprmft The history of SE thus far, with widespread and endless meta discussions on comments, clearly shows that chats are much more deterrent than comments (especially here on Academia), and that there is a clear discrepancy between the intended usage of comments from the SE staff and the expected and actual usage from most of the users. So, as I said other times, please be light-handed in managing comments.
"Almost nobody wants to read..." - How do you know that?
@GregSchmit: 1) Feedback from users in chat, in particular from other moderators, i.e., SE power users. 2) As already mentioned in the answers, it very often happens that redundant comments are posted under long comment threads, the best explanation for which is that even comment authors don’t read all the comments, and I consider it safe to assume that they are more interested in comments than other users. 3) +11/−3 votes on this post compared to +2/−1 votes on the answer based on the contrasting assumption.
@MassimoOrtolano I am not sure I agree. I think most users use comments as intended most of the time, but every once in a while a user gets sucked into a discussion that they are really interested in and cannot help themselves.
I know your answer has been controversial and you received a lot of both positive and negative comments. You have handled that, often hostile, feedback well. Your responses to the feedback have been on point. The main issue that I see as a moderator is your point
The deletion of the comments thus seems quite detrimental to a high-quality discussion and contrary to the goals of the site.
I strongly disagree with this statement. The goal of this site is not for high quality discussion, it is for high quality answers. The point of comments on answers is to help improve the answer. That improvement process might require a back and forth discussion, but the end result should be an improvement to the answer.
When reading the comments and responses, it was clear to me that you thought about the comments and were not going to integrate the concepts in your answer. Given the nature of many of the comments, that is a reasonable decision and yours to make. At that point all the comments became obsolete as they were no longer going to make your answer better. If someone felt strongly about the views expressed in those comments, they could have written an answer.
There's a (in my opinion) flaw with this approach. By deleting the comments, future readers do not know that that discussion took place, and that the answerer elected not to incorporate the proposed improvement. This can lead to the same improvements being proposed over and over. By moving the comments to chat, you achieve both goals. You keep the comments free of clutter, and you retain a record of the discussion in a separate place for those who want to refer to it. If the goal of the site didn't involve any element of discussion, then the move to chat feature wouldn't exist.
@JBentley yes. My answer was specific to the to this mm incident in which a set of comments had already been moved to chat and therefore the new comments could not be moved.
The answer is simple, of course. The comments should be moved into the existing chat. If the moderator can't because comments can only be moved once, then this strikes me as a serious flaw in the system.
I had a related issue recently. I posted a comment on an answer explaining my vote and ways to improve the answer, and the comment received several dozen upvotes. A long series of irrelevant comments followed. The entire block of comments was moved to chat, including mine. I queried that and was told that there's no way of selectively moving comments to chat. To me that seems to defeat the point of the comment system, which is supposed to be used for suggesting improvements to the answer.
I would suggest that moderators need finer tuned controls for deleting and/or moving comments, and site policies should also be finer tuned. Comments should be deleted or moved based on their individual merits, and not as an entire block (which is akin to throwing out the baby with the bathwater).
As a final point, deletion really ought only to be used on comments that have serious problems (e.g. are abusive). With the availability of move-to-chat, there is little reason to delete a comment.
I queried that and was told that there's no way of selectively moving comments to chat. – That’s not correct. We can leave individual comments standing and at least I regularly do so (because otherwise moving to chat would just be moving the problem).
Some moderators, however, do not seem to selectively move comments. I would say most, in fact, from what I've seen across many SE sites. I believe I've seen at least one say it takes too much time and effort for them to sift through every single comment and make the judgment calls on their worthiness, so they just always move/delete everything en masse. If there's dozens of comments that's pretty reasonable, though I've seen seemingly indiscriminate mass moves/deletes for relatively small amounts.
The flaw you mention in your opening paragraph is an open and popular feature request: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/266693/could-mods-have-add-comments-to-chat-to-supplement-move-comments-to-chat
The answer by @Wrzlprmft states
Almost nobody wants to read a discussion spanning twenty or more
comments.
Come on.
Almost everybody wants to read a discussion spanning twenty or more comments. More people prefer to talk-and-listen than to read-and-write.
But the Will of the People is not my concern here. On the contrary I understand why a website that wants to be and remain a serious Q&A forum, must come down hard on things like comments: we are here to play "too short; didn't read" rather than "too long; didn't read".
So the official policy explicitly scorns comments, and canonizes about their lowly nature. But, whatever the SE team wants the comments to be (and maybe rightfully so), they are stubbornly much more, and re-iterating the rules and the official intent around comments will not really help. And indeed, Many-many times comments contain precious content.
In light of the above, the rule "comments can be moved to chat only once and then they can only be deleted", is a dysfunctional SE operational rule (alongside a few others).
The compromise is obvious: sure, keep pushing comments to Chat (after all if you are here to chat, go to Chat), but scrap the "move only once, and then delete" rule. Let the moderators be able to easily preserve all Chatery, without needing to go to the extraordinary lengths our brave-with-the-spear moderator went, which apparently was so frustrating that he ended it with the grave warning "don't ever expect for this to happen again". I agree. Moderators have more important things to do than perform workarounds for inefficient SE rules. The point is to have the SE team change the functionality.
This is officially a "feature" request, and I would ask the moderators to consider forwarding it to the SE crew.
That feature request has existed for years. Until it changes, I suggest to make rules until it changes. Moreover, even if we had this feature, it does not change the problem that adding to chat would still requires moderator intervention and we would still get debates about what comments get to stay and which get moved.
@Wrzlprmft Sure, rules and guidance help. SE typically shows strong resistance to feature requests coming from outsiders.
If you want to forward this to the "SE crew", you can use the Contact link at the bottom of the page to do it.
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3306 | Is the [wetlab] tag necessary?
There's a new tag called wetlab. There seems to be only one (but rather popular) post tagged with this tag. I don't suppose it could generalise to any other question asked so far in Academia.SE.
Is such a tag necessary?
I think the wetlab tag is useful or might become so in the future if this site gets more attention in the natural sciences circles.
Besides, I don't think it's hurting the site in anyways to keep it.
Personally, I do not find that the tag 'wetlab' is necessary. A main point of a tag is to be able to search through questions more easily. I'm not sure that a future searcher would necessarily link that question with 'wetlab' which could more easily be applied to chemistry (for example).
True. Even if the tag is not present, the search result for this word would still pop up the concerned post anyway.
If there are significant number of questions on a given distinct topic, they need a specific tag. It does make search more precise.
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1947 | How is a question or answer is sent to First Question and Late Answer review queues?
How are these queues maintained? It seems to be always empty whenever I get to them. Could there be a facility to notify the moderator with this right as soon as this queue fills up? Is it possible to explicitly send any of such items to the queues myself and then review them?
How are these queues maintained?
Whenever a user with no existing posts posts something, it is sent to the first-posts queue. Whenever a user with less than 10 reputation posts an answer 30 days later than the question, it is sent to the late-answers queue (source).
It seems to be always empty whenever I get to them.
Those queues are usually emptied rather quickly as posts need only one review to be dequeued. Also, late answers are rather rare: As of now, there were only 806 such answers in the history of this site.
Could there be a facility to notify the moderator with this right as soon as this queue fills up?
If you mean that you are notified: If you reach 10 k reputation, there is a notifier in the top bar when there are more than three items in all review queues (taken together), which however happens rather rarely on this site.
Is it possible to explicitly send any of such items to the queues myself and then review them?
There would be little point in this as there is nothing that you can only do from the queue (except for gaining badges). If you see a post that needs improvement, you are free to provide it without a review queue.
Great explanation. Seeing as you are not 10k rep. either, I suppose you don't get notified too, @Wrzlprmft?
I see this means that you'll be getting his feature in the German Language SE but not in Academia SE (yet).
@ÉbeIsaac: Correct, yet I managed to review 337 first posts.
Answer accepted. Does that mean that you are always on the lookout?
Not really. I have the front page open, so I see new posts. If they are older than a few minutes and matching the criteria, they appear in the queues. It’s often good to wait that time because often posters edit then.
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1957 | Should self-plagiarism tag be renamed to duplicate-publication tag?
This is a tag that was introduced quite recently. Although the term seems to be quite accepted today, a few experts (one of which is an editor of an IEEE transaction journal) claim that is more of a misnomer.
Plagiarism generally means stealing the written work of another by copying it in your publishable work without necessary attribution of the source. But re-publishing your own work cannot be referred to as stealing. This can be recalled as double-publication or content-recycling. However due to widely used literature, the word 'self-plagiarism' do refer to double-publication.
Should we continue to keep the tag as it is or rename it to duplicate-publication and make any references to self-plagiarism suggest double-publication instead?
It's not the same thing. Self-plagiarism also includes reusing your own work outside the context of publication. (For example, in coursework, or grant proposals.) Self-plagiarism can include re-use of a small bit of content (such as a methodology section) in essentially different papers, while duplicate publication refers to trying to publish the same paper twice (in its entirety.)
Misnomer or not, self-plagiarism is the most commonly used term for this practice. We generally try to use commonly accepted terms for things as tags.
I agree. I would strongly suggest to synonymise [double-publication] to [self-plagiarism] though.
I agree with this - they're similar, but no so similar that they're synonyms.
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4627 | What are implication for Academia SE users of recent licence changes and moderators disatisfaction and revolt?
One moderator suspended activity
'm a mod on Academia.SE. After reading the official SE response, I'm going to temporarily suspend my mod activities as well. The disrespect being shown to a well-respected volunteer simply trying to understand what is going on, combined with the terrible handling of the actual firing, combined with the non-apology apology, are a bit over the top.
I encourage The Powers That Be™ to reconsider all their actions here, and think deeply about the types of behavior they want to encourage in their community.
Another one wrote A request for SE employees and CMs
User Apparente was suspended
That user was very nice and insightful, wonder what happened.
Everything I read it seems like moderators knew from the start of this year that something is going wrong, however they proceed with election for new moderators.
When I asked one user why she didn't apply for a position, she told me that big troubles are coming, now I understand on what she implied, however, if you all knew that why moderators kept us in dark? We as ordinary users how should react to these new changes on SE, are we somehow affected?
are our identities and location sold to third parties now?
Also moderators that suspend their activities commented or implied that they will come back, so what is the issue than?
We as the users are confused and would like to know more about the situation.
At this point I think this has really been talked to death, especially on the main SE meta. There is no conspiracy of moderators hiding information, beyond the information that they (we) are ethically required to hide (for example, the contents of private conversation, reasons for user suspensions). Since moderators can't talk about users' suspensions, it's also a bit rude to bring one up here.
I don't use meta. Most of us don't.
@SSimon Yes but if you want to read about this then you can go to MSE. I think that's better than rehashing it here and having us repeat all the same discussion that already happened.
@BryanKrause I tried but it is so confusing, I dont know who is Monica and why moderators of academia kept secret and continued with election, also what it means for them to return anyway, so what is the point of the boycott? why would someone protest ower changing of licence, I don't understand and why they blocked a user for expresing revolt,nothing of this is explaind
@Heutl so it is drama, and not serious issue
no idea,that is why I asked question
@SSimon There weren't any secrets kept besides the ones correctly kept and mentioned here. The election here started long before this situation unfolded, and was triggered because the existing mods here asked for some more help. There is no conspiracy here at academia.SE.
@SSimon Who is Monica? This might get you started.
Horrible. Is this because of new CEO @SecretAgentMan
The recent troublesome events have been extensively discussed on the main Meta, and I don't think there's anything significant we can add here.
Everything I read it seems like moderators knew from the start of this year that something is going wrong, however they proceed with election for new moderators.
There was nothing wrong at the start of this year and the troublesome events took place when elections had already started. As a candidate, I was well aware of the ongoing discussion on the main Meta.
if you all knew that why moderators kept us in dark?
I don't think anyone was "kept in the dark". During the election things were evolving and probably no one had a clear understanding of the ongoing events. Note also that people here participate with different levels of involvement. For many, events that are not specifically connected to asking and answering questions on this site are totally irrelevant. In other words, those who are interested in the meta-life of Stack Exchange may be a negligible minority.
We as ordinary users how should react to these new changes on SE, are we somehow affected?
It's up to you: How do you consider your participation to Stack Exchange? How do you use it? How do you react to troublesome events in your life?
are our identities and location sold to third parties now?
There's no reason whatsoever to think this.
Also moderators that suspend their activities commented or implied that they will come back, so what is the issue than?
I don't understand this point. Suspending the moderation activity is a form of protest against certain actions from Stack Exchange, the company. Protestants may withdraw their action if the issues that led to the protest are resolved.
There seems to be a lot in your question. I will try my best to answer what I see, if I miss something, let me know ...
What are implication for Academia SE users of recent licence changes and moderators disatisfaction and revolt?
The license was changed from CC 3.0 to CC 4.0. There are some immediate effects of that as the terms of the licenses are different. There is also the issue that SE has now set a precedent of retroactively re-licensing our content. This has raised the question of what prevents them in the future of attempting to re-licensing our content under a more restrictive license. The effect on Academia.SE users of the moderator dissatisfaction and revolt is pretty limited. We are still handling flags and user issues in a timely manner.
Another one wrote A request for SE employees and CMs User Apparente was suspended That user was very nice and insightful, wonder what happened.
I requested something in that question for CMs. I doubt anything will come out of it. The linked user was not suspended on Academia.SE so there really is nothing anyone, but that user, can say.
Everything I read it seems like moderators knew from the start of this year that something is going wrong, however they proceed with election for new moderators.
There are lots of things wrong, but I am confident that if we could go back to the beginning of the year, or even prior to the election scheduling, that few moderators would have predicted things going as poorly as they have. No one was trying to mislead anyone.
When I asked one user why she didn't apply for a position, she told me that big troubles are coming, now I understand on what she implied, however, if you all knew that why moderators kept us in dark?
I have no idea what this user told you, but apart from things we are not allowed to tell you, we don't keep you in the dark. In general, the things we are not allowed to tell you are "relatively small" (like what an individual said or PII) or scheduled for a widespread announcement.
We as ordinary users how should react to these new changes on SE, are we somehow affected?
I think each user needs to decide how they feel about the changed in the ToS regarding the right to sue, the ads and the fingerprinting associated with them, the re-licensing, and the public slandering of an SE user/moderator.
are our identities and location sold to third parties now?
I am not aware of any public change to the policies regarding the use of our identities and location, but this is not something I have been following.
Also moderators that suspend their activities commented or implied that they will come back, so what is the issue than?
I don't understand this question at all.
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3314 | is this question for academia or linguistic part of SE?
What is a difference between scientist and researcher?
I would like to know if this is adequate part of stack exchange forum to ask such a question or it is better to ask in English language part?
You know there are people who research things that aren't science, right? History. Art. Philosophy. etc. Those people are researchers and not scientists.
History is not a science????
History is traditionally considered one of the humanities.
Science[nb 1] is a systematic enterprise that, using mathematics and measurement, creates, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable observations, explanations and predictions about the universe.[
even history of earth?
@ff524: Well, it is called a social science by some. Unfortunately, the English word science is so diffuse that is almost useless.
It depends.
For example, if you want to know whether the word is appropriate to describe an activity on an English CV, Academia is more likely to give you answers from the perspective you are interested in.
If you are however interested how those words are perceived by native speakers of English (that are not necessarily academics), you will get a better answer on English Language & Usage or English Language Learners. For example, you cannot expect answers on this site to elaborate on such terms as researcher of the occult.
Either way, I would not consider this question off-topic on Academia, but providing more context and asking it on the site fitting your context will help you to obtain better answers.
do I need to decide which one of those two, or it is allowed to ask same question on different SE? or only to change contex
@SSimon: Cross-posting is generally frowned upon. If you really want to cover multiple perspectives, ask the question on one site and only when not all perspectives were addressed satisfyingly, ask it on the other site with special focus on those aspects and reference to the other question.
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3969 | Can I ask here regarding a high school teacher?
I have many problems with a high school teacher of mine in which I feel that some of the actions he performs are undignified and report-worthy. It closely follows the interpersonal issues tag in Academia and I believe that one can face the same situation in the university too. I feel it is more belonging here rather than Interpersonal StackExchange because I want advice regarding taking the appropriate action on him rather than just fixing the relationship with him.
Will the question belong here or should I ask that in Interpersonal StackExchange?
Note that if you are looking for a non-interpersonal solution (such as filing official complaints, contacting the higher ups, or similar), your question will be off-topic on [interpersonal.se]
The expectations and training of teachers, the procedures for addressing grievances, and the roles of various people in the administration, are very different in a high school than in a university setting. (Among other things.) And the academics (researchers, grad students, professors, postdocs) that offer expert answers here on Academia Stack Exchange don't have any special expertise in high school issues.
So, questions such as yours that are specific to a high school setting are outside our domain of expertise, and are off topic here.
I hope you get a good answer on Interpersonal Stack Exchange :)
@Wrzlprmft has informed me in the comments that stuff like contacting the higher authorities will be off topic in interpersonal SE. Could you suggest where I could ask the question? (I do need help regarding reporting him)
@SiddharthVenu Sorry, not aware of any such site.
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4837 | Do we want a canonical question on "what to do if accused of misconduct"?
There are a number of questions on Academia.SE from students who have just been accused of cheating, or of some other form of misconduct. While the specifics of the allegations and circumstances differ, there is a great deal of commonality in the advice given. Many of the questions are written in a panic on the day of the accusation, and essentially ask how the student can immediately "prove their innocence". Advice often consists of telling the student to calm down and follow the procedure for allegations of misconduct. There is a great deal of valid general advice that can be given here, irrespective of the particular allegation at issue.
To the extent that answers to these questions give advice that is specific to the situation (i.e., which would not be replicated in a canonical version of the question), that is usually technical advice pertaining to a particular piece of evidence (e.g., how a particular computer system works) and arguably this is not material that relates to academia per se. Rather than focussing on academic matters, advice then becomes technical advice on evidentiary matters, more akin to legal/forensic advice.
Here is the proposed canonical question with a long answer giving general advice [presently closed]. Please let me know if you think this question adds value, and if any edits to the question would be useful. I am open to editing the question (or my answer) if it would lead to acceptance as a canonical version of this class of question.
@RDC: Clearly a canonical question/answer would not be a "guide on how to beat" misconduct charges of any kind. As can be seen from the existing answer to the proposed question, it would contain advice on the process that applies for an allegation of misconduct, and how to engage with that process. (The answer given explicitly tells the questioner to admit to their misconduct if they actually did it, so your wild allegation here is misplaced.)
I've removed some unkind comments, let us remember to be nice and assume good intent. The suggestion to have a canonical question for cheating but not for other types of misconduct may be worth converting into a proper answer so that the community can vote on it / discuss it.
I don't have a strong opinion on this. To get things started, I will post two contradictory answers. Feel free to edit either post to make a better "case" for each side. Note, we have not defined what the "threshold" for acceptance is; it should probably be somewhere between a majority and a strong majority (Wrzlprmft has previously used 'at least 5 upvotes, and at least twice as many upvotes as downvotes').
Misconduct cases are all about technical details.
Upvote this post if you agree that we should not adopt this canonical question; downvote if you strongly disagree.
No, we should not adopt this canonical question. There are too many variables: technical issues with an online system are substantively different than a good-faith misinterpretation of the rules which is different than being caught texting during an exam. Further, things are different in different locations. Lumping research or sexual misconduct into this makes it even broader. While some misconduct questions are essentially duplicates of each other, we should continue to mark as duplicates of an existing, similar question rather than creating a giant, one-size-fits-all canonical answer.
On top of this, most of those questions are from undergraduates, which to me makes most of them off topic.
@JonCuster Please note though that we have stopped considering "being from undergraduates" a criterion for on-topicness since long (see this post for the current policy). And for what it's worth, I've experienced cases of cheating attempts from both BSc and MSc students alike.
@Ben: this seems to be the consensus. One thought: I think the answer you drafted is potentially helpful, and should be kept. I can use my superpowers to transfer the answer to one of the existing "what will happen to me?" questions; perhaps this one. Please let me know if this is OK with you.
Why upvote if you "agree" but only downvote if you "strongly disagree"?
@AzorAhai-him- if you feel "strongly", you can upvote A and downvote B. If you don't feel strongly, you can upvote A without downvoting B. But the key point is that upvoting your preferred outcome and downvoting all the others essentially gives you a "double vote", so I wanted to define some convention for double-voting rather than leaving it to random chance. This convention is aligned with the (implied) convention for larger surveys with many options, where you vote for the options you like, do nothing on acceptable options, and downvote options you don't like.
@cag51 Ah, I hadn't scrolled down far enough to see the other option when I commented. Although I guess I haven't seen a survey like that.
Sexual misconduct is of a different order, I think. Likewise it is hard for me to see that personal misconduct and research misconduct can reasonably be handled together. The "canonical" answer also makes too many assumptions about the good will of the administration, which isn't always present.
Upvote this post if you agree that we should adopt this canonical question; downvote if you strongly disagree.
Yes, we should adopt this canonical question. As Ben says, the purpose of this forum is the academic process, which we can explain in a single, well-written canonical question -- we should not wade into the forensic or legal matters of individual cases.
Note, this referendum is on the question only; the answer Ben proposed can be revised or a competing answer can be posted.
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4249 | Community Wiki post on interpreting GRE scores?
In response to this meta question, I decided to create a generic question and answer for posts that ask whether a particular GRE score is good enough for entry to a particular degree. The goal of the generic Q&A is to subsume a number of specific questions on this topic that can be generalised to a generic answer that would be useful to a broad class of users. User scaaahu has suggested that this should be a Community Wiki question, and has suggested I see if there is a consensus on meta to transfer this to the Community Wiki.
Question: Should this generic question and answer on evaluating GRE scores be turned into a Community Wiki question?
To clarify, I actually voted to close the question on the main site because it is very institute dependent. Some schools don't even need GRE. Some have different threshold. So, I am not even sure we should have this question in the first place. If we do, I think it should be a CW.
@scaaahu: Fair enough. My view is that if the question deals with one aspect of the factor-dependency (i.e., adjusting for the differences between fields) then that is making a contribution to making a more objective answer that is less dependent on particular factors. Effects of other factors can either be dealt with in other answers, or left as speculation. Best not to make the perfect the enemy of the good!
Exactly because you mention different fields in the question, I recommend the CW because it may make the question too broad.
CW would be fine with me. It would just be nice to have a Q&A to point to when we get a question asking about a specific GRE score.
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4151 | I do not understand why this question was put on hold
Recently my question here was put on hold due to "shopping-question", but I have the following reasons to claim that this is not:
In the first paragraph, I mentioned a school and I am having a hard time making a decision on my career path, but I didn't ask anything on these.
My question is on the second paragraph (I actually followed the logic of advises given by the comment, which suggested me to ask something like what to look for to know if my prospective advisor is a good fit). Similarly, I asked what qualities to look for to know whether a graduate program (not especially for a specific one but generally speaking) prepared me well for getting an academic job in future, which will make it easier for me to make a decision myself.
Therefore, I am not seeking help choosing or finding an individual journal, publisher, university, academic program, field, research topic, funding agency etc.
Also, according to line 13-15 from this guideline on shopping question which stating "Note that questions about how to make such a choice in general – that do not involve naming any of the above – are not considered shopping questions and may be welcome here" this question may not be regarded as shopping.
Welcome to AC.SE. Please take a look at our [help]. Thank you for bringing this to meta. You can also try and use [chat] to try and get your question into a state that we can help you get an answer.
Sidenote only three of the five close voters voted as shopping (you can see their names next to the close reason). The others voted to close as primarily opinion-based and depending on individual factors, respectively.
It takes 5 votes to close a question. looking at the history of your question: https://academia.stackexchange.com/review/close/63297 we see that the question accumulated 4 close votes while it read:
Especially any comments or thoughts on the math graduate program on that university?
The final close vote came after your edits that made the question much less of a shopping question. Sometimes users do not always choose the best close reason from the limited list of choices.
The edits to your question improved it a lot. In its current form, I wouldn't describe your question as a shopping question, but it is still not a great question for our community. Don't be put off, it is really hard to ask a question that works well on the first go. The issue I see is that there are multiple questions in your question and it is not really clear to me what the underlying point is.
I am not quite sure what kinds of quality I need to look for in a graduate program to make me more well-prepared to look for a academic position in colleges.
I think this has the makings of a good question. the back story does not really drive to this question so leads the reader (i.e., potential answerer) off track
The research topics my prospective advisor do match my interest very well, but does the prestige of the school play a very big role also?
This seems like two questions, both of which I bet we have answered here a bunch of times.
Or the no. of publications is more important?
Again, this is a good question, but probably has been answered before. Maybe if you provided more details it would make it clear what is unique about your question (possibly your desire to teach and not do research).
I could imagine you splitting the question into 4. Hopefully that will lead to better answers (and more rep) for you.
Also important to note: edits to a question do not clear close votes, but time does.
@aeismail I actually had an option - retract the close vote. However, the OP still had the comparison between the PhD program and high school teacher position question in the first paragraph. So, I did not retract the vote.
@scaaahu I think he was refering to the natural aging away of close votes and not that you had the option to remove it (which I think you always have the option to do: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/915/can-we-have-the-ability-to-retract-a-close-vote-before-it-closes)
@scaaahu The questions asks about the qualities of a graduate program in general I should look for, not to compare the choice. The mention of the PhD program and high school teacher position is reflecting the struggle in my mind only.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.637947 | 2018-05-14T15:38:50 | {
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4257 | Gender survey question- two similar answers, opposite reception
This has to do with this question on conducting surveys and asking gender-related questions.
I am confused about two answers (one mine-user153812, and the other, later answer by jakebeal).
To clarify, this is not about votes, but rather what makes answers perceived differently, and how one can be more careful while answering questions about sensitive issues.
(1) My original answer was practically identical to the later answer by jakebeal, with the exception that I used a different word ('transgender' rather than 'other') for one option.
(2) This was down-voted, and the reasons were mentioned by some commentors. To address these, I edited the answer and included some citations to validate my stand. It continued to be downvoted and disputed.
(3) I accepted the answer as being unhelpful and was about to delete, when I saw a very similar answer by jakebeal, one that got a considerably positive response.
That set me wondering what could make the difference between two similar answers, and what lessons can be drawn while dealing with other sensitive issues in the future.
(1) My original answer was practically identical to the later answer by jakebeal, with the exception that I used a different word ('transgender' rather than 'other') for one option.
That option is what makes all the difference between the two answers. Jakebeal's third option isn't simply "Other", but it's "Other (fill in blank) ________", that is, it allows those answering the survey to specify their gender of choice, whereas your answer doesn't give this possibility. You proposed a fixed option, which, as pointed out in the comments, is not even considered a valid one by many.
Note also that when people vote on an answer, they may not come back to read possible edits.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.638298 | 2018-07-29T18:25:00 | {
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4692 | I have a set of questions about writing a journal paper, how to ask?
I have a set of questions about different aspects of a journal paper (eg. What must be included in an introduction... how to write two papers based on the same model, without repeating yourself in the method section... etc.). What I don't want to do it spam the site with X questions.
What's the best practice for this kind of situation on academia SE?
If you do not expect answers to different questions to considerably overlap, please ask them separately.
We prefer one question per question here (and I never got why other sites don’t).
There are hard restrictions that throttle your question rate.
In particular, if you ask many question at once that are not well received, you may quickly run into a question ban that keeps you from asking questions for a considerable time.
Therefore:
Unless things are very urgent, start off with one question and wait a day before asking the next one.
This is not to avoid spamming the site, but so you can learn from your first question when asking your second one.
(There is also a badge for asking questions on separate days.)
Keep in mind that we cannot assess the content and quality of your research.
We have to take as given what you tell us about those.
Also keep in mind that writing conventions strongly depend on the field.
For an extreme example, an introduction in pure mathematics can be nothing more than “We consider the problem of X.”, while it is a certain desk reject in almost every other field.
Thanks. I'll start putting together my first question and await feedback on if it needs improvement before I consider other questions!
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:54:48.638460 | 2020-03-29T18:06:03 | {
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