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[ { "answer_id": 1298, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I agree that there is no benefit to naming names, and it can be detrimental to do so.</p>\n\n<p>Besides, if a question requires the name of the publisher in order to be answered, it's probably too localized, anyways (as per our <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic\">help center</a> guidelines). A better approach is to give details that <em>characterize</em> the publisher (as Kurt did quite well). This ensures that the question and answers will be applicable not just in this one situation, but also others like it.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1299, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>There are appropriate resources for public \"shaming.\" People can be directed to those sites as warranted.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1305, "author": "psukys", "author_id": 1023, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/1023", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The naming procedure itself is quite subjective and is not persistent, since the publisher/person might change and the question would be out of sync with real information. A rather more interesting question issued would be asking for guidance to identify the properties of a dodgy publisher/person. At this instance, giving out examples on naming a publisher/person doing (or not) a particular action would help on explanation.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1308, "author": "Cape Code", "author_id": 10643, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10643", "pm_score": 5, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think that, while naming <em>people</em> is inappropriate and not constructive (example: grad student complaining about their supervisor Prof. Doe to be a mean, mean person), <em>publishers</em> are another story. </p>\n\n<p>As commercial operations, they accept to be public entities and it's practical to the community to be able to discuss about a specific company (see for example this: <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/18625/10643\">Do Springer, IEEE, Elsevier charge a fee for non-open-access journals?</a>), the same way we discuss the pros and cons of, say, a reference manager software. For example, there are several questions about Elsevier's editorial website (example: <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/20834/10643\">How can co-authors check the status of a submitted manuscript in Elsevier Editorial System?</a>).</p>\n\n<p>The same holds for universities. Why put universities under scrutiny (<a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/10728/10643\">What is the status/reputation of the University of South Africa (UNISA)?</a>) but not publishers?</p>\n\n<p>Additionally, if a scholar is wondering about a given publisher, chances are the query will be more along the line of: <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/2513/10643\">Is Lambert Academic Publishing a reputable company?</a> or <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/5466/10643\">Is MDPI a reputable Academic Publisher?</a> than 'What is the process to evaluate the shadyness of a given publisher'.</p>\n\n<p>There are also multiple comments and answers that are critical about the business model of established publishers and I think it's very well, but we should also be able to openly criticize the smaller, less experienced, and especially the dishonest ones.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1297", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1303, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I was going to say initially that this question was off-topic, but I'm actually not so sure. It really does depend on the issue.</p>\n\n<p>The rule that we have is that questions that aren't set at the postgraduate level are off-topic unless they'd also be relevant here. So it really does become a question of what the specific problem is. If it's something that could also take place between a professor and staff at a university, then it could be on-topic.</p>\n\n<p>Alternately, you can take a look and see if this might be appropriate over at <a href=\"http://workplace.stackexchange.com\">Workplace.SE</a>.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1304, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If you frame it generally enough, it would be on topic, as it's a general question. However, do note that this forum is intended for university-level discussion, so the responses may not actually be relevant to your situation. That said, I would post it and see what answers you get. Good luck!</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1302", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1310, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Using the Digital Color Meter utility, the RGB values are as <code>(25,246,240)</code> (see image below), which translates into <code>#FAF6F0</code>.</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/pDwaq.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1311, "author": "Jukka Suomela", "author_id": 351, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/351", "pm_score": 3, "selected": true, "text": "<p>It is <strong>#fbf8f3</strong>. From the <a href=\"http://cdn.sstatic.net/academia/all.css?v=a1c833099250\" rel=\"nofollow\">style sheet</a>:</p>\n\n<pre><code>html,body{… background:#fbf8f3; …}\n</code></pre>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1309", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/20420/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1310, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Using the Digital Color Meter utility, the RGB values are as <code>(25,246,240)</code> (see image below), which translates into <code>#FAF6F0</code>.</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/pDwaq.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1311, "author": "Jukka Suomela", "author_id": 351, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/351", "pm_score": 3, "selected": true, "text": "<p>It is <strong>#fbf8f3</strong>. From the <a href=\"http://cdn.sstatic.net/academia/all.css?v=a1c833099250\" rel=\"nofollow\">style sheet</a>:</p>\n\n<pre><code>html,body{… background:#fbf8f3; …}\n</code></pre>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1312", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1317, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It's certain that dealing with misconduct by undergraduates is very much a part of the academia experience, for grad students as well as faculty. I see that when a faculty member comes and ask: \"A student did (misconduct), can you advise me on how to respond?\" then as long as it is not too narrowly applicable a situation, then it seems to clearly be within scope. </p>\n\n<p>If a similar question from a student leads to discussion of the faculty perspective and options for engagement, then it seems like having at least some questions and answers of this sort would be appropriate. Certainly, recent reaction seems to show that the community is quite happy to speak at length on the subject...</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1318, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I routinely see graduate students in my own university</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>study,</li>\n<li>cheat on exams and homework,</li>\n<li>submit plagiarized homework,</li>\n<li>get upset because others are cheating,</li>\n<li>dispute grades,</li>\n<li>complain that a class is badly organized,</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>and all the other things we accuse \"undergrads\" of doing.</p>\n\n<p>Therefore, I believe questions about conduct in university-level coursework should be on topic.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1321, "author": "Massimo Ortolano", "author_id": 20058, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/20058", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n <p>is there anything undergraduate-specific about questions on exams, studying, <strong>cheating</strong>, <strong>disputing grades</strong>, or other aspects of university-level coursework?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>For what concerns the above highlighted points, I've never seen any difference in behaviour between undergraduates and graduates (immaturity propagates across degrees).</p>\n\n<p>So, yes, I think that questions about conduct are on-topic.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1314", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1328, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Couple of things. I don't believe I deleted any comments. I simply moved them to a chat room. I left a few comments that I thought were directly relevant and not yet addressed by answers.</p>\n\n<p>As for Omen. I asked in chat about the comments and what we should do since at that point there were not a lot of flags on the question, but I felt uncomfortable with the comments. I was not singling him out. He chose to delete his comment and leave. It would have been nice had some other community members jumped in at that point to help out and either let Omen know that we loved him and/or let me know that we wanted the comments left.</p>\n\n<p>As to why I moved the comments to chat, it was in response to comments and flags. The question itself has been flagged 25 times and a number of the answers have had multiple flags also. To give you an idea of what 25 flags means, there have been a total of 127 flags in the past week on the entire site. Most of these flags are for either obvious spam or obsolete comments. Most of the flags on the question in question were for rude/offensive and not constructive comments. I took that as an indication that the community wanted to do something. I felt moving the comments to chat was a nice compromise as it cleaned up the question while still preserving the comments.</p>\n\n<p><strong>EDIT</strong> I just look through the comment history and I was wrong. I deleted half a dozen comments that were truly offensive and personal attacks. Those comments were so inappropriate that I will not repost them here, or even hint at the content. I what I will say is they were so bad that I also took additional moderator action at the time of deleting them and warned the user that future comments like that would result in a suspension.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1338, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In my relatively short experience with the site, I haven't noticed significant problems with comment deletion. I do, however, find chat very problematic to deal with. At least as my browser presents the site to me, there is no equivalent to the comment inbox for chat, and so I never know whether there is something worth paying attention to going on there.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1339, "author": "410 gone", "author_id": 96, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/96", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Comments are ephemeral. They are there to ask for clarifications on a question or an answer. Once they've served that purpose, they can be deleted. If they don't attempt to do that, they can be deleted.</p>\n\n<p>That's how comments are designed here on Stack Exchange.</p>\n\n<p>There are occasions where a comment can help point out an egregious error in an answer; often, a better route is just to post a better answer; that better answer could include a summary of why it is better, including mention of the egregious error.</p>\n\n<p>Deletion of comments is a routine bit of tidying up.</p>\n\n<p>Discussions belong in chat, nowhere else. Well, they belong here on meta, in contained form, if they're about the operation of academia.SE itself.</p>\n\n<p>If something's worth preserving, find where it belongs, and put it there. Not in comments. Put it either in a question, an answer, or a tag-wiki. If it doesn't belong in any of those, put it in a blog post on your own site, or in a journal paper, or a monograph, or a book. But not here.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1327", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10042/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1336, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 2, "selected": true, "text": "<p>It's hard to say definitively without seeing the specific question.</p>\n\n<p>My intuition would be that just as a question about your work as a student in a particular class would be off topic (e.g. a question on mathematics for a mathematics class), so would a question about organizing/developing a particular class. The reason being that it's more a question about X (where X is the subject of the class) than a general question about teaching.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1356, "author": "WetlabStudent", "author_id": 8101, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8101", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>This is the perfect site, potentially, to ask a question on what might go into a course on \"research methods and technical writing.\" This is effectively what nearly every STEM academic spends a lot of time doing. I disagree that this is like asking a question about what math topic should be covered in a math class. The class could almost be titled \"How to be an academic\" perhaps you can phrase the question less about what belongs in your class specifically (as ff524 does have a good point, you don't want it to be too specific) and more about academic writing in general. I think this potentially works as question.</p>\n\n<p>However, ff524 is right in general about the question in your title. I think it is the specific type of course you are talking about that offers an exception here.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1329", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/15723/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1335, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>These are indeed almost always off-topic, as they're simply reference questions; the questioner can (and should) look up the answer and go on. As you suggest, there is nothing about these questions that suggest they're about academia, they're about grammar and/or writing in general.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1337, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I, at least, see these as borderline but fairly harmless. There are many questions about citation practice that I feel are clearly on topic (e.g., <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30982/how-to-cite-from-a-book-with-more-authors/\">this recent question</a> that I answered), because they deal with issues that aren't simply and routinely settled by style guides. Even something that may seem cut and dried like the \"van Names\" question that you reference ended up teaching me something interesting about how customs differ in different countries. I don't see them showing up at high frequency, and they usually seem to get answered pretty quickly and non-contentiously, so I see no harm in letting them stay even if some are a bit borderline.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1332", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/16122/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1341, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Certainly, random Internet users should not be considered authoritative on legal matters. People needing legal advice for a specific situation should consult a lawyer. The tag excerpt for <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/legal-issues\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;legal-issues&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">legal-issues</a> says as much:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Note that Academia.SE, like any SE site, cannot offer specific legal advice; consult a lawyer for such questions.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>On the other hand, SE sites should also not be considered authoritative on moral and ethical matters, but I don't see any complaints about the <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/ethics\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;ethics&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">ethics</a> tag.</p>\n\n<p>I believe questions asking for general legal background about a particular academic issue <em>should</em> be considered on topic here.</p>\n\n<p>For example, I think <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30391/could-research-data-fall-under-the-freedom-of-information-act\">Could research data fall under the Freedom of Information Act?</a> is an excellent question. <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10340/is-it-illegal-to-share-publications-not-in-the-public-domain-with-collaborators\">Is it illegal to share publications not in the public domain with collaborators?</a> has quite a few upvotes. And I think <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/31052/are-there-any-laws-against-professors-publishing-scientific-papers-without-ackno\">Are there any laws against professors publishing scientific papers without acknowledging student's contributions?</a> should be reopened.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1342, "author": "BrenBarn", "author_id": 9041, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/9041", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I agree with your self-answer that random internet users aren't legal authorities. However, that doesn't stop people all over the internet from giving their opinions. People working in an area (e.g., academia) often have some awareness of relevant legal issues, and I think a site like StackExchange can benefit from the legal <em>knowledge</em> that people have through experience, even if it carries no official imprimatur.</p>\n\n<p>In other words, I think it's perfectly fine for people to ask about legal issues, and perfectly fine for anyone to give their perspective, with reference to situations they've encountered in the past, and where possible citations to external resources (e.g., legal disclaimers on university websites). If people feel the need to hedge their statements with \"I am not a lawyer\"-type remarks, fine. It's up the answerer to do that if they feel it necessarey, and up to the questioner to take the advice for what it is (free advice from non-lawyers), and people who don't want to get involved can just not ask or answer such questions. The mere fact that a question happens to deal with legal matters has no bearing on whether or not it should be closed.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1343, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think this is a tricky question because:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Even taking IANAL into account, the correct answer to a legal question is often determined by small details that make it hard to answer generally.</li>\n<li>In academic disputes, law is often the nuclear option. Many of the legal questions that I have seen down-voted and closed should really be asking about ethics, policy, or various other sub-legal regulatory mechanisms.</li>\n<li>Legal questions can often be complicated, time-consuming, or contentious to answer.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>I think that #1 and #2 are good reasons to close legal questions, and #3 is a good reason to apply a higher level of scrutiny than fast and <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1332/are-questions-about-citation-style-on-topic\">simple things like citation style</a>.</p>\n\n<p>Thus, for example, I voted to close the question about laws regarding publishing without acknowledging a student when I learned that it was just a theoretical question and thus failed both #1 and #2 in my view. I feel that for that question to become high enough quality to be answered meaningfully, more information would have been required about the situation and the reasons for considering the nuclear option in the dispute. Since it was theoretical, however, that couldn't really be provided. A similar but more general topic, however, like, \"Are there circumstances where you should resolve a publication dispute legally rather than by working with the journal?\" might well make a good question.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1349, "author": "seteropere", "author_id": 532, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/532", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I always have a hard time with <em>general</em> questions related to the <em>law</em>. I believe they are unanswerable without</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Pointing out the context (i.e. country or educational system)</li>\n<li>Seeking general advice.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>This is different from ethical questions. In which, the questions can be general or specific and the answers would give general advice (about the ethicality of the behaviour) and the OP has to verify it against the local law. </p>\n\n<p>Compare a general law-related <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/31052/are-there-any-laws-against-professors-publishing-scientific-papers-without-ackno\">question</a></p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Does this violate any laws at all?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>to another legal-issue <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/29315/can-a-us-university-force-a-foreign-student-to-obtain-health-insurance-from-a-specific%20provider?\">question</a></p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Can the university legally impose this on us, or are they just trying\n to take advantage of us being foreign? Is there anything we can do?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The first one is very general (without any context) and asks explicitly for a law, which makes it unanswerable. The second question can be answered in general and the OP has to verify it. </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Are questions on legal issues related to academia on topic?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>If the question is about a specific educational system and seeks <em>general</em> advice about the legality of something, then it should be on-topic. Otherwise it should be off-topic (as in too-localized or too-broad question). </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1350, "author": "Nobody", "author_id": 546, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/546", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I am one of the users who voted to close one of the questions (the contribution one) linked in this meta question and I just voted to leave it closed. I think I owe some explanation.</p>\n\n<p>First of all, I agree with seteropere's answer here.</p>\n\n<p>The main reason I voted to close and leave it closed is because the OP did not specify the location. As we know, the law varies in different locations. </p>\n\n<p>The following is what I know about Taiwan-specific cases. A few years ago, a graduate student sued a professor for stealing her contribution in a paper. The judge's decision (note here, the judicial system is very different from US.) was that the professor was guilty because the prof had financial gains due to the plagiarism. The financial gain was due to the fact that the prof used the paper to get the promotion (from assistant professorship to associate professorship), thus the salary was increased. Had the professor not used the paper for the promotion, the decision would be different. There was a similar case, the result was different. The judge determined that the student lost the case because the student sued the prof only because the student did not pass the oral exam. Therefore, there was no case. Please do not ask me for the details. The above was what I read from the local news report (in Chinese).</p>\n\n<p>So, you can see that the legal issues are complicated even in the same location. To me, this question is too broad to ask.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4140, "author": "Ben", "author_id": 87026, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/87026", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>These questions are quite dangerous, simply because it is <em>impossible</em> to give cogent legal advice on a situation without full details of jurisdiction, applicable policies and laws, details of agreements, factual and evidentiary details, etc. Even for a trained lawyer, you would not give legal advice with the information available in these questions.</p>\n\n<p>While I appreciate that users can contribute some legal knowledge, and there is also a <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/tags/legal-issues/info\">warning to users</a> (which they probably are not even aware of), the danger is that answers might induce a questioner to act on legal advice on the site, which turns out to be wrong or inapplicable to their situation, and leads them to suffer harm. That would be a great shame.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1340", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1347, "author": "Mad Scientist", "author_id": 201, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/201", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>This is intentional, <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/52764/what-is-a-protected-question\">the association bonus is ignored for the check</a>. </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Users with 10 or more reputation can answer a protected question. However, the +100 account association bonus is ignored for this check, so you must have earned 10 or more reputation on that specific site to answer a protected question.</p>\n</blockquote>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1348, "author": "Cape Code", "author_id": 10643, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10643", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>This a network-wide policy. It has been discussed (although not extensively) in some posts on the SE meta:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/109117/can-the-protect-feature-be-made-to-block-101-users-as-well\">Can the protect feature be made to block &quot;101&quot; users as well?</a></p>\n\n<p>Some explanations are available here:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/116494/undocumented-change-to-reputation-threshold-for-answering-protected-questions/116667#116667\">Undocumented change to reputation threshold for answering protected questions?</a></p>\n\n<p>The argument seems to be that at least one vote on the current site is required to be able to answer protected questions, presumably to prevent newcomers to pollute questions before having understood a bit about the specific community they just joined. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1346", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/12378/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1352, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I find anything mentioning a commercial solution extremely dubious, especially if it is one that I have not already heard of. In fact, in my short time at the site, I've already been involved in the cleanup of one apparent commercial spammer. On the other hand, some prominent and well-known products like Web of Science are often brought up in reasonable contexts. The question is, how do we determine the difference between marketing and legitimate recommendation?</p>\n\n<p>My thoughts:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>If something is already large and significant (e.g., has its own wikipedia page), then it is an established fact of the scientific world and there is no need for special scrutiny.</p></li>\n<li><p>For anything else, a heightened level of scrutiny is important, and in particular a person needs to make a clear and convincing disclaimer about their relationship (or lack thereof) with a product. Only posts by a convincingly unrelated advocate should be retained. New pseudonymous posters may have a hard time being convincing...</p></li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1353, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If a commercial product is a relevant answer to a question, then it <em>should</em> be posted as an answer. I'd rather err towards more complete answers (with possibly some hidden advertisements) than less complete answers. I care more about the end result (is it a good answer?) then the motivations of the person posting it.</p>\n\n<p>I consider a product mention spam only if it's <em>not</em> a valid answer to the question (in which case, it should be flagged and deleted).</p>\n\n<p>Certainly, users should follow the disclosure policy; but I don't think a heightened level of suspicion is a good thing. It leads to comments like the one on <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/31165/11365\">this answer</a>, which I find unfriendly and not particularly helpful.</p>\n\n<p>Now, if an answer mentioning a commercial product was getting upvotes from sockpuppets to make it appear more popular than it really is, <em>then</em> I would be concerned.</p>\n\n<p>Note: the description of the spam flag says that it should be applied to a post that is:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>effectively an advertisement with no disclosure. It is not useful or relevant, but promotional.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>An answer that is useful or relevant is not spam.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1354, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think our primary concerned should be to get good answers to our questions. Answers that show how a product is the best at solving the problem should be encouraged regardless of if the answer is posted by a regular user of the site, a new user, or a representative of the company that sells the product. If someone who has a vested interested in a product provides a good answer, great. One line link answers, as always, should be discouraged by down votes. Answers touting products that do not provide an answer to the asked question should also be down voted. </p>\n\n<p>It would be nice if answers always state if there is/isn't a conflict of interest, but that is hard to enforce. I see no issue with leaving a comment asking for a statement about potential conflicts of interest when the answer is not clear about it.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1355, "author": "Compass", "author_id": 22013, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22013", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>As long as it's not <strong>shameless self-advertisement</strong> and done in good faith, I don't believe there is any issue with providing a full disclosure and software as an option, in accordance with most SE policies.</p>\n<p>I know that a lot of research benefits from using open-source technology, but commercial technology is also useful and practical, and helpful to the user, and sometimes a person may have made software that genuinely is beneficial for the user.</p>\n<p>That being said, the product should be addressed to be as close to the request as possible.</p>\n<h3>Appropriate</h3>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Question: How can I farm potatoes?</p>\n<p>Answer:</p>\n<p>Potato Farmer, which I made, can help you since it plants, cultivates and harvests potatoes. It uses patented technology based on astrology to determine the best time to plant. It is capable of planting 4000 potatoes a minute. Harvesting is based on echo location and the free <em>Potato Farmer 1000</em> can only harvest 1 potato a week, but the full version <em>Potato Farmer 2000</em> can harvest 42 potatoes a day. Note that it really isn't helpful for carrot farming.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<h3>Inappropriate</h3>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Question: How can I farm pumpkins?</p>\n<p>Question: How can I make mashed potatoes?</p>\n<p>Question: Where can I buy potatoes?</p>\n<p>Question: Can someone explain to me the benefits of potatoes?</p>\n<p>Answer:</p>\n<p>Potato Farmer, which I made, can help you since it plants, cultivates and harvests potatoes. It uses patented technology based on astrology to determine the best time to plant. It is capable of planting 4000 potatoes a minute. Harvesting is based on echo location and the free <em>Potato Farmer 1000</em> can only harvest 1 potato a week, but the full version <em>Potato Farmer 2000</em> can harvest 42 potatoes a day. Note that it really isn't helpful for carrot farming.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>The software should be <strong>directly</strong> applicable to addressing the problem for me to be okay with it.</p>\n<p>A few weeks ago, we had a user promoting a sort of <em>course management system</em> of some sort. On some questions, it worked, but on others, it was noted that the user had searched for the tag and submitted the answer as the product, without ever addressing the question. For some, it was an appropriate solution. For others, it was way off mark or ignored the question entirely and proposed an alternative.</p>\n<p>Also, if the only thing the person is doing is answering about <em>Potato Farmer</em>, then that falls into the spam category for sure.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1351", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1358, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I'm not sure how this would be accomplished. Having a warning present <em>every single time</em> a user posts a question leads to the warning being ignored. Users see their name and image every time they log in, which reminds them that their actions are associated with their ID.</p>\n\n<p>Any time a user wishes to submit anonymously they can simply create a throwaway account and post from that. If they forget to do so, or if a question becomes problematic only after comments/answers are posted, users can flag their question and request that it be dissociated from their account; Community Mods (i.e., Stack Exchange employees; not the Academia mods) have the capability of doing that. I would personally advocate that users used those approach rather than add extra text that users are likely to ignore anyways to the question page.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1362, "author": "Mohamed Khamis", "author_id": 703, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/703", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>From a personal experience, in some cases you would want to anonymize the post after exchanging some comments or making some edits or updates.. In other cases people are not even aware of the severity of not being anonymous.</p>\n\n<p>Moreover, I don't think that users should be obliged to choose between either keeping and raising their scores, badges and points on one side, or being anonymous. </p>\n\n<p>If adding a customized feature in Stackexchange Academia is possible, I would suggest a voting feature (similar to that of closing questions), such that a question is made anonymous after certain number of votes in addition to being either approved or initiated by the asker. </p>\n\n<p>For example, X posts a question, Y and Z think it should be anonymous, so they vote for that and then X approves or rejects. Or X publishes a question and states his desire that it should be anonymous, then Y and Z would see the asker's desire, and could vote to anonymize it as well. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1371, "author": "kleineg", "author_id": 10637, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10637", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In so much as the poster needs to have common sense to realize they may not want their name attached to something on the internet, I am not sure how much responsibility the site bears towards informing them. It is, in the end, up to the individual to assume as much risk as they want. Although comments to the poster, warning them, might be appropriate. For example, this question <a href=\"https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/24540/how-to-intentionally-get-denied-entry-to-the-us-without-getting-into-trouble\">How to intentionally get denied entry to the US, without getting into trouble</a> had implications that it was important that no one from the OP's family find out. The account was a throwaway but a lot of people (including me!) posted to warn the OP of being tracked on her computer. In this case it was advice from answerers, rather than a policy of the site. </p>\n\n<p>Giving people the option to post anonymously could help those who do not want to be identified so that they do not have to create throwaway accounts. However, the privilege should be fairly strictly monitored. I am thinking that moderators would be able to see how many flags a person has, if not for what, and strip the user from being able to post anonymously in the future (this would NOT remove anonymity from anything currently posted but these could be deleted), and any further action taken (like putting the user on suspension) would happen as normal except the moderator would not know who it is.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1357", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22013/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1361, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>My impression nowadays is that we don't really need the undergraduate closing reason as such. Most questions that are closed for being \"undergraduate-only\" could also fall under the \"too specific\" label. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1363, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>My take, from what I've seen so far, is that most things to do with classes and general struggles with learning seem to apply equally well to graduate and undergraduate. I suppose that 'undergraduate-only' is a good filter for not having to deal with questions about undergraduate admissions, or about all of the folderol that is often very important for undergraduate life and has virtually nothing to do with academics (sports, underage drinking, living in dorms, being able to make your own choices for the first time, etc.).</p>\n\n<p>My feeling, then, is that it's a good policy to maintain, but that it's reasonable to be pretty inclusive about what might still be pertinent to graduate and post-graduate life.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1390, "author": "Fomite", "author_id": 118, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/118", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I actually like that there's a no undergraduate-only rule, despite often protesting it's (imo) misapplication. My reasoning, such as it is:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>There are some thing that, while generally applying to undergraduates, are very <em>specific</em> to undergraduates, and don't so much apply to the rest of the academic landscape. Because of the nature of most academic systems, one would suspect there are many more of these questions than there are questions about graduate programs and professorships. I think there's some value in keeping the scope of the site somewhat limited, as you can see in some other SE sites that \"expert\" questions are quickly overrun by non-expert questions. The Biology site comes to mind immediately. I think there are ample resources for undergraduates elsewhere.</li>\n<li>Allowing \"undergraduate questions\" is something of an \"Is this on-topic\" hydra, because more than other parts of academia, undergraduate education is this odd fusion of academic and social issues. Are roommate issues on topic? The sundry issues of administration? Student loans? \"Only some bits of undergrad\" is likely as hard and ambiguous to enforce.</li>\n<li>That being said, I do often vote against \"You have typed the word undergraduate, and now you shall be closed!\" for questions where there's a pretty clear answer to the question if you pretended for a moment that the questioner was a new graduate student - most often it seems authorship questions.</li>\n</ol>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1360", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1365, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The basic issue is that questions asking for list-based answers are considered poor fits for the Stack Exchange format. Asking a separate question for every country would mean you'd post 200 questions would compound the problem.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1366, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 3, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I think that it would help if you refined the question based on <em>why</em> you want to know the answer to the question. Do you really care whether Bolivia, Fiji, and Uzbekistan require legal consent for recording conference talks (nothing special about those countries, just picking a few at random)? If you are just asking a very broad question out of idle curiosity, it seems like a lot of effort for little reward.</p>\n\n<p>I think an appropriate way for this to get dealt with <em>would</em> be on a case-by-case basis, but in a <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazy_evaluation\" rel=\"nofollow\">lazy-evaluation</a> manner. In other words, when somebody cares about a particular country, they can ask about it. We've got a good answer for the US now; tomorrow somebody might ask about an EU country that they have particular reason to care about, and the answer might turn out to cover many countries given their similarities and the large number of community members from who hail from the EU. It might be a while before somebody asks about North Korea or Zimbabwe, and that's OK. </p>\n\n<p>In this way, the questions are likely to find an appropriate granularity and rate of asking on their own, rather than as either a single \"big list\" question or a big list of questions all at once, neither of which is likely to be addressed satisfactorily by the community in the near term due to lack of sufficient expertise in the less-well-represented countries.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1367, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I see a four issues with this question:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>It seems like a big list question where there would be one, likely trivial, answer for each country</li>\n<li>It does not seem particularly relevant or unique to academia</li>\n<li>Ignoring the ethical/political/any other non-legal issues makes the question even less relevant to academia</li>\n<li>It seems a little hypothetical to me and I would hate to see one of these questions for each country/region/state</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>I guess my point is that as individual questions, I am not sure they are great question(s) for us. As a big list, I think it is an awful question for us.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1364", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/452/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1370, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Call me a stick-in-the-mud if you wish, but I have to say I find these sorts of seasonal promos rather dreary and artificial. It's like when people wish you happy birthday because Facebook told them to, rather than because they actually remembered and cared on their own.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1372, "author": "Compass", "author_id": 22013, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22013", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Related: <a href=\"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/277407/do-we-want-hats\">Meta StackOverflow's thread about hats</a></p>\n\n<p>If you want to see how a relatively chaotic Meta site handles the question.</p>\n\n<p>It's in the same vein as how during April 1st, <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/37328/my-god-its-full-of-unicorns\">people got generated unicorn avatars</a>. It's just a bit of harmless fun for StackExchange. With hats.</p>\n\n<p>Edit: Hats are now live. You can opt out by selecting the snowflake in the top left and selecting \"I hate hats\"</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://winterbash2014.stackexchange.com/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">This is where you can enable hats</a></p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://winterbash2014.stackexchange.com/leaderboard\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">This is where you can track our hat-domination progress</a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1373, "author": "yo'", "author_id": 1471, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/1471", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I have said it before and since the time of year is back and the question of hats is back, I will say it once more: <strong>Put whatever stupid thing you wish on your smart heads, as long as you make it such that I don't have to look at it.</strong></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1383, "author": "ahamed", "author_id": 24908, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/24908", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think it is a good fun idea. Life without any fun is not a life. Smile, make others smile and laugh. Go for hats friends!</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1369", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1375, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I say, bump the contrast! I too find it slightly too subtle for my taste.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1376, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Not sure what's going on, but the cyan on my screen is much more clearly distinct from the main text than what you're showing. I think it might be something to do with your browser, perhaps?</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1377, "author": "Compass", "author_id": 22013, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22013", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>By default, here are the colors of links from Academia, pulled from the CSS:</p>\n\n<p>Unvisited: <code>#5e939f</code>\nVisited: <code>#252525</code>\nHover: <code>#DB786A</code></p>\n\n<p>The hover color is the red of the leaning book in the logo, which is actually quite noticeable.</p>\n\n<p>Instead of increasing contrast, increasing the saturation by increasing the blue, similar to the cyan that is used in meta, should be sufficient in differentiating the links from the text. Making the text darker and keeping the link the same color, or making the link darker or brighter, will be less noticeable if they are the same relative saturation. It is relatively easier to notice differences in color and contrast than solely differences in contrast.</p>\n\n<p>Also possibly problematic, <em>mousing over a link in Academia Meta makes it turn the same color as the text.</em></p>\n\n<p>Edit: Does this go to a web developer for Stack Exchange? Do we need to do anything special? I know on Stack Overflow, the web devs literally fix things within seconds. This isn't crucial, but because we have no feedback, there's really no way to tell whether a person who can change this (and it's not a big change AFAIK) has actually seen it &lt;_&lt;</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1374", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1381, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Obsolete comments relating to moderation of questions are one of the primary reasons why comments should <strong>not</strong> be viewed as permanent. Comments such as \"I think this should be reopened\" serves no use once the question has been reopened. </p>\n\n<p>If there is \"non-meta\" content in the comment, that's a different issue, but purely meta comments shouldn't be regarded as \"privileged.\"</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1382, "author": "Pete L. Clark", "author_id": 938, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/938", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In my interactions on this site last night, twice in one hour I spent time and effort putting content on this site, and both times that content was nullified or erased by immediate, unilateral moderator intervention.</p>\n<p>This started with a question that was closed by one person as &quot;unclear&quot; while two other people were answering it. That one person then proceeded to explain precisely what steps the other two people could do in order for her to reopen the question. When moderators unilaterally close questions and then administrate the reopening process, they take away the agency that is supposed to lie with all sufficiently experienced users of the site. Whether questions get closed or reopened is supposed to be a <strong>vote</strong>, after all. The model of a site in which moderators feel that they know better than the other users which questions should be opened or closed and act immediately and unilaterally to me is strikingly different from the other SE sites on which I've been one of the most active participants over a period of five years: too much so for me to want to participate.</p>\n<p>I then expressed concern over unilateral moderator closure in a comment recorded above (and described how my time was wasted by the closure). This comment was deleted within an hour without being responded to. In my opinion, it is alarmingly disrespectful to remove someone's comments while they are engaged in a discourse with you and others -- comments which express civil, reasoned criticism of your own recent actions in a way which obviously has a larger scope than any one question. I'm not going to argue that anymore: I think that the moderators here understand this opinion and just disagree with it. I am also not going to further argue that &quot;comments need not be permanent&quot; is very, very different from &quot;Any moderator who feels in the moment that a comment is no longer relevant or on-topic -- even if the comment pertains to them or to something they have been directly involved with -- can freely delete it without consultation or notification of the commenter&quot;. I am aware that the current SE party line is <strong>Comments are ephemeral</strong>, and I think that people here are aware that I and many other users find that position to be highly obnoxious: deal-breakingly so in some cases. If you want to delete my comments, ask me first: that way, at least I get a chance to preserve my own text for my own use!</p>\n<p>I feel a bit like I have a World of Warcraft avatar who is a math professor named Pete L. Clark. I can play whatever character I want, but I am still subject to the local and changeable metaphysics of the site, just as any orc (or whatever: in case it's not clear, I have never played WoW) would be. The similarity between my SE avatar and its controller may well have lulled me into a category error: I think of this site <em>as being part of my professional life</em>. Because of that I expect to be treated as I would in my professional life (which is not with any kind of royal respect, but in fact with the same courtesy that all academics are accustomed to, no matter their seniority). Every once in a while I get singed by a fireball and realize that this is not the real academic world. When that happens, I think the only sane response is to <strong>log off</strong>. I will now do so for a period of time. If anyone wants to have further discussion with me, I will be happy to have it in the real world, where my name is also Pete L. Clark, I am a professor at the University of Georgia, and my contact information is publicly available. My only requirement is that since I use my real, professional name, I ask you to do the same, in order to receive a response.</p>\n<p>P.S.: Since this will be my last content posted on this site for (at least) a little while, let me say that I do not think that ff524 is a bad person, a bad academic or even a bad moderator. The first two things I really don't know about but the available evidence is to the contrary. For the last, I think that 99.5% of the time she is an excellent moderator: she puts in so much time and effort into this site. The moderators here do a lot of great work: they just seem to fall into the practice, from time to time, of doing too much. When you spend time doing something that nullifies actions, deletes content or wastes the time of some other experienced, committed user, you're spending your time working against someone else. From one academic to another: it's so easy to work against each other, and the effect is always one of at least partial cancellation of time and effort. Please just do a little less: this leaves room for other people to be involved in a way which feels meaningful to them, and after all there is always more academic work to do.</p>\n<hr />\n<p><b>Added</b>: Thanks to all those who have responded. I wanted to further respond to some of these issues.</p>\n<ol>\n<li><p>There is an issue contained in the very title of this post. When do comments become &quot;obsolete with respect to the question they're posted on&quot;? This is not obvious. In the case at hand, I think that comments which discuss the history of closing, editing and/or reopening a question do not soon become obsolete: certainly not in the space of less than an hour and while the question is experiencing all three of these activities. The sentiments expressed in comments like these -- should the question be closed <em>again</em>, etc. -- may or may not be supported by others who come across the question later. Expressing carefully and politely why you think a question should be closed, for instance, takes time and effort. I don't think it should be deleted immediately after the question is reopened.</p>\n<p>The site has a mechanism for <em>users</em> to express that comments are obsolete: they can flag them for that purpose. (Unfortunately users cannot see how many flags a comment has and thus cannot precisely express the opposite opinion. They can upvote, which is not exactly the same thing.) The comment in question was there for well under an hour and had received one upvote. How many users flagged it as obsolete? If the answer is <em>more than one</em>, then that is something I will have to take into account. But if the answer is <em>none</em>, then that means that moderators are taking it upon themselves to decide what content is acceptable for the site or when an interchange has run its course. That's certainly unnecessary, and to me it's unacceptable.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>EnergyNumbers wrote &quot;Comments are designed as ephemeral.&quot;</p>\n<p>I have two issues with that statement. My comments are created by me, so I get to say whether they are designed as ephemeral. I have been clear that they are not. What is probably meant is that the platform was designed so as to make comments ephemeral. I don't think that is quite historically accurate: I have been using SE sites for more than five years, and the push to limit the number of comments is much more recent than that, but that seems more like a quibble. The point is that the platform itself doesn't want anything. This site was created by a specific set of users for a specific purpose, so we get to decide how to use it. There are several other SE sites -- highly correlated to be the ones most closely tied to academia -- where comments are handled in the way I am used to. So it is obviously our choice how to treat comments: it is not an issue of &quot;design&quot;.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>D.W. wrote that I have misunderstood something about how SE sites work. He doesn't explain exactly what I've misunderstood or why he thinks that. In my line of work, it would be a little less than collegial to suggest misunderstanding so casually. All I can say is that I've been involved with four different SE sites over a period of five years. The idea that I simply &quot;don't get it&quot; after all this time simply does not seem very plausible to me...so much so that I do not feel compelled to further defend myself or rehearse the depth of my experience here (you can certainly see it for yourself).</p>\n<p>However the comment that &quot;It's entirely standard for moderators to unilaterally close or re-open questions; that is not illegitimate in any sense. The moderators job is to act to enforce the site policies, as set by the community.&quot; seems at the very least to lack nuance. Yes, it is entirely standard for moderators to unilaterally close <em>certain</em> questions: they should (ideally: this is a service they provide for us, after all) do this when it is completely clear that in doing so they are enforcing the site policies. They should not take a role as people who understand the on-topicness or off-topicness of a question better than any other experienced individual user. But that's what has happened. Other users have called attention to the problematic nature of this, and there has not yet been any response.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>I am aware that I (or someone) could write a script that would save my comments. Or this could be done in other ways: I could create a separate account Pete_L_Clarks_Comments, direct every comment to this account, and in this way have the SE engine automatically mail me all my comments. I think this is a bit of a hack and a use of a site that would be at least somewhat disruptive to other users, so I would hesitate to do it, but I suppose it is an option. But doesn't it say something that the site already has all this infrastructure for others' comments to get emailed to me, but it doesn't even save my own comments?? I find that totally bizarre. Also this approach would not alert me to the deletion of my comments. The fact that I am not even alerted to the removal of my content is very jarring.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Others have emphasized that the model pursued by the moderators here is similar to that of most other SE sites. They have said this so much that I feel that I should reply: yes, I know. Not all SE sites though: I have been active on MathOverflow, math.SE, mathematics educators, and the moderation style is the one I prefer. To all accounts the same holds on the tcs site (I say this because one of the formerly top users on our site is Suresh Venkat, who is a moderator on tcs. The last time these issues came around, he expressed great surprise that on-topic comments ever needed to be deleted. I note that he is no longer very active on this site). Many people seem to hint or occasionally implicitly say that the moderators <em>have</em> to behave as they are or the site could not thrive. I think it's clear that is not the case. It is our choice.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>I don't think we know how the majority of users feel on this issue, because the majority of users are not at all active on meta. We had a recent poll on &quot;winter bash&quot;, and the number of participants was obviously a tiny minority of the total number of users of the site. The people who show up to vote on meta may be those who are used to frequenting SE meta sites (that includes me). For instance one of the answers to this question is from someone who has zero questions and three answers on the main site. He is certainly entitled to his opinion, but it is coming from someone who has put in a lot of time on SO itself and orders of magnitude less time here than I have. So my honest appraisal of the community response to these issues is: the community as a whole does not have strong feelings either way. I haven't heard anyone say that they would not like to participate in a site in which deletion of comments is done more rarely and gingerly than is currently the case.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>I find the sentiment &quot;I'm also pretty uncomfortable with setting a precedent where threatening to leave becomes a way to influence site policy&quot; a bit surprising. My leaving this site could only be a &quot;threat&quot; if my contributions are so valuable that leaving it would jeopardize the site's well-being. I think that is clearly not the case: I am one of the most active and highly reputed members of this site, but not the most and not uniquely so, and my particular areas of expertise are represented by others. Rather I think that when someone has been a member of a group for a long time and had a significant amount of group interactions, it is the honorable thing to do to vocalize any discontent they have with the group that reaches the level which makes them seriously consider leaving the group. That is what I am doing here. If no one else feels the way I do about these issues, then the mere matter of my departure is no great tragedy to anyone. I am slightly disappointed not to have heard from anyone about these issues &quot;in real life&quot;. It would be nice to hear personally from people who are involved in doing what they certainly think is in the site's best interest. I would like to think of the serious users of this site as being my academic colleagues.</p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n<p>It seems that I still have some things to think through.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1384, "author": "410 gone", "author_id": 96, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/96", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Comments are designed as ephemeral. So deletion is almost always a valid option, and very often the preferred option, with some exceptions.</p>\n\n<p>Any comment should stay, as long as it doesn't break any guidelines, if and only if:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>it requests clarification, and that clarification hasn't happened yet;</li>\n<li>it identifies a significant extant flaw in a question or answer;</li>\n<li>it provides guidance on editing, and that editing hasn't happened yet</li>\n<li>it forms a <em>live</em> part of a short live discussion about the post's status (on hold, to be reopened, to be deleted)</li>\n<li>it is addressing some other live aspect of the post that is better served in comments than in meta or chat</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>(I might have missed some other corner cases - I'll be happy to add other sensible exceptions, so please suggest some in comments below)</p>\n\n<p>But in this particular case, a prolonged discussion took place about a question's status: that might be best placed here on meta, where the moderators and the rest of the community can have space to explore the issues.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1388, "author": "xLeitix", "author_id": 10094, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10094", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Pete wrote in his answer:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I am aware that the current SE party line is Comments are ephemeral, and I think that people here are aware that I and many other users find that position to be highly obnoxious: deal-breakingly so in some cases. If you want to delete my comments, ask me first: that way, at least I get a chance to preserve my own text for my own use!</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>My impression is that if you have content in comments that is so valuable to you that you desperately need to preserve it, it maybe really shouldn't have been a comment in the first place. I don't find the SE mandate that important stuff should go into answers \"obnoxious\", but a pretty nifty design decision. </p>\n\n<p>That being said, I really don't have a strong opinion on this. By and large, I think removing comments is perfectly in line with how SE sites are supposed to work, but I also have to say that generally leaving comments in place does not seem to have a huge downside either. If it is in fact the case that this policy keeps valuable, high-profile users such as Pete and JeffE (as indicated by his support in the comments) from contributing, I could definitely see this just not get enforced on Academia.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1392, "author": "Joe", "author_id": 12346, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/12346", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Removing the comments was <em>entirely</em> appropriate, specifically because of the quantity of comments on the question. If there were two or three total comments it would make sense to leave them for a while perhaps - but with 10+ comments on the question, removing the ones that don't really provide useful context <em>immediately</em> makes the remaining comments more useful.</p>\n\n<p>ff524 wasn't hiding anything, after all; the edit history clearly shows who closed the question. If Pete's comment was intended to convince ff524 to not close questions quite so quickly in the future, well, in order to delete it she must have read it - so it served its purpose. </p>\n\n<p>If the point was to have a larger discussion about when it is appropriate to close or not close a question, that should happen in meta and not in comments on a single question.</p>\n\n<p>Either way, it needed to go (as did most of the other comments about closing/reopening) once the question was improved and reopened.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1400, "author": "J.R.", "author_id": 780, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/780", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I only come to Academia occasionally, but I moderate on another SE site. </p>\n\n<p>I think moderators have the right to edit comments in a way that they deem best for the site, and I don't think they should be handcuffed into making a group decision before deleting a comment. The Stack Exchange is pretty clear on this one: answers are permanent, comments are <a href=\"https://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/comment\">temporary</a>.</p>\n\n<p>When I'm moderating, I treat each situation as its own case. Sometimes I'll delete an obsolete conversation, sometimes I'll leave it as a helpful guide for new users. (Comments explaining why a question was closed might help new users learn more about the standards for a site, even when there's some disagreement and debate among regulars.) Sometimes I'll leave part of the conversation there, and trim the excess. Every once in a while, I'll combine two comments into one. </p>\n\n<p>Overall, occasional deletion of comments is healthy for the site, particularly when they become too \"chatty,\" too distracting, too hostile, too lengthy, too sidetracked, or unconstructive. Of course, everyone has their own dividing line. One man's trash is another man's treasure (or, as George Carlin once remarked, \"Ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?\"). The crowd doesn't always agree with the umpire behind home plate, but the game would take forever if everyone had to vote on each pitch. In the same way, some moderator decisions won't please everyone.</p>\n\n<p>In short, I try to do what's best for the site as a whole. My vote would be for that to be the prevailing guidance: let the moderators do their job, and don't make mountains out of molehills when comments get deleted. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1403, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>To look at the specific situation, ignoring comments made by ff524, the comments that were deleted are:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><em>User A</em>: Did you submit a paper to the journal, or did the email come unsolicited? If you did not submit to the journal, I would not recommend doing so.</p>\n<p><em>OP</em>: yes , i submitted my paper to this journal online , after 10 days i received the cited email below</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Note that user51189 is the OP and he/she made an <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/revisions/32394/2\">edit</a> that appears to address the comments making them obsolete. I don't see any question that they should have been deleted.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><em>OP</em>: I see it a spam</p>\n<p><em>ff524</em>: <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spamming\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">&quot;Spam&quot; is unsolicited communication</a> (by definition). If you submitted a paper to this journal, than their email to you is not &quot;spam,&quot; because you contacted them first. Please [edit] your question to clarify what you are asking.</p>\n<p><em>OP</em>: ok, thank you . Then i can pay to this journal for publication</p>\n<p><em>OP</em>: and telling me pleas , what do u know about the publisher cited , is he a predatory ?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>I am not sure where the &quot;I see it a spam&quot; comment originated from, but the question was <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/revisions/32394/2\">edited</a> to remove references to spam and after ff524 deleted her comments, the remaining comments seem obsolete.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><em>User B</em>: I have voted to reopen. The OP has asked whether a particular mathematical journal is reputable or not and also how to tell whether a math journal is reputable. These are both good questions for this site, I think.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>This comment is clearly valuable while the question is closed and votes are being made to reopen the question. Once the question is reopened it seems obsolete to me.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><em>User B</em>: Let me say that I was also writing an answer to the question when it was closed, and in my opinion the question is not so clearly inappropriate as to warrant moderator closure. Moderators should close questions only when the vast majority of serious users of the site would agree that the question should be closed or when there is something truly exceptional or pressingly problematic. If a question is really &quot;unclear&quot;, then five users of the site will think so. There is no hurry to close it unilaterally.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>This comment is very chatty and discussion oriented and not directly related to the question. Any discussion arising from that comment would be better held in meta or chat. Since the relevant portion of the question is on the closing of the question, once the question is reopened, the comment seems obsolete.</p>\n<p>While I agree that moderators need to exercise caution when deleting comments, I really do not see any comment that was deleted that should have been left.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1380", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1389, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think that the push-back you are getting may have to do with the fact that you ask a <em>lot</em> of questions of this type. Of the 41 questions currently marked as <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/reference-request\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;reference-request&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">reference-request</a> on the site as a whole, 19 were asked by you over the last few months, and you've only accepted an answer on one of them. These are also nearly half of the questions that you have asked.</p>\n\n<p>So far as I can see, this site is generally an excellent source for informed opinion, and people will often provide references voluntarily if they have them readily available. Moreover, many of your questions (e.g., <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30031/impact-of-the-visit-weekend-weather-on-the-admitted-graduates-grad-school-decis\">on visit weekend weather</a>, or on <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30090/how-does-the-authors-native-language-impact-the-likelihood-of-having-his-public\">ESL vs. conference acceptance</a>) draw good answers that are <em>not</em> references. </p>\n\n<p>Insisting on references only when good informed opinion is available can make one wonder about the motivation. Are you asking the site to \"do your homework\" on literature searches? This can feel especially dubious given that you work in large-scale ML / data-mining, and a lot of your questions are for information where, if a study exists, it would likely be generated by one of your colleagues in the field.</p>\n\n<p>So: is there a reason that you really need to tag so many of your questions as<a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/reference-request\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;reference-request&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">reference-request</a>? Are these questions out of curiosity, or are you trying to use the answers to formulate research questions or related work sections of your own?</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1391, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I am not sure that it is useful to provide evidence about how you have searched for a topic. Even if a Google/Pubmed/Arxiv search turns up references, it doesn't really provide any expert insight. I think the value of making a reference request on AC.SE is that experts, or at least others with experience, can help guide you and refine the search. I would hope that reference request type questions are receiving better answers than just the first relevant hit in some search engine.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1396, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It's true that questions on SE sites are supposed to show at least a minimum of effort.</p>\n\n<p>However, I think in the case of a <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/reference-request\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;reference-request&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">reference-request</a> question, the way to show that kind of effort is to</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>write a well-defined, specific question</li>\n<li>give context for the question (i.e. explain the motivation or inspiration for the question)</li>\n<li>explain why you think that a reference on the subject of your question might exist</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>This last point is, I think, where the pushback might be coming from - a couple of your questions are about things that I'd be <em>very</em> surprised if anyone had actually studied.</p>\n\n<p>I don't think it's necessary or helpful to list Google Scholar search terms.</p>\n\n<p>Regarding your comment on opinion-based questions, please don't abuse <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/reference-request\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;reference-request&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">reference-request</a> like that. It's perfectly valid to ask \"why,\" \"how,\" \"how often,\" etc questions here without insisting on references. Use <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/reference-request\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;reference-request&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">reference-request</a> and insist on supporting citations for questions where you really need the supporting citations.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1387", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/452/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1394, "author": "Compass", "author_id": 22013, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22013", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n <p>What do I need to know before travelling to Japan for an academic fellowship?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Travel Stack Exchange would be a better bet for you with a question like this. Probably stuff like health insurance, visas, documents, immunizations. Nothing academic-specific comes to mind in relation to a topic like this.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>How does British academia differ from Japanese academia with respect to etiquette and other social niceties?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This seems okay for the site when you frame it \"as a fellowship student from a foreign country\" I think. Might not get a lot of responses since it's a small subset. Removing \"British\" might yield more responses.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Do I need to bring omiyage for my host on a first meeting?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>U wot mate? (Very low yield question, since probably 99.5% of us don't know what an omiyage is. Is it tasty?) Might be better to use Travel.SE, or Japan.SE if one of those actually exists. Or even a travel website.</p>\n\n<p>You should target for questions that are applicable to more than you, in the vein of the second question. The country of destination will likely matter little in terms of actually coming up with an answer, except for very culture-specific questions, which will likely belong on a different SE entirely.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1395, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>There is a similar <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/984/whats-the-etiquette-for-a-short-visit-to-a-us-university-department\">question</a> about a short-term visit to the U.S. that seems to be well-received:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<h2>What's the etiquette for a short visit to a US university department?</h2>\n<p>In May, I'll be visiting a department at Columbia University in the US for a few days. What's the etiquette on visiting (answers relevant to US in general are welcome, to prevent this question getting too localised)?</p>\n<p>I'd like to spend some time with quite a few of the researchers, and compare notes on ongoing work. I'll read their recent publications in advance. Should I be inviting staff out for a coffee and a chat; or dinner; or a talk in the lab?</p>\n<p>Context: I'm a faculty researcher, and would be looking to spend a bit of time with postdoc researchers, and those professors whose jobs are primarily research, rather than admin or teaching.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Any reason an analogous question for Japan would not be suitable for you?</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1393", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/1202/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1405, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>As I said in my comment, remarks about the behaviour of a specific moderator should be brought up to meta, in a clear question, rather than as a \"by the way\" statement in an answer to a different question (even though the question is related). The question where the post is should be answered regardless of the identity of the moderator. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1407, "author": "Mad Scientist", "author_id": 201, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/201", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I consider it perfectly acceptable to make meta posts about the behaviour of specific moderators while naming them. Calling out regular users is problematic, but I think moderators can deal with some additional scrutiny. </p>\n\n<p>There is a very closely related issue of how constructive the complaint about a moderator is written. Posts like \"Moderator xzy is a fascist because he removed my post\" tend not to result in anything constructive, the language often becomes a distraction and the real issue is not actually discussed. In my experience, complaints about moderation get much better results if they're written reasonably neutral, and don't assume malice. And often this means that not even naming the specific moderator, but simply the actual issue is a good idea (unless there is a recurring pattern with a specific moderator).</p>\n\n<p>As a moderator on two other SE sites, I personally tend to allow even very non-constructive criticism of the mods on meta sites, and I answer them calmly with some facts and an explanation of the relevant policies. The way a user complains reflect more on them than on me as the moderator, and I won't prevent clearly unreasonable users from demonstrating that fact.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1408, "author": "Alexandros", "author_id": 10042, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10042", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>First of all, let me say I have nothing about ff524 or any other moderator. In fact, I have recently added a praising comment about ff524's excellent answer in <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32938/protocol-for-writing-a-recommendation-letter-for-someone-you-only-know-on-a-pers/32939#comment73856_32939\">Protocol for writing a recommendation letter for someone you only know on a personal basis</a>. And I am not buddies with PeteLClark since I have never met him in my life. I have multiple times agreed, disagreed and downvoted by or upvoted by multiple power users such as ff524, JeffE and Pete. On all these times, I was civil and respected their different opinions. I expect the same courtesy from moderators.</p>\n\n<p>This too much moderation is something that I have also mentioned in the past (<a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1327/comments-deletion-in-academia-se\">Comments deletion in Academia SE</a> and <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1071/what-is-this-question-asking-about/1074#1074\">What is this question asking about</a>). Since both my questions and answers were highly upvoted, this is also an interesting issue for the entire community and one that the moderators should take into account. On my answer to <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1071/what-is-this-question-asking-about/1074#1074\">What is this question asking about</a>, I think @StrongBad was convinced that the SE Academia does not really need moderator protection against controversial questions and that the community would quickly \"shoot down in flames\" any troll. </p>\n\n<p>But what you moderators have done in my answer in <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1380/should-moderators-delete-comments-that-are-about-moderation-once-they-become-ob/1385#1385\">Should moderators delete comments that are about moderation, once they become obsolete with respect to the question they&#39;re posted on?</a> is not nice at all. I have expressed my civil opinion about moderation of a specific individual. If I do not like this individual's style of moderation I must be allowed to freely and publicly express my opinion. I can do that for any government official in any public news blog and SE academia moderators are somehow beyond any criticism? This is wrong by any SE policy or in any democracy.</p>\n\n<p>And then getting my answer edited by another moderator (who BTW has only posted one answer in the last 5 months and only ghost-appeared for this edit) is plain rude. I could appreciate a comment, such as \"could you please remove the personal name of the moderator\" and I would gladly do it. But doing it \"just because we can do that\" is wrong. And even when Pete and me rollbacked again, then @strongbad locked the post AFTER keeping the version he prefers. Why? Was this really necessary? For whom? </p>\n\n<p>You do not like my answer. I get it. Downvote. But changing the answer without consulting the original OP and changing its actual content is considered extra rude in any SE community. @StrongBad's answer to the same question refers to Pete. What if I removed the content referring to Peter, because he \"targets the specific user\". Would that be normal behavior? No, it won't. That is why, I do not do it and I never edit answers of those I disagree with. <strong>Especially those I disagree with</strong>. And so should moderators.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1409, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<ol>\n<li><p>I don't think there is any reason for <em>someone other than the OP</em> to remove a moderator's name from a meta post, as long as it's (a) civil in tone, and (b) related to the moderator's activities on the site. In this case, both conditions are met. </p></li>\n<li><p>I agree with <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1407/11365\">Mad Scientist</a> on the subject of whether someone should name a moderator in their <em>own</em> post. Sometimes it's useful, sometimes it isn't.</p></li>\n<li><p>I did not find <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1385/929\">that particular post</a> useful, for reasons having nothing to do with being named. I asked a specific question about moderating comments; the post was about moderating questions. It's hard to interpret the downvotes on that post, because I can't tell whether they signify \"I disagree with this post\" or \"This doesn't answer the question.\" It would be much more useful to bring up the issue of moderating questions in a new post, to resolve this ambiguity and so that we can discuss it properly. But if the OP believes for some reason that his post adds something to the thread about moderating comments, I have no problem with that.</p></li>\n</ol>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1416, "author": "J.R.", "author_id": 780, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/780", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The original question:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Should moderators delete comments that are about moderation, once they become obsolete?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The contentious part of the answer that was edited out: </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Of all the 4 moderators, I also think that @ff524 moderates a little too much. There is simply no need to close questions (e.g. as in potential duplicates) unilaterally</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This was off-topic and out in left field; it had little to do with the original question. More importantly, a reasonable explanation was given:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>that is a fine topic for discussion in a separate post, but not as an answer on this question</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Those who have made exaggerated allegations of misguided censorship, demanded apologies, and engaged in a childish rollback war could have simply opened a new meta post about the issue of unilateral closures by moderators. Both discussions would have stayed more on-topic, and less barbs would have been thrown.</p>\n\n<p>Rumors of moderators overusing their powers have been greatly exaggerated. This has nothing to do with a crumbling of democracy; rather, a couple people felt slighted and irate because a few of their words got removed from a discussion. Too bad cooler heads didn't prevail.</p>\n\n<p>This meta question:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Does including the name of the individual who is being \"accused\" of closing questions too frequently add value to the question?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Because the context of the remark was closing questions – not deleting comments – <strong>I believe the moderator acted appropriately by toning down the answer</strong>, and inviting those involved in the debate to open a separate discussion on meta. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1417, "author": "Compass", "author_id": 22013, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22013", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Naming a moderator when it is relevant should be <em>encouraged</em>. If a person doesn't know why something has occurred, and isn't allowed to ask why a moderator action was performed, he will likely continue the activity. </p>\n\n<p>That being said, moderator issues should be dedicated their own question, so that they can be resolved separately. An answer like the one presented would be \"Not an Answer\" and the member needs to be informed as such. </p>\n\n<p>The following examples from StackOverflow demonstrate that questioning moderation helps to improve member/moderator relations, establish an understanding (may not be mutual), and reach a resolution.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/277031/deleted-comments\">Exhibit A</a> and <a href=\"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/278763/erratic-moderator-behaviour-on-this-question-and-on-the-grub-tag-in-general\">Exhibit B</a></p>\n\n<p>On SO especially, I do recall several examples of moderators actually revealing the name of the moderator who performed the action and pinging them to resolve the dispute. If people are unwilling to ask for clarification, we'll continue to have moderation disputes indefinitely.</p>\n\n<p>I don't believe editing of a user's post on meta in such that it alters the <em>intent</em> is appropriate, regardless of whether it is an answer or not, though. Some of us here have the requisite 2k rep to be able to edit instantly. However, edits that are made typically should follow this rule, which is seen in the Suggested Edits queue: <em>This edit deviates from the original intent of the post. Even edits that must make drastic changes should strive to preserve the goals of the post's owner.</em> If the intent of the user is to name a user, removing that name is technically altering the intent.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1404", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1419, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>These <em>without a doubt</em> meet the <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/237978/a-guide-to-moderating-comments/237982#237982\">criteria for deleting comments</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>they offer nothing of value to either the author of the post or to future readers.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>These are meta-comments about the potential closure of the question. The only vote to close the question has long since aged away. There is no ongoing debate over closing the question (and the question never even came close to bring closed, by moderators or anyone else). The entire conversation is almost two years old. The person who posted those comments was invited to bring the concerns to meta, and declined to do so. </p>\n\n<p>Given the current vote counts on <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1380/should-moderators-delete-comments-that-are-about-moderation-once-they-become-ob\">this question</a> which was about a <em>much</em> more borderline case, I don't think there's any reason to believe that the community majority would want to keep those comments around.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1428, "author": "Pete L. Clark", "author_id": 938, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/938", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Here is a second shot at posting what really is an answer to the question. That answer had a feature which proved to be distracting and controversial, so I am trying again without it.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Moving comments to meta is much less potentially objectionable than deleting them outright. It would be easy enough to keep one or more meta questions open for the purpose of transferring comments that pertain to moderation (and/or other meta issues).</p>\n\n<p>The point of the meta site is to provide a platform for discussions of site mechanics. It is natural that many discussions of site issue begin on the site itself, and I don't like to see discussions which begin there deleted outright. However, \"I have moved this discussion of site issues to the dedicated place for site issues\" ought not to be problematic to anyone.</p>\n\n<p>Note also that moving such discussions seems easier and faster than wondering whether or not to delete them and especially to having discussions about the suitability of deleting questions.</p>\n\n<p>I do not myself see much of value in the present comments, and deleting comments that are more than a year old and have not been acted upon is not a problem to me. But I think that the general practice of moving comments to meta rather than (or technically speaking, along with) deleting them is a good one. I hope it does not take much more work for moderators to do this. If it does, a streamlined way to move comments to the meta site seems like a eminently reasonable feature request.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1418", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1427, "author": "Alexandros", "author_id": 10042, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10042", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think that the question presents a false dichotomy. We do not have to choose one option vs the other. Also, as users or moderators we are exactly like comments. <strong>We are ephemeral</strong> (as moderators tend to remind us about comments). Who knows which one of us will still be around to answer questions or moderate this forum in ten years from now? Why do we need to strictly enforce one policy or the other, based on our \"vision\" we have for this site. Why do we need to actually have a vision for this site, instead of letting it evolve naturally? Why can't we decide on a question-per-question basis or on comment-per-comment basis? Why do we actually need to have a prevailing policy after all? We are mostly scientists and there maybe more than one correct and viable approaches to the exact same problem exist. Why must we enforce the prevailing one? Academia SE really does not have to be our little science project where we calibrate the results to best fit our theory.</p>\n\n<p>The SE policies have been tested multiple times on many sites and they really work. They are harsh but they help avoid the disintegration of SE sites into a mash of newbies who ask silly questions and chase away the serious users who really want to contribute. But here, we do not have any of those problems. We do not have newbies who want to solve their homework. We do not have \"Java HasMap. Plz hlp\" questions. We do not have <strong>help vampires</strong> who answer their questions to increase their rep. The high-rep users are established people who just want to contribute and would never waste their time to answer idiotic questions for increasing their rep. As such, this community has none of the problems of Stack Overflow as pointed in many meta questions there (e.g., <a href=\"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/251758/why-is-stack-overflow-so-negative-of-late\">here</a> and <a href=\"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/252506/question-quality-is-dropping-on-stack-overflow\">here</a>). </p>\n\n<p>Also, on a personal view, I am not very interested in rounding different questions and answers so that all the different use cases are rounded to the exact same problem, to be marked as duplicates to facilitate easier Google searching. 90% of the answers in this forum may be answered by canned answers like, \"Ask your advisor\", \"Do not walk, run\", \"Do research as an undergraduate and get good grades to get a good PHD position\", \"You are not too old for a PHD\" and so-on. Do we really need rounded / identical questions and canned answers or we need personalized, high-quality advice from Academia professionals? This is the real question and what we should decide after all. And to that end, option 2 is a a far better choice.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1429, "author": "410 gone", "author_id": 96, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/96", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p><strong>tl;dr: vigorous maintenance and weeding help make this site the success it is</strong></p>\n\n<p>Stack Exchange software and guidelines are all designed for \"building up a library of concise, clear and correct questions and answers\".</p>\n\n<p>That's not the only way to do things. As userxxxx noted in a now-deleted answer, places like the <a href=\"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskAcademia/\" rel=\"nofollow\">Ask Academia sub-Reddit</a> provide a great venue for other approaches.</p>\n\n<p>But expert Q&amp;A about Academia is what we do well - better than anywhere else on the web, IME. It's how we do things on Stack Exchange - that's why most of us are here rather than somewhere else. There are other places for long discussions all over the web, and have been for many years. There are other places for opinion pieces, for mutual support groups, and so on. We don't need to try to provide those platforms as well as being a Q&amp;A site, because there are already plenty of places on the web for those, with software platforms tailored for them.</p>\n\n<p>The software platform here is tailored for expert Q&amp;A. That's what we've been so far, that's what we're good at: we've got a great web niche, and we fill it really well.</p>\n\n<p>We don't have help vampires, precisely because we are a type #1 site: we close and delete nonsense quickly and efficiently.</p>\n\n<p>We have the tools to close duplicates; to close opinion-based questions; to keep discussions contained to chat. And we use them. Academia.SE has one of the lowest ratios of questions in limbo (closed, but not deleted) of the whole network.</p>\n\n<p>I agree with Alexandros that we're not here to maintain a tiny number of canonical questions and close everything else as duplicates. At the same time, having a hundred answers scattered across fifty questions that all boil down to variants of the same answer is an unmaintanable mess, and that would get in the way of us helping each other.</p>\n\n<p>We've had the discussion about comments here several times, and every time we come back to yes, comments are designed to be ephemeral, and that's what works.</p>\n\n<p>There's a lot of experience across over a hundred Stack Exchange sites about what works in the short run and in the long run. Those are embodied in the guidelines that are common to almost all the sites. They all point to building a library of concise, clear questions and answers. Not discussion. So that means deleting comments once they've served their purposes of seeking clarification or pointing out egregious errors. That means closing questions that are not clear, are off-topic, are too broad, that are primarily opinion based; and then getting those closed questions either edited and reopened, or deleted.</p>\n\n<p>This is about whether we continue with the meticulous weeding and maintenance tasks, or let the site get overgrown with whatever happens to self-sow here. There are already plenty of briar patches all over the internet, and it would be a real waste to take on of the web's best-maintained academic gardens and let it decay into just another briar patch.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1430, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Honestly, I think that we can <em>and should</em> effectively serve both goals.</p>\n\n<p>I see the aim of this site as consistent with #1: providing consistent, clear, and correct answers.</p>\n\n<p>Because of the nature of the questions and answers, however, there is inherently more subjectivity and personal perspective involved in creating a good answer than there is for a question on programming or statistics. For this same reason, I believe that in many cases even answering a fairly question can provide a much more general value in the answer: it is for this reason that I typically take pains to explain the principles and reasoning process that I use to arrive at an answer, because I think that in many cases those are more of the takeaway than the answer itself. I see many others doing the same, and suspect it may be for the same reasons.</p>\n\n<p>From these basic principles, I would propose the following approaches to the various policy questions:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p><strong>Editing:</strong> Removing \"noise\" is fine, but should be careful to preserve as much of the original intent and also <em>voice</em> of the OP as possible.</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Closing questions:</strong> Off-topic questions should be closed, but when a question is borderline it is best if it closes more slowly, rather than getting a mod-jump to the end. I see a lot of questions that get a quick answer and/or de facto answers in comments that probably adequately address the OP's problem, even though the question is then deemed not worth of retention. I think this is a good balance between problem solving and curation.</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Comments:</strong> Many comments serve as good \"footnotes\" to the original posts, as well as information about how an edge case is best resolved. We should definitely remove obsolete comments, but be slow about it and generous about what we consider a footnote.</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Answers:</strong> Again, I think we should be fairly generous in what we consider to be an on-topic answer, because many times the exact question asked is not actually the question the person actually wants answered, often due to some degree of ignorance on their part. Anything that doesn't fit a fairly generous reading, however, should be downvoted, converted, or deleted.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>As you may notice, I think that in principle we should hew to #1, but in practice due to the nature of the comments there will be a lot of #2 as part of the reality of providing good answers to many issues, especially around judgement and ethics.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1432, "author": "Dilaton", "author_id": 5904, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/5904", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It depends on who you want to get as targetted audience, both as active contributors to the site AND as \"passive\" external readers.</p>\n\n<p>If the goal is, as the name <strong>Academia</strong> of the site implies, to have a high expert-level site useful to and used by academics such as professors, active researchers, posdocs, ect you have to treat these folks and their generous contributions with the appropriate respect and appreciation. The schedule of academics and researchers is often very time constrained, which means that the time and effort they voluntarily offer to contribute to something such as this site, can not be taken for granted. If they dont get something back from contributing to Academia themself and dont think the site is of use and helpful to them, they simply dont come or leave again.</p>\n\n<p>So if the targetted audience of Academia is academics and active researchers, the only appropriate (and demonstrably successful) way to moderate the site is the <strong>MathOverflow</strong> <strong>model</strong> <strong>(Option 2)</strong>, which is in addition to MathOverflow also successfully applied (adopted exactly) by the research-level <a href=\"https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/\">Theoretical Computer Science</a> site in the SE network. </p>\n\n<p>From an academics/active researchers point of view, option 1 is orthogonal to any high-level academic community, it just wants to lure academics and experts in to write a dead online book useful for an as large as possible general audience of random external viewers for free, without giving anything back to them or allowing the site to be useful to the people who actually offer their time and effort to write the content. </p>\n\n<p><strong>In summary: if a high density of accomplished academics and active researchers is important for Academia, the SO model (option 1) is not suitable and the MathOverflow model (option 2) should be adopted.</strong></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1437, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Academia in generally is pretty harsh and we all have a lot of things to rant about. What I really like about AC.SE is that we are NOT a discussion board and we have a low tolerance for ranting. Many of our questions are \"soft\" and our answers are our opinions driven by our experience. While our answers may be our opinions, I think sometimes others can better express <em>MY</em> opinion better than I can. I would like to see AC.SE as a community driven site where we all work together to improve the questions and answers by freely editing them to be as helpful and clear as possible. I think that adding an answer that simply tweaks the meaning of another answer just adds noise to the site. We need to be able to edit things. If answers and comments are not directly relevant, they should be improved or deleted.</p>\n\n<p>I think closing questions is the biggest issue. Keeping AC.SE rant free is important to me. Questions should be closed if they are outside our scope and most definitely if they are discussion oriented. It doesn't matter if someone wants to answer the question or not.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1422", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1436, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 3, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I don't know why people where not voting to reopen it. Sometimes the process is slow and you just need to alert people, on either meta or chat, to issues. The question had two reopen votes, and I added mine to reopen it. I think your edit made the question much clearer.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1446, "author": "yo'", "author_id": 1471, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/1471", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Well, the reason is that the whole <code>close -&gt; improve -&gt; reopen</code> strategy is not exactly working well all the time. In my opinion, the strategy <code>comment -&gt; edit -&gt; problem solved</code> works better. It is just necessary to decide whether you prefer some good questions staying closed or some bad questions staying open. I prefer the latter.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1452, "author": "Nobody", "author_id": 546, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/546", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>First of all, let's go back to the Revision history of the question linked to this meta. See <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/posts/34431/revisions\">https://academia.stackexchange.com/posts/34431/revisions</a></p>\n\n<p>I was the one who cast the first Reopen vote after the OP edited the question. Then jakebeal edited it again to make it better and voted to Reopen. Then the question just sat there until StrongBad, one of our mods (I was going to say our excellent mod, but all of our mods are excellent), reopened it.</p>\n\n<p>The reason I casted the Reopen vote was because I am a regular <strong>Review</strong> queue user. I saw it in the Review because the OP edited it. I examined it and decided to vote to reopen. I believe jake is also a regular Review user. He probably saw it in the Review and then did the Edit and Reopen.</p>\n\n<p>Now, here is the problem I have observed. Not too many of our users use the Review queue. As far as I know, only a handful are regular non-mod Review users. You can check the stats for each Review category. For example, only Peter Jansson and I have three digits number of Reopen reviews. I believe this is one of the reasons the subjct question stayed on limbo stage for so long. Had many users seen it in Review, it would be reopened (or left closed) without mods' intervention.</p>\n\n<p>My answer here naturally raises a question, how do we encourage our users to use Review which is a very good moderating tool? I don't have a good answer for this question. I just keep doing Review myself.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1435", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1454, "author": "Federico Poloni", "author_id": 958, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/958", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>My opinion is that full disclosure of this potential conflict of interest is <strong>necessary</strong> in the answer itself.</p>\n<ul>\n<li><p>The question is &quot;would use of Wikimedia images be considered unprofessional&quot;; it is a subjective question, and it is clear that being president of a national Wikimedia branch affects significantly her view on this topic. The fact that she is not paid for this position is irrelevant.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Disclosure of this fact in her profile is <em>not</em> sufficient: first of all it is information that should not be one click away from the answer, and more importantly profiles (unlike answers) can be changed at any time without notice.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Her answer is (unnecessarily) apologetic of Wikimedia images in several passages:</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<blockquote>\n<p>it is possible to find great images in Commons</p>\n<p>There are great pictures on Commons.</p>\n<p>There are many professionals who use their free time to provide Commons (and hence Wikipedia articles) with illustrative, clear graphics.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>      It should be made clear that this is not the opinion of an independent academic user, but the one of a person who is significantly involved in the project.</p>\n<ul>\n<li>&quot;Should I always disclose my opinions beforehand?&quot; -- this looks like a straw man from her part.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>I have nothing against her, Wikimedia or her answer, and I welcome her contributions to this site, but I think that an user should disclose this kind of information whenever they reference explicitly an organization in which they are actively involved. We have had some cases of advertising of one's own projects on this site, and it is always better to err on the side of transparency.</p>\n<p>(full disclosure: I have <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Fph\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">contributed</a> to Wikipedia by editing a few pages in the past.) :)</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1455, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I don't think there's a huge conflict of interest here, as the user in question is not in a position to profit directly or indirectly from increased Wikimedia Commons usage. </p>\n\n<p>That said, it certainly doesn't hurt to provide that information upfront when one is talking about something that could <em>appear</em> to be a conflict. However, I would be careful about making more <em>requirements</em>. I think the existing rules are sufficient.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1456, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I don't think there is any significant problem with the answer as it stands. Here is why I differentiate it from the \"advertising\" posts that have been problematic in the past:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Most advertising posts introduce the subject that they are advertising (e.g., \"problems with students cheating on exams? why not use Cheat-Be-Gone, now with lemon scent!\"). Here the OP introduced the subject, and simply drew an answer written by an expert.</p></li>\n<li><p>I found the post mostly simply adding clarification and information, rather than advocating Wikimedia vs. other sources. This is a post that could easily have been written by anybody familiar with the resource---in fact, much of it are things that I would consider nearly \"common knowledge.\"</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>That said, disclosure never hurts, and in this case would probably be nice simply in adding to the authority of the answer. For example, when I write an answer to a post about how journals work, I will often mention the service I have done as an editor simply as part of credentialing my answer. I thus think that this answer could be enhanced by disclosure, less for ethical reasons and more to make clear the expertise of the author.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1458, "author": "Aubrey", "author_id": 26682, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/26682", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I would like to make some clarifications. </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>my name is Andrea, but I'm a man :-) (not a big deal, but let's set things straight)</li>\n<li>I'm no Wikimedia executive. I'm a volunteer in Wikimedia projects, and I'm also a volunteer in the no profit association called Wikimedia Italia. I actually wrote it <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/29863/is-it-unprofessional-to-use-graphics-from-wikipedia-in-a-poster/34817#comment77336_34817\">in my comment</a>. \nThe Wikimedia movement is a complex thing, but what is probably necessary to know is that being the President of Wikimedia Italia it's not my \"job\".\nMy paid job is being a \"digital librarian\": in the past, I also worked for the University of Bologna in their open access journals library service. </li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Of course, and that is probably the thing we want to discuss, I am <em>biased</em> towards open access and open knowledge. I'm an advocate (someone would consider me an activist), and I understand my answer is not neutral, because I'm not.\nI alsways try to ground my answers and comments with reason and facts, but I do have a strong opinion regarding certain topics. I cannot help it :-)</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1459, "author": "Feij", "author_id": 26808, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/26808", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>As an addendum to other answers, my perspective is that once the conflict of interest is fuzzy enough, there is a benefit to leaving it out: people don't care too much, and would rather spend their time reading something else. As an analogy, academic talks also often omit details in proofs to maximize the information/time tradeoff. Those details are relevant, but not worth people's time.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1453", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/958/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1461, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The general \"tilt\" of SE sites is towards math and computer science, so it's not much of a stretch that such disciplines would be well-represented here. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1463, "author": "Anonymous Mathematician", "author_id": 612, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/612", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>Mathematics is certainly disproportionately represented here, although it's only a minority of the site.</p>\n\n<p>One reason is <a href=\"https://mathoverflow.net/\">MathOverflow</a>, which is arguably the most successful stackexchange site devoted to research-level academics. As a consequence, the stackexchange network probably has more visibility within mathematics than in any other academic field except computer science itself. When non-technical questions come up on MathOverflow, people are often advised to come here instead, so we get a steady stream of visitors interested in mathematics.</p>\n\n<p>A second reason is critical mass. If a mathematics student or professor visits this site, they will quickly see that it's a welcoming and useful place to ask/answer questions, while this may be less apparent in some other fields. The net result is that first-time users in mathematics are probably more likely to become active participants.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1460", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/26682/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1475, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think that there is an important distinction between \"Is this a good conference?\" vs. \"Is this a scam?\"</p>\n\n<p>The first is often a matter of opinion and perspective (\"good\" as evaluated by which community?), and may also change over time, so I think it is not appropriate for this forum. The second is both more objective and less likely to change, but the boundary between the two may be fuzzy regarding certain for-profit venues. Thus I think that the question may be appropriate, but should be approached gingerly and only answered with independent evidence rather than opinion.</p>\n\n<p>I therefore think we ought to accept \"is this a scam?\" questions on a trial basis, and if they prove to be problematic reverse the policy.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1477, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>As I've said <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1298/11365\">here</a>, I believe it is much more useful to <em>characterize</em> a publisher (or conference, university, etc) than ask about it by name.</p>\n\n<p>Consider the question <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/23406/is-a-university-that-grants-me-a-phd-for-1000-and-a-copy-of-my-unpublished-book\">\"Is a university that grants me a PhD for $1000 and a copy of my unpublished book fake?\"</a>, which has a great, general answer that someone put some non-trivial effort into. There are dozens of diploma mills out there. If this question is asked dozens of times (once for each diploma mill, by name), either (a) they won't all get such great answers, or (b) a lot of effort will be duplicated providing essentially the same answer to dozens of questions.</p>\n\n<p>So I am in favor of the following policy for questions that ask about reputability of X:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>If there's an existing question about a Y which has essentially the same characteristics of X (for purposes of the question), close as a duplicate¹. Indicate to the OP in a comment that while the name is different, X and Y have the same relevant characteristics and so the answers still apply. </li>\n<li>else, edit the question to ask about <em>something with the characteristics of X</em>, not just X itself.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>¹ I prefer closing as a duplicate over closing as 'too localized' in this situation. Duplicate questions are not usually deleted. So it's still searchable by name (i.e. will still show up in Google results for \"Is X a scam?\"), and also, can be reopened by the community if, in the future, somebody decides that X is different from Y in a way that affects the answer to the question.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1462", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1465, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I am not confident enough about what a manuscript (<a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13089/what-are-the-boundaries-between-draft-manuscript-preprint-paper-and-article\">What are the boundaries between draft, manuscript, preprint, paper, and article?</a>) to want it as a tag. As long as the tag wiki was clear enough, it might be helpful ...</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1466, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In short, I don't think it would be helpful to introduce a new, very broad, tag that does not have a clearly defined scope distinct from existing tags. </p>\n\n<p>There are three reasons I am not in favor of this proposal:</p>\n\n<p>1) There is not much consistency in how people understand the word \"manuscript,\" which makes it a bad choice for a tag name. We've even had a question asking about the distinction, as StrongBad brought up. </p>\n\n<p>In my field, for example, I never hear people use the word \"manuscript.\" People use \"paper\" when they are talking about an article in any stage of the publication process (both before and after publication).</p>\n\n<p>Tag wiki excerpts are great, but underused, so if we think very few people will correctly understand a tag without referring to its excerpt, it's probably going to be a badly used tag.</p>\n\n<p>Good tags should be easy to use and understand; \"manuscript\" vs \"publication\" is a distinction that means different things to different people, so it's not a good distinction to make in a tag.</p>\n\n<p>2) We already have tags <em>more</em> specific than \"manuscript\" that I think would make the manuscript tag redundant. Questions about a manuscript would probably be about</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>writing them, in which case they'd be covered by the <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/writing\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;writing&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">writing</a> tag</li>\n<li>circulating them, which would be covered by <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/preprint\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;preprint&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">preprint</a></li>\n<li>submitting them for review or publication, which would be covered by <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/paper-submission\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;paper-submission&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">paper-submission</a></li>\n<li>etc.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>When the more specific tags are used, they implicitly include \"manuscript\" - e.g. if a question has <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/paper-submission\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;paper-submission&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">paper-submission</a>, it is obviously about a manuscript. </p>\n\n<p>You mentioned in a comment that it is <em>wrong</em> to use <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/publications\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;publications&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">publications</a> together with these tags. I don't think it is wrong. People use <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/publications\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;publications&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">publications</a> to distinguish between, e.g., <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/writing+publications\">questions on writing content that is intended for publication</a> and <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/writing+thesis\">questions on writing content that is intended for a thesis</a>. It's a useful distinction.</p>\n\n<p>3) Massive changes to the tag taxonomy need massive benefit to justify. This change would apply to a lot of questions, and I don't see massive benefit to this proposal.</p>\n\n<p>It's not very disruptive to suggest and apply changes to tags on a small scale (i.e., less than a dozen questions). Changes on a large scale are more disruptive to existing users, and I prefer not to do them unless there's a very good reason. (And of course, large changes should preferably have a <em>lot</em> of support on meta before anyone undertakes them.)</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1464", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/15723/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1468, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>My quick thoughts:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>I would definitely leave in comments that highlight parts of the answer, as they reinforce the message of the answer and indicate why it's important.</li>\n<li>A simple \"Thanks!\" or \"+1. Nice answer.\" that doesn't really contribute anything probably can go.</li>\n<li>Comments should at least be left up for a day or so, unless it's clear that they've already been seen and responded to.</li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1471, "author": "410 gone", "author_id": 96, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/96", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If it's been flagged, and there isn't a really good reason for it to stay, just delete it.</p>\n\n<p>What would be a really good reason? If it's asking for clarification, and that clarification has not yet been made. Or if it's pointing out an egregious error in an answer.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1467", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1472, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Specific tags have some benefit, as long as they're used appropriately.</p>\n\n<p>Someone looking for information about <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/elsevier\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;elsevier&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">elsevier</a> policies in particular isn't necessarily interested in general practices of <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/publishers\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;publishers&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">publishers</a>. Specific tags allow for finer distinctions when searching for questions of interest. Synonyms destroy those distinctions.</p>\n\n<p>Tags that are a brand name also have the benefit of name recognition and SEO-friendliness. Nobody asks Google, \"Can I cite a wiki-type website in an academic paper?\" They ask, \"Can I cite Wikipedia?\"</p>\n\n<p>Some other SE sites use brand-specific tags very successfully. For example, on <a href=\"https://travel.stackexchange.com/\">Travel</a>, there is the general <a href=\"https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/airlines\">airlines</a>, but also <a href=\"https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/ryanair\">ryanair</a>, <a href=\"https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/jetstar\">jetstar</a>, <a href=\"https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/qatar-airways\">qatar-airways</a>, etc.</p>\n\n<p>There may be individual tags on Academia that are too specific to be useful and should be re-evaluated. But I don't think making all brand-specific tags synonyms of a broader tag is useful as a general rule.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1473, "author": "Aubrey", "author_id": 26682, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/26682", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I'm not an expert of the SE software, but I think the answer to your question boils down to the role of tags in this website.</p>\n\n<p>My impression (correct me if I'm wrong), is that tags are:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>used by users for <em>browsing</em> and finding Q&amp;As they are interested in</li>\n<li>used by the community to <em>organize</em> Q&amp;As, clean up the mess, have a coherent taxonomy</li>\n<li>used for <em>SEO</em> purposes by the SE devs (meaning: search engines look at tags) </li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>From a librarian point of view (which is mine, and it's not neutral :-) findability is very important, and tags are useful and helpful when they actually are. I agree with ff524's answer: sometimes specific tags are useful and sometimes they are not. \nI'm not a fan of perfect, coherent taxonomies that do not help the user (especially, the new ones). They are beautiful to see, but they serve no other purpose than be consistent. <a href=\"http://www.shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">The world is fuzzy</a> (even a small world as academia.SE) and thus there is no taxonomy that can be created <em>bottom up</em>, as we do, that can maximize consistency and usefulness. We need to pick one :-)</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1474, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>To me, the critical question is this: what resource is expended by tags?</p>\n\n<p>Infrastructure-wise, there is no limit on number of tags in the database. There <em>is</em> a per-post limit, so we cannot have a general taxonomic policy without needing to allow for frequent truncation. There is also a limit on citation time expended by the community and on rate of change that does not disrupt the front page.</p>\n\n<p>I thus see it as better to think of tags as identifying clusters rather than creating categories. The value of a tag is then not defined by how broadly it is used but by how informative it is: frequency of use times specificity.</p>\n\n<p>Brand name tags, such as Elsevier and IEEE thus make sense when there is a large number of <em>people</em> who are likely to find the direction highly specific. A much more specialized brand name like IJCAI or CACM, however, is much more dubious because we are starting to get into non-generalizable territory.</p>\n\n<p>At the end of the day, though tagging is fuzzy and bottom up, and we aren't going to be able to have a completely precise policy no matter what we do.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1469", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/15723/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1479, "author": "Grace Note", "author_id": 72, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/72", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"https://twitter.com/StackAcademia\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/zvu3l.png\" alt=\"Help this community grow -- follow us on twitter!\"></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1480, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 5, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"http://phdcomics.com/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/Z06qs.png\" alt=\"PHD Comics\"></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1482, "author": "Cape Code", "author_id": 10643, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10643", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"https://pubpeer.com/recent\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/gLoKU.png\" alt=\"Pubpeer: post-publication peer review\"></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1483, "author": "Cape Code", "author_id": 10643, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10643", "pm_score": 5, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"http://retractionwatch.com/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/0BpfR.png\" alt=\"Retraction watch\"></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1484, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"http://apod.nasa.gov/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/PAocG.png\" alt=\"NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day\"></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1485, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"http://what-if.xkcd.com/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/8wlTb.png\" alt=\"What if? Serious scientific answers to absurd hypothetical questions\"></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1487, "author": "soliton", "author_id": 21790, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/21790", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"http://arxitics.com\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/IL75b.png\" alt=\"arXiv Analytics: specialized web portal dedicated to reading &amp; discussing arXiv eprints\"></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1489, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"http://expatriates.stackexchange.com\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/smddc.png\" alt=\"Expats.SE\" /></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1494, "author": "Raystafarian", "author_id": 27498, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/27498", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"https://productivity.stackexchange.com/\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/AiCgv.png\" alt=\"For people looking to improve their productivity\"></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1502, "author": "Piotr Migdal", "author_id": 49, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/49", "pm_score": 5, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"https://archive.org/web/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/PXirF.png\" alt=\"Internet Archive WaybackMachine\"></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1503, "author": "Piotr Migdal", "author_id": 49, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/49", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"https://scirate.com/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/LyjNt.png\" alt=\"SciRate\" /></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1504, "author": "Piotr Migdal", "author_id": 49, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/49", "pm_score": 5, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"http://arxiv.org\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/7oxm4.png\" alt=\"arXiv.org: the biggest open-access e-print repository for maths and physics\"></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1505, "author": "Piotr Migdal", "author_id": 49, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/49", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"http://opensciencefederation.com\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/WplS3.png\" alt=\"Open Science Federation\"></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1564, "author": "E.P.", "author_id": 820, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/820", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"http://thecostofknowledge.com/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/PrE5E.png\" alt=\"That&#39;s called negative income!\"></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1614, "author": "sckott", "author_id": 637, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/637", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"http://ropensci.org/community/#join-us\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/A29HY.png\" alt=\"rOpenSci - Join Us!\"></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1615, "author": "Martin Schröder", "author_id": 3940, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3940", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/?tab=featured\">See all questions with active bounties http://stack-exchange-dynamic-ads.herokuapp.com/academia.stackexchange.com/bounty.png</a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1734, "author": "nic", "author_id": 307, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/307", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"http://opendata.stackexchange.com\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/o0VGk.png\" alt=\"Open Data\"></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1735, "author": "Goodbye Stack Exchange", "author_id": 3928, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/3928", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/academic-writing\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/gviTm.png\" alt=\"Ad for Writers\"></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1745, "author": "durron597", "author_id": 33096, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/33096", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"https://mythology.stackexchange.com/\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/OEaN4.png\" alt=\"Mythology.SE\"></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1758, "author": "Martin - マーチン", "author_id": 13372, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/13372", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"http://chemistry.stackexchange.com\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/OvLd6.png\" alt=\"Haikus are awesome/ Chemistry is more so/ Ask straight away!\"></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1761, "author": "plannapus", "author_id": 9664, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/9664", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"http://earthscience.stackexchange.com\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/q4Y6D.png\" alt=\"If you want down-to-earth answers to your questions\"></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1773, "author": "Ooker", "author_id": 14341, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/14341", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"http://health.stackexchange.com\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/oCH8h.png\" alt=\"Tagline to show on mouseover\"></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1797, "author": "HDE 226868", "author_id": 35515, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/35515", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"https://hsm.stackexchange.com/\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/aJtWS.png\" alt=\"HSM\"></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1907, "author": "feetwet", "author_id": 37048, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/37048", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"https://law.stackexchange.com/\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/nCYws.gif\" alt=\"Participate on Law Stack Exchange!\"></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1919, "author": "Sepideh Abadpour", "author_id": 11734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11734", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/90327/geomatics-and-remote-sensing?referrer=8G2asYAyI_To9RoVf1VtPg2\"><img src=\"http://area51.stackexchange.com/ads/proposal/90327.png\" alt=\"Check out the Area 51 Remote Sensing Proposal\"></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1991, "author": "Earthliŋ", "author_id": 41580, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/41580", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/75409/latin-language?referrer=A4jGyZ0h5Q1OXgEW5Vh1eQ2\"><img src=\"http://area51.stackexchange.com/ads/proposal/75409.png\" alt=\"Latin Language proposal on Area 51\"></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 2013, "author": "Ooker", "author_id": 14341, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/14341", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/82841/language-learning?referrer=sg-MbJAGOjNnNFDS7ptHjQ2\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/xlpvC.png\" alt=\"Tagline to show on mouseover\"></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 2034, "author": "Ooker", "author_id": 14341, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/14341", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/92559/science-educators?referrer=kJpAFl8x1jOj1x29D-RukA2\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/fNOGN.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 2037, "author": "marcin", "author_id": 7135, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7135", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/91841/crystallography\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/EoUXC.png\" alt=\"New site for researches interested in structure determination\"></a></p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1478", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/72/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1491, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>A user¹ has raised a large number of close flags². Posts on which close flags have been raised are pushed into the review queue. </p>\n\n<p>Some <em>other</em> users tend to vote to close fairly aggressively in the review queue, so these posts typically accrue at least one or two close votes. </p>\n\n<p>Anyone with sufficient rep (10k+) can see the vote history <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/review/close/history\">here</a>. Feel free to review the review history and edit/cast reopen votes for questions that are worth saving. (Either because the question itself is good, or because the question itself can be made \"good enough\" and the answers are good.)</p>\n\n<p>Regarding your point:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>It seems to me that it would be courteous to announce it on meta or at least in chat. Would others agree?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Yes, I agree that large and/or systematic curation efforts should be announced on meta first. </p>\n\n<p>These efforts - no matter how well intended - can often have unforseen and undesirable effects on the rest of the community. It's a good idea to get feedback first and make sure your specific efforts are actually helpful and wanted by the community.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>¹I'm not at liberty to say more (i.e. name names), although the user who raised the flags is welcome to out him/herself here and explain what's behind it.</p>\n\n<p>² Possibly badge-hunting? Note that if even one reviewer agrees with the flag (which often happens whether it's warranted or not), the flag is marked helpful. Also, declined/unhelpful flags don't have any negative impact on site privileges or badge progress. So there's an incentive built into the platform for users to keep raising these flags, regardless of what the community does in response to them or whether they're <em>actually</em> helpful.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1492, "author": "enthu", "author_id": 15723, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/15723", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In answer to your sub-questions above, I should mention that from about three month ago, I went on the process of reviewing the older posts on the website. My edits include the following activities:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Edit on the title of the questions; some of the questions posted in the past had no clear title to help the user recognize what the content of the question is. As an example, I edit the title of the questions from something like <code>On doing something</code> to <code>How should I do something in somewhere situation?</code> to help the newer users find questions easier.</p></li>\n<li><p>I Edit the tags of the questions to improve the searchability of the questions. My edits to the tags is systematic: I choose one tag and once in every 12 hours, I only edit 5 or 6 questions to avoid having many questions bumped to the top list. (At this edit level, I also edit the questions titles and content only if they need some edits.)</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>In the recent days, I have started to review the content of the older posts. By saying the older posts, I have sorted the display of questions from new to old; and I am checking the older questions one by one. On this process I check the following things:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>I check whether the questions is on-topic or not.</p></li>\n<li><p>I edit the question if it <em>really</em> needs it. To avoid bumping questions to the top-list, I only edit the questions on my tag edits, not at this review process.</p></li>\n<li><p>I control and raise flags for un-useful comments such as <code>+1</code> or <code>Thank you</code> comments. Also, for the comments which are obsolete, for instance the ones which are now part of answer to the question.</p></li>\n<li><p>I raise flags for answers which I think they are not helping the questions.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>These are the reasons which I think our older posts need curing:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Older posts should be reviewed sometimes. It is good for the website to dynamically check newly posted questions as well as the questions and answers which are posted in the past.</p></li>\n<li><p>The users can see the older posts too and if they have something new and helping to the question; when they see those old questions, they will post their new points of view to the questions. So the answers will be updated.</p></li>\n<li><p>Problematic parts of the posts will be reviewed. Off-topic questions will go for another review process and people again, think about the questions.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Based on the introduction above, in the recent days I have reviewed about 100 questions or more; and I raised some flags on the un-useful answers and comments. However, it was just due to making this website's questions in better shape and quality, not for badge-hunting or making trouble for the site. Also, as far as I am an ordinary user on the website and I really do not know whether another user/s have also raised any flags or not.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1490", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1496, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I suggest for the text of the close reason:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Questions about the content of an academic discipline are off-topic here. They may be on-topic on <a href=\"http://stackexchange.com/sites#science-questionsperday\">a Stack Exchange site pertaining to that discipline</a>, though.</p>\n</blockquote>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1497, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>We can only have 3 custom off-topic close reasons. They are currently:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Questions that cannot be generalized to apply to others in similar situations are off-topic. For assistance in writing questions that can apply to multiple people facing similar situations, see: What kinds of questions are too localized?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><br/></p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Questions about problems facing undergraduate students are off-topic unless they can also apply to graduate or post-graduate academicians as described in What topics can I ask about here?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><br/></p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>This question appears to be off-topic because it seems to seek specific advice for a very specific situation, and it's likely that only someone with a good understanding of your situation will be able to provide an objectively correct answer.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><br/></p>\n\n<p>So if you want a new reasons, it comes at the cost of deleting one of the current reasons (or begging the SE team to <a href=\"https://meta.askubuntu.com/questions/6994/can-we-have-more-than-3-custom-close-reasons-pretty-please\">create more</a> for us). The first and third close reasons are similar, but a <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1097\">previous discussion</a> suggested we liked it that way. At that time, there was no proposed third custom reason, so it might be worth revisiting that discussion. While it would be desirable to know the usage of the custom close reasons, <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/194378/how-can-i-search-for-custom-off-topic-close-reasons\">usage data are unavailable</a>.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1499, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Personally, I am in favor of rethinking <em>all</em> of our close reasons. Some are underutilized, some are badly misutilized, and there are some that I think are conspicuously missing.</p>\n\n<p>I think we should start a CW thread here on meta in which each answer has:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>proposed text of a custom close reason</li>\n<li>a description of the kind of questions it would apply to</li>\n<li>some examples to demonstrate the need for this close reason</li>\n<li>links to any discussion threads on meta relevant to this close reason.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>We can post the existing current close reasons, as well as any new ones that people would like to propose. Upvotes on the answers (after a sufficiently long period for discussion) could indicate which close reasons the community <em>currently</em> finds most important and applicable.</p>\n\n<p>Also, if we want to request an additional custom close reason, the meta thread I'm proposing would position us to do so. The SE team likes to see discussion on site meta and demonstrated need before approving such requests.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1495", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1500, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It sounds like we need something along the lines of <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stats-depts\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;stats-depts&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">stats-depts</a> for the first case, <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stats-research\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;stats-research&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">stats-research</a> for the second, and <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stats-on-academia\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;stats-on-academia&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">stats-on-academia</a> for the last. I'd prefer to keep them all starting with \"stat\" for convenience in the tag browser. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1501, "author": "Compass", "author_id": 22013, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22013", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I'd prefer <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/statistics-discipline\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;statistics-discipline&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">statistics-discipline</a>, <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/statistics-in-research\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;statistics-in-research&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">statistics-in-research</a>, and <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/statistics-meta\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;statistics-meta&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">statistics-meta</a> as an alternative naming convention. The discipline covers the subject, in-research covers the practice, and meta covers meta-statistics that are not related directly to research.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1498", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1507, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Unfortunately, many of the answers are posted in comments rather than answers, which means we can't see who would have downvoted. However, it does appear that there is a sense that the question is off-topic due to it's being about a specific research topic rather than relating to academia itself. Personally, I agree with that assessment. In that vein, I think it's remaining closed is probably the best path on this site. </p>\n\n<p>Regarding other venues, the main one that comes to mind is reddit. Hopefully other people can provide other good suggestions.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1508, "author": "Piotr Migdal", "author_id": 49, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/49", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>For me, it sounds more like a Quora-question. I mean, it's great, but a bit open-ended [I didn't cast a close-vote, thought].</p>\n\n<p>Alternatively, you can try asking on <a href=\"http://biology.stackexchange.com\">http://biology.stackexchange.com</a>. But even with that it can be too general - depending on discipline the answer may vary. (In short, it is usually applied mathematics, understanding of models, numerics and analogies from physical system.)</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1506", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/14341/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1510, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In general, we will only correct questions placed \"on hold\" (or closed, or duplicate, etc.) if <strong>the title</strong> has a grammatical error or typo, which should <em>always</em> be corrected, as the question titles are the main \"interface\" presented to visitors. Other edits are likely to be unproductive.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1511, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I would distinguish between duplicate question, non-duplicate questions that on hold and could possibly be reopened, and non-duplicate questions that are on hold and have no chance of being reopened (e.g. are wildly off topic).</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p><strong>Duplicate questions</strong> are not going to be deleted; they should reflect the quality we expect of all questions on this site, and if they do not, edits are perfectly valid. As with other questions (including open questions), edits should <em>significantly</em> improve the post.</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>On hold/closed questions that are not duplicates and could be improved</strong> <em>should</em> be. That's the point of putting them on hold in the first place.</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>On hold/closed questions that are not duplicates and will never be reopened</strong> in anything resembling their current form (for example, because they are shopping questions, or wildly off topic for this site) and are subject to <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5221/how-does-deleting-work-what-can-cause-a-post-to-be-deleted-and-what-does-that\">automatic deletion</a> shouldn't be edited in most cases (removing offensive content or profanities is a notable exception). Editing closed questions pushes them into the <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/161390/what-are-the-review-queues-and-how-do-they-work\">reopen queue</a>. It seems pointless to create unnecessary work for reviewers, for questions that are certainly going to be deleted soon anyways.</p></li>\n</ul>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1509", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/17966/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1513, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>This is a Stack Exchange-wide \"feature,\" which I imagine would have to be implemented at that level, rather than just on Academia.SE.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1514, "author": "Compass", "author_id": 22013, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22013", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>This is how we've been explained to interpret stuff in our queues on Stack Overflow, which gets a much higher volume of questions. The goal is to check whether the answer passes the smell test as an answer, not whether it holds water as an answer.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/266428/low-quality-review-queue-meaning-of-looks-ok\">Here's an example of usage from Stack Overflow over the use of \"Looks Okay\".</a></p>\n\n<p><em>Looks Okay</em> does not mean <em>Is Correct</em>.</p>\n\n<p>Consider the following example question:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>What is 1 + 1?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>And the example answers, with the correct(ish) response in parentheses</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Two (Looks Okay)</li>\n<li>1.99999 (Looks Okay)</li>\n<li>I like turtles! (Not an Answer)</li>\n<li>example.com (Link-only Answer)</li>\n<li>Has anyone figured it out? (Not an Answer)</li>\n</ul>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>As awkward as it may seem, the second answer, 1.99999, based on what the LQPRQ is looking for, should be marked as \"Looks Okay.\" The answer may be categorically <em>wrong</em> (in which case you would downvote it), but the goal of the queue itself is to get rid of content which do not meet the guidelines to be considered an answer.</p>\n\n<p>So long as it is an attempt at an answer, the correct action we're supposed to do is mark it as \"Looks Okay\" from an Answer perspective.</p>\n\n<p>After that, we can go to the page and downvote, comment that this is wrong, unsafe, insane, etc.</p>\n\n<p>Answers that get downvoted because they are wrong and answers that get deleted because they are not answers fall in different buckets. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1512", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10094/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1520, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>Many of the questions that we get on Academia related to ethics necessarily involve \"grey\" areas, since what is the most ethical choice, as you suggest, may not be the most practical choice.</p>\n\n<p>However, I believe we would be remiss if we, as a board, did not encourage <strong>best practices</strong>—what we believe <em>should</em> be done in a given situation. Of course, people reading the answers need to weigh the advice given against their own personal situations. There may be circumstances in which following the advice given may be detrimental. It is better, though, if the reader knows what is appropriate, so that they can try to avoid having to do something less ethical in the future. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1525, "author": "Pete L. Clark", "author_id": 938, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/938", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The following is a good paraphrase of a conversation I had with a junior colleague yesterday:</p>\n\n<p><strong>I</strong>: I just wanted to say that I would have discussed the issue of coauthorship of this paper with you if I thought there was any chance that you would consider it.</p>\n\n<p><strong>She</strong>: I didn't contribute any of the results of the paper.</p>\n\n<p><strong>I</strong>: Yes, but I've seen cases where people get added as coauthors with less involvement than you've had, in some cases just by being in the room when the work was done. </p>\n\n<p><strong>She</strong>: [reddening] There is no way that I would agree to that!</p>\n\n<p><strong>I</strong>: I know. So I didn't ask.</p>\n\n<p>Or, from the other side, here is the last paragraph of a recently accepted paper by <a href=\"http://www.math.uga.edu/~jhicks/research.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">Jacob Hicks</a> (my PhD student) and Dr. Kate Thompson (a 2014 PhD from my department):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>All of the computer implementations and almost all of the mathematics was done by the named authors. P.L. Clark’s mathematical contributions were (only) the statement and proof of Theorem 4 and the proof of Corollary 1. The statement of Corollary 1 is due to the named authors and was (earlier) proven by them via a different and more computational method making use of quaternions. Clark also contributed to the writing of the paper, working off of an early draft of the named authors.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I had been invited by the named authors to be a coauthor, but I declined. </p>\n\n<p>Or let's switch it around again: twice in recent memory I wrote papers that benefited substantially from conversations I had with more senior academics (one of whom is many years older; the other is not <em>that</em> much older but many times more famous and eminent); in the latter case there was no way I could have written the paper without the ideas this guy gave me. It happened that the ideas were difficult <em>for me</em> to implement, required some variations, and I finished the paper years after I had the conversation, but I have no reason to believe that he could not have carried through what he proposed to me. I offered coauthorship to both of these people and got turned down both times. And, to come full circle, in the former case I did coauthor the paper with a (different) student in my department. I wrote the whole paper and contributed the majority of the results: still, what he contributed was the best part, and his name comes before mine (alphabetically!). </p>\n\n<p>I could go on, but you get the point: when it comes to issues of coauthorship, in every coauthorship situation I have been directly involved with, all parties involved have taken what the OP calls \"the moral high ground\". I don't really like that term because it makes the practice sound different from the norm. Speaking for myself, i would rather say that I have always acted according to the ethical standards that I was taught and that are followed by the majority of my colleagues the vast majority of the time. My career is alive and reasonably well. In fact I would like to think that I have a reputation for acting honorably and that reputation <em>helps</em> my career. </p>\n\n<p>So my recommendations that other academics uphold professional ethics no matter which way the power flows are not only unhypocritical but sincere: I really do think that following these recommendations are in junior academics' best interests. </p>\n\n<p>I have never directly witnessed a refusal to compromise on these kinds of professional ethics end anyone's academic career. Perhaps I've been very lucky, been in the best places, surrounded by unusually great people. Perhaps mathematicians are more samurai-like in their codes of honor than other academics. Perhaps. But overall my reaction to such questions on this site tends to be the diametrically opposite one: I find it shocking that so many young people are being placed in situations where they feel like they have to choose between their professional integrity and their career. When no one around you is behaving well, it seems hopeless to take an ethical stand <em>even when it actually isn't</em>. So having people on this site firmly steer questioners in the direction of \"best practices\" seems very, very important. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1530, "author": "Piotr Migdal", "author_id": 49, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/49", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I like a lot <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/959/49\">an answer by Suresh to Are we presenting an idealised view of academia?</a>, i.e. that we should make a split:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <ul>\n <li>what we would all like to happen</li>\n <li>what typically happens</li>\n <li>what should NOT happen under any circumstances (even if it's sadly not rare)</li>\n <li>what is completely abnormal.</li>\n </ul>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I understand that [survival bias, etc] many profs here may never had to write a recommendation for themselves or were never in situation where presence and positions of authors reflected other factors than thier contribution.</p>\n\n<p>(And I am sure that they would not set their advisees in these conditions.)</p>\n\n<p>Yet, to answer: <strong>Why do people on academia.SE often suggest courses of action that are very different from what most people would do in real life?</strong>, I think that:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>some people didn't met these problems in person,</li>\n<li>idealizing academia, advisor-advisee relations, etc (survival bias + wishful thinking),</li>\n<li>it may be dangerous to put under one's name an advice for a breach of ethics,</li>\n<li>\"lesser evil\" doesn't sound well plus may be an excuse for others as a normal, acceptable behaviour.</li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1532, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Apart from the other good arguments, I think that we should answer “what should I do?” questions from the point of view of ethics and academic standards, because that’s the only point of view from which we can give a useful answer to most of these questions.</p>\n\n<p>Let’s take this question for an example:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Should I let my supervisor be a coauthor on my paper when he didn't contribute anything to the project?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The decision that the asker eventually has to make strongly depends on the following questions:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>How high is the risk that not making the supervisor a coauthor has negative repercussions of what kind?</li>\n<li>How high does the asker value the damage done by these repercussions?</li>\n<li>How high does the asker value the ethics involved?</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>The first question obviously strongly depends on the supervisor and can only be answered by somebody knowing this person; the other two questions can only be answered by the asker.</p>\n\n<p>We cannot make the decision for askers of such questions; we cannot even give direct advice for such situations; we can only help them to make an informed decision. To this end, the main thing we can do is to inform askers about ethics and academic standards. We can and should also inform them about possible repercussions originating from them being expected to breach ethics – but in most such questions that I am aware of, the askers are already aware of possible repercussions.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1537, "author": "Ben Bitdiddle", "author_id": 24384, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/24384", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think some reasons may be</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>People on academia.SE don't truly care about anonymous Internet posters in the same way they care for their family and friends. They would rather uphold ethics than side with a random person, but in real life they would side with their friends rather than upholding ethics.</li>\n<li>Many people on academia.SE post under their real name, and they wouldn't want to endorse unethical behavior where people could see it. On the other hand, never endorsing unethical behavior may be one of the things that make them comfortable posting under their real name in the first place.</li>\n<li>As others have said, people who stay in academia have generally been screwed over less than people who don't, and have good relations with their colleagues and supervisors. They can afford to disapprove of writing letters of recommendation themselves, because they've probably never been in a position where they had to write one.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p><strong>Is this a problem?</strong> Personally, I think it is okay as long as questioners are aware of this community bias.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1519", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/24384/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1528, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>(This is not an answer to the discussion prompt, but a suggestion on how to proceed following said discussion.)</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>I have converted the question to CW in the interim. </li>\n<li>The question can now be handled by the usual community reopen vote/review process. If you believe the question has sufficient value to be kept around, you can vote accordingly. If you previously refrained from voting to reopen because you felt it should be kept, but only in CW form, now there is nothing holding you back.</li>\n<li>If there is a consensus as a result of this meta discussion that the post should <em>not</em> be made CW (regardless of whether it is reopened or not), flag and a mod can change it back.</li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1529, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>This <em><a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1528/11365\">is</a></em> an answer to the discussion prompt :) </p>\n\n<p>/<strong>takes off mod hat</strong>/ Also, this post is my opinion, not some dictate of policy or anything like that.</p>\n\n<p>I am <em>not</em> in favor of reopening the question under consideration.</p>\n\n<p>I am in favor of using CW to keep otherwise unsuitable posts <em>very, very</em> rarely, when a question and its answers are expected to be very broadly useful to most users of this site. </p>\n\n<p>For example, see the current CW questions:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13355/what-do-you-wish-you-knew-as-a-student-before-you-became-a-researcher\">What do you wish you knew as a student before you became a researcher?</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1095/software-to-draw-illustrative-figures-in-papers\">Software to draw illustrative figures in papers</a> </li>\n<li><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1593/what-do-publishers-provide-to-authors-in-different-disciplines\">What do publishers provide to authors in different disciplines?</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2467/what-does-first-authorship-really-mean\">What does first authorship really mean?</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20901/compiling-ethical-standards-for-coauthorship-across-academic-fields-and-regions\">Compiling ethical standards for coauthorship across academic fields and regions</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>I am <em>not</em> in favor of expanding use of CW to keep posts around that are inappropriate for a Q&amp;A model, and <em>wouldn't</em> be expected to be very useful to most users of this site. (Also see <a href=\"http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/the-future-of-community-wiki/\">The Future of Community Wiki</a>.)</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1527", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1545, "author": "xLeitix", "author_id": 10094, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10094", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p><strong>What I look for in answers:</strong> (i.e., what I typically upvote)</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>A neutral, down-to-earth tone</li>\n<li>A fresh take on a question (i.e., don't make your answer start with \"I agree with XY\")</li>\n<li>Substantial answers (very short answers are not typically very useful to me)</li>\n<li>A user that, based on her/his bio and SE habitus, seems trustworthy to answer the question</li>\n<li>Sources, if appropriate for the question</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>The last-but-one bullet likely requires more explanation: given that we usually deal with rather subjective topics, I usually take into account <em>who</em> posts an answer if it goes against my own opinion or seems counter-intuitive. Yes, that's unfair towards new users, but I have certainly seen new users post, well, stupid things much more frequently than high-rep users, who, often, also happen to be senior academics.</p>\n\n<p><strong>What I hate in answers:</strong> (i.e., what I typically downvote)</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Agenda answers (\"this clearly shows that [professors|students|...] are just ...\" - we had a few of those recently)</li>\n<li>Answers that seem to fall into the \"uninformed opinion\" category (\"I don't have experience with this, but clearly ...\")</li>\n<li>Excessive strong language, uncalled-for attacks towards the OP or somebody else mentioned in the question</li>\n<li>Circumventing the actual question asked, and instead answering what the answerer thinks \"should\" be the question (although there is definitely a substantial grey area here)</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Bonus point: <strong>What I hate in questions:</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>More than everything, I hate questions where the OP has clearly a pre-formed opinion, argues with everybody who answers differently, and then goes ahead to accept the first answer that validates her/his opinion no matter how much more votes all the other answers had. </li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1546, "author": "Cape Code", "author_id": 10643, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10643", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I don't know if this question asks about what we <em>should</em> look for or what we <em>are</em> looking for. I ran <a href=\"http://data.stackexchange.com/academia/query/259715/most-upvoted-answers\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">this query</a> and extracted the answers that received 100 votes or more*.</p>\n\n<p>Here are the links to the best voted answers to date in decreasing order of vote count:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/35160\">232</a> \n- <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/2221\">182</a>\n - <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/18496\">156</a>\n - <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/28339\">154</a> \n - <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/30547\">152</a> \n - <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/30552\">151</a>\n - <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/17245\">147</a> \n - <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/2222\">128</a> \n - <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/154\">120</a> \n - <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/8196\">118</a>\n - <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/16281\">113</a> \n - <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/18493\">106</a>\n - <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/28679\">102</a> \n - <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/30499\">101</a> \n - <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/21969\">100</a> </p>\n\n<p>Some observations (listed in the order used by <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1545/10643\">xLeitix in his answer</a>): </p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Most have a polite, down-to-earth tone. One ('Mind your own business') has had its tone disputed and one politely questions the good faith of the original question.</p></li>\n<li><p>None of them are 'support' answers repeating or confirming an existing answer. One is even clearly at odd with the others.</p></li>\n<li><p>The average answer length on Academia.SE according to <a href=\"http://data.stackexchange.com/academia/query/64725/average-length-of-answer-bodies\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">this query</a> is <code>1212</code> characters. The character count in the listed answers (obtained with a Firefox plugin) are: <code>376 2234 5964 1098 2354 3389 6303 3091 3476 1692 2535 793 3686 2100 279</code> in the respective order. Mean: <code>2624.66</code>; standard deviation: <code>1791.99</code>; and median: <code>2354</code>. They are substantially longer than average, with a few exceptions.</p></li>\n<li><p>High-rep users are well represented: 3 are from <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65/jeffe\">JeffE</a>, 9 out of 15 are from 20k+ users. But there are exceptions and some are even almost the only answer given by the poster. It seems like we are still pretty open to newcomers inputs.</p></li>\n<li><p>Only one cites a reference document (a policy description on a university website), 2 give links to Wikipedia articles, and one to a book. None cite scientific publications or data. Citing sources does not seem to be a criteria for success.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>_{* I know it's more a measure of popularity than quality, but I think it still shows which answers we <em>are</em> looking for. There is an obvious bias due to the popularity of the <em>question</em>, two questions have actually multiple answers in this list. Popular questions attract popular answers, and it's not a surprise.}</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1547, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Adding to the other things already said, I also think it is very valuable when an answer delves into the principles and reasoning the lead the poster to answer in the way that they did. I think that this is particularly valuable because many answers are derived from a broader scientific or pedagogical ethos. Communicating that ethos helps beyond the specific situation in the question, and helps to build and reinforce the better elements of academia.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1548, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>xLeitix's answer is great, just want to add one thing to that: <strong>answers should be concise.</strong> Many answers here tend to have lots of examples or stories or other stuff that's relevant but not required, and it almost always makes the answers much harder to read with little benefit. Shorter is almost always better.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1544", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1552, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I think that Writers.SE is a better place to ask about general style and grammar, while Academia.SE is a better place to ask about substance and academic customs.</p>\n\n<p>There's a big grey area where a question might legitimately be asked on either (e.g., these <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20046/switching-between-active-and-passive-voice\">two</a> <a href=\"https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/14266/what-voice-active-passive-is-most-suitable-for-literary-academic-papers-liter\">questions</a> on active vs. passive voice).\nDo <em>not</em> however, post a question on both: that is considered a Bad Thing on SE sites. Pick the one you think will give you the best answer, and your question can be migrated to the other if necessary.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1553, "author": "Massimo Ortolano", "author_id": 20058, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/20058", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>When it comes to academic writing, several SE sites other than Academia.SE might give you a good answer, at least <em>in principle</em>: Writers.SE or, even, for the usage of English, ELU.SE and ELL.SE.</p>\n\n<p>I'm a bit hesitating, however, in suggesting to ask there questions about academic writing in technical fields (in case you are from a technical field) because I have the impression that there are not many academics who participate in the sites I've listed, especially from technical fields. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1550", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/14341/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1558, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>You should ask a question on Reddit whenever you feel like it, regardless of whether you ask the question on Academia.SE.</p>\n\n<p>Academia.SE doesn't make any claim to be the only site you should ask a question on. It only asks that you not ask the same question on any other SE site, because that is general SE policy.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4130, "author": "Ooker", "author_id": 14341, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/14341", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<h1>Reddit</h1>\n<ul>\n<li>Born for open-ended discussions</li>\n<li>After 6 months posts are automatically locked so discussions are &quot;fossilized&quot; to reflect what happened in that time</li>\n<li>No way for users to improve others' posts</li>\n<li>Downvotes can (and usually?) mean &quot;I don't like this&quot; or &quot;this is uninteresting&quot;</li>\n<li>The only way to have links to relevant posts within the subreddit is by having other users provide</li>\n<li>More active users in my opinion</li>\n</ul>\n<h1>Stack Exchange</h1>\n<ul>\n<li>Born for Q&amp;A</li>\n<li>Posts can always be improved until the Sun dies</li>\n<li>Contributions from users are encouraged and peer-reviewed</li>\n<li>Downvotes mean &quot;This post is wrong/not useful&quot;</li>\n<li>Have tag system, related questions to categorize and discover more questions/answers</li>\n<li>Posts can have images, HTML. The site overall is nicely designed</li>\n</ul>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1557", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/14341/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1561, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>My immediate emotional response is well summarized by <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCbfMkh940Q\" rel=\"nofollow\">Ripley's line from Aliens</a>.</p>\n\n<p>Putting things in a somewhat less inflammatory way: I think these are terrible questions and epitomize the \"specific advice for a very specific situation\" closing reason. The reason why they are terrible is because:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>They are almost never generalizable (how many people are there with a 3.7 GPA from a mid-ranked Elbonian institution who double-majored in electrical engineering and llama-wrangling but did two semesters of research in an unrelated area with a nice professor who probably still remembers their name)</p></li>\n<li><p>The answers pretty much always boil down to \"It will probably be pretty hard, but not necessarily impossible.\"</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Because of this, I generally vote to close these questions whenever I see them, except in the unusual circumstance that neither problem #1 nor problem #2 applies.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1562, "author": "xLeitix", "author_id": 10094, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10094", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n <p>My concern is that are too broad or too particular.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Hmm, how can they be both too broad and too particular :) ? Honestly, I think they are neither. The first question talks about getting into <em>any</em> CS program with mediocre grades, the second one about getting <em>any</em> physics scholarship with terrible grades. Both seem not super-specific to me. The only thing that is probably \"wrong\" with those questions is that it is very unlikely that there is a good, objective answer to them, more than \"it's unlikely, but you can always try\".</p>\n\n<p>I personally don't find these questions overly interesting, but there is probably a large number of students out there for which they are relevant. So <strong>I would just let these questions be</strong>. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1563, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I would like to see one nice CW question asking how to get into grad school with answers that would cover low GPA, low GRE, low TOEFL, limited research experience, bad references, bad undergraduate school, etc. A single answer with subsections might be better than multiple answers, just because a lot of information would be the same. We could then close these types of questions as duplicates.</p>\n\n<p>I have created the CW question and started an answer: <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38237/how-does-the-admissions-process-work-for-us-phd-programs\">How does the admissions process work for Ph.D. programs in the US, particularly for weak or borderline students?</a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1565, "author": "rcd", "author_id": 29034, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/29034", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think these questions should be closed due to the fact that there are now such varying types of graduate/masters programs in these fields (e.g., Computer Science, the MBA, Law, MSIS (MBA + CS), etc). </p>\n\n<p>At some schools it is implicitly known that the masters program is much more like the bachelors program, and at other schools, this may be explicitly made known (along with some requirement that remediary courses be taken the first year exclusively). While at others still, the curriculum may be designed to be totally soul-crushing from the beginning. There is a wide-range of hand-holding from 0-100 at institutions, and it hasn't really been quantified anywhere. </p>\n\n<p>Thus these kinds of questions aren't really apples to apples unfortunately.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4248, "author": "Ben", "author_id": 87026, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/87026", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I have taken the liberty of adding <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/114130/is-a-general-gre-score-of-x-sufficient-for-entry-to-postgraduate-degree-y\">a generic question and answer</a> for the questions we get regarding the GRE level required for entry to programs. There were a lot of these questions and they were very specific to the student, so I have tried to give a general answer that allows students to assess any GRE score against the data on their cohort. This could be a useful question to link to as a duplicate for questions of this kind. Hopefully that contributes something to this issue.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1560", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/14885/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1561, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>My immediate emotional response is well summarized by <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCbfMkh940Q\" rel=\"nofollow\">Ripley's line from Aliens</a>.</p>\n\n<p>Putting things in a somewhat less inflammatory way: I think these are terrible questions and epitomize the \"specific advice for a very specific situation\" closing reason. The reason why they are terrible is because:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>They are almost never generalizable (how many people are there with a 3.7 GPA from a mid-ranked Elbonian institution who double-majored in electrical engineering and llama-wrangling but did two semesters of research in an unrelated area with a nice professor who probably still remembers their name)</p></li>\n<li><p>The answers pretty much always boil down to \"It will probably be pretty hard, but not necessarily impossible.\"</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Because of this, I generally vote to close these questions whenever I see them, except in the unusual circumstance that neither problem #1 nor problem #2 applies.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1562, "author": "xLeitix", "author_id": 10094, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10094", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n <p>My concern is that are too broad or too particular.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Hmm, how can they be both too broad and too particular :) ? Honestly, I think they are neither. The first question talks about getting into <em>any</em> CS program with mediocre grades, the second one about getting <em>any</em> physics scholarship with terrible grades. Both seem not super-specific to me. The only thing that is probably \"wrong\" with those questions is that it is very unlikely that there is a good, objective answer to them, more than \"it's unlikely, but you can always try\".</p>\n\n<p>I personally don't find these questions overly interesting, but there is probably a large number of students out there for which they are relevant. So <strong>I would just let these questions be</strong>. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1563, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I would like to see one nice CW question asking how to get into grad school with answers that would cover low GPA, low GRE, low TOEFL, limited research experience, bad references, bad undergraduate school, etc. A single answer with subsections might be better than multiple answers, just because a lot of information would be the same. We could then close these types of questions as duplicates.</p>\n\n<p>I have created the CW question and started an answer: <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38237/how-does-the-admissions-process-work-for-us-phd-programs\">How does the admissions process work for Ph.D. programs in the US, particularly for weak or borderline students?</a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1565, "author": "rcd", "author_id": 29034, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/29034", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think these questions should be closed due to the fact that there are now such varying types of graduate/masters programs in these fields (e.g., Computer Science, the MBA, Law, MSIS (MBA + CS), etc). </p>\n\n<p>At some schools it is implicitly known that the masters program is much more like the bachelors program, and at other schools, this may be explicitly made known (along with some requirement that remediary courses be taken the first year exclusively). While at others still, the curriculum may be designed to be totally soul-crushing from the beginning. There is a wide-range of hand-holding from 0-100 at institutions, and it hasn't really been quantified anywhere. </p>\n\n<p>Thus these kinds of questions aren't really apples to apples unfortunately.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4248, "author": "Ben", "author_id": 87026, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/87026", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I have taken the liberty of adding <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/114130/is-a-general-gre-score-of-x-sufficient-for-entry-to-postgraduate-degree-y\">a generic question and answer</a> for the questions we get regarding the GRE level required for entry to programs. There were a lot of these questions and they were very specific to the student, so I have tried to give a general answer that allows students to assess any GRE score against the data on their cohort. This could be a useful question to link to as a duplicate for questions of this kind. Hopefully that contributes something to this issue.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1577", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/15723/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1582, "author": "Piotr Migdal", "author_id": 49, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/49", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>IMHO, being to eager to close is not a good thing (especially for community-building):</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Jason Sachs, <a href=\"http://www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/741.php\" rel=\"nofollow\">My Love-Hate Relationship with Stack Overflow: Arthur S., Arthur T., and the Soup Nazi</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>In the case of doubt, I would judge the question by answers it brings. If they make sense and are highly upvoted, I wouldn't close a question.</p>\n\n<p>For this particular case, I voted to reopen (though, before answers, I wasn't so sure). This question is general enough (i.e. presents a general issue, rather than a very specific one).</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1585, "author": "Cape Code", "author_id": 10643, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10643", "pm_score": 5, "selected": false, "text": "<p><strong>I'm in favor of closing it as soon as possible.</strong></p>\n<p>It matches this closing criterion perfectly:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>This question appears to be off-topic because it seems to seek\nspecific advice for a very specific situation, and <strong>it's likely that\nonly someone with a good understanding of your situation will be able\nto provide an objectively correct answer</strong>.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>It attracted, and will continue to attract, all the worst of 'personal advice' that one gets in such a situation, ranging from pet-social theories to pseudo-psychology and plain old judgment (not to mention daunting <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/40078/10643\">walls of text</a>). While one or two answers will eventually be sort of interesting for the OP, it's unlikely that the whole batch will be worth archiving.</p>\n<p>Our site, IMHO, shouldn't be about telling people to loose weight, whether or not their use of dating websites is appropriate, or whether or not they should quit their PhD. <em>We don't know that</em>.</p>\n<p>Example of content that I find utterly out of place:</p>\n<p>From answers:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>&quot;I think you should not quit your PhD. Not right now. There will be time for that, maybe.&quot;</p>\n<p>&quot;You are smart, you can lose weight, you can dress better&quot;</p>\n<p>&quot;You can quit if you like.&quot;</p>\n<p>&quot;Always be grateful, never compare yourself with people better then you, but think about people who are in worse situation then yours&quot;.</p>\n<p>&quot;Don't quit. Quitting easily becomes habit forming.&quot;</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>From comments:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>&quot;Research shows a high correlation between online dating and depression&quot;</p>\n<p>&quot;Diet is 95% of weight loss, you don't need to exercise&quot;</p>\n<p>&quot;Consider learning dancing. Dancing is really good exercise, is social, and is fun.&quot;</p>\n</blockquote>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1587, "author": "RoboKaren", "author_id": 14885, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/14885", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I am torn because it is a terrible question (I was going to vote to close until I saw the responses) but it is a site of community-making in action (which is why I ended up voting to keep it open). </p>\n\n<p>We have to admit that the 'chat' function of SE (at least A.SE) is broken and we don't use it for communal conversation. So popular questions like the one in question is really where we see community building.</p>\n\n<p>That being said, it's still a bad question. But I would suggest rather than rapidly closing it -- we allow people to use it to build a sense of community -- and then when the number of answers starts to fade, that we close it for all the right reasons (it's off topic).</p>\n\n<p>[I also wish we had a downvote option for comments given all of the bad personal advice being given through that vector].</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1590, "author": "Aubrey", "author_id": 26682, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/26682", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p><em>(Being the first one to answer and the one that got 39 upvotes for the reply, I think I have to weight in...)</em></p>\n\n<p>Yes, the question is probably out of scope. </p>\n\n<p>Yes, my answer is probably out of scope. </p>\n\n<p>The reason why I did it is that that was a cry for help and I would have been a terrible person saying: <em>sorry, your question does not belong here</em>. \nI chose to sit in the \"<a href=\"https://stackoverflow.com/help/be-nice\">Be nice</a>\" part of academia.se, and this is the part why I love this site, more than others: it is a <em>safe space</em>, where people are treated like people. \nI've read warm and honest answers, and many questions here are related to <strong>how people feel in academia</strong>. \nThis, to me, it's important for community building and thus for the project as a whole. </p>\n\n<p>I've seen other projects go bad because the community felt they had to be stricter with rules. I would dare to say that is better to be a bit out of scope but more welcoming, but that is an opinion. \nI would love to see some research confirming or refuting my insights (for example, what is the rate of male/female users in academia.se?)</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1591, "author": "Jennifer", "author_id": 29506, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/29506", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I'd like to thank everyone for the lovely answers to my question. I was not in the best mood a couple days ago, and I'm feeling much better now, although still slightly miserable.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>However, I am not entirely sure what the golden core is that makes this question more interesting to the community than all the other \"I hate grad school, shall I quit?\" questions that we usually close rather unceremoniously. I have the theory that it has a lot to do with the impression that the OP's self-esteem seems rather unhealthily tied to her grad student status, but I am not sure.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I think it's because a lot of people feel (or have felt) the same way as me, so they have opinions and want to help. But usually people don't talk about this stuff, because it's taboo to do a PhD for any reason other than passion for the subject, let alone fear of being a fat loser. I think there's a general expectation that grad students not care too much about money (except research funding) or social status (except within the academic community).</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1581", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10094/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1593, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p><em>In its current form</em>, I do think this question is too broad/opinion based.</p>\n\n<p>You write</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Of course, I am not looking for general things like \"work hard everyday\"; ideally, it would be more specific and helpful things.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>But in order to avoid answers like that, you need to draft a more specific, focused question.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1597, "author": "Nate Eldredge", "author_id": 1010, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/1010", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>From the <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask\">help center</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>There <em>are</em> entire books that (attempt to) answer this question. For example: Steven Krantz's <a href=\"http://www.ams.org/bookstore-getitem/item=gscm\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><em>A Mathematician's Survival Guide: Graduate School and Early Career Development</em></a>.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1586", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/28451/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1589, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I don't think this is academia-specific. Depression is a common human condition. Evidence: Google search for <a href=\"https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=site:workplace.stackexchange.com+depression\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Workplace.SE mentions of depression</a> (10 pages of results).</p>\n\n<p>I don't think we need a separate tag; <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/health-issues\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;health-issues&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">health-issues</a> seems adequate to me.</p>\n\n<p>I also don't think we need to handle it differently than we currently do: close questions that are about depression itself, and answer questions that are about academic problems related to or caused by depression.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1592, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I think that there is probably a lot of selection bias in the questions that we see. There are a lot of depressed people out there, and people who are struggling with <em>something</em> (depression or otherwise) are a lot more likely to come and ask a question on this site. I'm not surprised that depression is one of our themes. I agree with ff524 that <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/health-issues\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;health-issues&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">health-issues</a> reasonably covers it, though it's worth wondering whether we should add <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/mental-health\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;mental-health&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">mental-health</a> as well.</p>\n\n<p>It is also worth distinguishing between two major classes of depression:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysthymia\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Chronic depression</a> is a condition that is long-term and people who suffer from it generally need some form of ongoing professional medical support. We cannot and should not help with this, other than to recommend that people take their depression seriously and seek help, and to make recommendations on professional actions that can help limit the damage that is a byproduct.</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjustment_disorder\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Situational depression</a> is a common response to situations of major and unusual stress, and graduate school is simply <em>full</em> of major and unusual stress. Just like with chronic depression, people experiencing situational depression can benefit strongly from professional help. Here, however, there is <em>also</em> a likelihood of significant benefits just from learning that their experience is common and hearing how others have gotten through similar difficulties---much like and strongly linked to <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">imposter syndrome</a>.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>In short: I don't think depression is over-represented, and there are some ways that we can help, but we must not succumb to the temptation to play consequence-free internet doctor.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1594, "author": "Aubrey", "author_id": 26682, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/26682", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think there could be another factor. \nAcademia (especially in the US, I guess, but everywhere) is an highly competitive industry. There is <em>publish or perish</em>, seeking grants, fast moving disciplines, an overwhelming tide of new papers and results everyday. Research is hard. There are many people who struggle in academia.</p>\n\n<p>This site is specific. It regards academia, and is full of clever people. All questions and answers are written correctly and there is a lot of work from everyone in choosing words. This make it valuable, for both Q and A. </p>\n\n<p>The other point is that this site is welcoming. I see it as a positive thing, of course. I feel (and I can be refuted) that people find here a safe space and so they ask, because they know they will be answered politely. Politely and correctly. </p>\n\n<p>All these things together make me think that there will be a good share of questions related to the emotional life of people in academia. Depression/discouragement is definitely a good share of that life. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1595, "author": "Piotr Migdal", "author_id": 49, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/49", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Does anyone else finds it surprising? Is it just an artifact, or does our site somehow attract depressed peoples?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Not surprising at all. You get rants and voices of frustration on most Internet places. And I don't think that A.SE attracts more of such than other places for people related to academia.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I'm unconvinced that the prevalence of clinical depression amongst academics is higher than usual.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>@JeffE would say, <em>ex cathedra</em>, <strong>No.</strong> (vide <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20401/why-do-phd-students-complain-so-much\">Why do PhD students complain so much?</a>).</p>\n\n<p>But I think that it might be:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2014/may/08/work-pressure-fuels-academic-mental-illness-guardian-study-health\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2014/may/08/work-pressure-fuels-academic-mental-illness-guardian-study-health</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>or do we need a tag for it?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I did introduce tag <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/quitting\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;quitting&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">quitting</a> for situations where someone is quitting (whether dropping out or not continuing academic track) or considering doing so (for whatever reason). It may be worth to add a tag <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/psychological-issues\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;psychological-issues&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">psychological-issues</a> (there is already one for problems between people: <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/interpersonal-issues\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;interpersonal-issues&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">interpersonal-issues</a>).</p>\n\n<p>And for reason mentioned in comments on other answers, I am in favor of <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/psychological-issues\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;psychological-issues&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">psychological-issues</a> (or something similar) rather than putting everything in <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/health-issues\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;health-issues&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">health-issues</a> bag (as not all psychological issues are psychiatric).</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1609, "author": "J.R.", "author_id": 780, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/780", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Based on your sample, most of these questions seem to be coming from students in graduate programs, not from faculty. In my mind, this rules out the <em>pressure due to publish-or-perish</em> hypothesis. </p>\n\n<p>However, getting through an advanced degree program can be hard, particularly at the PhD level. </p>\n\n<p>Something else may be at play, too: take your average PhD candidate. Chances are this individual has largely excelled in academia – otherwise, they wouldn't be in a PhD program. But not all who enter these programs emerge with a degree, and that can be a tough pill to swallow, particularly when one has had 16 or more previous years of success. (The same is true for a master's candidate, too, though the failure rates probably aren't as high.) In short, some are dealing with failure in academia for the very first time. Throw in some other factors, too – students may have moved away from their hometown to go to school, they may be caught in the crossfire of departmental infighting, etc. – and it seems like a recipe for the blues.</p>\n\n<p>Given that environment, I'm not surprised at all to find no small number of questions that at least mention some form of depression. In fact, I might have been surprised to find the opposite. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 2117, "author": "posdef", "author_id": 5674, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/5674", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I dont find it surprising at all for two reasons:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Internet is where people go to complain, rant and whine... </li>\n<li>Academia does leave a lot of people frustrated, sad, angry or depressed.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>As a matter of fact emotional/mental health problems is <a href=\"http://qz.com/547641/theres-an-awful-cost-to-getting-a-phd-that-no-one-talks-about/\" rel=\"nofollow\">rather prevalent</a> in academia. I want to take a specific paragraph out: </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>A 2015 study at the University of California Berkeley found that 47%\n of graduate students suffer from depression, following a previous 2005\n study that showed 10% had contemplated suicide. A 2003 Australian\n study found that that the rate of mental illness in academic staff was\n three to four times higher than in the general population, according\n to a New Scientist article. The same article notes that the percentage\n of academics with mental illness in the United Kingdom has been\n estimated at 53%.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Also I think it's rather disturbing or insulting, when someone who's not having difficulties claims that there are no problems and PhD students (or any other generalized group of people) complain too much. The fact that you, specifically, do fine does not invalidate anybody else's troubles, worries or difficulties. </p>\n\n<p>I have more than a couple of colleagues and friends that ended up with rather severe problems through-out their graduate studies, some still suffering from these problems after therapy and medication.</p>\n\n<p>Without any intent to sound offensive, I suggest you revise your thoughts regarding the prevalence of psychological problems in academia. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1588", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10643/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1589, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I don't think this is academia-specific. Depression is a common human condition. Evidence: Google search for <a href=\"https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=site:workplace.stackexchange.com+depression\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Workplace.SE mentions of depression</a> (10 pages of results).</p>\n\n<p>I don't think we need a separate tag; <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/health-issues\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;health-issues&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">health-issues</a> seems adequate to me.</p>\n\n<p>I also don't think we need to handle it differently than we currently do: close questions that are about depression itself, and answer questions that are about academic problems related to or caused by depression.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1592, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I think that there is probably a lot of selection bias in the questions that we see. There are a lot of depressed people out there, and people who are struggling with <em>something</em> (depression or otherwise) are a lot more likely to come and ask a question on this site. I'm not surprised that depression is one of our themes. I agree with ff524 that <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/health-issues\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;health-issues&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">health-issues</a> reasonably covers it, though it's worth wondering whether we should add <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/mental-health\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;mental-health&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">mental-health</a> as well.</p>\n\n<p>It is also worth distinguishing between two major classes of depression:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysthymia\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Chronic depression</a> is a condition that is long-term and people who suffer from it generally need some form of ongoing professional medical support. We cannot and should not help with this, other than to recommend that people take their depression seriously and seek help, and to make recommendations on professional actions that can help limit the damage that is a byproduct.</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjustment_disorder\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Situational depression</a> is a common response to situations of major and unusual stress, and graduate school is simply <em>full</em> of major and unusual stress. Just like with chronic depression, people experiencing situational depression can benefit strongly from professional help. Here, however, there is <em>also</em> a likelihood of significant benefits just from learning that their experience is common and hearing how others have gotten through similar difficulties---much like and strongly linked to <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">imposter syndrome</a>.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>In short: I don't think depression is over-represented, and there are some ways that we can help, but we must not succumb to the temptation to play consequence-free internet doctor.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1594, "author": "Aubrey", "author_id": 26682, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/26682", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think there could be another factor. \nAcademia (especially in the US, I guess, but everywhere) is an highly competitive industry. There is <em>publish or perish</em>, seeking grants, fast moving disciplines, an overwhelming tide of new papers and results everyday. Research is hard. There are many people who struggle in academia.</p>\n\n<p>This site is specific. It regards academia, and is full of clever people. All questions and answers are written correctly and there is a lot of work from everyone in choosing words. This make it valuable, for both Q and A. </p>\n\n<p>The other point is that this site is welcoming. I see it as a positive thing, of course. I feel (and I can be refuted) that people find here a safe space and so they ask, because they know they will be answered politely. Politely and correctly. </p>\n\n<p>All these things together make me think that there will be a good share of questions related to the emotional life of people in academia. Depression/discouragement is definitely a good share of that life. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1595, "author": "Piotr Migdal", "author_id": 49, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/49", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Does anyone else finds it surprising? Is it just an artifact, or does our site somehow attract depressed peoples?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Not surprising at all. You get rants and voices of frustration on most Internet places. And I don't think that A.SE attracts more of such than other places for people related to academia.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I'm unconvinced that the prevalence of clinical depression amongst academics is higher than usual.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>@JeffE would say, <em>ex cathedra</em>, <strong>No.</strong> (vide <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20401/why-do-phd-students-complain-so-much\">Why do PhD students complain so much?</a>).</p>\n\n<p>But I think that it might be:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2014/may/08/work-pressure-fuels-academic-mental-illness-guardian-study-health\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2014/may/08/work-pressure-fuels-academic-mental-illness-guardian-study-health</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>or do we need a tag for it?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I did introduce tag <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/quitting\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;quitting&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">quitting</a> for situations where someone is quitting (whether dropping out or not continuing academic track) or considering doing so (for whatever reason). It may be worth to add a tag <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/psychological-issues\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;psychological-issues&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">psychological-issues</a> (there is already one for problems between people: <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/interpersonal-issues\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;interpersonal-issues&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">interpersonal-issues</a>).</p>\n\n<p>And for reason mentioned in comments on other answers, I am in favor of <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/psychological-issues\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;psychological-issues&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">psychological-issues</a> (or something similar) rather than putting everything in <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/health-issues\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;health-issues&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">health-issues</a> bag (as not all psychological issues are psychiatric).</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1609, "author": "J.R.", "author_id": 780, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/780", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Based on your sample, most of these questions seem to be coming from students in graduate programs, not from faculty. In my mind, this rules out the <em>pressure due to publish-or-perish</em> hypothesis. </p>\n\n<p>However, getting through an advanced degree program can be hard, particularly at the PhD level. </p>\n\n<p>Something else may be at play, too: take your average PhD candidate. Chances are this individual has largely excelled in academia – otherwise, they wouldn't be in a PhD program. But not all who enter these programs emerge with a degree, and that can be a tough pill to swallow, particularly when one has had 16 or more previous years of success. (The same is true for a master's candidate, too, though the failure rates probably aren't as high.) In short, some are dealing with failure in academia for the very first time. Throw in some other factors, too – students may have moved away from their hometown to go to school, they may be caught in the crossfire of departmental infighting, etc. – and it seems like a recipe for the blues.</p>\n\n<p>Given that environment, I'm not surprised at all to find no small number of questions that at least mention some form of depression. In fact, I might have been surprised to find the opposite. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 2117, "author": "posdef", "author_id": 5674, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/5674", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I dont find it surprising at all for two reasons:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Internet is where people go to complain, rant and whine... </li>\n<li>Academia does leave a lot of people frustrated, sad, angry or depressed.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>As a matter of fact emotional/mental health problems is <a href=\"http://qz.com/547641/theres-an-awful-cost-to-getting-a-phd-that-no-one-talks-about/\" rel=\"nofollow\">rather prevalent</a> in academia. I want to take a specific paragraph out: </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>A 2015 study at the University of California Berkeley found that 47%\n of graduate students suffer from depression, following a previous 2005\n study that showed 10% had contemplated suicide. A 2003 Australian\n study found that that the rate of mental illness in academic staff was\n three to four times higher than in the general population, according\n to a New Scientist article. The same article notes that the percentage\n of academics with mental illness in the United Kingdom has been\n estimated at 53%.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Also I think it's rather disturbing or insulting, when someone who's not having difficulties claims that there are no problems and PhD students (or any other generalized group of people) complain too much. The fact that you, specifically, do fine does not invalidate anybody else's troubles, worries or difficulties. </p>\n\n<p>I have more than a couple of colleagues and friends that ended up with rather severe problems through-out their graduate studies, some still suffering from these problems after therapy and medication.</p>\n\n<p>Without any intent to sound offensive, I suggest you revise your thoughts regarding the prevalence of psychological problems in academia. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1598", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/20580/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1602, "author": "Compass", "author_id": 22013, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22013", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Thanks for the updates!</p>\n\n<p>I have a singular concern.</p>\n\n<p>I don't know if it's just me, but it appears that question titles now have serif font that is somewhat harder to read, because the characters seem to be wider than those of other StackExchange sites. It's also slightly disorienting as the rest of the page is in a sans serif font.</p>\n\n<p>Probably need other people's opinions on this to verify.</p>\n\n<p>Here's a site that hasn't got its changes yet from what I can tell, for comparison: </p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/\">https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/</a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1603, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I don't have a bug so much as an inconsistency. The answer windows use a fixed-width font, but the box to enter comments uses a proportional font. This is jarring to the user.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1604, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"/questions/tagged/status-completed\" class=\"post-tag moderator-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;status-completed&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">status-completed</a></p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>There is no longer a downvoted-answer class, and downvoted answers are no longer greyed out. (As mentioned <a href=\"http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/20218342#20218342\">in chat</a>).</p>\n\n<p>Is this intentional?</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1601", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10587/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1607, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>For what it's worth, my own opinion on migration has not changed since <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1018/11365\">I wrote</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I would prefer to see a gray-area question be closed (and possibly migrated a little later) rather than migrated immediately.</p>\n \n <p>Migration is qualitatively different from other kinds of closure.\n Assuming we don't have accounts on the target site,</p>\n \n <h3>Closed Questions</h3>\n \n <ul>\n <li>High-rep users can vote to reopen</li>\n <li>Users can continue to discuss the closure in comments</li>\n <li>OP can edit the question to make it a better fit</li>\n </ul>\n \n <h3>Migrated Questions</h3>\n \n <ul>\n <li>High-rep users on the original site cannot vote to reopen</li>\n <li>Users on the original site cannot comment</li>\n <li>OP cannot edit the question to make it a better fit for the original site</li>\n </ul>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>In this case, the question had no close votes before it was migrated. It also had some upvotes and no downvotes.</p>\n\n<p>Given <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1023/closing-migration-criteria\">this meta post</a>, which seems to be the most recent \"policy statement\", I don't think this question should be migrated - at least, not unless it's closed by community first. If you delete the version on Open Data, I'll reopen it here.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1608, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>As the guilty party, I'll just note that my primary justification for migrating the question was that the question was about how DOI's get applied to specific data sets. It's more a question about how data works—which is Open Data's specialty, than to Academia's. I'm OK if the consensus is otherwise, and apologize for the rash action.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1610, "author": "Stephan Kolassa", "author_id": 4140, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/4140", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I only saw this thread today, otherwise I would have weighed in earlier. I definitely think that migration was warranted in this case. I agree 100% with <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1608/4140\">aeismail's rationale</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>It's more a question about how data works—which is Open Data's\n specialty, than to Academia's.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Honestly, this to me would seem to settle the discussion. (Incidentally, I don't understand why aeismail adopts a rather apologetical tone in his answer.)</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>To comment on EnergyNumbers' original question:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>But instead of being here, where it will be seen by hundreds of\n academics, and get thousands of views, it's been migrated to a quiet\n beta site where it will get dozens of views, very few of which will be\n academics.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>That can't be an argument in favor of not migrating. If a question is off topic, then it's off topic. (See below.) I don't see how \"it may be off topic at Academia, but it'll get many more hits here\" makes a lot of sense.</p>\n\n<p>I am somewhat active on CrossValidated.SE, which is SE for statistics. They recently added a custom close reason for data requests, directing people to OpenData. Which makes perfect sense, given the missions of the two sites. Yes, of course there is more activity at CV than at OD. But if the number of hits were a criterion, we would post everything at StackOverflow, and beta sites would never get any traffic at all.</p>\n\n<p>It seems to me EnergyNumbers argues that the question is of special interest to academics because the DOI explicitly aims at academics. (To quote the migrated question, \"I'm familiar with DOIs been allocated to historic time series, to give academics a unique, citable identifier for datasets.\"). However, the <a href=\"http://www.doi.org/infokit/0607DOIFAQs.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">DOI Foundation's FAQ</a> nowhere contains the word \"academic\" or variants. To quote from the FAQ:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>A DOI name provides a means of persistently identifying a piece of\n intellectual property on a digital network and associating it with\n related current data in a structured extensible way.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Intellectual property may be specially relevant to academics, but it is so for lots of other people, too. This discussion here reminds me of <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/14486/256777\">boat programming</a>, with \"DOI\" in place of \"boat\", and \"academics\" in place of \"programmers\". And I'd argue that many people who are interested in how DOI deals with \"evolving\" datasets will not be academics (e.g., industry researchers, technical journalists etc.), and they'd likely rather expect such a question on OpenData than on Academia. (Thank goodness for search engines.)</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Across the whole Stack Exchange, a question doesn't get migrated just\n because it's a good fit elsewhere. It only gets migrated if it's not a\n good fit here. So why was this question not considered a good fit\n here?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Compare the <a href=\"https://opendata.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic\">on-topic help for OpenData</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Open Data Stack Exchange is for developers and researchers interested in open data.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>with the <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic\">analogous page for Academia</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>This site is for academics of all levels—from aspiring graduate and\n professional students to senior researchers—as well as anyone in or\n interested in research-related or research-adjacent fields.</p>\n \n <p>If you have a question about...</p>\n \n <ul>\n <li>Life as a graduate student, postdoctoral researcher, university professor</li>\n <li>Transitioning from undergraduate to graduate researcher</li>\n <li>Inner workings of research departments</li>\n <li>Requirements and expectations of academicians</li>\n <li>University-level pedagogy</li>\n </ul>\n \n <p>... then you're in the right place!</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Looking back at aeismail's rationale quoted above, I'd say that the migrated question fits <em>much</em> more comfortably into the first than the second category, although one can of course argue that it's \"research-adjacent\" and doesn't cover <em>open</em> data in particular.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>(No, I'm not going to flag the question for re-migration, given that there seems to be a consensus that it should stay. As may be obvious, if the question had been posted today, I would have flagged it, for the reasons above.)</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1606", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/96/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1617, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I disagree with the assertion that this is a \"style\" question. The precision of numbers and measurements is a vital part of the practice of statistics, and really belongs on a site like <a href=\"http://stats.stackexchange.com\">Cross Validated</a> rather than on Academia.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1618, "author": "Pete L. Clark", "author_id": 938, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/938", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I agree with the migration (and perhaps I was involved in it? I couldn't easily see tell the voters were on our end by looking at the question in its new destination). A few points:</p>\n\n<p>1) Migrating a question from one SE site to another should probably not be viewed as equivalent to other types of closing. It is an attempt to give a question more activity, not less.</p>\n\n<p>2) Similarly, I don't think migrating a question from site A to site B implies that the question is off-topic for site A so much as that it is much more on-topic for site B. We want questions to be recorded in places where they are most relevant, where they have the largest possible community to answer them, where they can be compared to other relevant questions, and so forth.</p>\n\n<p>3) The question in question is one about statistical practice. By good fortune, we have an entire site for that. Let me remark that the Cross Validated site is not only or primarily for academic statisticians. It is a general site for questions and answers both about the academic field of statistics and its application in a variety of endeavors. (In other words, if I am not mistaken it is more like math.SE than mathoverflow.) It's better for questions like this to be asked on Cross Validated, in which the leading answerers are all statistical experts and in which the community as a whole is statistically savvy enough to up and downvote accordingly. In a similar way a question which required mathematical expertise -- rather than expertise with the mathematical community or profession -- to answer would be better asked on math.SE than here, even though there are mathematical questions which are of interest to academia as a whole. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1616", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1622, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>They are not germane to the text of the question, and therefore need not be preserved. My preference is to remove such text. </p>\n\n<p>If the question is \"fresh,\" then I would think that an edit just to remove such text is appropriate. However, I would <em>not</em> edit an old question, as this is not a significant enough change to the question that would merit moving it to the top of the \"active\" question list.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1628, "author": "gnometorule", "author_id": 4384, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/4384", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I realize that across SE sites the accepted answer is what is increasingly recommended, or at least common behavior (certainly among those network sites I have frequented), but I find its reasoning dubious. On the one hand, the site <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/823/minor-edits-of-other-peoples-questions\">suggests</a> that reasonably minor spelling or grammar errors go unaddressed (specifically mentioned: \"...or two words\"); but with the accepted answer staying unopposed, it is now searchable best practice to edit \"Thank you!\" out of a fresh question. I find that sad.</p>\n\n<p>As with other issues, I see no reason why ASE should adopt habits I find unfriendly, not welcoming, and so questionable. The sub-sites are given leeway to be different from another, and academia always struck me as the \"friendliest,\" for lack of a better word. Within reason, let people talk in their language. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1621", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/15723/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1624, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>From the <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/behavior\">help center</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Your user page belongs to you — fill it with information about your interests, links to stuff you’ve worked on, or whatever else you like!</p>\n</blockquote>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1625, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>To me, the question is this: where is the line between appropriate promotion and spam / single-purpose-accounts? I have noticed that when an account is <em>centered</em> on a link in its user profile, that can be considered evidence of inappropriate promotion. If the promotion is just a small part of an otherwise well-rounded account, however, I see no issue at all. For example, in your own case, you are a well-established contributor to this site who is known for doing a lot of different constructive work. Adding clear, transparent lines in your profile that say, \"I like this stuff, and think you should check it out too\" seems to me to be no problem at all.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1626, "author": "user3293056", "author_id": 31864, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/31864", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Wow why would it be unethical are you selling something?</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1627, "author": "peer revu", "author_id": 31700, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/31700", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Is it ethical to promote another Stack Exchange website in about me section of the users' profiles?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>It doesn't trigger an ethical question. It's fine. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1623", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/15723/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1630, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The Academia.SE meta is a lot less active than many of those other ones, so I suppose it's not surprising it it's got less structured and organized tags as well.</p>\n\n<p>I'd say: if you're psyched for it, go for it! As always, of course, it's a good idea to post your plans to chat and/or meta to get a sense of how well they agree with the rest of the community before making big changes.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1657, "author": "xLeitix", "author_id": 10094, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10094", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I basically have OSD about tracking, organizing, classifying, and taxonomy-ing stuff, and it has even leaked into my research. But what I have learned the hard way is that there is no point in providing a lot of organization if you are not actually using the resulting classifications. Basically, write-only metadata just produces overhead.</p>\n\n<p>Hence, I would not ask what kind of tags we <em>do not</em> have, but rather what kind of tags are <em>missing</em> from a user perspective. Do we have indications that people are not finding the meta-questions they are looking for? If yes, I am all in favor of adding more and better tags. If no, why bother?</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1629", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/15723/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1632, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think welcoming new users with a comment is fine. I think it is also fine to flag welcome comments as \"too chatty\" a few days later. At that point the comment has served most of its purpose (i.e., welcoming the new user). I guess the argument for keeping it longer, is to let other new users know we are welcoming.</p>\n\n<p>I tend to only welcome new users when I have something else to tell them. Typically, I welcome them as I am telling them I am deleting or closing their question/answer. Generally my welcomes include asking them to look at our help center.</p>\n\n<p>I would have no problem with new users getting a welcome comment in general.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1633, "author": "Penguin_Knight", "author_id": 6450, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/6450", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I usually welcome the OP if I have something to say in the comment. But I guess it's to everyone's taste. If this is to become a trend then the only annoyance would be skipping one more line of comments, which is not a big deal.</p>\n\n<p>There are a few thoughts:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Most of the time when I see those \"welcome\" comments they are from users with, say, around 100-200 reputation and I feel kind of weird about that. Like someone just visited you in the morning and by afternoon he is running around welcoming guests for you.</p></li>\n<li><p>It's a Q&amp;A platform. I'd rather express welcome by putting more thoughts in the answers and comments, give them what they asked for rather than just a plain welcome. Sometimes I saw questions with no answer but a 100-reputation user's \"Welcome!\" comment, I couldn't help but felt kind of sad.</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Another more practical way to welcome newcomers is to upvote their questions</strong> given their questions are good. This is a lot more welcomed (pun intended): by giving them more reputation they can unlock more functions and get to integrate into the forum faster.</p></li>\n</ol>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1650, "author": "xLeitix", "author_id": 10094, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10094", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I usually don't post these <em>Welcome</em> messages because, well, I see no real purpose to them, and if there is a policy to post them always, the entire exercise becomes incredibly fake and dishonest fast.</p>\n\n<p>I have no quarrels with a policy of always welcoming new users, but frankly I remain unconvinced that this will make new users somehow feel more at home more quickly.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1681, "author": "Frames Catherine White", "author_id": 8513, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8513", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I normally (on all SE sites),\npost welcome messages of the form.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>\"Welcome to <strong>X.SE</strong>. Your question is a bit too <strong>Y</strong> for our format. You could improve it by doing <strong>Z</strong>.\"</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The welcome message is not there to welcome them, but to soften the blow when giving (constructive) criticism.</p>\n\n<p>So as not to drive the new user away, while they are still learning the ropes.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1631", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/15723/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1635, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Personally, I don't really think we need a separate tag for each <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/citation-style\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;citation-style&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">citation-style</a>. (Let the votes on this answer indicate what everyone else thinks...)</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1636, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>APA style is <em>so</em> obnoxiously comprehensive (and generally obnoxious and different from other styles) that I think it's reasonable to have its own tag.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1637, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>What about a <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/style-manuals\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;style-manuals&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">style-manuals</a> tag to cover things like APA, MLA, and the others, where the question is about things that go beyond citations?</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1634", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/4140/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1635, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Personally, I don't really think we need a separate tag for each <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/citation-style\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;citation-style&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">citation-style</a>. (Let the votes on this answer indicate what everyone else thinks...)</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1636, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>APA style is <em>so</em> obnoxiously comprehensive (and generally obnoxious and different from other styles) that I think it's reasonable to have its own tag.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1637, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>What about a <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/style-manuals\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;style-manuals&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">style-manuals</a> tag to cover things like APA, MLA, and the others, where the question is about things that go beyond citations?</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1676", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/19607/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1685, "author": "Chris Cirefice", "author_id": 15360, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/15360", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>College is a business, unfortunately. I think that part of the 'agreed upon' in attending is that the university owns parts of your educational data that the institution itself grants (titles, transcripts, etc.). Sad, but that's how business works.</p>\n\n<p>Personally I don't find that linking to NSC is distasteful in terms of adding the content to an answer because:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>They have data on students that universities have the right to give (or sell) them</li>\n<li>They are a verified not-for-profit entity.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Even if one has to pay for the service, it's NFP so it's not <em>as perverted</em> an operation in my view.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1686, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The main criteria regarding mentioning third-party services are not to write anything that could be construed as an endorsement or advertisement, and to disclose if you have any direct or indirect involvement with that particular entity. It's completely fine to mention them and then explain why you don't like them, just as you did in your question here. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1684", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/14885/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1691, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<h2>Retraction and withdrawal are not the same.</h2>\n\n<p><strong>Retraction</strong> refers to expunging of papers from the literature, usually for reasons related to fraud or error.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Withdrawal</strong> of a paper can occur for any reason. Withdrawal can also apply to conference papers, posters, and oral presentations. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1693, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Withdrawing from a course in progress, withdrawing an application for admission, withdrawing from a degree program (<a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/quitting\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;quitting&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">quitting</a>), and withdrawing a paper submitted for review are <em>not</em> the same thing.</p>\n\n<p>There should not be an ambiguous <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/withdraw\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;withdraw&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">withdraw</a> tag applied to all these different scenarios.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1690", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/15723/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1697, "author": "earthling", "author_id": 2692, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/2692", "pm_score": 5, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If the question is on-topic, and the OP chose to post here, I believe we should keep the question here, even if it is a better fit somewhere else.</p>\n\n<p>The one exception I can see is if the OP requests migration after becoming aware of that option.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1700, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think that as a community we are a bit fast on the trigger for migration, and basically agree with earthling's post. I would add that the distinction I find useful is whether the question's answers will need to be highly technical vs. more about custom and practice.</p>\n\n<p>Thus, for example, in the two examples that you give, I think the \"p-value\" question is definitely right to migrate, because the answer is deeply technical in statistics, whereas the \"link to article\" question could have stayed (though it might have ended up on hold anyway as opinion-based).</p>\n\n<p>Mostly, though, I think we're migrating a bunch of questions because a lot of people turn up confused about the scope of this site, apparently feeling that \"I encountered this in academia\" means \"I should ask about this on Academia.SE.\" Looking at some of the other sites on the network, though, I think our frequency of migration is pretty normal.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1708, "author": "Fomite", "author_id": 118, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/118", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I don't think we're necessarily migrating too many questions - because Stack Exchange is a network, I don't think there's particularly harm in seeing a question moved, and indeed the initial asker can benefit a lot from a prompt to go to a more appropriate venue for their question, and future questions like it.</p>\n\n<p>I'll admit that I'm particularly pro-migration for questions that fit better on CrossValidated (the p-value question), because this <em>isn't</em> a question specific to academia, and <em>is</em> specifically a question in a technical area that has a SE site. I'd feel the same about questions about code, even if it was for a thesis (SO) or say a specific biology question.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1712, "author": "O. R. Mapper", "author_id": 14017, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/14017", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In my opinion, whether or not a question is on-topic on Academia SE (or on any other SE site) is a bad measurement for the decision whether or not to migrate it away.</p>\n\n<p>The more important factor, I think, is where the question is <em>most</em> on-topic. That is for the simple reason that similar questions turn up over time, and only if we have each question flow toward the one site where it is \"most at home\", there is a chance that the various variants of one question are eventually merged.</p>\n\n<p>I say this based on the following personal beliefs of mine (here expressed in a somewhat drastical way):</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Duplicate questions are a vicious evil to fight, even though it will be an eternal struggle and they can never completely be eradicated. When looking for some specific information, I vastly prefer <em>one</em> question with lots of different answers over having to open a dozen browser tabs, each of which contains what <em>might or might not</em> be another duplicate of the same question I am trying to solve.</li>\n<li>Reviving even old, seemingly inactive questions is nothing to be criticized for; if you know something to contribute to a question or answer, do it, no matter whether the respective post was added a minute or a decade ago.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>In short: I prefer increasing chances of merging duplicate questions across the whole SE network, rather than have each SE site amass a pile of borderline questions that have already been, or will also be answered elsewhere.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1696", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1701, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I would suggest a perhaps rather unusual solution that hacks the SE model: for a case in which the situation has radically changed over time, create the new question and link to the old question as a possible duplicate with the explicit declaration that the new question has been created because the situation has changed. Then:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>If the community thinks things have really changed, close the old question as duplicate and add an edit at the top saying: \"This is how things used to be, but see the new question because they have changed\"</p></li>\n<li><p>If the community things things haven't changed, close the new question as duplicate.</p></li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1703, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Adding a bounty to an old question asking for new answers will likely get it noticed. New answers to old questions get added to a special review queue, which increases the visibility. As for answer that are now outdated, adding a comment saying they are outdated is probably useful or even an edit which explains how thing shave changed and why the answer is now out dated.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1704, "author": "Sciencertobe", "author_id": 24682, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/24682", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Another possibility, similar to what jakebeal suggests, is to simply ask directly if the answer is now invalid.</p>\n\n<p>This is more or less the approach I took with my recent question:\n<a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/40442/how-has-the-application-review-process-for-nsf-graduate-fellowships-changed\">How has the application review process for NSF graduate fellowships changed?</a>.</p>\n\n<p>It seems to have been well accepted by the community.</p>\n\n<p>Of course, this could lead to questions whose answer is simply \"No\", but no one said all the question of our site had to be <em>interesting.</em></p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1699", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10685/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1706, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I'd say: we have the tools to make this statement explicit. Up-vote the question and leave a comment saying that you up-voted because it's a good question, but you think it is not on topic for reason X. </p>\n\n<p>If it needs to be migrated, that is probably the end of it. If it has a different problem (e.g., being opinion-based), then you might also consider proposing edits to make it a more answerable question.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1707, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It is your vote and you should vote as you see fit. I think of up votes as saying this is a good question that is a good fit for our community. I only like rewarding people for doing things that help our community. There is also a small reduction of work if closed questions are not up voted since closed questions with negative vote totals are automatically deleted. Questions with a score of zero or more require high rep users to vote to delete them.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1705", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/28451/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1716, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Broadly speaking, questions about job-seeking outside of academia are not on topic. You may want to try checking out <a href=\"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/\">Workplace.SE</a>.</p>\n\n<p>I'm sure there are some counter-examples where questions like this were on topic; if you find any that you want to have clarified, feel free to post in the comments and we can discuss.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1717, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If you are looking help regarding to an R&amp;D job in which people engage in many of the same actions as academia (e.g., scientific research, peer-reviewed publishing, research funding applications), then that job is likely to be considered part of \"greater academia\" for the purposes of this site.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1762, "author": "Roger Fan", "author_id": 20375, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/20375", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>As a rule of thumb, I think that if a job entails publishing in academic journals or work that supports or eventually will lead to that goal, then it's on-topic. Anything that isn't at least tangentially related to that it probably isn't on-topic.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1713", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/14341/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1739, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I absolutely concur with the assessment that \"cannot be generalized\" and \"very specific advice\" are largely redundant. </p>\n\n<p>If we are to do away with one of the two, I would suggest removing \"cannot be generalized\" because I find myself using the other very often for \"Hi, here's my situation, help?\" questions.</p>\n\n<p>I also like the idea of a \"no shopping questions\" close reason, which I would suggest to tweak to:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Suggestions or recommendations or comparison of specific universities, journal, research topics, etc (i.e., \"shopping questions\") are off-topic.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Mainly, I am suggesting we drop the 'primarily opinion-based' wording from your original suggestion for the \"no shopping questions\" reason because that is setting us up for argument that some distinctions are <em>not</em> just matters of opinion. Instead, I think it is OK to simply say that we do not do this as a matter of policy, since there are <em>many</em> good reasons to do so (opinion, \"taking sides,\" unprofessionalism, tendency to gossip, overly broad libel laws, etc.)</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1741, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I second that there is no need to distinguish between <em>cannot be generalized</em> and <em>very specific advice</em> and would like to suggest the following new wording for the close reason to compise them both:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The answer to this question strongly depends on individual factors such as a certain person’s preferences, a given institution’s regulations, the exact contents of your work or your personal values. Thus only somebody familiar with these can answer this question and it cannot be generalised to apply to others.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I chose to phrase it like this as many cases it should give the asker a strong hint where they can find an answer to their question, namely:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><em>a certain person’s preferences</em> → ask that person (in most cases: the advisor) or or somebody who knows them.</li>\n<li><em>a given institution’s regulations</em> → ask that university.</li>\n<li><em>the exact contents of your work</em> → ask somebody who is familiar with your work, namely your supervisor, colleagues or yourself.</li>\n<li><em>your personal values</em> → ask yourself, e.g., as to how much risk you are willing to take.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>I also second the demand for a shopping question and suggest the following wording:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Shopping questions, i.e., questions that seek individual universities, academic programs, publishers, journals, research topics or similar as an answer or seek an assessment or comparison of such, are off-topic.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I chose this wording to slightly expand the scope (in comparison to the existing suggestions) and explicitly include such cases, where the asker is not explicitly asking for a recommendation but only for the existence of a program (but implicitly wishes recommendation). This should reduce certain complaints made by the asker (“I wasn’t asking for a recomendation, I just wanted to know if …”) I have witnessed quite often.</p>\n\n<p>Also, at the end of the day, many close reasons (such as this) exist due to problem arising from the answers. Defining the problem via the answers directly addresses the problem and makes the close reason specific to what it needs to be specfic about.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1736", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1738, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>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.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1740, "author": "Mangara", "author_id": 8185, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8185", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>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:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/26130/8185\">Should I host my academic website under my institution domain or under a domain of my own ?</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/3709/8185\">What contents should I put on my academic website?</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>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.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1737", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/31973/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1743, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The question you have asked is, at its root, <strong>not</strong> about internships. The reason you have asked it is based on trying to secure an internship, but I could just easily replace \"applying for academic internships\" with \"hawking laboratory supplies\" or \"soliciting manuscripts for an open-access journal.\"</p>\n\n<p>Your question can be reduced to \"how do I avoid spam filters?\" It can't be reduced to \"how do I apply for an academic internship?\"—at least not in its present form.</p>\n\n<p>(For what it's worth, I've provided an answer for you in that question, but I suspect it's not one you're going to like.)</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1744, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 2, "selected": true, "text": "<p>Personally, I disagree with the close votes on the question. There is a possible case to be made that it is only about undergraduates, but since such academic internships are frequently pursued with an aim towards graduate school, I think that still makes it sufficiently on topic.</p>\n\n<p>I think that your question is based on mistaken assumptions and aims at a rather obnoxious behavior. My feeling is that many of those close votes may have been influenced by a dislike of internship spamming and the attitude that goes along with it (which is reflected in your question as well). <strong>However, just because a question is wrong-headed or reflects an odious attitude doesn't make it a bad question.</strong> In fact, I think that it is a very <em>good</em> question for that very reason, because maybe some fraction of students who go looking good methods of spamming professors will come across it and realize they are using the wrong tactic.</p>\n\n<p>If others show agreement with this position, then I would vote to reopen.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1742", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/31973/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1748, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>To me, the question was closed for a few reasons:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>It is unclear what is actually being asked. It appears very abstract and philosophical in nature, which is typically not the type of question asked on these forums.</li>\n<li>The question is also only tangentially related to academia. The concept of a curriculum exists in education of all levels; elementary, secondary, undergraduate, graduate, certifications, online trainings, etc.</li>\n<li><p>The question has a pretty simple answer. A curriculum is:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>1: the courses offered by an educational institution</p>\n \n <p>2: a set of courses constituting an area of specialization</p>\n \n <p><em>source: <a href=\"http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/curriculum\" rel=\"nofollow\">m-w.com</a></em></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>It's not clear to me what your different subcategorizations even mean, and it's even less clear why I would want to begin a discussion using your classification scheme.</p></li>\n</ol>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1751, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I voted to close the question as \"unclear\", because I have no idea what the OP is asking about. I have never heard of a curriculum as being described as a list of topics, never mind a prescriptive and/or descriptive one. The question in the body seems to be a yes/no question, while the titular question seems to require a pretty broad answer what a curriculum is. Neither seem a good fit and I think if he unclear part was clarified the good part of the question would emerge.</p>\n\n<p>I did not vote the question down, because I think there is a good question in there, it just needs clarification.</p>\n\n<p>I did not leave a comment to the OP because I thought the close reason was pretty clear and I saw that the OP he has 100k+ rep on the SE network so I figured if he was confused he would ask on meta, chat, or the comments.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1747", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/73/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1748, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>To me, the question was closed for a few reasons:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>It is unclear what is actually being asked. It appears very abstract and philosophical in nature, which is typically not the type of question asked on these forums.</li>\n<li>The question is also only tangentially related to academia. The concept of a curriculum exists in education of all levels; elementary, secondary, undergraduate, graduate, certifications, online trainings, etc.</li>\n<li><p>The question has a pretty simple answer. A curriculum is:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>1: the courses offered by an educational institution</p>\n \n <p>2: a set of courses constituting an area of specialization</p>\n \n <p><em>source: <a href=\"http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/curriculum\" rel=\"nofollow\">m-w.com</a></em></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>It's not clear to me what your different subcategorizations even mean, and it's even less clear why I would want to begin a discussion using your classification scheme.</p></li>\n</ol>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1751, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I voted to close the question as \"unclear\", because I have no idea what the OP is asking about. I have never heard of a curriculum as being described as a list of topics, never mind a prescriptive and/or descriptive one. The question in the body seems to be a yes/no question, while the titular question seems to require a pretty broad answer what a curriculum is. Neither seem a good fit and I think if he unclear part was clarified the good part of the question would emerge.</p>\n\n<p>I did not vote the question down, because I think there is a good question in there, it just needs clarification.</p>\n\n<p>I did not leave a comment to the OP because I thought the close reason was pretty clear and I saw that the OP he has 100k+ rep on the SE network so I figured if he was confused he would ask on meta, chat, or the comments.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1755", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/32436/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1760, "author": "410 gone", "author_id": 96, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/96", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>You can always post a link to the question in the chatroom of a site that might be interested.</p>\n\n<p>If you post the question URL on a line to itself in chat, with no other text on that line, then the chat system will create a onebox with a preview of the question, and a link to it.</p>\n\n<p>Don't do it <em>often</em> in the same chatroom, because that will feel spammy. And do check the local customs of each chatroom beforehand.</p>\n\n<p>And do add a sentence of explanation before or after the line with the URL on it, mentioning why you're bringing it to that particular chatroom's attention.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1768, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Unfortunately, there is no systematic way to cross-promote questions. It would be nice if there were a tab on the home page that might show \"related\" questions from across the network, but that's a feature request above our pay grade.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1759", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/13535/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1764, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>You ask an excellent question. I don't know how they ended up with different dispositions; they should either both be left open or both be closed on the same grounds. I would tend to lean towards them both being left <strong>open</strong>.</p>\n\n<p>One thing to note, though—the \"powers that be\" are all the users that have sufficient representation to cast close votes. Also, close votes expire after a certain window. So it may be the case that \"critical mass\" was achieved in one case but not the other.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1765, "author": "Nobody", "author_id": 546, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/546", "pm_score": 3, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I am one of the voters who voted to close the first question and voted to leave the second question open. I feel obligated to answer your question from my own perspective.</p>\n\n<p>However, I can only speak for myself. Please take my answer as my own opinion.</p>\n\n<p>My vote to close the first question was because it is about an undergrad student seeking jobs outside Academia.</p>\n\n<p>My vote to \"Leave Open\" the second question because of the word \"internships\". To me, an internship job is temporary. The OP will go back to school at the end of it. In my opinion, it's on the borderline between Academia and industry. This is what was on my mind at the time I was reviewing Close Votes.</p>\n\n<p>If I remember it correctly, I did hesitate to leave open the second one because the OP is an undergrad student. It seems that it was an undergrad question. Then my thought was that the same could happen to graduate students. So, there was my vote.</p>\n\n<p>Come to think of the whole thing, the first question deals with the issue \"prestigious school vs. average school\" while seeking industry jobs. This is an important question because everyone needs a job, whether in Academia or industry. We do have questions concerning Academians' job hunting in industry on this site. If expanding the question to undergrad students, I am not sure our community would accept it.</p>\n\n<p>The above is my opinion and mine only.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1763", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11192/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1775, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Down votes are not \"wiped out\" when a question is reopened.</p>\n\n<p>In general, though, any question that had an answer can be reopened if it is edited, made to fit site guidelines, and enough \"reopen\" votes are cast. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1776, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 3, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I am the person who first nominated the question for re-opening. Questions typically should eventually progress toward either reopening or delation. I always did like the question (I am one of its up-votes), so I edited to try to make it more focused and neutral in tone, then reopened. Apparently enough others liked the question now to reopen it---though it seems to still be somewhat controversial, given the ongoing accumulation of up and down votes. </p>\n\n<p>As the OP, of course, please feel free to further improve the question: I tried to preserve your intent as much as possible while decreasing the \"rant\" perception that helped cause it to be closed in the first place.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1782, "author": "D.W.", "author_id": 705, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/705", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I didn't vote to reopen the question, but members of the community (with enough rep) are allowed to vote to re-open it at any time. The ethos here is that questions are owned by the community, and the community are free to vote on closing and re-opening questions based upon their own view about whether it meets the standards for this site. Folks who believe the question is a good question might have decided to vote to re-open it, on the basis that they believe the question is on-topic and suitable and helpful. Hopefully that answers your question about why people might have voted to re-open the question.</p>\n\n<p>Of course, re-opening the question also bumps it back to the front page, which might cause it to be read by new people who didn't read it previously. That can cause it to receive additional votes (whether upvotes or downvotes).</p>\n\n<p>I suspect your secondary question is: why am I getting these downvotes, and how can I avoid getting more of them? I can share some thoughts on that.</p>\n\n<p>First off, remember that upvotes increase your rep more than downvotes decrease it. It looks like you have received more upvotes than downvotes, so just to keep things in perspective, any loss of reputation due to the downvotes is outweighed by the increase due to upvotes.</p>\n\n<p>Second, the best way to avoid downvotes is to edit your question to improve it based upon the feedback. The #1 piece of feedback you got is: \"The rant/question ratio here is quite high.\". As I read the question today, I still feel that this feedback remains pretty relevant. So, if you'd like to avoid future downvotes, arguably the best thing you can do is edit the question to address this feedback. You might try deleting some of the opinions (they can sometimes be perceived as \"rant\", even if that was not your intent), and focusing on the specific question. At the risk of exaggerating and over-simplifying a bit, consider the difference between \"I see a phenomenom that puzzles me, I assume there are probably good reasons behind it, I want to learn, can you help me understand?\" vs \"I see a phenomenom that is stupid, look how stupid it is, why are universities being so stupid?\"; you want to be as close to the former as possible, and avoid any opportunity for people to misconstrue the question as an instance of the latter. This is a matter of tone, and tone is always delicate, but it can affect how people view your question.</p>\n\n<p>The other thing you can do in your question is to show your research. We expect you to do a significant amount of research before asking and to tell us about what research you've done. As explained here:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Have you thoroughly searched for an answer before asking your question? Sharing your research helps everyone. Tell us what you found and why it didn’t meet your needs. This demonstrates that you’ve taken the time to try to help yourself, it saves us from reiterating obvious answers, and above all, it helps you get a more specific and relevant answer!\n <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask\">https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask</a></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>So, those are some concrete steps you can take that might avoid future downvotes, if that was part of what you were asking.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1774", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/16049/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1778, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>There is a lot going on in this question and I will attempt to tackle it, but if I miss something, let me know.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Then I got a message from the moderators saying someone, whom they did not identify, had complained that I was \"stalking and harassing\" him, using my words, not quite verbatim. Naturally this gave rise to a suspicion about who it was. The moderators suspended me for seven days. </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>To be fair you got a message saying that there were complaints about users harassing each other. You were told that we were contacting everyone involved and telling everyone to stop it and that we were not taking any further action. You then took what the mods decided was a combative and harassing response, and it was at that point we suspended you for 7 days.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The moderators are anonymous and it is not possible to contact them except by flagging a posting (and you can't flag comments) and they cut you off from being able to reply to them when they inform you of their decision.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I am not sure what you mean by anonymous. We are listed here <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users?tab=moderators\">https://academia.stackexchange.com/users?tab=moderators</a>, but obviously I am not the real Strongbad. We watch meta and chat, so there are ways to contact us publicly. We also have a tool to contact users privately, and once contacted, you can reply privately. The ability to reply may expire at some point, I do not know. I am pretty sure you can flag comments. </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>When the suspension ended I did flag a posting from the person who stalked and harassed me, explaining that my concern was not about that particular posting but about the behavior of the poster. After two days I've heard nothing. So it seems it is about who goes to the moderators first.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>We saw the flag, discussed it amongst ourselves and the SE employees. We decided that it would be best if an SE employee handled the issue. I believe when the flag was cleared, you received a message saying essentially \"give us some time\". The SE employees are busy, but I am sure they will get to the issue.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Are the behaviors described in the bullet points above considered appropriate by the participants in academia.stackexchange.com or by its moderators?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>We are left to guess which question and comments you are referring to. You did raise a couple of flags saying you felt bullied, but they did not point out specific comments and did refer to the multiple down votes you received. Looking more carefully at the comments, some of them are less than nice and probably should be deleted. That said, no one specifically flagged the comments as rude. I am leaving them for now to aid the conversation, but if you flag them in a few days as rude, I will delete them. That said, the comments that I see are not over the top and while we discourage that type of behaviour, I do not think it is bad enough to require moderator intervention.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1779, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Your post is leaving out many, many relevant details of the actual story as it occurred, so much so that the case you state is a purely hypothetical situation.</p>\n\n<p>As such, in response to the hypothetical question, no, that would not be an appropriate moderator action. Suspension is a fairly severe punishment, only used after a written warning (or rarely when the initial offense is particularly severe). Also, there's no such thing as a \"who reported something first\" concept; I'm not sure how that would ever actually play out in practice, but each flag is judged on it's own merit.</p>\n\n<p>Additionally, you stated above that \"moderators are anonymous and unable to be contacted.\" To address those two points:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>We are not anonymous; <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users?tab=moderators\">we're right here</a>. Regarding who performed a particular action, we try as much as possible to discuss amongst ourselves when issues come up, and actions taken by one are fully backed by the rest of the group. You don't need to worry that what one person did cannot be defended or addressed by another. Even more so, in many cases, we frequently do respond to specific instances of moderator action (see <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1747/why-was-this-question-about-the-definition-of-a-curriculum-closed\">here</a> and <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1606/when-did-doi-questions-become-off-topic-here/1608#1608\">here</a> for two examples).</li>\n<li>We are very easily able to be contacted; you just did so! Posting to Meta is the correct venue, and as you can see by simply browsing questions, we post here a lot.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p><em>Edit to add:</em></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>After I posted I remembered... almost every mod message ends with the name of the moderator who originated it. I just checked, and this case was no exception. You <em>were</em> aware of who contacted you, as it was stated explicitly on the email you received.</li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1796, "author": "aparente001", "author_id": 32436, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/32436", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I see a Stack Exchange participant who perceives unfair treatment, and is wondering if things are working differently in practice from how things are supposed to work. Also, this participant is confused about some moderator actions.</p>\n\n<p>I have a suggestion for you, @MichaelHardy. If you haven't yet tried this, hit the \"contact us\" button in the footer. Write as calm a letter as you can (mainly so you don't upset yourself further), and include links and quotes so that someone who is just coming into the story can follow what you're saying. You can include specific questions about things you haven't understood, and you can include specific complaints and suggestions.</p>\n\n<p>I am a pretty recent arrival at SE, so I can't guarantee that this will be helpful, but I do think it's worth a try.</p>\n\n<p>By the way, please do experiment with flagging comments. Here is a page that talks about comment flags: <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/17364/how-does-comment-voting-and-flagging-work\">How does comment voting and flagging work?</a>\nI am a little confused about what that page says about downvoting comments. Maybe that part is obsolete. But what it says about flagging comments matches my experience.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1777", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7229/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1781, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Well, as you said, this is a very unusual question.</p>\n\n<p>Questions asking about specific coursework preparing for research are considered off-topic, but this doesn't do that. It's not an \"undergrad-only\" question, since the focus is on research, rather than the coursework <em>per se</em>. It also avoids the \"too specific\" trap, but it may (legitimately, perhaps) be dinged for being opinion-based. </p>\n\n<p>Personally, I wouldn't contribute an answer, but my comment would be:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>You should consider asking some people at a nearby research college what they would expect undergraduates to have studied before starting in their research group. You may need less formal coursework than you think.</p>\n</blockquote>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1795, "author": "aparente001", "author_id": 32436, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/32436", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think you should start out asking the question that that guy was answering, and compare the answers you get with the answer you've collected so far.</p>\n\n<p>How does this sound?</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I'm getting ready to start college with some kind of science major,\n with the plan of doing grad studies in astronomy.</p>\n \n <p>Q1: What sort of proportion of my undergrad courses should be physics\n and what proportion astronomy? I've heard that the best way to\n prepare for grad studies in astronomy is to get as strong a foundation\n as possible in physics, and that undergrad courses in astronomy might\n not be very helpful, and could actually be counter-productive!</p>\n \n <p>Q2: My hope is to get involved in astronomy research as an\n undergraduate. Is this a realistic goal?</p>\n \n <p>Q3: Would it be counter-productive, in the long term, to get involved in astronomy research as an undergrad?</p>\n</blockquote>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1780", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/35515/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1784, "author": "Stephan Kolassa", "author_id": 4140, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/4140", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p><strong>Clearly separate physical and mental disabilities</strong>, by tagging the 4 questions above <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/physical-disability\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;physical-disability&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">physical-disability</a>, retagging the other 16 <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/disability\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;disability&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">disability</a> questions <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/mental-health\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;mental-health&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">mental-health</a>, black-listing the <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/disability\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;disability&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">disability</a> tag, and adding <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/mental-disability\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;mental-disability&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">mental-disability</a> as a synonym for <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/mental-health\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;mental-health&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">mental-health</a> (so people find it when they type \"disability\" into the tag box).</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1785, "author": "Stephan Kolassa", "author_id": 4140, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/4140", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p><strong>Merge the two concepts</strong>, by retagging the <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/mental-health\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;mental-health&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">mental-health</a> questions to <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/disability\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;disability&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">disability</a> and blacklisting <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/mental-health\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;mental-health&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">mental-health</a>.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1786, "author": "Stephan Kolassa", "author_id": 4140, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/4140", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p><strong>Do nothing</strong>, and let nature take its course.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1787, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/mental-health\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;mental-health&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">mental-health</a> should be merged with <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/health-issues\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;health-issues&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">health-issues</a>.</p>\n\n<p>I'm reposting here a highly-upvoted <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1588/is-the-seemingly-high-prevalence-of-clinical-depression-cases-in-a-se-askers-nor#comment7196_1592\">comment</a> on a related meta question:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I am very much against a mental-health tag, just because I am concerned about contributing to the misconception that mental health issues are somehow not \"real\" medical issues.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>See related discussion there.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1783", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/4140/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1793, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The questions you have listed are indeed not shopping questions. However, they are still not appropriate for the site, because they fall under the \"too specific\" category. If we allow such questions for an arbitrary journal X, then we have to allow similar questions for every journal. We don't want to have the site flooded with such questions, so this would be off-topic.</p>\n\n<p>On the other hand, questions about <strong>how</strong> to determine these statistics in general would be OK, since they are not tied to individual journals.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1794, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In addition to what Aeismail said, if the answers to the first three questions aren’t available on the journal’s website, they are very difficult to obtain (unless you work for the respective journal). Therefore most of such answers are either very easy to answer or very unlikely to ever be answered.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1792", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7619/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1799, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I had the same thought when I saw it closed. The problem with this type of question is that I think its quality depends on how many \"answers\" exist. If there are a large number of potential answers, then it seems like a typical shopping question. It seems like it is only a useful question if here are only a couple of potential answers.</p>\n\n<p>In the case of the specific question, asking it as a how question, might make it a better fit. If someone knows a good on line forum, that would be a good answer. Other answers might focus on talking to your friends and advisors.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1802, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>To answer the more general question, I think some of us do not realise or disagree that we only close questions shopping for certain types of answers:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>\"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. (See this discussion for more information.)</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Nothing in that list even closely resembles the online resources the question in question was asking for.</p>\n\n<p>In order to have more clarity regarding this, I suggest to set up a separate Meta question asking which types of shopping questions we want to close, as determined by what answers a question asks for. Each answer to this Meta question would represent one type of answers and explains why the corresponding questions are not a good for this site. Votes determine whether we accept questions “shopping” for such answers.</p>\n\n<p>This question may then double as a FAQ for users whose question gets closed as it helps them to understand where the problems with their question lie.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1821, "author": "hBy2Py", "author_id": 27271, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/27271", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Perhaps the policy should be that such questions are converted to community wikis by mods whenever they're encountered?</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1798", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1809, "author": "410 gone", "author_id": 96, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/96", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>You're right. It should not have been closed as a shopping question. It should have been closed for being unclear.</p>\n\n<p>No country is specified. It's still unclear, and should remain closed while it is.</p>\n\n<p>By the way, the question has clutter, with a sign-off and signature. When you edit a post (in this case, you retagged it), please remove that clutter at the same time as you make other edits.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1814, "author": "Tom Church", "author_id": 563, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/563", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I find the line of argument in EnergyNumbers' answer (and the accompanying comments by EnergyNumbers, David Richerby, and scaaahu) disappointingly pedantic.</p>\n\n<p>We don't see the same objections when questions or answers refer to NSF grants, even though \"National Science Foundation\" is just as unclear as \"National Merit Scholarship\". This is the <strong>title</strong> of an organization, hence the capital letters; you might find it self-centered of the NSF to not name themselves \"United States of America National Science Foundation\", but they didn't.</p>\n\n<p>Since there is (as David Richerby points out) no other prize with the title \"National Merit Scholar\", it is hard to imagine any future internet user being confused by the question or its answer. I would vote to reopen if I could.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1808", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22013/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1813, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Feasible? Sure. Useful? Doubtful.</p>\n\n<p>Most discussion surrounding post moderation, including large-scale edits, takes place in Meta, which has far more activity than chat. The question/answer/voting interface makes Meta pretty well suited to these needs. Even more so, you're far from the only person who isn't a fan of Stack Exchange chat; I know a few members of our community who never set foot in chat, no matter what. Given history, my perception is that making some minor changes to how chat is used—such as creating dedicated chat rooms as you suggest—would only solve a minor subset of the problems they have with the chat platform. (These people can definitely speak for themselves, though... not trying to put words in their mouth, just sharing a feeling I've seen shared before.)</p>\n\n<p>Long story short, not sure that would be a useful addition to the community.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1817, "author": "enthu", "author_id": 15723, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/15723", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I like the idea of having diverse chatrooms in this website, but the problem is that the community here is not much interested in doing chats. At the time of posting my answer to your meta post on July 01, the last activity on the Academia's chatroom was on about nine days earlier June 22. That is why I think that the Academia's community does not find chatrooms useful indeed because it is not using it very often; so making more chatrooms seems not to be feasible.</p>\n\n<p>Despite the fact that eykanal correctly mentions that most of the discussions take place in Academia's meta; I see no interest in organizing chat events too. </p>\n\n<p>About your first question; at our current chatroom, unfortunately very few discussions happen about closing or reopening posts on our main site. Those are discussions usually made not by the people who vote to close/reopen posts, but by the users who think that their post should not be closed/edited.</p>\n\n<p>So, at our current state opening a new chatroom will not encourage users to join chatrooms just to discuss moderation activities which happen on Academia's main site.</p>\n\n<p>These are the signs that bring me to the point that although your suggestion is perfect, the community seems not to be interested in doing chat in Academia.</p>\n\n<p>However, in order to improve our community here, we can think about how we can attract more people to the chatrooms (for example, by organizing events, which I suggested before but never received enough attention by our community: <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1698/event-proposal-decide-on-unanswered-questions\">Event Proposal: Decide on Unanswered Questions</a>) or think about why people here are not really interested in doing chats compared to other Stack Exchange sites.</p>\n\n<p>After chatrooms had a minimum number of users who think that chatrooms are useful on Academia, and discussions needed more specific moderation attention, then it will be feasible that we make more chatrooms.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1812", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/20058/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1820, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The reason is that one-sentence answers are frowned upon as independent answers on Stack Exchange sites. Therefore people tend to view material that firs into a comment as too short to be a free-standing answer. I don't think there's an easy fix for this, as it's a cultural issue. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1825, "author": "xLeitix", "author_id": 10094, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10094", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>At least for me, it is (for some reason) psychologically easier to just drop into a question a leave a short comment than to write an answer. If I write an actual answer, I usually try to put down at least ~15 minutes of writing time (I try to not write very short answers), and sometimes I just don't have the time. For comments, 5 seconds are enough.</p>\n\n<p>However, I usually just leave a short comment-as-answer when I think that the answer is obvious enough that somebody else will write the same as an answer anyway. Hence, I usually don't think in these cases that I have some sort of magical special knowledge that isn't available to many other members of this community.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3998, "author": "RyanfaeScotland", "author_id": 48007, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/48007", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>\"<em>I'm not happy with that solution, however, <strong>because it ends up throwing away the associated comment-votes</strong></em>\"</p>\n\n<p><strong>Good!</strong> You should be happy, you are doing the question (and Academia) a favour!</p>\n\n<p>Answers as comments are <em>damaging</em> to SE because they circumvent the quality assurance mechanisms put in place by SE. </p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>The community can’t down vote a comment.</li>\n<li>The community can’t edit a comment.</li>\n<li>A comment doesn’t move up and down based on votes (i.e good ones to the top, bad ones to the bottom).</li>\n<li>A comment can’t be marked as the accepted answer.</li>\n<li>A comment doesn’t show a question as having an answer.</li>\n<li>The moderation options for dealing with a comment aren't the same as the moderation options for dealing with a comment (including review queues and the like).</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>All those up-votes you see could just as feasibly be outnumbered by double, <em>triple</em>, <strong>octuple</strong>, <strong><em>even more!</em></strong> down-votes had the answer-as-a-comment been made as it should have been: as an answer.</p>\n\n<p>The users of Academia do seem to do this a lot, even the high rep members, so it is nice of you to prod people into moving them into answers first. If you don’t mind coming back to the question again then by all means leave a ‘grace period’ between prodding and flagging but if you don’t want to then just flag with a custom moderator flag of ‘Answer in comments’ and the mods will normally clear out the comments and leave a reminder message of what comments are for. After having a handful of \"good\" answers-as-comments deleted users generally stop doing so.</p>\n\n<p>You could even add a link to the page for the comment privledge into your proddding comment to help remind users what comments are for: <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/comment\">https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/comment</a></p>\n\n<p>Here are a couple of the key points from that page (some emphasis mine):</p>\n\n<p><strong>When should I comment?</strong></p>\n\n<p>You should submit a comment if you want to:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Request clarification from the author;</li>\n<li>Leave constructive criticism that guides the author in improving the post;</li>\n<li>Add relevant but minor or transient information to a post (e.g. a link to a related question, or an alert to the author that the question has been updated).</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p><strong>When shouldn't I comment?</strong></p>\n\n<p>Comments are not recommended for any of the following:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Answering a question or providing an alternate solution to an existing answer; instead, post an actual answer (or edit to expand an existing one);</strong></li>\n</ul>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1819", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1827, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Regarding</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>\"I am sure they [StackExchange community team] will get to the issue\". I haven't heard from them.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I have just flagged your profile for attention from the community team (my first time using this <a href=\"http://modnewsletter.stackexchange.com/2015/05/june-2015-newsletter/#contactus\" rel=\"nofollow\">new feature</a>!) so hopefully they will reach out to you as a result.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1830, "author": "JNat", "author_id": 32458, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/32458", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I’ve reviewed all the posts involved once again, and it seems that there were actually no updates at all since I had last checked aside from this new meta post. The text quoted above from StrogBad was from <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1778/32458\">an answer</a> posted on June 4th, and I did reply to your messages sent to our team via the contact us page. I replied to two of them, each pertaining to different matters. I sent these replies back to you on June 5th, and you replied back to one of them on the next day and got a reply back to that one two days later (the weekend got in the way). I ended one of the messages with the following paragraph:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I hope to, together with the moderator message exchange and the feedback you got on the Meta post you created, have addressed all of your concerns. But please let me know if there's anything else I can help make clearer.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>That still stands: <strong>if there’s <em>anything</em> I can help make clearer, please let me know.</strong></p>\n\n<p>I’m not sure if the messages got sent to your spam folder, or if something else happened, but they did get sent. If you cannot find them, let me know and I’ll personally make sure to send them out again. That being said, I think most of the issues were indeed addressed either on the message I sent to you, on the previous replies to your earlier meta post, or on the message exchange between you and the moderators. Once again, though, <strong>do let me know if there was anything left unaddressed or unclear</strong>.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1833, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>We as mods have been lucky to have not had to deal with too many sticky situations where we have had to communicate with users via mod messages so we are not experts on the process. I apologize for this short coming and we have created a new <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1831/how-should-a-user-with-a-problem-contact-a-moderator\">FAQ</a> covering how to get in touch with moderators and CMs.</p>\n\n<p>In regards to the issues leading up to and following on from your suspension, we think the issue is being well handled by the SE team and are handing off future issues arising from this incident to them. You are still welcome use AC.SE and we hope you will continue to offer your expertise. If you have new questions and issues unrelated to the above mentioned incident, feel free to post on meta or in chat. For new issues related to or arising from your suspension, please use the <em>contact us</em> link to contact the SE team directly. We are happy to accept any recommendations by the CMs after they have reviewed any new information.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1826", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7229/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1853, "author": "Pops", "author_id": 8375, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8375", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Well... what Questions actually get Asked here Frequently?</p>\n\n<p>I think your heart is in the right place here, but you're probably overthinking things a bit. FAQ entries can be generated on an as-needed basis, just like tags are, and things seem to be running just fine around here at the moment. It doesn't seem to me like actively looking for FAQ entries to write would be a particularly good use of anyone's time right now.</p>\n\n<p>As you may know, a moderator is needed to apply the <a href=\"/questions/tagged/faq\" class=\"post-tag moderator-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;faq&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">faq</a> tag, but there's nothing special about the <a href=\"/questions/tagged/faq-proposed\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;faq-proposed&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">faq-proposed</a> tag; its usage is just a convention. If and when you (or someone else) do produce a proposed new FAQ entry, it would probably be better to just flag for moderator attention than to use a special tag, at least for now.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1901, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>One thing I would like to see answered in the FAQ is the difference between good and bad opinion based questions. I think some questions that seem to be asking about opinions are really asking about academic culture, while others are asking for personal opinions. I think we have covered this in a couple of meta questions already, but having a nice answer would be great</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1834", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/15723/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1836, "author": "MJeffryes", "author_id": 31487, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/31487", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>You can't, other than by deleting or editing the question. If you edit, the text will still be publicly available, but unlikely to rank highly on a search engine. However, in this case you should ensure the text remains viable as a question (ie, you should remove the specific information you don't want found by a search engine, rather than the entire question). Deleting a question <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5221/how-does-deleting-work-what-can-cause-a-post-to-be-deleted-and-what-does-that/5222#5222\">may not be possible</a>, but in these cases you can flag for moderator attention and explain why you would like it to be deleted.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1837, "author": "410 gone", "author_id": 96, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/96", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>When you write a post here, you grant Stack Exchange a permanent and irrevocable licence to use that material. That material should be indexable by a search engine, so don't code it and don't hide it in any way that would hinder that.</p>\n\n<p>If those conditions aren't acceptable to you for some specific material, then don't post that material anywhere on Stack Exchange.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1839, "author": "Mark", "author_id": 26460, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/26460", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Why do you want this? I can only think of a few reasons:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>You're a student and you want to get some kind of help but don't want your professor to know that you asked the internet. I doubt your professor is googling your work to find that out. And either way I doubt it would reflect poorly on you as long as it looks like you're honestly trying to figure something out.</p></li>\n<li><p>You're asking a question about your research and don't want anyone to steal your ideas. Asking about research is a two way street. You can't expect to keep your a research a secret if you're asking for help. And that's the ironic reason why it's not a great idea to work in secret in a vacuum. You usually take so long to figure everything out that you're sure to get scooped, and you'll probably have an error. Whereas if you collaborate you're more likely to finish faster and be correct.</p></li>\n</ol>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1835", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1842, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I don't know about others, but the way in which I have approached this question is to think about which issue is the most salient for any attempt to fix the question.</p>\n\n<p>Close votes put a question on hold, at which point the asker is encouraged to try to repair the question if possible. Thus, if the question has multiple problems with it, I try to select the one that I think will pose the largest problem for attempting to reopen it. </p>\n\n<p>As I see it, then, there are three \"high priority\" reasons where we usually expect the question to not be re-openable via editing:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>\"Not about academia\" has highest priority: it doesn't matter if a question about debugging a Java program has other problems; it still doesn't belong on this site.</li>\n<li>\"Undergraduate only\" is similar (though occasionally it can be fixed)</li>\n<li>\"Duplicate\" also generally can't or shouldn't be fixed by editing (though occasionally clarification will make it clear that it is more distinct than it first appears).</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>The remaining reasons (\"Shopping\", \"too individual\", \"too broad\", \"unclear\", and \"opinion-based\") are all generally fixable if the original poster cares to do so. As I see it, these get superseded by the high priority reasons, but then we should just pick the one we think is most problematic with the particular post, i.e. will best guide the person in editing toward reopening.</p>\n\n<p>If the OP then edits to fix only the one reason without dealing with the other, we can guide them further in the comments.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1845, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It depends.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>If any issue makes the question <strong>clearly unsalvagable</strong>, e.g., if it is blatantly off-topic, select the corresponding close reason. Keep in mind that you may err about unsalvagability. If there is any doubt, better leave a comment.</p></li>\n<li><p>If there is only <strong>one underlying issue</strong> that is captured by two close reasons, select the more helpful close reason. For example, for most shopping questions that are also too broad, making them non-shopping will also automatically make them not too broad anymore. In this case, the shopping-question close reason is probably more helpful to the asker. </p>\n\n<p>Remember that an individual comment explaining what’s wrong may help the asker to salvage the question before it’s closed in the first place and give them more specific information as to what is problematic than a canned close reason can (see also <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1772/7734\">here</a>).</p></li>\n<li><p>If there is <strong>more than one separate problem</strong>, e.g., if the question is unclear but from what can be understood you suspect that it’s also too individual, by all means leave a comment explaining all that is wrong with the question. It is very frustrating for an asker if they put effort into fixing a question and then get told that it has another issue which they may not be able to fix.</p>\n\n<p>Select the most problematic issue to ease the job for future reviewers.</p></li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1846, "author": "xLeitix", "author_id": 10094, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10094", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>My (not at all well-defined) approach is usually to select the close reason that is most evident. I do not have a \"taxonomy\" of close reasons in my head, in which some count more than others. At the end of the day, a close is a close, and any single reason alone is sufficient to close a question.</p>\n\n<p>If multiple close reasons seem equally pronounced (interestingly, there are many questions that are at the same time very localized and very broad, AKA the notorious \"here is my life story, what can I do?\" questions), I typically just select one at random if there are no previous votes on the question. Depending on how much time I have and how realistic I see the question being fixed and re-opened, I <em>may</em> explain the other problem in a comment.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1840", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/15723/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1843, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think it's OK to vote to close a question when you review it in \"First Posts.\" So far as I can tell, it then gets removed from your \"Close Votes\" review queue, which is OK. </p>\n\n<p>The thing that I think is important when voting to close while doing \"First Posts\" review is to welcome the person to the site and make sure to suggest how to improve their post.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1844, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In the rare case, in which you cannot select the appropriate choice during a review because you already made this choice elsewhere, you should skip the review.</p>\n\n<p>Note that this situation should only arise if engage multiple review queues simultaneously, e.g., if you go to the <em>Review</em> page and open all queues in new tabs. Going through the reviews one-by-one should avoid this.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1841", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/15723/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1855, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>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.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1856, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>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.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1854", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/34965/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1861, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I get the sense that a lot of the problem comes from people having never read the \"What can I ask?\" page in the help center. There's nothing we can do to improve our educational material for those people who never think to read it in the first place.</p>\n\n<p>So, how about we try to make it really easy for them to encounter the educational material at the right time. A simple way would be to force new user accounts to get put through <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/tour\">the tour page</a> upon signup.</p>\n\n<p>Better, though, would be to put the review of the rules right at the point of question submission. Maybe before the submission of the first question there could be a \"review your own question\" prompt that puts the key bullet points from the help page up for somebody to click on saying that they think it passes them all? This would require implementation by SE staff, but might help a lot.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1881, "author": "D.W.", "author_id": 705, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/705", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If you can find the original comment made by the high-rep user where this was suggested, post a comment replying to that high-rep user educating them about Academia.SE. At least that one user might know for the future. No, it doesn't scale, but it's basically the best mechanism we have right now. I don't know of any better way.</p>\n\n<p>This problem is not unique to Academia.SE; it pops up on other sites, too, and as far as I know, they don't have any better solution, either.</p>\n\n<p>And as far as the new user, about all we can do is be sympathetic but firm and informative when letting them know about why their question must be closed.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1911, "author": "TRiG", "author_id": 898, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/898", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Programmers SE have <a href=\"https://codereview.stackexchange.com/users/51786/duga\">a bot in their chatroom</a> which scans Stack Overflow for references to Programmers. If they see someone inappropriately recommend Programmers to a user, they step in.</p>\n\n<p>Actually, the same bot works for Code Review SE. Either the remit of the bot could be expanded (address a query to the current owners &amp; operators), or its code could be forked to create a new bot for Academia SE.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1912, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Related to <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1911/7734\">TRiG’s answer</a>, something that we could do very easily is linking the feeds of tags on other sites that are prone to this phenomenon into our chat. In a quick search, I could find:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><em><a href=\"https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/career-development\">career-development</a></em> on Math</li>\n<li><em><a href=\"https://mathoverflow.net/questions/tagged/career\">career</a></em> on MathOverflow</li>\n<li><em><a href=\"https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/career\">career</a></em> on Theoretical Computer Science</li>\n<li><em><a href=\"https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/physics-careers\">physics-careers</a></em> on Physics</li>\n<li><em><a href=\"https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/careers\">careers</a></em> and <em><a href=\"https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/academia\">academia</a></em> on Cross Validated</li>\n<li><em><a href=\"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/university\">university</a></em> on Programmers</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>If you know of other such tags, please let me know.</p>\n\n<p>This may be a good thing for other reasons as well, as we may offer another perspective on such questions or link to relevant questions on Academia.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1860", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1863, "author": "Nobody", "author_id": 546, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/546", "pm_score": 2, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I just looked around for you. I found a question</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://datascience.stackexchange.com/q/997/10960\">Where can I find free spatio-temporal dataset for download?</a> on Data Science SE, </p>\n\n<p>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.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1864, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>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,</p>\n\n<p>Second, you are correct that it does not seem like a good question for us. Looking through the <a href=\"http://stackexchange.com/sites#name\">list of all SE sites</a> 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.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1862", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/37798/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1868, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I think it is a broken-down bicycle. In my interpretation, it was locked up to the bike rack (grey wave) by the bush (green cloud) in working order and then had its front wheel stolen, leaving it non-functional. This is an unfortunately common sight on college campuses. </p>\n\n<p>I think it relates to the 404 because when you come to get your bike and see it like that, it's incredible frustrating, and you know you aren't going anywhere just now.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1872, "author": "Palu Macil", "author_id": 15315, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/15315", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think it's a play on...</p>\n\n<p><strong>404: Route not found</strong></p>\n\n<p>That varies a little, in a technical sense, from the 404 error's resource not found meaning, but the humor certainly seems to come from a bike being the transportation (routing) method of a poor student... and this is roughly the age when you realize your tire needs to be locked up too.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1885, "author": "Suntropical", "author_id": 38595, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/38595", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Its a common 404 theme to supplement the Not Found with a connoted broken link. Wit the front wheel spirited away the bike is of no help in getting to the bus (at the bus stop)</p>\n\n<p>Thus the meaning would be, We are unable to find you the information you requested or to get you to B where you wanted to go. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1867", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/14341/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1868, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I think it is a broken-down bicycle. In my interpretation, it was locked up to the bike rack (grey wave) by the bush (green cloud) in working order and then had its front wheel stolen, leaving it non-functional. This is an unfortunately common sight on college campuses. </p>\n\n<p>I think it relates to the 404 because when you come to get your bike and see it like that, it's incredible frustrating, and you know you aren't going anywhere just now.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1872, "author": "Palu Macil", "author_id": 15315, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/15315", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think it's a play on...</p>\n\n<p><strong>404: Route not found</strong></p>\n\n<p>That varies a little, in a technical sense, from the 404 error's resource not found meaning, but the humor certainly seems to come from a bike being the transportation (routing) method of a poor student... and this is roughly the age when you realize your tire needs to be locked up too.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1885, "author": "Suntropical", "author_id": 38595, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/38595", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Its a common 404 theme to supplement the Not Found with a connoted broken link. Wit the front wheel spirited away the bike is of no help in getting to the bus (at the bus stop)</p>\n\n<p>Thus the meaning would be, We are unable to find you the information you requested or to get you to B where you wanted to go. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1869", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/34766/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1876, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>What we (or actually Stack Exchange employees) could do is to add a <strong>tag alert</strong> for tags that are prone to be country- or field-specific.</p>\n\n<p>Tag alerts are special, tag-specific info messages that pop-up whenever the author adds certain tags to a question they are composing. To such an alert in action, begin <a href=\"https://stackoverflow.com/questions/ask\">asking a question on Stack Overflow</a> and add the SQL tag to it. You can read more about tag alerts on <a href=\"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/274632/2127008\">here</a>. I know that at least <a href=\"https://graphicdesign.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2353/19174\">Graphic Design</a> and <a href=\"https://anime.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1084/14905\">Anime &amp; Manga</a> also have tag alerts.</p>\n\n<p>As for tags to which we could consider applying this, <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/graduate-admissions\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;graduate-admissions&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">graduate-admissions</a> and <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/phd\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;phd&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">phd</a> come to mind. In particular <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/graduate-admissions\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;graduate-admissions&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">graduate-admissions</a> could do with a tag alert anyway, as I have the feeling that we are closing a lot of questions with this tag and a tag alert could help askers to ask appropriate questions or see that their question is not appropriate for our site in the first place.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1880, "author": "David Richerby", "author_id": 10685, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10685", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Reminders don't work. On <a href=\"http://cstheory.stackexchange.com\">CS Theory</a>, they modified the greyed-out text that appears in the subject line when you start a question, so it emphasizes that questions should be research-level questions about theoretical computer science. It made zero difference: they still get just as many questions about undergrad exercises and fixing Windows as they always got.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1873", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/34972/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1878, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I propose the following wording:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Use tags that describe what your question is about, not what it merely relates to. For example almost every question on this site is eventually related to research, but only questions about performing research should be tagged <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/research\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;research&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">research</a>.</p>\n<p>Use tags describing circumstances only if those circumstances are essential to your question. For example, if you have a question about citations that came up during writing a thesis but might as well have arisen during writing a paper, do not tag it with <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/thesis\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;thesis&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">thesis</a>.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p><em><strong>Implemented June 6th, 2017:</strong></em></p>\n<p><a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/FZw4h.png\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/FZw4h.png\" alt=\"screenshot of /questions/ask tag guidance, with the wording above included\" /></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1879, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think we don't need to worry about high-usage tags, if they are for general categories. A post can have multiple tags, so it's OK if one or two are quite broad.</p>\n\n<p>For comparison, consider the following statistics on the top four tags of our site vs. a couple of the other major sites;</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Academia.SE: publications (18%), phd (16%), graduate-admissions (12%), research (9%)</li>\n<li>StackOverflow: javascript (9%), java (9%), c# (8%), php (8%) </li>\n<li>SuperUser.SE: windows-7 (14%), linux (11%), windows (10%), osx (6%)\n275K</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>We're somewhat more concentrated, but not so much that I think it's worth worrying about.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1877", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1883, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Unfortunately \"how\" and \"why\" questions about a particular course are likely to be <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic\">off-topic</a> for the following reasons:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>\"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.</li>\n<li>\"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.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>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.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1884, "author": "Memj", "author_id": 36363, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/36363", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Try to reword a question if it uses \"how\" or \"why\" and keep a few things in mind:</p>\n\n<p>1). Is this only applicable to undergrads? (will be closed)</p>\n\n<p>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)</p>\n\n<p>3).Is it opinion-based? @jakebeal did a good job at explaining this. </p>\n\n<p>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. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1882", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/38447/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1887, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/graduate-admissions\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;graduate-admissions&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">graduate-admissions</a></p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Before asking your question on graduate admissions, please consider the following:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><p>We cannot predict the success of your application and answer questions like: “Can I get into [program] with [prerequisites]?”. <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/38237/7734\">This question</a> may help you though.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>We do not know details of procedures – such as deadlines, required formats and handling times – any better than you. Probably only the admissions office or similar can answer you such questions.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Please state country and field as answers may strongly depend on this.</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n</blockquote>\n<p>This tag has a very high number of closed questions, absolutely and relatively, (146 closed questions with 1222 questions in total) and that despite the tag not being prone to spurious use and that I would guess that a high number of questions fall victim to the roomba deletion bot.</p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/38237/7734\">linked question</a> was <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1560/7734\">explicitly created</a> as a master duplicate for a certain type of question. As of now, it is the duplicate of 49 questions.</p>\n<p>Questions for details on procedures are one of the main reasons for the following close reason (at least in my understanding):</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The answer to this question strongly depends on individual factors such as a certain person’s preferences, a given institution’s regulations, the exact contents of your work or your personal values. Thus only someone familiar can answer this question and it cannot be generalised to apply to others.</p>\n</blockquote>\n" }, { "answer_id": 2012, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<h3>TL;DR</h3>\n\n<p>Equip tags that are frequently used for off-topic questions about the contents of an academic discipline with warnings that inform askers about the nature of this site and where such off-topic questions should be asked instead.</p>\n\n<h3>General</h3>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/some-academic-field\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;some-academic-field&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">some-academic-field</a></p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>If you have a {{field}} question, please do not ask it here – ask it on {{field.se}} and please check {{their guidelines}} before asking.</p>\n \n <p>If your questions is about academic standards, conventions and life specific to the academic field of {{field}}, however, you are at the right place.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>For example:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>If you have a physics question, please do not ask it here – ask it on <a href=\"https://physics.stackexchange.com/\">Physics SE</a> instead and please check <a href=\"https://physics.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic\">their guidelines</a> before asking.</p>\n \n <p>If your questions is about academic standards, conventions and life specific to the academic field of physics, however, you are at the right place.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>We get a lot of blatantly off-topic questions that are about the teachings or contents of an academic field instead of academia. Many of these questions are tagged with the respective field’s tag. A tag warning could prevent some of those questions from being asked in the first place and direct the asker to the right place (and make them read the guidelines before asking).</p>\n\n<h3>Specific</h3>\n\n<p>The above scheme can be straightforwardly applied to the following tags:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/biology\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;biology&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">biology</a>,</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/chemistry\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;chemistry&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">chemistry</a>,</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/computer-science\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;computer-science&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">computer-science</a>,</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/economics\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;economics&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">economics</a>,</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/engineering\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;engineering&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">engineering</a>,</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/electrical-engineering\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;electrical-engineering&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">electrical-engineering</a>,</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/law\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;law&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">law</a>,</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/linguistics\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;linguistics&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">linguistics</a>,</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/mathematics\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;mathematics&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">mathematics</a>,</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/medicine\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;medicine&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">medicine</a> (<a href=\"https://health.stackexchange.com/\">Health SE</a>),</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/philosophy\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;philosophy&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">philosophy</a>,</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/physics\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;physics&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">physics</a>,</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/political-science\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;political-science&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">political-science</a> (<a href=\"https://politics.stackexchange.com/\">Politics SE</a>),</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/psychology\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;psychology&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">psychology</a> (<a href=\"https://cogsci.stackexchange.com/\">Cognitive Sciences SE</a>),</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/statistics\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;statistics&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">statistics</a> (<a href=\"https://stats.stackexchange.com/\">Cross Validated</a>),</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Note that I explicitly do not link to <a href=\"https://mathoverflow.net/\">Math Overflow</a> and <a href=\"https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/\">Theoretical Computer Science</a>, as they are limited to research-level questions and very unlikely to help somebody. Also, I refrained from referencing more specific sites such as <a href=\"https://matheducators.stackexchange.com/\">Math Educators</a> or <a href=\"https://matheducators.stackexchange.com/\">Computational Science</a> as well as other sites such as <a href=\"https://stackoverflow.com/\">Stack Overflow</a> that are the right place for some questions misposted under one of the about tags as they are mentioned on the on-topic helps of the sites directly corresponding to the tags, which give a much better guidance than what we can fit into a tag warning.</p>\n\n<p>The following tags require slight changes:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/social-science\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;social-science&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">social-science</a></p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>This tag is for questions about the academic standards, conventions and life specific to the social sciences.</p>\n \n <p>Note that questions on the contents or teachings of a social science are off-topic here (unless academia is targeted as a research subject).\n They <strong>may</strong> be on-topic on\n <a href=\"https://economics.stackexchange.com/\">Economics SE</a>, \n <a href=\"https://politics.stackexchange.com/\">Politics SE</a>, \n <a href=\"https://history.stackexchange.com/\">History SE</a>, \n <a href=\"https://hsm.stackexchange.com/\">History of Science and Mathematics SE</a>, \n <a href=\"https://law.stackexchange.com/\">Law SE</a> or\n <a href=\"https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/\">Linguistics SE</a>.\n Please check their guidelines before asking.</p>\n</blockquote></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/science\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;science&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">science</a></p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>If you have a science question, please do not ask it here – ask it on the <a href=\"http://stackexchange.com/sites#science\">respective field’s site</a> and please check their guidelines before asking.</p>\n \n <p>If your questions is about academic standards, conventions and life specific to the sciences, however, you are at the right place.</p>\n</blockquote></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/programming\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;programming&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">programming</a> </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>If you have a programming question, please do not ask it here – ask it on <a href=\"https://stackoverflow.com/\">Stack Overflow</a> or one of the other programming-specific Stack Exchange sites. Please see <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/129598/255554\">this Meta post</a> to find the appropriate site.</p>\n \n <p>If your question is on the interplay between programming and academic research, teaching or learning, however, you are at the right place.</p>\n</blockquote></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/code\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;code&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">code</a></p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>This tag is for questions on the licensing, ownership, sharing, distribution, and formatting of source code in an academic context.</p>\n \n <p>Programming questions are off-topic here. They may be on-topic on <a href=\"https://stackoverflow.com/\">Stack Overflow</a> or one of the other programming-specific Stack Exchange sites. Please see <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/129598/255554\">this Meta post</a> to find the appropriate site.</p>\n</blockquote></li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4900, "author": "Anonymous Physicist", "author_id": 13240, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/13240", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>For &quot;copyright&quot; and &quot;plagiarism,&quot; could we please have a message like:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Questions which are primarily about copyright law may be more suited to <a href=\"https://law.stackexchange.com/\">https://law.stackexchange.com/</a>. Questions about academic integrity customs and plagiarism ethics in academic settings are appropriate for this site.</p>\n</blockquote>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1886", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1889, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I strongly agree with your conclusion, though hadn't been able to phrase it so well. Undergraduate breadth requirements have very little to do with graduate school. In addition, the strength and particulars of their enforcement is also very institution-dependent, which <em>also</em> makes it a poor question for this site.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1892, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In my country, there is no comparable distinction between undergraduate and graduate, and thus I rarely, if ever, select this close reason (and rather skip reviewing questions that are deeply rooted in this system). </p>\n\n<p>Nontheless, I agree with you seeing this as boat programming. With the same argument, we could allow all sorts of question on school education, as it may be relevant for university admissions – at least in my country, where said distinction between undergraduate and graduate does not exist.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Moreover, despite me not caring about the undergraduate close reason, I voted to close this question with the following close reason (which did not make it into the close notice):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The answer to this question strongly depends on individual factors such as a certain person’s preferences, a given institution’s regulations, the exact contents of your work or your personal values. Thus only someone familiar can answer this question and it cannot be generalised to apply to others.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>More specifically: This question depends on your institution’s regulations on graduations or how the exception handlers will decide. Thus you have to look into your regulations or ask whoever takes care of this at your institution.</p>\n\n<p>Note that this does not only apply to the first question (Is it reasonable to ask?) but also the second (What should I say?), as the arguments also depend on the regulations, preferences of the decider and other individualities.</p>\n\n<p>I consider the existing answers to confirm this judgement and reflect exactly the problem why this close reason exists, namely that answers can only guess or say “it depends”. Sure, there is content going beyond this in the answers:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><em>You request will fail and instead you should …</em></li>\n<li><em>What you want is unethical/bad for you, because …</em></li>\n<li><em>The answer is probably no, but trying does not hurt.</em></li>\n<li><em>If I were to decide, I would say no because …</em></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>In neither case do the additions really answer the question.</p>\n\n<p>Except for the cynical remark that the course the asker wants to avoid would have taught him to answer this question themselves, only few answers address the second question at all and only very generally. This information may actually be worth keeping but rather to some much more generalised form of the question (e.g., “What are general strategies to argue for an exemption from some examination regulation?”), which may may indeed be a good fit for our site.</p>\n\n<p>So, we are left with a lot of answers that do not really compete except for the yes/no part and mostly answer different questions that weren’t actually asked. This alone strongly suggests a bad, closeworthy question.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1888", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/14885/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1891, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I reviewed the question based on it being flagged for moderator attention.</p>\n\n<p>The main reason citing it being closed was that it was \"undergraduate focused.\" However, the fundamental question relates to requesting the exemption in the context of applying to graduate schools, which makes it relevant for this board. (Again, I will also note that I have said on multiple occasions that the undergraduate flag is overused.)</p>\n\n<p>In that spirit, I viewed that the original basis for closing the question was no longer valid, and cast a reopen vote. I do not feel that this is an \"abuse\" of moderator power, as it came out of a direct request for intervention, not as a \"drive by\" reopening.\n.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1893, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Can someone explain why aesimail's actions on this question are good for this community-driven site?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I think the simple answer is, because aeismail does an excellent job of moderating the site. Based on the responses, he probably jumped the gun a little on his reopen vote. Note that he wasn't obviously wrong in his actions since the question has still not be reclosed. In fact, had I seen the edit and not had a mod vote, I would not have hesitated on voting to reopen. Overall, I like how aeismail moderates, and it seems a little harsh to ask him to justify himself for such a minor issue.</p>\n\n<p>As a mod, I think there is a difference between mod hammering a question to close it versus to reopen it. Further, we tend to have a high bar for reopening questions and a few users are very against under graduate questions. The cost of reopening it, means a few people need to vote to close it again, the benefit is a new user.</p>\n\n<p>Finally, I think this is where comments about closing can help. Had we been clearer about what needed to be fixed, I would have been less ikely to vote to open, and hopefully we would have gotten a better answer.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1890", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11192/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1897, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>Looking at the <a href=\"http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/65426?phase=definition\">proposal questions for OpenScience</a>, virtually all of those would be on-topic here, as they all relate to academic-level research—specifically, open-access academic research, but still academic research. Heck, some of those questions have <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17740/open-source-the-project-code-before-or-after-publication\">already</a> <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2158/how-to-identify-predatory-publishers-journals\">been</a> <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/search?q=open+access\">asked</a>.</p>\n\n<p>So, with that background, I suggest that people looking to ask those types of questions just post here. If it turns out that there's a subset of questions that I'm missing that are distinctly <em>not</em> related to academia, we could bring that subset up in Meta for inclusion in our <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic\">on-topic</a> list at that time.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1898, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Looking at the questions posted on the private beta site, it looks to me like the vast majority of the questions there would fit quite well on Academia.SE. Perhaps they could even simply be migrated over here?</p>\n\n<p>Examples of questions that would fit well:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>What should I do if I cannot afford a journal Article Processing Charge?</li>\n<li>How to protect scientific open research from being patented?</li>\n<li>How to deal with sensitive individual data in open science?</li>\n<li>How do I get a DOI for a dataset?</li>\n<li>Percentage of the world population with subscription journal access?</li>\n<li>What is the difference between “Green” and “Gold” Open Access?</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Others look like they'd currently be closed here for being too broad, too dependent on particular regulations, or too opinion-based, but could probably be adjusted to be answerable within the rules and customs of this site. Examples include:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>How much does it cost to publish an academic article?</li>\n<li>What criteria does a research project need to match to be called open science?</li>\n<li>How can one share data for open science?</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Only a few appear to be too far off-topic for this site, primarily because they concern technical details, such as:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Using knitr to produce multiple output documents</li>\n<li>Publishing location based data in Easting and Northing, Longitude and latitude, or Addresses?</li>\n<li>Is there a specification for versioning a dataset?</li>\n</ul>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1896", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/18124/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1917, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think the general SE policy is against trivial \"thanks\" and \"me, too!\"-type comments. If you want to add information about why you like the answer, or explain what's relevant in your own case, you're adding information to the system, which is a different matter.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1918, "author": "Memj", "author_id": 36363, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/36363", "pm_score": 3, "selected": true, "text": "<p>From what I understand the SE community (at least academia) is not supposed to be like everyday speech when phrasing your question, answer, or comment. </p>\n\n<p>Every question on this SE is not just a resource for the OP but also for anyone with a similar question (hence why no duplicate questions are allowed) a person with the same issue can refer to the original question to see the context and refer to answers to possibly find a solution to their own problem. A comment such as \"Thanks\" may be polite but it has no value to the question or the answee for someone looking back at the question. </p>\n\n<p>Instead of saying \"thanks\" I phrase my comments as \"+1 for ...\" to show appreciation for the answer or a unique part of the answer that other members may not have addressed. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1924, "author": "D.W.", "author_id": 705, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/705", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>This site is a resource not only for you but for others. Part of what makes the site so useful is that the signal-to-noise ratio is high: there's a lot of useful information, and it's not cluttered up with other stuff.</p>\n\n<p>So, the etiquette on Stack Exchange sites tends to be: Don't write \"Thanks\". Don't write \"+1\". Not even \"+1 for the second sentence.\" Instead, thank the answerer by upvoting their answer, and accepting the best answer that most helped you. That's the most effective way you can thank them and help others.</p>\n\n<p>It might seem polite to write \"Thanks\" for \"I really liked your second sentence\", but when you take into account that your remarks will be read by many other people other than the answerer and you are effectively wasting their time by cluttering up the page, arguably refraining from posting such comments is actually the more polite thing to do.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1916", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/24694/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1928, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I would only ask a new question, if it is new. If you ask a duplicate question, it will get closed. The original question is not great, but it is not awful either. I would try a bounty, if the question addresses the issue you are after.</p>\n\n<p>I do not think my answer is great, but what type of answer are you looking for?</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1929, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I think the real question is this: why aren't you satisfied with the answers to the original question?</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>If you think that the original question would receive good answers if people paid more attention to it, then set a bounty.</li>\n<li>If you think that the original question didn't receive the answers you're looking for because it wasn't focused on the particular aspect of the problem you want, then ask a new question. In the new question, link to the existing question and say why it doesn't answer your question already.</li>\n</ul>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1926", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/32436/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1932, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<blockquote>\n <p>And for the last 2-3: could you write them (I don't have access to them) and present some rationale?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I think it's useful for the the community to see what kinds of comments get flagged, and why. So here goes (these are listed most recent first):</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Comment: \"@DeboraWeber-Wulff It would be cool to carry a scythe.\"</p>\n\n<p>Post: <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/54147/presentation-time-is-out-in-a-scientific-conference/54150#54150\">Presentation time is out in a scientific conference</a></p>\n\n<p>Flagged as: too chatty</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Comment: \"[Best wishes for the overzealous comment deleter.]\"</p>\n\n<p>Post: <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/44902/phd-application-denial-is-it-usual-to-ask-reasons-recommendations\">PhD application denial - Is it usual to ask reasons/recommendations?</a></p>\n\n<p>Flagged as: not constructive</p>\n\n<p>I handled this flag, so I can comment further on the rationale. This post is not an appropriate place for a complaint about comment deletion. It's entirely possible that the \"comment deleter\" would never even see it, since it's not directed @ anyone. Instead, every future visitor to this post would have to read it... for what purpose? It does not improve the post in any way. If you want to start a constructive conversation about comment deletion, meta is the place to do it.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Comment: \"You don't mention a country/system in which you applied. If you applied to a particular professor, you can get some informal feedback; if to a university/department - it's unlikely to get any feedback (see answer).\"</p>\n\n<p>Post: <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/44902/phd-application-denial-is-it-usual-to-ask-reasons-recommendations\">PhD application denial - Is it usual to ask reasons/recommendations?</a></p>\n\n<p>Flagged as: It wasn't flagged. It was deleted after the user added the requested information to the post, presumably making the first part of your comment obsolete.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Comment: \"@xLeitix I turned it into an answer, thanks.\"</p>\n\n<p>Post: <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/41337/is-there-a-lack-of-oversight-of-how-professors-interact-with-students/41338#41338\">Is there a lack of oversight of how professors interact with students?</a></p>\n\n<p>Flagged as: obsolete. </p>\n\n<p>I handled this flag, too, so I can comment on the rationale. This comment is meant to notify a user of something but has no additional purpose beyond this notification. Generally when handling this kind of flag, , I check to see if the user it's directed @ has been on the site since the comment was posted. If so, I will delete it. Otherwise, I wait a little longer.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Please, if you have to remove my comment, DO inform me.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Since the purpose of removing comments is to remove \"noise,\" it would be counterproductive for moderators to inform you by adding a comment. Also, there is no way in the moderator interface (when dealing with comment flags) to add a comment, so it would involve extra work to go to the post and add a comment.</p>\n\n<p>I think a better way would be for the website to notify you automatically when a comment of yours is removed. If you want, you can suggest this as a feature request on Meta Stack Exchange (if it hasn't been suggested already).</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1946, "author": "Nate Eldredge", "author_id": 1010, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/1010", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>There's a general principle on Stack Exchange sites that comments should be considered ephemeral and will be removed without warning or notification when the community feels they are not helpful or no longer needed. This is global across the whole Stack Exchange network and the SE staff have shown no signs of considering changing this. So if you want to participate in SE sites at all, I think you have to live with \"your things disappearing at random\".</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1931", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/49/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1934, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If I had to guess, I would speculate that it was locked in an attempt to protect it from getting highly polemic answers that don't <em>directly</em> address the question. (This tends to happen in the <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/gender\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;gender&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">gender</a> tag.)</p>\n\n<p>I don't think locking the question is the correct response, as this also prevents it from getting good answers.</p>\n\n<p>Personally, I think the appropriate response to those answers is to downvote and leave a comment if you disagree with it or believe it doesn't answer the question. I don't like deleting the answers that contain unpopular or slightly tangential content, because:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Leaving a strongly-downvoted answer in place is a useful signal to readers showing what the community apparently thinks is a wrong or bad approach to the question. Leaving the comments in place (as long as they don't get personal) shows the community's counter-arguments to the answer.</li>\n<li>If the answer is deleted, other users with the same approach see the question, don't see their viewpoint represented in the answers, and post a new answer expressing this view. Deleting the answer leads to <em>more</em> of them being posted. </li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1935, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Sorry for making a (small) mess! My concerns is that the question is very old; it's actually from when the site was still in very early beta. We've since defined policies around questions, and if that was asked today, would be closed almost immediately as one of \"too vague/unanswerable in current form/too discussion-like in nature\". There isn't even a direct question present, it's a \"what can we do about X\" question, thinly hiding behind \"what is being done\".</p>\n\n<p>The lock was because it has good content. I didn't want to delete, but I didn't want it to continue to garner new responses, particularly likely it seemed (to me) that it would just generate lots of discussion (as it has; there are many deleted tangential comments).</p>\n\n<p>The \"for the reasons above\" was intended to point to the three existing comments directly preceding mine. I guess that wasn't clear; my fault.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1933", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/118/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 1937, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>While this seems like a nice idea, I think this is something that needs to be addressed across the full Stack Exchange network. I could see that multiple sites (particularly some of the hard science sites) being interested, and thus it would be useful to have the central Stack Exchange employees make the decision if it can be made available across the network to sites that want it.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1938, "author": "Wolfgang Bangerth", "author_id": 31149, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/31149", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>What would be the purpose? I suppose it is rare that a StackExchange thread (and even rarer that an Academia StackExchange thread) reaches the level of a significant academic production that one would like to cite it. No desire to cite a thread would equate to no need for a DOI.</p>\n\n<p>In any case, it would be useful to have empirical evidence that having a DOI would be useful.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1939, "author": "Anonymous Mathematician", "author_id": 612, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/612", "pm_score": 5, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n <p>In short we’d love to make these great Q&amp;As citable in the scholarly literature and count on users CVs for credit in the workplace/academia.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Assigning DOIs does absolutely nothing of the sort. Questions and answers here can already be cited with no need for DOIs. (Many documents people cite don't have DOIs, and that doesn't stop anyone.) And the idea that this will make them count for credit on CVs is ridiculous. I can't imagine any university department saying \"We didn't think participating in Q&amp;A online should count for anything, but now that your contributions have been assigned DOIs by The Winnower, that make them Genuine Scholarly Contributions™ worthy of respect and credit.\"</p>\n\n<p>Under the Creative Commons license used on this site, nobody can stop The Winnower from archiving whatever they'd like, as long as they comply with the license terms. However, I do not believe the site should officially endorse these activities:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>It comes uncomfortably close to endorsing The Winnower overall. So far, I see nothing to indicate that it's a service I'd like to endorse.</p></li>\n<li><p>It feeds into the DOI fetish, which I think is something we should strongly oppose. (There's nothing wrong with DOIs, and they are a useful organizational tool, but they should not be presented as a symbol of scholarly legitimacy, and the question here already does that)</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>The other aspect of this is archiving via Portico. That's not bad, but I don't think it's necessary for this site. (If The Winnower decides to do it anyway, I can't stop them and wouldn't want to, but I don't think it's worth an endorsement.)</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 1940, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>How does one even archive a dynamic site like SE? If I write an answer/question and it gets deleted, do you issue a retraction? Do you issuse a new DOI/ update the archive everytime an edit is made?</p>\n\n<p>Maybe it is naive, but to the extent I value my contributions here, I trust how SE is archiving the data. If they go bankrupt I think they will provide the data for a bit. I find URLs, almost as easy as DOIs and again trust SE not to break links too badly.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1936", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/41111/" ]