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[ { "answer_id": 3704, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<h3>Your examples</h3>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>For example <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/86672/should-i-prefer-phd-programs-with-higher-quality-students\">Should I prefer PhD programs with &quot;higher quality&quot; students?</a>\n Is a shopping question on what phd program to select. +4 up votes.</p>\n \n <p>Right below it <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/86669/phd-is-75-done-in-russia-any-options-in-europe-uk-citizen\">https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/86669/phd-is-75-done-in-russia-any-options-in-europe-uk-citizen</a> \n Another shopping question on what phd program to select. -4 down votes.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>There is a crucial difference between those questions. The first one is asking whether a certain aspect is a relevant criterion to select a program; the second one is asking for a <em>specific individual program.</em> Or with other words: The first question is asking <em>how</em> to shop; the second question is asking <em>what</em> to shop. The latter what we call a shopping question. I tried to make <a href=\"//academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3657/7734\">a FAQ on this</a>, explaining what makes a shopping question and why they are bad, but it did not receive much attention yet.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>There are social etiquette questions about how to answer emails that have almost nothing to do with academia being highly prioritized.\n <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/86352/how-to-deal-with-an-inappropriate-greeting-in-an-email\">How to deal with an inappropriate greeting in an email?</a></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I disagree that this has nothing to do with academia. Sure, such a situation could occur elsewhere, but then you would evaluate it differently (academia’s e-mail etiquette differs from business e-mail etiquette) and the ways to react to it are different: If a representative of a company was rude to me, I can report this to their superior; in a student–teacher relationship, this is not possible.</p>\n\n<p>Note that this question got an insane amount of attention and hence votes due to being a <a href=\"//meta.stackexchange.com/tags/hot-questions/info\">hot network question</a>.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>And another question about how to respond to emails dealing with research paper submissions being down voted and ignored. \n <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/86742/what-to-do-when-you-have-not-received-a-response-three-weeks-after-submitting-mi\">What to do when you have not received a response three weeks after submitting minor revisions?</a></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This question is hardly comparable to the previous one, because it is about an entirely different situation. The problem with this kind of question is that we have dozens of it and there is little to answer for us. In fact, this lead me <a href=\"//academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3707/7734\">to propose to make a canonical question on this</a>.</p>\n\n<h3>Your general question</h3>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>If the purpose is to form a consistently high standard, how are you ensuring that you're meeting that goal? Because that goal appears to be different depending on who's viewing your question.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>That is indeed the goal. We are ensuring to meet that goal by requiring five close votes on a question, allowing users¹ to vote on posts, and allowing users¹ to participate in improving questions. Also there are mechanisms to reöpen questions.</p>\n\n<p>Of course, this system is not perfect, but it is a viable compromise between fairness, a working community, and effort.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>How are you measuring whether your judges are doing their job?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>If anybody¹ has the feeling that our closing behaviour needs changing or a specific question was wrongly closed or left open, they can take it to Meta. Of course only a portion of users care enough about their issues to actually do this, but even regarding this, there are very little complaints, e.g., if you compare to other Stack Exchange sites.</p>\n\n<p>In addition, review decisions are public and 10 k users have access to statistics on closure and similar that allows to find problematic patterns.</p>\n\n<p>Apart from this, the community seems to work insofar that it still thrives and we are not drowning in complaints. You may see this as a self-fulfilling prophecy, but if this community weren’t working, we would become subject to natural selection. Nobody forces you to participate if you do not like this.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>^{¹ who passed a small reputation threshold, which exists to avoid the system being gamed and to ward off spam and similar}</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3705, "author": "cba1067950", "author_id": 70350, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/70350", "pm_score": -1, "selected": true, "text": "<p>There appears to be no meta data on the quality control checks. </p>\n\n<p>And all responses appear to be reinforcing the idea that there is nothing checking against self centered expressions of ego in an isolated community. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3708, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n <p>How to check internal measurements of standards. </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>During our beta period there were a few <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/site-evaluation\">site-evaluations</a> when users were asked to rate how we were doing. There is also the <a href=\"https://data.stackexchange.com/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">data explorer</a> that lets users dig into the AC.SE database to see how things are doing. Finally, diamond moderators and SE staff have access to site analytics that go way beyond votes and page visits. For example, one metric allows us to see where anonymous users are coming from and how they are voting (these votes do not show up in the vote total).</p>\n\n<p>In other words the health of the site is measured on a bunch of metrics at all levels of the game (users, moderators, and staff).</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3703", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/70350/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3710, "author": "Mick", "author_id": 23580, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/23580", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think that a canonical Q&amp;A should refer to the field. </p>\n\n<p>From what I have seen the amount of time the review process takes can vary widely between fields. Astronomy and Astrophysics papers (from personal experience as well as speaking with others) can make the transition from submission to acceptance (without revision) within a few weeks, but quite commonly from submission through the review process, submitting revisions and then acceptance for publication usually within only a few months. But this is the exception as other fields can take months upon months. I have colleagues who work in marine sciences - underwater acoustics, current modelling, hydrodynamics, etc. - and in biological sciences who are quite happy if they get a paper to publication in under a year. </p>\n\n<p>Of course, long review process times are a separate issue to lack of response from editors.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3823, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 2, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I created a question as proposed:<br>\n<a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/88355/7734\">Is my paper under review for too long and if yes, how should I react?</a></p>\n\n<p>(I just forgot to post it here.)</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3707", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3723, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 3, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I agree that <strong>this question is not a shopping question</strong> as no reasonable person would choose conferences by that criterion and hence the close reason was badly chosen. Note that I consider it irrelevant that the criterion for answers is objective; “What is the most visited conference for theoretical underwater basket weaving?” still is a shopping question. (The phrasing of the respective close reason <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1741/7734\">was chosen with exactly this in mind</a>.)</p>\n\n<p>However, the wrong choice of close reason is about the only problematic thing about this. In particular:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p><strong>I do not see that we need to redefine <em>shopping.</em></strong> Just that a close reason was misused in one case, does not mean we need to redefine it.</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>We need no new canned close reason.</strong> Bearing exceptional cases, sites can only have three canned close reasons. These should be used for the most common cases and mainly exist to prevent close voters from having to type/paste/script-insert a custom close reason every time they are closing such a question. Questions that ask for lists and that are not shopping questions are very rare.</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>The question should not be reöpened.</strong> As you already noted, the problem is that every answer matching the criteria is equally valid. While this can be solved by having a single community-wiki answer, this does not solve the problem that this platform is not suited to provide the required maintenance.</p></li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3724, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think is a broad sense, the question is a shopping question. In my mind shopping questions come in two flavors:</p>\n\n<p>The first asks for help choosing between a list of potential \"products\". In general, for these type of questions, the criteria for defining \"better\" are undefined or personal. In the presence of an objective set of criteria, these questions might be a good fit. For example, a question with a back story involving a desire to be taught by Fields Medal winners could then aspect the objective question \"Is MIT or Cal Tech better in terms of number of classes taught by Fields Medal winners\". This would be an okay question in my mind with a small number of potential answers (someone might answer the total number of classes, another might be number of professors, one might include cross listed classes, etc). It also highlights the fact that shopping questions are not necessarily because the asker is lazy, sometimes the relevant information is hard to find.</p>\n\n<p>The second asks for products that meet a given list of criteria. These tend to lead to lots of answers with a single \"product\" or a community wiki answer with the complete list. An example of such a question would be \"Which universities have classes taught by Fields Medal winners\". While not asking for an opinion about which is better, these still feel like shopping questions since compiling the options is part of shopping. Your question falls within this category</p>\n\n<p>The <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/46914/list-of-2013-us-national-merit-scholars\">question you link</a> as a counter example is slightly different in that it is not asking for individual \"products\", but rather if someone has already gone through the effort of compiling a list of \"products\".</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3722", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8101/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3727, "author": "Mad Jack", "author_id": 11192, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11192", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I edited the question to its more \"generic,\" current form. Full disclosure: I am an engineer, not a mathematician.</p>\n\n<p>My main motivation to edit the question was that the answers in place prior to my edit seemed to apply perfectly well to me, too, and the question in its original form only mentioned mathematics as a bit of extraneous information; all of the other details in the original question seemed to apply to a wide range of academics, not just mathematicians.</p>\n\n<p>If my edits are way out of line, feel free to rollback the question to its previous version. Then we can have a meta discussion about why we need a version of this question for every discipline :-/</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3732, "author": "Tommi", "author_id": 13017, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/13017", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If the answers to the edited question turn out to miss something fundamental to mathematics, then I guess you could ask a new question specifically about mathematics.</p>\n\n<p>If you do so, you should</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>link to the original question</li>\n<li>explain why the answers to the more general question are not satisfactory; in other words, what is the peculiarity within mathematics that makes a separate question worth it.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Alternatively, if the answers simply miss something important that is present more widely, than adding a bounty is one way of emphasising the missing thing.</p>\n\n<p>Editing the scope of a question with plenty of answers is probably not ideal.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3726", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/52718/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3738, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>We definitely should be nice to new users. This includes welcoming them and explaining what can be improved about their questions and answers. As for not down voting them, large negative scores, especially in the absence of close votes, have little positive influence and a pretty big negative influence.</p>\n\n<p>That said, it is worth noting that questions with a <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/117119/how-many-downvotes-to-push-an-active-question-off-the-active-list\">score of -4 or worse</a> are hidden from the active page. Assuming a question has a close vote, giving it a score of -4 will get it off the active page. This has the advantage of decreasing the visibility until higher rep users handle it through the close review queue.</p>\n\n<p>Additionally, <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5221/how-does-deleting-work-what-can-cause-a-post-to-be-deleted-and-what-does-that\">closed questions with non-postive scores</a> are automatically deleted by the community bot.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3741, "author": "nikki", "author_id": 73492, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/73492", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I am a newcomer and that post was mine. When I find the website for the first time. It made the best first impression on me. I thought that was a great way to ask questions in a friendly manner. I did not want to hurt anyone or waste your time. I am just a newcomer. on that post, I mentioned that I am not a native speaker, instead of giving me a piece of advice you just told me you need to work on your writing before going and studying there. I was in the middle of very important talk with my professor, instead of guiding you just teased me. I know that I made mistakes. I am going to leave this website. I want the admin to remove my account. Thank you for stopping me. I WON'T be active here anymore.\nBest wishes!</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3737", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/32436/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3746, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Thanks for posting this question. This is a constant struggle on these sites.</p>\n\n<p>On the one hand, people in a community setting want to enjoy themselves. That involves conversation, jokes, sarcasm, poking fun, off-topic comments, the like. Those things are very important for a strong community; no one wants to participate where it's just a bunch of dead fish in a room.</p>\n\n<p>On the other hand, the goal of the site is to be informative, helpful, and easy-to-use. This <em>necessarily</em> means that much the off-topic stuff should be removed, because someone visiting the site from the outside (1) may not get the jokes and (2) has to wade through inane stuff to get to the useful stuff.</p>\n\n<p>Most of the time, this isn't a big issue. Conversations take place in comments, and after they're done—or after two days, whichever comes first—we move them to chat. People make jokes, we laugh, and then make sure it doesn't affect the answer itself, editing if necessary.</p>\n\n<p>This is one of those unusual cases where (1) the joke was integral to the answer, (2) the joke was potentially confusing to new visitors, and (3) the question was on the Hot Network Questions list. With all that in mind I took the rather drastic step of heavy-handed editing and then sat back and waited for someone to ask about it. I appreciate your doing it politely :) I would love to hear people's thoughts as to whether I did the right thing or not.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3747, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I personally feel that our community has expressed little patience with sarcastic questions/answers. This means removing that part of the answer, especially on a HNQ post, in a timely manner is important. I also believe that the answer probably should be deleted as NAA. As mods, there is a big difference between editing an answer where everyone can see what we have done and anyone can roll it back and deleting an answer. As the answer has 21 up votes and only 1 down vote, I would want to see a well discussed justification before deleting the answer.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3745", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/74774/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3753, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I do not consider this answer acceptable because it violates <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/be-nice\">be nice</a>, in particular:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><blockquote>\n <p>Be welcoming, be patient, and assume good intentions.</p>\n</blockquote></li>\n<li><blockquote>\n <p>Don't be a jerk. These are just a few examples. If you see them, flag them: […] Harassment and bullying. If you see a hostile interaction, flag it.</p>\n</blockquote></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Threatening or scaring users, in particular with consequences outside of this site, clearly violates this. This answer should be deleted as soon as possible.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Is allowing it, in effect, discouraging questions?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Sure, but there are far better reasons to delete this post.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3754, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The threats were inappropriate and definitely a violation of our be nice policy. I have deleted the answer. If a 10k+ user thinks they can salvage the answer, please edit and flag for attention so it can be undeleted.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3752", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/12461/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3757, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I like to think of the <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/privileges\">privileges</a> granted by reputation falling into two categories: participation and moderation. The system provides a 100 rep association bonus to users of other sites. This seems to allow existing SE users to fully <em>participate</em> in a new site immediately, but only provides limited <em>moderation</em> privileges (a new user can flag things). As sites should ideally be able to handle the moderation load with existing high rep users, it doesn't seem like there is a need to provide other privileges. Is there one that is obviously missing?</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3758, "author": "Laurel", "author_id": 56207, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/56207", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>There's already a mechanism that gives privileges to \"high\" rep users of other sites. It's called the <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/whats-reputation\">association bonus</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>If you are an experienced Stack Exchange network user with 200 or more reputation on at least one site, you will receive a starting +100 reputation bonus to get you past basic new user restrictions. This will happen automatically on all current Stack Exchange sites where you have an account, and on any other Stack Exchange sites at the time you log in.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This bonus unlocks nearly half of all the privileges (notably upvoting, commenting, and flagging).</p>\n\n<p>I think it unlocks only so much for a reason. Close voting in particular makes sense as a privilege. If a question needs closure, a user with 101 reputation can flag it, pushing the question into the queue where other users can decide if it should be closed. If the question shouldn't be closed, the flag gets declined, and enough of that gets you flag banned. </p>\n\n<p>Consider this: I got the ability to close vote on one site through nothing but a single answer (because the site is in beta and the question I answered was in the HNQ). As a new user, I'm unfamiliar with the meta discussions where the site decided what's on and off topic. There's nothing to stop me from voting to close the wrong questions, with little to no feedback that I'm doing it wrong. My experience on other sites doesn't change any of this. That's why I don't vote to close on that site at all.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Also, <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/238420/323179\">people have discussed</a> making it so that the bonus doesn't count towards upvoting, although nothing has been decided or done yet.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3756", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/41302/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3767, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p><strong>Close Reason:</strong></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><strong>Description of Questions:</strong></p>\n\n<p>Stealing from the <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1093/time-to-expressly-ban-i-want-to-do-x-heres-my-life-story-questions\">previous discussion</a>:</p>\n\n<p>Every SE site seems to have a particular genre of questions that are essentially unanswerable. I've come to believe that the questions we get wherein someone asks, with an accompany tale of their career, coursework to date, interests, etc. \"How do get into a top program in X\" or \"Should I apply to the University of Y\".</p>\n\n<p>These questions have, in my mind, three problems:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Many are too specific - they only generalize to someone specific.</li>\n<li>They're <em>also</em> too broad, because they're not actually asking an actionable question.</li>\n<li>They're inherently unanswerable. The people who know (the admission committee of University of X's Department of Y) won't answer, and no one else knows.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p><strong>Example Questions:</strong></p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/43839/another-student-used-my-completed-work-what-should-i-do\">Another student used my completed work, what should I do?</a></p>\n\n<p><strong>Previous Discussions:</strong></p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1093/time-to-expressly-ban-i-want-to-do-x-heres-my-life-story-questions\">Discussion of the need</a></p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1120/new-custom-close-reason\">Discussion of the text</a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3768, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p><strong>Close Reason:</strong></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><strong>Description of Questions:</strong></p>\n\n<p><strong>Example Questions:</strong></p>\n\n<p><strong>Previous Discussions:</strong></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3769, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p><strong>Close Reason:</strong></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><strong>Description of Questions:</strong></p>\n\n<p><strong>Example Questions:</strong></p>\n\n<p><strong>Previous Discussions:</strong></p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3766", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3776, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/292011/drop-not-constructive-combine-noisy-reword-rude-and-other-comment-flag\">Comments are often abused.</a> There's no agreement on how to use them and they often end up playing host to side discussions, critical commentary, or (more often than not) memes. On the moderating side, comments are treated as ephemeral... once a discussion topic is over, there's a good chance off-topic comments will get deleted.</p>\n\n<p>To that extent, rewards for comments simply encourages what is often bad behavior. The system is designed to encourage good questions and answers. Everything else is just there to help that first part work as well as it can. As such, I don't think this suggestion is a good idea.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3798, "author": "Dirk", "author_id": 529, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/529", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Two points:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><blockquote>\n <p>This is demotivating for the new members of academia.SE site.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I don't think so. A new user can't even comment on anything except for their own questions and answers. Commenting is a privilege that has to be earned (50 rep). You only need 1 rep to answer or ask and this emphasizes what this site is for: Useful answers for relevant questions.</p></li>\n<li><p>There are two badges for comments, namely</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Commentator</strong> [Bronze]: Leave 10 comments</li>\n<li><strong>Pundit</strong> [Silver]: Leave 10 comments with score of 5 or more </li>\n</ul></li>\n</ol>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3775", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53762/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3780, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>No. Per the <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic\">help center</a>, only university-level education is within the scope of this site.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>This site is for academics of all levels—from aspiring graduate and professional students to senior researchers—as well as anyone in or interested in research-related or research-adjacent fields.</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><strong>University-level pedagogy</strong></li>\n </ul>\n \n <p>... then you're in the right place!</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>There is a proposal on Area 51 that may be of interest to you: <a href=\"http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/110775/primary-and-secondary-education\">Primary and Secondary Education</a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3797, "author": "Pops", "author_id": 8375, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8375", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Depending on the specific nature of your question(s), you <em>may</em> be looking for the <a href=\"https://matheducators.stackexchange.com\">Math Educators</a> or <a href=\"https://cseducators.stackexchange.com\">CS Educators</a> sites.</p>\n\n<p>As those site names imply, though, they are about specific subjects, not all of K-12 education, and they tend to be more focused on the problems facing educators as people than issues relating to the field of education broadly.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3779", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/17928/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3782, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Why can't the moderators etc. just let the people ask and answer the questions peacefully and without censoring unless there arises a serious problem?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Most content that is deleted on Stack Exchange is deleted because it simply doesn’t belong where it is posted (and not due to censoring).\nThis is necessary as, no matter what you do, there always will be people who ask questions that do not fit the topic of a site or cannot reasonably be answered within this format, use answers for asking questions or similar, and use comments for dumping their opinion and having discussions.\nThe success of the Stack Exchange model is based on keeping the site clean from such misplaced content.</p>\n\n<p>That this is a good thing is demonstrated quite well by most of the rest of the Internet, where relevant information is often buried under tons of garbage and comments are a write-only area for those who have a desperate need to share their opinion.\nFor example, comments on news pages may be less moderated, but then I hardly ever read them and if I do, I usually quickly regret it.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>It's called freedom of speech and freedom of association.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Nope. Please read <a href=\"https://xkcd.com/1357/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">this educative cartoon</a> (which is about even stronger cases, but still gets the general gist).</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3787, "author": "Fomite", "author_id": 118, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/118", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n <p>I have seen multiple questions and comments deleted, closed, and moved\n without much justification. Why can't the moderators etc. just let the\n people ask and answer the questions peacefully and without censoring\n unless there arises a serious problem?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Because the StackExchange network is expressly meant to be a curated source for information, not a free-wheeling discussion of whatever happens to wander in.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Just let people talk. Look at how the New York Times publishes pretty\n much all of the submitted comments. I have posted to the New York\n Times for 5+ years and none of my comments has ever been\n censored/blocked/deleted by the editors.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>\"Don't Read the Comments\" is one of the great rules of the Internet for a reason - the lack of a curated comments section leads, very, very often, to a rambling cesspool of insults, digressions, spam, and any signal gets swiftly lost in the noise.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>It's called freedom of speech and freedom of association.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Association only apply to the government (and a specific government at that) - the Academia StackExchange site is not obligated to indulge any post that wanders in.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3788, "author": "SmallChess", "author_id": 42080, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/42080", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The moderators here work quite hard for a position that pays nothing. They work in academics, and thus have too much spare time to waste. For example, look at this:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3772/what-happened-to-my-comment\">What happened to my comment?</a></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Moderator @ff524 deleted the valid comments because she didn't like it (not related to her research?). No other moderator on any other StackExchange site would have done that. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3781", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/68458/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3784, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>As a wording for the new close reason, I propose:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>This question is <strong>not within the scope</strong> of this site as defined in the <a href=\"//academia.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic\">help center</a>. Our scope particularly excludes <a href=\"//academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1486/7734\">the content of research</a>, <a href=\"//academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2059\">education outside of a university setting</a>, and <a href=\"//academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1360\">problems <em>only</em> faced by undergraduate students</a>.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Note that unless I am very much mistaken, this can be implemented adhering to the character limit (400) by replacing the help-centre link with <code>[help]</code>.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3785, "author": "Massimo Ortolano", "author_id": 20058, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/20058", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>As I argued in the question <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3300/20058\">What kind of undergraduate questions are not really generalizable to graduate education? (An &quot;Academia varies more than you think&quot; perspective)</a>,\nthe boundary between problems faced by undergraduate students and those faced by graduate ones is not universally well defined.</p>\n\n<p>About a year ago I wrote that question because I had the feeling that the <em>undergraduate</em> close reason was frequently misused without really taking into account the variability of academia and the advice given in <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1363/20058\">the highest voted answer</a> to the question <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1360/20058\">Why does AC.SE exclude undergraduate students?</a></p>\n\n<p>As shown by the stats reported by Wrzlprmft, the undergraduate close reason is now a small fraction of all closures: for this reason and for the risk of misusing it, I propose to remove the undergraduate close reason altogether.</p>\n\n<p>By slightly shortening Wrzlprmft's proposal, I suggest:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>This question is <strong>not within the scope</strong> of this site as defined in the <a href=\"//academia.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic\">help center</a>. Our scope particularly excludes <a href=\"//academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1486/7734\">the content of research</a> and <a href=\"//academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2059\">education outside of a university setting</a>.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Further, I suggest to change the text in the help center, by removing the sentence</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Undergraduate-specific issues that could not apply to graduate or post-graduate academicians</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>and substituting it with a short, more specific, list of undergraduate-specific issues that we consider not generalizable (at the moment, the only proposal was <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3301/20058\">Strong Bad's</a>).</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3783", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3784, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>As a wording for the new close reason, I propose:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>This question is <strong>not within the scope</strong> of this site as defined in the <a href=\"//academia.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic\">help center</a>. Our scope particularly excludes <a href=\"//academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1486/7734\">the content of research</a>, <a href=\"//academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2059\">education outside of a university setting</a>, and <a href=\"//academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1360\">problems <em>only</em> faced by undergraduate students</a>.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Note that unless I am very much mistaken, this can be implemented adhering to the character limit (400) by replacing the help-centre link with <code>[help]</code>.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3785, "author": "Massimo Ortolano", "author_id": 20058, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/20058", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>As I argued in the question <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3300/20058\">What kind of undergraduate questions are not really generalizable to graduate education? (An &quot;Academia varies more than you think&quot; perspective)</a>,\nthe boundary between problems faced by undergraduate students and those faced by graduate ones is not universally well defined.</p>\n\n<p>About a year ago I wrote that question because I had the feeling that the <em>undergraduate</em> close reason was frequently misused without really taking into account the variability of academia and the advice given in <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1363/20058\">the highest voted answer</a> to the question <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1360/20058\">Why does AC.SE exclude undergraduate students?</a></p>\n\n<p>As shown by the stats reported by Wrzlprmft, the undergraduate close reason is now a small fraction of all closures: for this reason and for the risk of misusing it, I propose to remove the undergraduate close reason altogether.</p>\n\n<p>By slightly shortening Wrzlprmft's proposal, I suggest:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>This question is <strong>not within the scope</strong> of this site as defined in the <a href=\"//academia.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic\">help center</a>. Our scope particularly excludes <a href=\"//academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1486/7734\">the content of research</a> and <a href=\"//academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2059\">education outside of a university setting</a>.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Further, I suggest to change the text in the help center, by removing the sentence</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Undergraduate-specific issues that could not apply to graduate or post-graduate academicians</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>and substituting it with a short, more specific, list of undergraduate-specific issues that we consider not generalizable (at the moment, the only proposal was <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3301/20058\">Strong Bad's</a>).</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3789", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/41198/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3795, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>This is a question-and-answer site, not a publishing platform.</p>\n\n<p>If you want to publish your master’s thesis, the best way is to convert it to a proper journal article (or conference paper, if that is a thing in your field). Your supervisor is probably the best person to advise you on this.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3796, "author": "Coder", "author_id": 53762, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53762", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In addition to the amazing answer by @Wrzlprmft, I have the following to make you <strong>aware</strong> of few things:</p>\n\n<p>Many publishers, mostly 'unknown' and 'business oriented' ones do take advantage of the weak situations of the Graduate students by claiming that they would publish the whole thesis as a book.</p>\n\n<p>One such example is Lambert Academic Publishing (LAP) whose status to be called as a legit publisher is highly questionable. Even I was about to get trapped by them. Have a look at the following questions:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2513/is-lambert-academic-publishing-a-reputable-company\">Is Lambert Academic Publishing a reputable company?</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://chemistry.ws.gc.cuny.edu/2014/06/03/be-alert-lambert-academic-publishing-spam/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Be alert: LAP s[c|p]am</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://library.bond.edu.au/news/46287/your-thesis-and-predatory-publisher\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Your Thesis and the Predatory Publisher</a> (you must read this)</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Another example is OmniScriptum. <a href=\"http://www.guide2research.com/tutorials/avoid-omniscriptum-to-re-publish-your-thesis-and-other-scientific-papers\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Read the blog here.</a></p>\n\n<p>Be careful, it is your hard work produced as a thesis. You might lose copyright, ownership, and then left with nothing. Look how much they are earning from your hard work (<a href=\"https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_1_8?url=search-alias%3Daps&amp;field-keywords=lambert%20academic%20publishing&amp;sprefix=lambert%20%2Caps%2C358&amp;crid=23PVVFINIYF47\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">a sample e-shopping site</a>).</p>\n\n<p>If you want slightly faster publication (i.e. the time to get published), target high tier conferences in your field. (I am assuming here that you belong to Engineering fields)</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3794", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/78173/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3800, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Additional clarity is always good. However, we should make sure that we revisit this from time to time—someone may always try to come back and say: \"But it's not on the list!\"</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3812, "author": "Kimball", "author_id": 19607, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/19607", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I don't believe those two \"definitions\" are the same. I'm not sure how seriously people tried to give complete answers to <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3300/19607\">What kind of undergraduate questions are not really generalizable to graduate education? (An &quot;Academia varies more than you think&quot; perspective)</a>\nbut it seems to me there are various other issues specific to undergraduate education (at least in the US) that would be very different for graduate education. For instance</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>general education requirements</li>\n<li>changing majors (while it can be done at the graduate level, the process is quite different)</li>\n<li>minors</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>That said, I am all for clarifying what's in the help center. So my suggestion would be to amend what's currently in the help center to something like</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>[do not ask questions about]</p>\n \n <ul>\n <li>Undergraduate-specific issues that could not apply to graduate or post-graduate academics such as undergraduate admissions, undergraduate life and culture, etc.</li>\n </ul>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>(I don't know what kinds of undergrad specific questions tend to get asked on this site, but if someone has a sense of this, that should inform the sort of examples we give.)</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3819, "author": "Jessica B", "author_id": 20036, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/20036", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think in my mind the distinction wants to be between questions about <em>being a student</em> versus questions about <em>being a trainee researcher/academic(/uni teacher?)</em>. So I would prefer to make questions about undergrad research (or even classes on presentation skills), or describing your work well in a scholarship application, on-topic, but questions about filling in forms for graduate finance off-topic.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3836, "author": "Robert Columbia", "author_id": 58912, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/58912", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The scope \"Undergraduate-specific issues that could not apply to graduate or post-graduate academicians\" can be interpreted as <em>allowing</em> questions that <em>can</em> relate both to graduate and undergraduate issues, but that might be asked by a person who is facing, or has faced, the issue from an undergraduate perspective. Questions for and answers to these kinds of issues should be written from a perspective that could apply to both groups.</p>\n\n<p>E.g. Instead of asking:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I am having trouble in my Freshman math course. How can I ask for help?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Ask:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>How can I communicate with an instructor and ask for specific help?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Instead of asking:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I have been accused of plagiarizing on my Senior thesis. I didn't plagiarize. What can I do?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Ask:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>How can I handle allegations made against me of plagiarism that I believe are unfounded?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Instead of asking:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Undergraduates at East Northern Outer Podunk University are required to maintain a 2.0 GPA. How can I ensure I keep a 2.0 GPA?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Ask:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>How can I understand a minimum GPA requirement and comply with it?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The following topics could clearly be in scope for both undergraduates and graduates, and should be allowed, regardless of whether the question asker is an undergraduate student or not:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Study habits - how to study, take notes, understand a syllabus, etc.</li>\n<li>How to communicate with instructors.</li>\n<li>Basic research techniques - how to collect data, locate articles, etc.</li>\n<li>How to cite sources.</li>\n<li>How to handle allegations of cheating - founded and unfounded.</li>\n<li>How not to be a cheater.</li>\n<li>Understanding grading systems - GPA, quality points, percentage scores, etc., how they are determined, how to convert between them, how to compute averages, etc.</li>\n</ul>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3799", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3802, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I would not recommend changing the question. In general, I think we as a community limit edits to grammar/readability, tags, adding content from comments into the question/answer, and rewording the titular question to provide better information on the front page. Trying to change the question i think is too invasive. That said, working with the OP to improve the question through comments and chat (and possibly a mutually agreed edit) is encouraged.</p>\n\n<p>As for what to do with these difficult questions, I suggest flagging, and when you have the reputation voting to close. Often these questions are unclear and/or opinion based and not a good fit.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3817, "author": "Fomite", "author_id": 118, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/118", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think, in most cases, that questions of the form \"A is True, Therefore B, Why?\" where there is either a false presumption or that the question itself is a sort of rhetorical device rather than a question have a valid answer of \"It Isn't\".</p>\n\n<p>This doesn't even necessarily need to be controversial questions. Consider, for example, my answer to <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/19726/paper-rejected-should-i-appeal-against-biased-reviews/19728#19728\">Paper rejected. Should I appeal against biased reviews?</a></p>\n\n<p>I will say that it's unlikely the answer will be <em>accepted</em> if the OP isn't posting in good faith, but community voting enables disagreeing with the OP's premises in an answer.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3801", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/52718/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3805, "author": "Yemon Choi", "author_id": 52718, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/52718", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think the original title overestimates the universality of the author's sense of humour, and is in a certain technical sense gratuitous. If the same point can be made with a title that does not risk either causing offence or derailing, then why go for a title that does have such risks, unless one is desperate to burnish one's Lenny Bruce credentials?</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3806, "author": "Nobody", "author_id": 546, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/546", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Please read the question <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/291153/217406\">Who has the final authority in an edit war? OP or a moderator?</a> on Meta Stack Exchange</p>\n\n<p>and one of the <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/292796/217406\">answer</a> says</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>What is a moderator? Someone who is trusted to know the site rules and enforce them. Either elected by the site users themselves, or by Stack Exchange staff (or SE staff member on their own), a moderator has the final say in everything, and got tools to enforce their decisions</p>\n</blockquote>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3818, "author": "Fomite", "author_id": 118, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/118", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>As with @YemonChoi, I found the title to be entirely unnecessary, and a distraction from the content of the answer itself. While I'm all for humorous example titles, it's trivial to make one <em>not</em> involving an inflammatory topic.</p>\n\n<p>When it comes down to it, I don't think the fake title added anything, <em>did</em> feel like it was baiting a bit, and I was entirely comfortable with its removal. The further edits by the OP don't do much to make me think I'm wrong.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3803", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3829, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I am having trouble answering this. At the heart of the issue is <em>As a thought experiment, try applying these comments to basically any minority or disadvantaged group and see how quickly that gets flagged and removed</em> students are not a minority or a disadvantaged group, they are the entire population of individuals being taught. The comments are not suggesting any sort of preferential treatment be given to one group of students at another groups expense.</p>\n\n<p>For example, saying students (or any other group) make bad customers because they are illogical is inappropriate since it implies preferential treatment should be given to non-students. Saying jobs in sales are hard because customers are illogical, however, is fine. What the comments are essentially saying is that teaching is hard because students are illogical.</p>\n\n<p>I disagree with your point that the comments don't <em>add anything positive or useful to the discussion</em> but I agree with your point that they <em>could discourage some users from participating</em>. It is important for new teachers to realize that some students are illogical/emotional and that others will complain and criticize. Therefore, I believe the comments add value. That said, the comments could have addressed the fact that not all students are illogical or prone to complaint and criticism, that students are not necessarily more emotional than any other group, and that each student should be treated as an individual. That is a lot to pack into a comment on the off chance that a student would be offended that students are stereotyped (fairly or unfairly) as emotional.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3835, "author": "Fomite", "author_id": 118, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/118", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>A few thoughts on this:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Are these comments not considered rude?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The second example you use is a bit rude, but the first is clearly a joke, and a pretty minor one at that.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Is there a huge amount of popular lecturer-bashing which has passed me\n by?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>If you mean on the site, there isn't much. But in life?</p>\n\n<p>Consider the very existence of ratemyprofessor.com. Additionally, there's a lot of concerns about the quality and impact of student evaluations and complaints - there's some evidence of some pretty serious gender bias, these things <em>are</em> potentially used in hiring decisions, and there's a whole genre of essay recently that's essentially boils down to \"Student complaints are out of control\". I have my own issues with the conclusions of those essays, but they're definitely a thing.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>As a thought experiment, try applying these comments to basically any\n minority or disadvantaged group and see how quickly that gets flagged\n and removed.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Students are neither a minority nor inherently disadvantaged, which makes this at best irrelevant.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>doesn't add anything positive or useful to the discussion</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This is where I think you're wrong. Some notes that student complaints are often fickle, make sweepingly ignorant assumptions about what a professor's job actually is, are often biased or needlessly cruel, and often outright insane are useful things for faculty to encounter. \"Oh good, it's not just me\" is a very powerful thing.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3828", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/6785/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3833, "author": "Alexander Woo", "author_id": 34050, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/34050", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Yes, I do think it is different, because I can think of multiple examples of specific jobs for which \"Research Trumps All\" is clearly correct if you are applying for that job as well as multiple examples of specific jobs for which \"Laundry list\" is clearly correct if you are applying for that job. Over the job market as a whole, I do not see a clear preference for one over the other.</p>\n\n<p>(Keep in mind my perspective is North American, and it seems to me that there is more diversity here in types of universities and their preferences than there is in Europe.)</p>\n\n<p>For the other questions, I do not know of multiple examples of situations where different answers are clearly correct.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3834, "author": "Fomite", "author_id": 118, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/118", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In addition to @AlexanderWoo's answer, I think some of the broadness of this question steps from <em>the postdoc</em> in addition to the job itself.</p>\n\n<p>For example, there are people who I know who are extremely good at playing \"The Game\", for whom the \"Laundry List\" approach would potentially be very productive, and where \"I spend a lot of time on Twitter\" is actually a major benefit to one's career instead of a time sink.</p>\n\n<p>Similarly, there are people who are <em>immensely</em> productive when writing papers - if they can ditch the other stuff on the \"Laundry List\" for a bit, they can absolutely churn out solid, impactful research results. In this case, \"I shall crush them under the weight of my CV\" might be a good strategy.</p>\n\n<p>I have seen these people co-exist in the same position, and have similarly good career trajectories.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3832", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10094/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3844, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>Questions should only be deleted if they have no lasting value. Your question very likely has lasting value, however:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>If you found a duplicate question and answer on this site, your question can direct other people having a related problem to the answer. After all you did not find the duplicate target easily yourself, and others may have the same problem. You can mark your own question as a duplicate without wasting anybody’s time via <em>Flag → should be closed → duplicate of.</em> If the target was difficult to find, also consider whether its 9indability can be improved, e.g., by adding tags, keyword, or a better title.</p></li>\n<li><p>If you found your answer in some other resource, a similar thought applies: You did not find this resource easily in the first place and your question may help others having the same problem. In this case, <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/self-answer\">self-answer</a> your question. Keep in mind to credit the resources that helped you, refrain from extensive copying and pasting (rather summarise with your own words), and focus on your problem.</p></li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3850, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I'm not sure what Stack Exchange's view on this would be, but I see a ton of duplicate questions and it usually helps me, not hinders me, because I can combine parts of the different suggested solutions if I need to. There are usually many solutions to a problem and a set of solutions for the first posted question may not work me while the solutions for the duplicate do. This is actually the norm for most of what I go on here for. I would have been SOL many times if duplicate questions weren't allowed to stay. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3843", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/38012/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3848, "author": "Fomite", "author_id": 118, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/118", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Pondering my own answers to these types of question, I actually think there <em>is</em> a canonical version that exists.</p>\n\n<p>Perhaps the canonical question would be something like:</p>\n\n<p><strong>Switching Positions After Accepting an Offer</strong></p>\n\n<p>I have currently accepted a position, however in between when I accepted the position and now I have gotten another offer that is more appealing for personal or professional reasons. Is it ethical to accept this new offer and leave the other position, and if so, how do I do so while minimizing any damage to my career?</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Trying to keep it vague enough that it's widely applicable, while covering most cases.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3849, "author": "xLeitix", "author_id": 10094, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10094", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I am of the opinion that reneging on an accepted PhD position, a grant, a postdoc position, and a tenure track is sufficiently different that merging them all into a single answer is not very useful. Yes, the answer to all of those questions is <strong>no, you should not</strong>, but the practical implications are, I think, different enough that the canonical answer will add little as it would need to address all of these different aspects to be of real value.</p>\n\n<p>Another aspect is that we <em>have</em> actually answered virtually all permutations of this question already, so we should be able to close pretty much all of these questions in the future as a duplicate of one of the existing questions - so it's not that we save work by having a canonical question.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3845", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/958/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3854, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I would expect that such labels should be applied rarely, if at all. But it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing to have the option available to us.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3858, "author": "xLeitix", "author_id": 10094, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10094", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Yes, please add this. And no, I don't think we should add this sparingly. I would propose to aggressively add this to questions that have a potential to be controversial. If used too much it does not matter (the warning does not say anything that's not true for all questions anyway), and if it salvages just a few questions that would otherwise get derailed it's a win.</p>\n\n<p>(OTOH it will <em>only</em> help if the diamond mods actually <em>do</em> end up aggressively removing argumentative answers and comments without notice, as the warning would indicate - in my opinion this has not really been the case in the past)</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3853", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/20058/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3856, "author": "Massimo Ortolano", "author_id": 20058, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/20058", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>As is, your question would be quite probably considered off topic, because we don't assess the quality of tests, books etc. </p>\n\n<p>A general question about the difficulty of standardized tests could be potentially interesting, but it would be too broad or too much opinion based.</p>\n\n<p>For what it's worth, I find the linked questions from the test rather depressing.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3857, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In addition to Massimo's answer, questions pertaining to high school students that are not research-oriented are automatically considered off-topic.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3855", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/75464/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3860, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>Perhaps we need to carve out an exception for books on the <strong>practice</strong> of academia, since that is (usually) an on-topic discussion here.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3861, "author": "D.W.", "author_id": 705, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/705", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Asking for a textbook on how science works is too broad. There is <em>lots</em> that has been published on that subject, and it's not clear how to narrow down among them.</p>\n\n<p>Asking for a textbook on how academia or science works is even broader. Asking how academia works is quite different from asking how science works, so you shouldn't ask for both in a single question.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3859", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/14341/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3864, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>This answer is <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/be-nice\">not nice</a> to:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>the asker, who is implied to be insecure and lack social skills:</p>\n\n<blockquote class=\"spoiler\">\n <p> I think you are blaming your STEM professor status instead of your insecurity and lack of social skills.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Furthermore, there are some pretty trite geek clichés here, that are just silly on their own, but make me question whether the post is serious:</p>\n\n<blockquote class=\"spoiler\">\n <p> How about you hang out in book stores and try to chat up the first girl that smiles at you?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Also, if I were the asker, I would be put off at least a little by being suggested to acquire a partner through trickery. Finally, unless I missed something, the asker did not indicate their gender or sexual preferences – which is fine as they are completely irrelevant to this question.</p></li>\n<li><p>women in general, who are implied to fall for very stupid advances, false compliments and waffling:</p>\n\n<blockquote class=\"spoiler\">\n <p> [let them know] that they have beautiful eyes, you think they are really intelligent, bla bla bla)</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<blockquote class=\"spoiler\">\n <p> Just ask them where the sugar is</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Moreover, tricking a woman into a relationship is considered acceptable behaviour:</p>\n\n<blockquote class=\"spoiler\">\n <p> one will fall for it after a few tries</p>\n</blockquote></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Not to mention that the only part of this that addresses the question is the general gist of “try to get a relationship”. Specific dating advice is beyond this question and I strongly doubt that the asker was looking for this (it’s like elaborating the “look into your examination guidelines” part of an answer into a reading 101).</p>\n\n<p>Now, of course all that is inappropriate or beyond the scope of the question could just be edited out of this answer, but that would only leave something along the lines of: “Try to get a relationship.” While that would still make for an answer on its own, it has already been said (in a better way) in other answers.</p>\n\n<p>The only thing that I find odd about its deletion is that the answer was just deleted and not hammered with a <em>rude/abusive</em> flag instead.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3867, "author": "Federico Poloni", "author_id": 958, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/958", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think the answer should not have been deleted by a moderator. It is OK for me if it is downvoted into oblivion, but I do not see a reason to take explicit action to delete it.</p>\n\n<p>Summarizing my comments to <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3864/958\">this answer</a>, let me counter the arguments in favor of closing it.</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>The \"you lack social skills\" part seems acceptable to me. In a question specifically about difficulties in socialization, suggesting lack of social skills should not be a taboo topic. The answer does not say \"ha ha you are a loser\"; it just goes to the point. In fact, apart from the \"bro\" style, I see little difference between saying <em>I think you are blaming your STEM professor status instead of your insecurity and lack of social skills</em> and <em>My suspicion is that this is not so much about \"professors lead lonely lives\" as it is about \"I am lonely,\" or \"I fear leading a lonely life.\" But this need not be so. You can learn to be more outgoing</em> (currently in another answer). Should we close that one, too? </p></li>\n<li><p>The attitude about women suggested in the answer seems acceptable to me. Not that I support it, but I see no reason to censor it. If compliments and attempts at conversation are now an unacceptable way to \"trick a person into a relationship\", our jails might be overflowing soon.</p></li>\n<li><p>The answer <em>does</em> answer the question. The (blunt) answer to \"how does a professor deal with a lonely lifestyle\" is \"dude, stop being a loner, go outside and meet girls\".</p></li>\n<li><p>It's assuming OP's gender (uhm, no, it's not actually?) and sexual preference. No big deal --- people often do that. The proper way to deal with it is leaving a comment, not using special moderator powers and nuking the answer from orbit.</p></li>\n<li><p>You don't like the style of this answer, I get it. A part of it probably is there just for the shock value. There are lots of other strongly formulated answers and comments on this site, though --- JeffE is famous for his cutting style, for instance, and it seems very well received. I see nothing so offensive in this answer that deserves immediate deletion, instead of going through the usual path of getting downvotes. There are no direct attacks to the OP. There is a shade of misogyny (is there? I see no attempt to generalize \"all women are gullible\") that we may find despicable, but the proper answer if you disagree is downvoting, not preventing the answerer to express his opinion.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>(And, just in case you are thinking it: there is no relation between me and the answerer. His name sounds Italian, I am Italian, but I have no idea who he is. And I am using male pronouns here because that's a masculine name.)</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3863", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/958/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3866, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Only the original poster can accept an answer, and that’s not something the community can change. It may be a flaw, but that’s the way the system is set up.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3870, "author": "nengel", "author_id": 71814, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/71814", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>There has to be some room for analyzing <em>why</em> the questioner asked the question they did, and maybe indicate some less-than-ideal steps along the way that lead to the question. Sometimes our preconceptions/naivety/received wisdom lead us to ask the wrong question. (<a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66377/what-is-the-xy-problem\">See also the XY Problem</a> - the questioner's real question here is clearly how to pick a research subject.) In that case, being told about the misconceptions behind the question is often more important than getting your question answered: the fact that the original poster marked this as the accepted answer is a strong indication that it was actually <em>the most useful</em> to them.</p>\n\n<p>Taking some kind of action against this type of answer would reduce the overall value of the site, IMO.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3865", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3874, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 3, "selected": true, "text": "<p>The primary reason I had for deleting this question so quickly was that the author had just posted another question that was also very off topic, with all the same problems. When someone abuses the site by repeatedly posting very off-topic questions (that are more rant than question), even after getting feedback that these are off topic, we prefer not to reward this behavior. Also, quick moderation actions (downvotes, votes to close, flags and deletion) help trigger a question ban, which prevents the author from posting more unwelcome content.</p>\n\n<p>I do believe that those who answer very bad questions would prefer for them not to be deleted. But I think this community has an even stronger preference for not encouraging people to keep posting content that they've been told is unwelcome, i.e for closing bad questions rather than answering them. We rely on this kind of community moderation to keep the quality of the site high.</p>\n\n<p>As a general rule, we do not like for bad content to hang around, because it lowers the apparent quality of the site both for regular users and casual visitors. If someone posts a question that can be improved, we would put in on hold and try to improve it; but if a question can never be made to be on topic, and is very low quality, we don't like for it to hang around.</p>\n\n<p>Of course, there is a continuum - a question that is <em>slightly</em> off topic, but with very good answers, is often closed but not deleted. But <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/deleted-questions\">extremely off topic or very low quality</a> questions are likely to be deleted. </p>\n\n<p>I would be happy to copy and paste your answer to a pastebin or something like that - it's not on topic here, but if there's somewhere else you want to post it, I'd be glad to help so your work isn't wasted.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3885, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>In this very particular situation (don't generalize, since I may or may not like what the moderators do or don't do in the other cases!), I would agree with the corresponding moderator: let's kill bad questions. Let's give the OP an opportunity to improve, but, if no action is taken, let's delete them. Yes, some answers required work, but lots of the work of an academic researcher goes into the trash bin, so it's business as usual.</p>\n\n<p>(That's all, folks, sorry for the brevity...)</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3873", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/38012/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3876, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If you take a look at the top page of users, the split is slightly in favor of pseudonyms over real names (4:3 advantage, roughly).</p>\n\n<p>I'd argue that the quality of answers is independent of the use of a pseudonym. The quality of the questions depends on experience with SE sites rather than just being \"experts\" or not. We've had many excellent \"signed\" and \"anonymous\" questions. However, as you suggest, it's unlikely someone will \"sign\" a bad question with their real name.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3877, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Looking at our <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Reputation&amp;filter=all\">first page of users</a> 7/36 users provide limited information in their user name or profile (i.e., are anonymous). Three of these users are, or were, moderators. At least one of these users (me) was not always anonymous. On a <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users?page=7&amp;tab=reputation&amp;filter=all\">random page of users</a> 15/37 are anonymous despite having reputations between 2831 and 3365. These differences could be related to the quality of contributions or an indication that higher rep users are more likely to not be anonymous.</p>\n\n<p>We can also look at the average vote counts for questions and answers by anonymous and non-anonymous users. This is sounding like a question for the data explorer, but taking a very small sample of the top three non-anonymous and anonymous users reveals that the top three non-anonymous users have a combined 3628 answers and a combined rep of 352158, for an average rep of 97 per answer (I ignored the number of questions). The top three anonymous users have 2083 answers for a combined rep of 277104, for an average rep of 133 per answer. This suggests that anonymous users may provide better answers.</p>\n\n<p>In summary, as a biased anonymous user, it looks like anonymous users provided better answers :) As an academic who likes to butcher statistics, I bet my findings will not replicate.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3875", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/38012/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3879, "author": "nengel", "author_id": 71814, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/71814", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Stack Exchange is a for-profit company, it cannot legally take donations (as far as I know, but I am not a lawyer). There are also no employees specific to the \"academia\" site. The contributors and moderators in question could presumably receive a gift (not a donation, and especially not a tax-exempt donation) if you asked them individually to divulge their financial information, but they have no group structure that could receive or manage money.</p>\n\n<p>You may be able to buy some site contributors a coffee, but you won't be able to support the functioning of this website with a donation.</p>\n\n<p>(There are also various pitfalls with introducing money into a community that works essentially as a gift economy, so IMO you should look for other worthy causes.)</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3884, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Requests like this should be made directly to the Stack Exchange team. Contact information is listed on <a href=\"https://stackoverflow.com/company/contact\">this page</a>, which I found on the footer of this page. Thanks!</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3878", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/83000/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3882, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>We do get a lot of questions like this, but I would not be in favor of this as a tag concept.</p>\n\n<p>This sounds like a meta tag - it's about the category of question, more than it is about the key topics in the question. Meta tags <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/tagging\">are discouraged</a> on SE sites, and I think for good reason.</p>\n\n<p>Also: Tags are most useful when it's easy to find them by name and figure out what they're for. We want to make it easy for new users to find the right tags to use on their posts, and for slightly more experienced users to know how to re-tag posts. But nobody comes here thinking, \"I'm going to ask a question about reading between the lines\"; they think, \"I'm going to ask a question about the status message in a journal submission system\". This tag seems a little too subtle to be really usable (except for the minority of very experienced users).</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3883, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Right. But choose a better name. The word has a direct meaning which you want to avoid (<a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kremlinology\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kremlinology</a>), apart from Kremlin in the Soviet times and Kremlin today being two different pairs of shoes. Moreover, a politically neutral tag name would be best. (Humor: <em>Saddamology</em> for wrong, potentially blind guesses. After all, we should be <em>diverse</em> in our choices.) More seriously, I would suggest a term along the line of \"hidden-meaning\", \"unclear-meaning\", \"low-information\", etc.</p>\n\n<p>Moreover, there is a difference between trying to suss out what a professor is thinking based on a one-line email (which is unknown in general), and what does \"With Editor\" at a journal means after 7 days (which means exactly what it says and could be clarified in certain cases by reading the online help).</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3881", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/118/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3890, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The answer was deleted at the answerer's request:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Update: after further thoughts I agree with the downvoters that this is not a great idea. This is probably not a workable answer in practice. I would no longer recommend it, though I cannot delete it, since it is the accepted answer.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>As for why the question wasn't \"rated\" lower—I think the kernel of a good idea was there (not using your own calculator), but the execution wasn't right. So it's not necessarily worth downvoting to oblivion, but it probably shouldn't have been the accepted answer, either.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3891, "author": "Massimo Ortolano", "author_id": 20058, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/20058", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>At the beginning, the author of the answer thought it was a good idea (of course he did). Many other people probably thought along the same lines.</p>\n\n<p>Once the possible flaws have been pointed out, some people might still have thought that it was a good idea nonetheless; others might simply haven't come back to the answer to rethink about it; and those who wanted to cancel or revert their upvote would have found the vote locked until the next edit.</p>\n\n<p>I don't think we did anything wrong, after all.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3892, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>First note that the answer in question has 51 upvotes and 23 downvotes right now. So there is a considerable amount of downvotes already.</p>\n\n<p>The main reason for the discrepancy between downvotes and comment upvotes is probably this:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Downvoting requires 125 reputation; upvoting requires only 15. So there are just more users who can upvote a comment than who can downvote the question.</p></li>\n<li><p>As of this writing, the question is a <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/219922/255554\">hot network question</a>. It’s safe to assume that most of its ten thousand visitors come from other sites of the network and thus have 101 reputation (from the <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/whats-reputation\">association bonus</a>). Therefore they can only upvote and not downvote.</p></li>\n</ul>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3889", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/13438/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3896, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think a good line to draw would be:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Questions specific to individual institutions are only allowed if those institutions operate on the national or international level.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This would include institutions like CNRS, NSF, NIH, DFG, Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, etc., but exclude individual universities and similar.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3897, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The basic idea is that if the answer to your question would only be of use to people <em>at the institution in question</em>, it’s not a good fit.</p>\n\n<p>Questions related to funding and support clearly fall outside of that. Internal HR policies at the NSF or NIH or Max Planck-Gesellschaft, for instance, would not.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3898, "author": "Alexander Woo", "author_id": 34050, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/34050", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>As I understand it, \"Positions at CNRS\" mean something different than it would in other countries, because, for a combination historical, social, and legal reasons, the French government largely funds research by hiring researchers directly rather than by giving grants through the universities at which they work.</p>\n\n<p>I was discussing possibly making a 1-2 month visit to a French collaborator. (In the end, we couldn't get the timing and the funding to work out.) If I wanted a collaborator to visit me in the US, the funding mechanism would be that I would apply for a grant (eg from the NSF) or a supplement to an existing grant or a reallocation of funds in an existing grant to fund the visit. On the other hand, if a French person wanted me to visit him in France, the most common funding mechanism involves me applying (with his help and support) for a temporary one-month position from the CNRS.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3895", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22768/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3900, "author": "padawan", "author_id": 15949, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/15949", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>For <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/100104/in-how-much-detail-should-one-describe-their-past-and-projected-future-work-for\">this</a> question, the first (closed) version looked like this:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The competitive application process for CNRS jobs has opened this week, and part of the required documents are a report on past work, as well as a project for future work (together with a list of CNRS labs where this work could be done). There is not much information about what these are expected to contain; the instructions only specifies &quot;Report on research completed&quot; and &quot;Proposed research program&quot;.</p>\n<p>More specifically, for a &quot;chargé de recherche&quot; (junior scientist) position, how much detail should be given in these two documents? How long should they be? Is there a typical structure that one should follow for them? It is my understanding that the national committee members may not (and in my case are not, I checked) experts in the specific domain of the applicants, there is e.g. a committee for all of sociology, another for &quot;brain, cognition, behavior&quot; and so on.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>I will try to write the unclear parts one by one:</p>\n<p>First, there is no introduction.</p>\n<ol>\n<li>What is CNRS?</li>\n<li>What does it stand for?</li>\n<li>Who are you?</li>\n<li>How is CNRS related with you?</li>\n</ol>\n<p>After that, you mention some reports out of nowhere.</p>\n<ol start=\"5\">\n<li>What are those reports?</li>\n<li>Which instructions specify those reports?</li>\n</ol>\n<p>In the second paragraph, it gets worse. You start with <strong>more</strong> specifically, even though there is not a tiny bit of specification (see 1-4). After you ask multiple questions about those documents mentioned in the first paragraph, you suddenly jump to the committee members.</p>\n<ol start=\"7\">\n<li>What committee?</li>\n<li>How are those members related to your question?</li>\n<li>How are their area of expertise related to your question?</li>\n</ol>\n<p>You cannot assume that people know the answers to all nine questions listed above. Usually, four or five of them makes the text unclear. In your case, you had nine.</p>\n<p>For <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/100215/what-is-the-cnrs\">this</a> question, I believe nothing is wrong with people. The question seems to be asked at random.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>What is CNRS? It's supposedly a research center somewhere in Europe but it's been asked about a few times already on this site. I hope that asking this question is going to clarify things.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>If it was asked a few times, why do you ask again? Just upvote the question and wait for an answer. This alone is a reason for closing the question because it is duplicate. Also what <em>things</em> do you want to clarify? Do you assume everyone reads this question also read your first question? Again, this question is not clear at all to me.</p>\n<p>Just something popped into your mind and you asked in Academia.SE. As an example, <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/62146/arxiv-puts-submissions-on-hold-for-months-ignores-email\">this</a> question also got several downvotes.<br />\nThe answer to your question is a matter of Google search and reading through the results.</p>\n<p>As a side note, it would probably be to your best interest to drop &quot;I'm doing everything right. What is wrong with these people?&quot; and move to &quot;how can I improve my questions?&quot;</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3901, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Welcome to AC.SE. I am sorry your first exposure has been so difficult. Please give us a shot, things usually work much better. Things seem to have gotten a little out of hand this weekend.</p>\n\n<p>I think your question about the application process for jobs at CNRS is very clear. Not knowing anything about the CNRS in particular, I have a hard time judging if it is a good question for our community and therefore do not feel qualified to up/down vote on the question or vote to close or open the question.</p>\n\n<p>My concern is related to this <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3895/questions-about-particular-institutions\">meta question</a> in that I am not sure if your question is about a narrow set of intramural jobs at the CNRS or something broader. The US and UK funding agencies that I am familiar with (e.g., the US NIH and UK MRC), have intramural jobs, but don't really offer extramural jobs. I think a question about how to get a job at the NIH would be closed as <em>too localized</em> (SE speak for not being interesting to enough people) just as a question about the application process at Big State U would. That said, employment in France is very different from the US and UK and it sounds like the CNRS has a different model where you apply to and are employed by the CNRS, but work at a university. </p>\n\n<p>My lack of understanding of the CNRS, and the potential that it is different from the US and UK (end even likely the German system) led me to suggest someone asking about the CNRS. This <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/100215/what-is-the-cnrs\">question</a> was not what I had in mind and is way too broad.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3899", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/84127/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3903, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Let me start with I did not delete your comment and you are probably not going to like this answer ;)</p>\n<p>Comments are the bane of the SE system in my opinion. We need them, but we don't like them. Quoting the <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/comment\">help center</a></p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Comments are temporary &quot;Post-It&quot; notes left on a question or answer.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>As you say, we try and delete comments that are unconstructive, offensive, or rude. But we also try and deal with cases that violate</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>When should I comment?</p>\n<p>You should submit a comment if you want to:</p>\n<p>Request clarification from the author;</p>\n<p>Leave constructive criticism that guides the author in improving the post;</p>\n<p>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).</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Your comment was flagged as <em>no longer needed</em>. As it wasn't really doing any of the above and may have actually fallen into the <em>When shouldn't I comment</em> category of <em>Secondary discussion</em> it seems like it really wasn't needed.</p>\n<p>Of course as you are probably aware, there are tons of comments that are not good comments and we have not deleted them all. As I said, you are probably not going to like the answer that your comment was deleted because it wasn't needed despite the fact that lots of other comments that are not needed do not get deleted.</p>\n<p>As for what you should do. You should really turn that comment into a new answer that can be properly voted on and evaluated.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3904, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I was the moderator that deleted your comment. StrongBad's answer explains the reason very well. I would just elaborate on the following:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Of course as you are probably aware, there are tons of comments that are not good comments and we have not deleted them all. As I said, you are probably not going to like the answer that your comment was deleted because it wasn't needed despite the fact that lots of other comments that are not needed do not get deleted.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This site is primarily moderated by the community. In the case of comments, that means that diamond moderators review a comment if it is flagged by one or more members of the community. If the comment should be deleted (according to the criteria explained in StrongBad's answer), and it is brought to our attention via a flag, then we delete it.</p>\n\n<p>The reason why so many deletion-eligible comments are not deleted, is because they haven't been flagged, and so they haven't been reviewed by a moderator. (Contrary to popular belief, it is <em>not</em> because moderators read all comments and delete the ones they disagree with, while leaving the ones they agree with.)</p>\n\n<p>Your comment was flagged, I handled the flag and reviewed the comment, and since it met the criteria for deletion, I deleted it. It really had nothing to do with my opinions about Sci-Hub (for the record, I have no strong opinions about it one way or the other).</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3902", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/4018/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3906, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The community bot raises an automatic flag when a question or answer receives 20 comments. I almost always move the comments to chat at that point. The only time I tend not to is when the question is on hold or has multiple votes to close and I think the comments might help resolve things.</p>\n\n<p>In the absence of the auto flag, I almost never move the comments to chat.</p>\n\n<p>When moving comments to chat, ideally I will read through them and maybe hand select a few to save that seem important for improving the question/answer. More often then not, by the time I see the flag, things have gotten so out of hand I just bulk move everything.</p>\n\n<p>I like to think my decision to move things and which ones to save have nothing to do with my personal opinions of the comment content, but rather if the comment is secondary discussion or not.</p>\n\n<p>Looking at the timeline od the specific question shows that a number of flags for rude comments were raise around Dec 11 23:59. At that point a moderator ff524 moved almost all the existing comments to chat. It does not appear that post had the auto comment flag, but it did have flags raised by users. When dealing with flags on some comments, is basically the case where I might move other conversations to chat in the hope of keeping everything working smoothly.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3907, "author": "Elizabeth Henning", "author_id": 77539, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/77539", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Many of the comments \"showing strong criticism over the diversity engagement\" were repeated comments coming from a few individuals which contributed nothing to the discussion. There were also many abusive and inappropriate comments, some of which used vulgar language. In other words, this is not about politics, it's about bad behavior.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3909, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I really did not pay attention to whether the answers were positive or negative, when moderating the comments section. At 00:30-00:40 on December 12, I moved all the long comment threads that existed at that time to chat. </p>\n\n<p>Here is what happened that day: I opened up the moderator section of the site. In the diamond moderator interface, it shows flags that have been raised by ordinary users, grouped by post (so if many flags are raised for a single post, or comments on a single post, it shows them all together). There were a large number of flags on that diversity post. (I don't know how many there were at that time, but as of now, 29 flags have been raised on that post and its answers, which is a very, very, very large number for a quiet site like Academia.SE.) I clicked through to the main post, moved all of the long comment threads to chat, and that was that.</p>\n\n<p>You mentioned two \"positive\" answers where the comment threads were not moved to chat. I moved comment threads to chat on December 12 between about 00:30 and 00:40, according to the timestamps. I didn't move comments on xyz123's answer because it wasn't posted yet then (the timestamp on that answer is December 12 at 8:54). I didn't move comments on Anna SdTC's answer because at the time there were only two - one from the OP, and one by Anna directly addressing the OP's comment:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Thanks. I am the opposite - high GPA but totally bombed my Biology GRE. So I'd like to take any opportunity - like this one - to boost my application. I just felt that this question really wasn't intended for me. But I guess you're right. Congrats on your success – user84325 Dec 12 at 0:01 </p>\n \n <p>I am not sure if you can or want to repeat your GRE, but of course take any opportunity to boost your application, such as mentioning that you learned early on to be responsible. That is absolutely relevant to the process! – Anna SdTC Dec 12 at 0:05 </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>the other comments on that thread were added later - the third comment, by Dilworth, was posted Dec 12 at 01:06. (I prefer to leave the OP's comments, if productive, and any direct response from the author of the answer to the OP's comment. I also left undeleted the OP's comment on Elizabeth Henning's answer.)</p>\n\n<p>Edited to add: I have since gone back and moved other comment threads on that post to chat. As a general rule, diamond moderators mostly moderate comments that are brought to their attention via comment flags, either flags raised by individuals or the automatic flags mentioned by StrongBad. If you're concerned that some comments on a post were deleted/moved but others that should have been deleted were not, please flag the comments that should be deleted for moderator attention, using the \"flag\" button.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3905", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/13452/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3912, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Your original answer was flagged by two users as rude/offensive. This brought it to my attention. Upon looking at the answer it seemed unrelated to the question and designed to produce discussion. This is taking advantage of our community and considered rude. Therefore I cast a 3rd flag as rude which caused the community bot to delete your question.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3913, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Your answer is full of arguments that take an argument that is typically made by the side which you claim to oppose and present it as an argument for the other side.\nMoreover you are throwing clichéic, unjustified accusations at the asker.\nThis is so blatant that it is almost certainly intentional¹.\nI don’t know whether you do this to provoke conflict, to mock others, or because you severely misunderstood the concept of devil’s advocate.\nBut whatever your motivation, it’s <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/be-nice\">not nice</a>:\nIt’s not respectful of others and harmful to this community.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>^{¹ in the unlikely event that it isn’t, please stop; you are not helping your cause}</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3910", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/84670/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3917, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>These concerns were mentioned in the comments (now in the chat room linked from a comment):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>This, unfortunately, looks like a \"make a big list\" question that likely too broad for effective answers.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>and </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>In this community, the consensus is generally against big list questions</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>That is the reason your question was closed. Making the scope of the list narrower (by specifying the field, or specifying the part of the application you're asking about) doesn't help; the fundamental question is still asking us to compile a list. When a question is posed in such a way that it can't be answered well in one answer, but needs many separate answers to give a complete answer, it is \"too broad\", even if the situation referenced is very narrow. This community has decided that we don't want those kinds of \"list\" questions (with some exceptions, that are discussed on meta before the question is posed).</p>\n\n<p>You also make the situation a bit worse by asking for people's opinions about which mistakes are most serious. (See the <a href=\"http://academia.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask\">help center</a>.)</p>\n\n<p>Your question could be improved by framing it to be about your specific situation, instead of asking for a list of anecdotes from other people's situations, and by not soliciting opinions. Instead of</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>In your opinion, what are the most serious common mistakes that continental European candidates for tenure-track assistant-professor positions in Computer Science in the US commit in their cover letters?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>You could ask,</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I am a continental European candidate applying for tenure-track assistant-professor positions in Computer Science in the US. What common cover letter mistakes are made by people in this situation, that I need to watch out for?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This could potentially have a single \"best\" answer, and doesn't ask for subjective opinions on which mistakes bother people the most. The \"best\" answer would not just be a one line answer enumerating a mistake that has been judged \"most serious\" by the votes of other users; the \"best\" answer would be a comprehensive answer that describes the common problems and explains more about them.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3918, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The big problem is that your question boils down to asking for a list of things, and that’s not a good fit for this site. </p>\n\n<p>Moreover, the narrowing isn’t making the question any easier to answer. I can’t really say “continental Europeans do X that other international applicants don’t,” and I don’t think there’s anything that is a CS-only kind of mistake, either.</p>\n\n<p>Also, when asked to clarify what you want, you came up with “the worst ones.” This doesn’t help us understand what you want, which brings us back to an unfocused list question.</p>\n\n<p>To a degree, to paraphrase Chekhov: “every declined application is unique.”</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3916", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3920, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n <p>\"Don't bother trying\" is a valid answer to \"How do I [do thing]\"</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>In general, I agree with you. An answer that questions the premise of the question is a valid answer.\nBut that’s not what your answer does.\nThe question does not aim at fundamentally changing the gender ratio in the field of computer science, but just at making ads more encouraging for women.</p>\n\n<p>A valid (but likely wrong) answer that challenges the premises of that question would be:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Don’t bother trying.\n While there might be an impact of the wording on the gender-specific appeal of job ads, <a href=\"https://www.example.com\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Doe et al.</a> showed that it is strongly field-dependent and least prominent in the field of computer science where women are at most 5 % less encouraged by typical job ads than men.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Yes, your answer also starts with <em>don’t bother trying,</em> but the following elaboration makes clear that this refers to something else than the asker’s goal (with this question).\nYour answer addresses the question:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Should we bother to increase the gender ratio of computer scientists at the PhD level?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This is considerably different from the question in question. (It would also be too opinion-based for this platform.)</p>\n\n<p>Hence, I considered your answer to fall in the category <em>not even a partial answer to the actual question.</em></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3921, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The way the SE system works is we like to have our discussions about moderation in public so everyone can participate since we are really a community moderated site and so there is a level of transparency.</p>\n\n<p>In general, regular users cannot delete an answer with a net positive score. They are forced to flag the answer. It then gets reviewed by other high rep users, and based on that review gets brought to a diamond moderator's attention. As a diamond moderator I have extra tools and privileges that allow me to delete up voted answers. The review of you answer is here: <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/57451\">https://academia.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/57451</a></p>\n\n<p>Basically, a high rep user raised a flag on your answer (it is not public who raised the flag, but they are a respected, trusted and valued member of the site). Then 7 additional high rep users reviewed your answer and 5 of them recommended it be deleted. Another user flagged your answer as rude. Basically 7 users voiced support of deleting the answer and 2 suggested it was ok.</p>\n\n<p>Based on this review, I looked at your answer. I agreed with the first comment to the answer</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Sans the first sentence, this is a poignant comment</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>And could see how the 7 users might be agreeing with the idea that your answer is <em>not even a partial answer to the actual question</em>.</p>\n\n<p>Overall, the decision to delete the answer was a real struggle for me. My personal preference would be to keep the answer. In other words, if I had a non-mod vote the review would have been 7-3 instead of 7-2, even factoring in your presumably positive vote, only gets us to 7-4. I deleted your answer, because the evidence at the time was that is what the community wanted. If the community thinks the answer is worth saving (and I might even write an answer arguing it should be), I will happily undelete it.</p>\n\n<p>I suggest you either provide an answer to this meta question arguing why the answer should be undeleted because in fact it is more than just a comment and provides at least a partial answer to the question. If the community agrees (by up voting, since votes on meta are interpreted differently), we will undelete the answer.</p>\n\n<p>One difficult aspect of judging the community wishes is the net vote count does not always reflect the wishes of the community. Questions that make the HNQ list attract a lot of attention from SE users whoa may not be active members of academia.SE. These users lack the reputation to down vote questions and answers, but can upvote. This bias is a known problem: <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/238420/prevent-questions-on-hot-list-from-being-upvoted-by-casual-visitors-only-rep-is\">Prevent questions on Hot List from being upvoted by casual visitors (only rep is from association bonus)</a>. There is also the issue of down votes costing rep, so there tends to be an upwards bias. In general, 4 down votes is a lot for the main site. It is also a lot on meta, so this answer (and my actions) has clearly struck a nerve. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3926, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The answer (1) expresses an unpopular point of view, (2) is poorly reasoned, (3) makes factual assertions without citing evidence, and (4) is not closely tied to what was being asked. The combination of factors 1-4 makes it seem trollish to me. If your intention was not to be a troll, and you actually want to convince liberals in academia to seriously consider a point of view that they are predisposed to reject, then you need to stop making mistakes like 2-4, which make it easy for them to dismiss you as a troll. SE is not an open-ended discussion forum, it's a forum in which people ask and answer specific questions.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3932, "author": "user", "author_id": 49750, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/49750", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If I understand correctly, the question had +11 votes, as such it seems that the \"community\" valued this answer. In addition, even if that was not the case, as @jpmc26 said, \"I'm not really comfortable with the idea that any content is deleted just because the community wants it to be. Such an approach leaves too much room for drowning out less popular points of view\".</p>\n\n<p>Regardless of the last statement, 15 people liked the answer, 4 did not, it means (to me) that those 15 people thought the answer did provide some value. So, while I appreciate the point of view of the moderators that the answer did not answer the question, it seems that at least 15 people did find some value in the answer. </p>\n\n<p>I am just a lowly user, but, for what it is worth, these are my 2 cents, and I would vote for the answer to be re-instated (if I had the opportunity).</p>\n\n<p>To summarise: why do I believe the answer should be undeleted?</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>It was up-voted by 15 people. </li>\n<li>The answer does answer, at least partially, the question asked. In other words, people reading that answer (who may have the same question) may still get some feed-back (they might agree with @nick012000 that it is useless to bother trying). </li>\n<li>The reason I go to SE is to read different answers, and I would not want that particular answer deleted.</li>\n<li>The answer is not completely off-topic, nor is abusive or insulting</li>\n</ol>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3938, "author": "Robert Wolfe", "author_id": 14352, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/14352", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Don't you know that moderators are executive, legislative, and judiciary all in one? Don't you know that the SE moderation is also winner-take-all? Don't you know that moderators determine what \"rule of law\" is?</p>\n\n<p>Since you can't be pro-law today anymore without people assuming that you're being pro-opposite-party when the \"law\" doesn't match with popular opinion, I do lean liberal.</p>\n\n<p>Math (my community) has the same problem. I would be thrilled if math gained more venerable women mathematicians. Math needs as many brilliant minds as possible. However, attempting recruitment at a PhD level seems to be misdirected. There's research that suggests women tend to lose interest in the sciences between middle and high school. This needs to be researched more.</p>\n\n<p>The way I interpret nicks answer is that you can't fish a dry pond; rather the people upstream controlling the dam need to think more downriver. And this is a perfectly acceptable answer to the question.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3919", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/81424/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3924, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Short answer: Yes.</p>\n\n<p>However, questions are generally protected only when they are attracting large numbers of junk answers or comments or other unwanted behavior by low rep users is taking place.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3925, "author": "Massimo Ortolano", "author_id": 20058, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/20058", "pm_score": 3, "selected": true, "text": "<p>You can also drop a line in chat: there there are frequently a couple of high-rep users hanging around who can protect questions (though 15k+ users should wait a bit more than mods to protect a question).</p>\n\n<p>However, I'm not sure I'd protect that question right now, the situation doesn't seem so bad to warrant protection.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3923", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/38012/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3929, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If you want resources on a specific research area, that is considered off-topic on Academia.SE, since the site is devoted to questions about academic <em>practice</em>, not the specific content of research. You might be able to ask such a question on a content-specific SE site, but most likely such questions will be poorly received.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3930, "author": "JeffE", "author_id": 65, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/65", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Honestly, I think your best bet is <strong>your local university librarian</strong>. Helping people find relevant literature is part of their job description.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3928", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/74945/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3934, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 5, "selected": false, "text": "<p>As a rule, suspensions are a private matter between the user that is suspended, the moderators, and the SE team. We don't give out information to other users, other than the brief canned message shown on the profile page of the suspended user. (And I wouldn't bother reading too much into that canned message; there are only a few and not all suspensions fit neatly into one of them.)</p>\n\n<p>In general, one avoids \"voting irregularities\" by voting for <em>posts</em>, not targeting specific <em>people</em>. That means:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Don't take any action to specifically vote in favor of yourself or any other user. (For example, the following behavior is not allowed: Paula is friends with Katherine. They don't vote much on SE but they make sure to vote up one another's posts when they see them and like them, to help out a friend.) </li>\n<li>Don't take any action to specifically vote against any user. (For example, the following behavior is not allowed: Joe is convinced that Alex downvoted his post. Joe visits Alex's profile page, looks through it until he finds a post he doesn't like, and downvotes it.)</li>\n<li>Don't take any steps to give yourself more than one vote per post, or other votes that you wouldn't normally be entitled to. (For example, the following behavior is not allowed: Pat creates a second account to post an embarrassing question that she doesn't want to have linked to her main account. Pat then visits the question from her main account and votes it up, even though normally you can't vote on your own post.) </li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Also see: <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/126829/254250\">What is serial voting and how does it affect me?</a> and <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/57685/254250\">When should sockpuppets be considered a problem?</a></p>\n\n<p>The list above is not exhaustive. If you're not sure about a particular behavior, please start a new meta post to ask about it.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3946, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The question should be posed differently:</p>\n\n<p><strong>Why did the mods kill Leon Meier</strong> or <strong>on the importance of being revengeful</strong>.</p>\n\n<p>When you take a look at Leon Meier's last comments in the days preceding his death, you find that, on the one hand, his comments were criticizing. On the other hand, some folks also bullied the user, saying one of his posts could be a rant. I guess, it was easy to provoke the user into critical comments against anyone's content - and then the mods probably did their utmost best to allow the others to take revenge on him. (Of course, this is my guess: in reality, I don't know.) Leon's comments I see may be up to the point or not, but they are not bad: it'd say they are business as usual. We see way lower levels on the other SE sites and from other users.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3933", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/85309/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3936, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>When a user is suspended, they receive a message (a \"mod message\") in their Stack Exchange inbox giving the reason for the suspension. They can then write a response to that message. If they believe that the suspension is in error (\"Did you mean to suspend the user <em>ff523</em>, not <em>ff524</em>?\") this is a quick way to clear up the misunderstanding. Note that you can't keep sending multiple responses, one after the other; you get one response per mod message, so use it wisely.</p>\n\n<p>All mod messages <em>and</em> the responses to them are copied to <em>all</em> the diamond moderators on the site. So if there's a rogue mod acting up (\"You voted to close my post? See how you like a ten year suspension!\"), other mods will see and intervene.</p>\n\n<p>Finally, if the moderator team on Academia.SE is not willing to lift your suspension that you believe is unwarranted, you can use the \"contact us\" link in the footer of every SE site to ask the SE team to look into the matter. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3942, "author": "Federico Poloni", "author_id": 958, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/958", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It is described <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/293444/243091\">at the end of this meta.se post</a>:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>How do I escalate my individual suspension/conflict with a moderator?</p>\n<p>There are, I think, three options:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><p>Reply to the moderator message directly. This both preserves privacy and notifies other moderators and a community manager. It's also the best way to show you are a reasonable/misunderstood/repentant user. Note you can only reply once, so make it count.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Use the &quot;contact us&quot; link. If you used up your reply or feel the need to elevate your concern, the contact form is a direct line to a community manager. We take complaints against moderators seriously. See also, the advice in the previous item.</p>\n</li>\n<li><p>Post a question on meta. (Not recommended.) Obviously, you can't do this during your suspension. (Though some folks come here to Meta Stack Exchange instead.) This is a master-level move that requires discipline. Be aware that most communities appreciate the hard work of their volunteer moderators so they tend to get the benefit of the doubt. You really need to go the extra mile to show yourself reasonable.</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n</blockquote>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3935", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/38012/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3940, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>As a mod, I only unilaterally delete posts if they are:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>spam or nonsense, </li>\n<li>ask a question,</li>\n<li>are Thanks!-type comments, or</li>\n<li>are blatantly rude or abusive.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Absent that, I would prefer to wait for flags and reviews, as ff524 suggests in her comment.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3941, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>As a mod, when I do not feel a post deserves to be deleted unilaterally, my preference is to leave \"not an answer\" and \"low quality post\" flags active - that is, not mark the flag as helpful nor dismiss it. The reason is that these flags put posts into the <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts\">\"Low quality posts\" review queue</a>, where other users then vote on them. (Marking the flag as helpful or dismissing the flag would <em>remove</em> the post from the review queue prematurely.)</p>\n\n<p>Once the review is completed, one of three things will happen:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>the post will have been deleted by the community from the review queue. (Or, it was deleted by the owner, or it was fixed, in response to comments from the review queue.)</li>\n<li>people have weighed in via review, indicating that most find the post worth keeping. In this case I will not delete the post, and I will mark the flag as helpful (if it was a reasonable flag).</li>\n<li>people have weighed in via review with votes to delete, but not enough to actually remove the post (e.g. it gets five votes to delete, but it needs six). In this case I might add an additional \"delete\" vote so that the post is deleted, if I feel it's warranted. I will then mark the flag as helpful (if it was a reasonable flag).</li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3943, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n <p>When should answers be deleted</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I believe that answers should not be deleted beyond the reasons given in the help page. If mods want to delete answer beyond the reasons given in the help page, we should expand the list as a community. </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>How do we want moderators to handle flags on answers that have net positive scores that seem to be poorly researched (i.e., worthy of down votes) and not obviously more than a partial answer to the actual question that have resulted in an inconclusive review?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Downvote, edit or comment. I am not a mod, but I believe that low quality posts (that does not meet the deletion criteria) with mixed reviews should be downvoted, and not deleted. If a mod or a user can see a way to improve the answer, edit it away or comment for the OP to improve. I think we should always strive to improve the answers instead of deleting.</p>\n\n<p>If the post is bad and is barely a partial answer to the question, downvotes will be sufficed to signal the OP that particular answer is not well-received by the community. While going on HNQ list may skew the amount of upvotes and downvotes, if the answer is truly low quality and the downvotes sufficiently justified, it will garner enough downvotes (I may be an optimist here). If it does not, and SE deems it important to address the HNQ upvote issue, SE should introduce a new feature as per the <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/238420/prevent-questions-on-hot-list-from-being-upvoted-by-casual-visitors-only-rep-is\">link</a> StrongBad listed in the question. Failure to garner enough downvotes for a low quality answer should not be a reason for deletion. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3939", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3956, "author": "Hexal", "author_id": 85610, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/85610", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think we need more the tag \"poor-performer\" for the type of questions (<a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/102472/what-are-my-chances-of-being-accepted-for-masters-degree-in-german-or-dutch-univ\">What are my chances of being accepted for masters degree in German or Dutch universities?</a>) you mentioned.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3957, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I think a canonical question on how academic education after bachelor’s works in Germany would be a good idea, as we get many questions where basic knowledge about this is missing.</p>\n\n<p>I don’t think there would be much to write about borderline cases, given that they are either decided by the hiring professor (and thus very individual) or the programme’s criteria, which in turn are either very clear or subject to grade conversions (and thus difficult to predict without knowledge about the specific grading system). That doesn’t mean that we cannot write anything about borderline cases (I just did after all) or that we shouldn’t use the canonical question as a duplicate for many such questions, but making borderline cases the focus (and title) doesn’t seem like a good idea to me.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3955", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3960, "author": "Federico Poloni", "author_id": 958, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/958", "pm_score": 5, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It seems like this is common. In the SE system, the questions that get the most views (and hence upvotes) are the clickbait ones: those that end up in the hot network questions list, and/or those that tend to attract strong, polarized opinions (for instance, those about sexism, just to cite a recent example). </p>\n\n<p>In other SE sites this effect is even more pronounced. In Mathoverflow, for instance, the most popular questions are superficial questions on recreational math games, or \"soft questions\" on writing papers, or \"big list of all examples of \". A genius answer on a deep, technical topic will typically get you ten votes or fewer. In Physics.se, an enlightened discussion on the fine points of quantum field theory will attract much less attention than a simple explanation on \"why does a feather fall slower than a ball\".</p>\n\n<p>I find that this is true also with academic papers: my most cited papers are not the ones I am most proud of --- and every time I speak about this fact with a colleague they tell me that it's the same for them.</p>\n\n<p>It's just life, in my view. The most popular movies or songs are not the favorite ones by critics. The politicians that get the most votes are not the most suited persons to run a country. And we could go on listing examples forever.</p>\n\n<p>I don't think there is an easy way to fix this phenomenon. The only ideas that spring to my mind are a more nuanced rating system (bad-meh-good-genius), or a \"pagerank-like\" voting system (the votes of \"experts\" on a given topic count more). Both ideas would change SE radically, though.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3971, "author": "StephenG - Help Ukraine", "author_id": 74137, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/74137", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>You are being a bit superficial when you describe your example answer. It was, IMO, more constructive and helpful than the somewhat derisory \"then fix it dear Henry\" would suggest.</p>\n\n<p>So I think you earned the points fair and square.</p>\n\n<p>And in any case, sometimes people need to get a straight and simple answer like that and the votes are, I suspect, for you being the one who phrased it best.</p>\n\n<p>Even the OP in that case accepted the answer.</p>\n\n<p>So, somewhat in the same vein as \"well fix it dear Henry\", drop the guilt trip and accept the points as a mark of respect for your common sense from the OP and your fellow users.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I think it's ridiculous this gets over 60 upvotes within a couple of days</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>One of the examples you gave of a post you seem to think got few votes but perhaps deserved more (remember that's a decision for other people to make, not you !), was made 2 days after the higher voted accepted answer. I think perhaps you have to accept that stuff falls off the radar for most people.</p>\n\n<p>That doesn't make your post less useful (and someone clearly thought they were), so I think you may need to treat this as karma that balances out - you got more points that you think you should for one answer, and less for another couple - the net effect was maybe just right.</p>\n\n<p>Personally I am constantly surprised by which answers get votes and which don't on SE generally. It's never quite what I expect and often the highest votes I get will be on answers which I regard as trivial or obvious.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3974, "author": "David Richerby", "author_id": 10685, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10685", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think your upvoted answer deserves its votes, even though it was easier to write than the others you link to.</p>\n\n<p>This kind of effect often happens on the more technical SE sites: short, easy to understand answers to beginner questions get a bunch of votes; difficult, technical answers to highly specific questions take an hour or two to write get crickets and tumbleweed, because it's not worth the effort for most people to read them.</p>\n\n<p>Broadly speaking, the two effects balance each other out. Look at your rep as a whole and think of the rep you got but \"didn't deserve\" for this question as making up for the rep you \"deserved\" but didn't get on the other questions.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3978, "author": "msouth", "author_id": 12746, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/12746", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Q: Is life fair; more specifically, does the work I do which I highly value get the same recognition as a quick one-off that happened to go viral?</p>\n\n<p>A: Nope. cf. Charles Dodgson</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3959", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7319/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3962, "author": "Grace Note", "author_id": 72, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/72", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"https://twitter.com/StackAcademia\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/wLQrl.png\" alt=\"Help this community grow -- follow us on twitter!\"></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3965, "author": "Dilaton", "author_id": 5904, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/5904", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"http://www.physicsoverflow.org/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/Pqs48.png\" alt=\"www.physicsoverflow.org\"></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3981, "author": "Martin - マーチン", "author_id": 13372, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/13372", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"http://chemistry.stackexchange.com\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/noaFv.png\" alt=\"Haikus are awesome/ Chemistry is more so/ Ask straight away!\"></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3984, "author": "kim holder", "author_id": 69922, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/69922", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"https://www.marchforscience.com/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/asloN.png\" alt=\"March for Science now has ongoing activities, but this year&#39;s march is on April 18th\"></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3988, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"https://writing.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/academic-writing\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/EjHue.png\" alt=\"Writing.SE welcomes questions about academic, scientific, and technical writing\"></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4013, "author": "Sir Cumference", "author_id": 72753, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/72753", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/1tczj.png\" alt=\"Tagline to show on mouseover\"></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4033, "author": "padawan", "author_id": 15949, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/15949", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/tTiRS.png\" alt=\"Academia.SE\"></a></p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3961", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/72/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3964, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Often times once the first person chooses a close reason everyone jumps on that reason even if it is not the best. The original version of the question was not worded in the best way and I would have been inclined to vote to close it as either unclear or depending on \"individual factors\", but I would not have called it a \"shopping question\". The edited version makes it much easier for me to see and understand what the question is.</p>\n\n<p>In summary, we often do not use the best close reason, which is obviously not as helpful as we can be.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3977, "author": "David Richerby", "author_id": 10685, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10685", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>To expand on <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3964/10685\">StrongBad's answer</a>, the original question was not a \"shopping\" question. It wasn't asking directly about what university to attend; rather, it was asking about the impact of a particular phenomenon on people studying in a particular country.</p>\n\n<p>The problems with the original question are that</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>the actual impact of boycotts is mostly a matter of opinion; people have been talking about boycotting Israeli academia for at least as long as I've been in the business and nothing much has really ever happened;</p></li>\n<li><p>the question of whether it's better to take this potential risk or wait a few years and do a PhD elsewhere is very much an individual factors thing. For some people, there might be little down-side to waiting; for others, it could be a disaster; for most, it's probably somewhere in between. </p></li>\n</ul>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3963", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/4018/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3976, "author": "David Richerby", "author_id": 10685, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10685", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Do questions become unclear if the asker rejects the answers given?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>No, they do not. If a question is posted that is reasonably interpreted to mean&nbsp;X and answers to&nbsp;X are posted, but the author insists the question means&nbsp;Y, then the only unclarity is in the author's mind. We vote on questions, not authors.</p>\n\n<p>If Y&nbsp;is also a reasonable interpretation of the question, we don't need to do anything. The author should edit their question to clarify, as long as they don't invalidate the existing answers. (Within reason; if there's just one short answer, it's probably not a big deal if that gets broken; if there are thoughtful answers that have taken time to write, they shouldn't be invalidated.)</p>\n\n<p>If Y&nbsp;isn't a particularly reasonable interpretation, then the asker should be encouraged to post a new question that clearly articulates&nbsp;Y. The existing question isn't <em>unclear</em>; it's just not the question the asker wanted. However, questions dont belong to the asker. If the \"wrong\" question is still on-topic and useful, we should keep it. The fact that it is not useful to the asker doesn't mean that it's not useful to our community as a whole.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3989, "author": "einpoklum", "author_id": 7319, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7319", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Do questions become unclear if the asker rejects the answers given?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>By definition, no; rather, they lose some false clarity. Without the rejection people have apparently mistaken the question to mean something it didn't. The question as-is may or may not be unclear.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>How much weight should authorial intent of the questioner be given in these cases?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>It means the world, and at the same time nothing at all. </p>\n\n<p>That is, a question author is entitled to an answer regarding the issue s/he is facing (to the extent they are entitled to anything). At the same time, if a question, as asked, has an answer according to some interpretation which people feel is useful, then regardless of what the original question' author wants - that question + answer combination should exist for the benefit of readers overall.</p>\n\n<p>So essentially I'm saying the question should probably be split off in some way or another.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Does the questioner wanting a different answer mean that they necessarily asked the wrong question? </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Let's say they failed to make a clear enough distinction between their own question and another pertinent question for which they got an answer. (Albeit not necessarily pertinent to them).</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3967", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/71814/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3982, "author": "Stella Biderman", "author_id": 12660, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/12660", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>My approach is generally to prod people who leave good comments into making them into answers, with sentences like \"@username, if you posted that as an answer I would definitely upvote it!\" That seems to work pretty well. If a few days later the answer still hasn't been posted, I'll post an answer of my own, using the comment as the core but also making a point of elaborating, extending, or providing evidence.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3983, "author": "Massimo Ortolano", "author_id": 20058, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/20058", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I very like Stella Biderman's approach, which is also probably the more common here. I don't like when someone copies a comment into an answer, without adding anything, just to avoid leaving a question unanswered.</p>\n\n<p>However, I'd like to add a remark. I very frequently access SE from the Android app, especially during dead times (while waiting in a line, at the – ehm – restrooms, etc.). Unfortunately, the Android app makes far easier to comment than to answer, because when commenting I can read the question's text too, which is instead removed when answering. Thus, I tend to write a lot of comments, but later I might not have the time to expand a certain comment into an answer (or I simply forget about it). Maybe it's the same for some other people too. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3980", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10941/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 3986, "author": "Massimo Ortolano", "author_id": 20058, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/20058", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I don't think that late answers are frowned upon. Where did you get this impression? Yes, it frequently happens that late answers contain spam or questions by new users instead of real answers, and these are certainly frowned upon, but a good answer to an old question won't cause any issue (it's a pity, though, that a late answer may not get the attention it deserves).</p>\n\n<p>For instance, I actually answered a couple of old questions on Cross Validated –\n without realizing they were old – and one of my answers was then accepted, even if it came some three years later than the question.</p>\n\n<p>So, no, I don't think there should be any mechanism to discourage users from answering old questions.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 3987, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<blockquote>\n <p>As far, as I understand, \"late answers\" (and, by extension, comments) are frowned on.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>No, that’s not correct.\nStack Exchange is not a forum and we do not frown about thread necromancy like most forums (which does not even make sense for most of them).\nIf the information in the existing answers is outdated, incomplete, or just wrong, you are encouraged to write a new answer.\nNot doing so would be like refraining from editing Wikipedia articles that haven’t been touched in a while.\nThere are even two badges for providing good late answering: <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/badges/17/necromancer\">Necromancer</a> and <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/badges/64/revival\">Revival</a>.</p>\n\n<p>The reason why we have a review queue for late answers is to get another check on late answer (of new users) to compensate for the decreased visibility due to the question’s age.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3985", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/46265/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4004, "author": "Nobody", "author_id": 546, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/546", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I am the one who made the comment. I'll answer your question to the best I can. I'll leave the things that I cannot answer to the mods.</p>\n<p>In our <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic\">Help center</a></p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>However, please do not ask questions about</p>\n<p>•Undergraduate admissions</p>\n<p>•Undergraduate life and culture (sports, nightlife, dorms, leaving the nest, etc.)</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>So, no, we do not handle high school problems, to the best of my knowledge.</p>\n<p>Next, <em>sh*t</em> is not allowed on our site. It's up to the user, you can either flag it or edit it out if the post is salvageable.</p>\n<p>Whether it is a troll is up to individual judgement. The Mods may have more clues to tell if it is. I already flag this to the mods.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4005, "author": "Massimo Ortolano", "author_id": 20058, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/20058", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think that the linked question is off-topic, but not because of age. </p>\n\n<p>There are certainly questions related to high-school education that remain valid also at higher levels, but this is not the case. In fact, the question states clearly that the teacher had been already removed from the school and, thus, the alleged facts are happening outside of the school environment.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4006, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think there are two issues here. The first is our definition of <em>academia</em>. From our <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic\">on-topic page</a></p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>This site is for academics of all levels—from aspiring graduate and professional students to senior researchers—as well as anyone in or interested in research-related or research-adjacent fields.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>So our working definition of academia/academics starts at graduate school research. On the teaching front, we consider undergraduate teaching on topic, but don't consider high school teaching to be on topic. While this definition may not match some dictionaries or the general public, I think it is fairly consistent among <em>experts</em>.</p>\n\n<p>As this releases to the question at hand, sexual harassment of high school students is very different than sexual harassment of undergraduate students. High school students are generally minors and sexual harassment of a minor is different than sexual harassment of an adult. The systems in place in a high school are very different than at a university. This means are our experts are not able to answer these types of questions since they are off-topic.</p>\n\n<p>The second issue is that the teacher has already been fired. While there may be some nauce of high school education, the school no longer has an affliation with the teacher and the harassment did not start until the student-teacher relationship ended. This makes it seem like it has nothing to do with academics.</p>\n\n<p>Finally, if the user is a minor and is reporting a crime, that sets off all sorts of warnings. I have alerted the SE team their procedures require them to do.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4007, "author": "Pont", "author_id": 32532, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/32532", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think StrongBad has already done a good job of explaining why the question isn't within the topic of \"academia\", as explicitly defined for this site. I'd just like to address your final assertion a little more thoroughly.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The topic within the question affects not just high school but every level of academic study.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The topic within the question affects many areas of human life <em>outside</em> academic study too. Sexual harassment can be experienced by pilots, gardeners, emacs users, TeX users, writers, and puzzle enthusiasts. There are SE sites for all these topics, but the question wouldn't be on-topic there either. Harassment questions can be on topic here <em>if</em> they're occurring within an academic environment, but topic X isn't automatically appropriate here just because \"X also occurs within academia\".</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4003", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/88048/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4009, "author": "Grace Note", "author_id": 72, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/72", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Here is a set of general questions, gathered as very common questions asked every election. As mentioned in the instructions, the first two questions are guaranteed to show up in the Q&amp;A, while the others are if there aren't enough questions (or, if you like one enough, you may split it off as a separate answer for review within the community's 8). </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments? </li>\n<li>How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?</li>\n</ul>\n\n<hr>\n\n<ul>\n<li>In your opinion, what do moderators do? </li>\n<li>A diamond will be attached to everything you say and have said in the past, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you will do will be seen under a different light. How do you feel about that? </li>\n<li>In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep? </li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4014, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>What question or answer of yours on meta best exemplifies your philosophy on moderation? Why do you feel this is the best example?</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4015, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>As a moderator, I find that comments are a tricky thing to deal with. Under what circumstances will you delete comments?</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4017, "author": "Azor Ahai -him-", "author_id": 37441, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/37441", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>What is your field? </p>\n\n<p>I think it's important to have moderators that aren't just mathematicians or experimental scientists (for example)</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4018, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>What activities on the site suggest that you would be a good moderator? How have you used the moderation tools available to you at your current reputation level?</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4021, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>A user posts something you consider off-topic/not-an-answer/offensive and you close/delete/migrate the post. The user takes the issue to Meta and the question as well as answers supporting and opposing your decision get a lot of upvotes. How do you decide what to do next?</p>\n\n<p><em>This is essentially <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/946/7734\">this question</a> from the last election.</em></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4028, "author": "Tommi", "author_id": 13017, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/13017", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The site has a large number of answers, and partial answers, in comments. As a moderator, what is your stance towards these?</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4008", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/72/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4011, "author": "Ben", "author_id": 87026, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/87026", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Thanks to <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/37441/azor-ahai\">Azor-Ahai</a> for making this meta-post. As the poster of the original criticism of the question, here is my two-cents on possible amendments/retraction:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>In my view, it would be dishonest to alter or remove the initial claim in the post, or substitute it with another alleged incident of rape. The very fact that a false rape claim was used as the example is informative of the subject under discussion. (In particular, it undercuts the OP's claim of a \"pervasive rape culture\" and raises the issue of false rape claims.) Given that the question asks what can be done about fraternities, it is relevant that the example raised to justify the discussion is an example where the fraternity was falsely accused.</p></li>\n<li><p>Replacing the incident in the post with another incident would be a classic example of cherry-picking and swapping-out of evidence. It would be highly intellectually dishonest. The question is predicated on the assumption that a rape accusation was correct, when it has subsequently been shown to be false. The OP cites this case as an instance of \"entrenched rape culture\", which is itself a highly controversial notion. By substituting the false rape claim for a true (or possibly true) rape claim, that would mean that the OP is able to put forward evidence, have it rebutted, and then change the evidence to ignore the original evidence.</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>So what <em>should</em> be done</strong>. In my view, the question should be edited with an <strong>update</strong> at the end, correcting the record. The initial claim could be edited with <s>strikethrough</s> so that the initial claim is visible, but the reader is alerted to the fact that it is now being retracted.</p></li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4012, "author": "Tommi", "author_id": 13017, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/13017", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>The question, as is, asks the question: Given that a horrible gang rape happened in a fraternity event, what can and should the university do?</p>\n\n<p>This question is reasonably independent of the actual university in question. Furthermore, even if no such events had happened, the similar hypothetical question would have the same answers, and would still be on topic.</p>\n\n<p>The question is not part of an argument, and is not intended to be evidence for anything, and as such editing it to point to actual examples, with maybe a note at the end about the original question, is in my opinion unproblematic.</p>\n\n<p>The current situation, where the question claims that there a happened a rape at a particular fraternity where such an event did not happen, is very bad: it makes a serious false accusation. At we should edit in a note saying that that the claim about the rape is false.</p>\n\n<p>In fact, I went ahead and edited the question to include a note about the retraction and similar events. A false accusation should not stand uncorrected.</p>\n\n<h1>Academia.SE is not an advocacy group</h1>\n\n<p>This section mostly addresses a misconception by the user Ben. Academia.se is not a discussion group or an advocacy group. It is a site for asking concrete questions about academic life, and for providing answers to such questions. This is not a blog or a discussion forum.</p>\n\n<p>The reason why this particular question contained misinformation for such a long time is because nobody who knew about the misinformation happened to read it and bothered doing anything to address the matter. It was a good thing for Ben to let the users know about the issue.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4016, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I am at a little bit of a loss about what the question is about and how the originally cited incident and the other similar incidents relate. At the heart of the question, I think, is <em>what can universities do to fraternities that do bad/awful things</em>. But maybe the question is really about when the awful thing is rape. Then there is the part about a very minimal punishment (at least according to the OP). Did the other <em>similar</em> incidents also result in similar punishments? Does it matter?</p>\n\n<p>Part of me thinks the question could avoid rape all together and essentially be be reduced to</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Supposing for the sake of argument that they were willing to completely disassociate themselves from one frat, or from the frat system as a whole, would it do any good? I assume that the frats own their houses, and the schools can't actually shut them down.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>but this would invalidate the answers which focus on the rape aspect.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4010", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/37441/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4020, "author": "Massimo Ortolano", "author_id": 20058, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/20058", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I don't think you should delete your answer. Even though it doesn't address the OP's situation exactly, it's a good answer that can be useful to others experiencing a similar situation within their institution. The disclaimer you added should be enough to warn the reader.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4029, "author": "supercat", "author_id": 21086, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/21086", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The purpose of Stack Exchange is not merely to provide immediate answers to people with immediate questions, but also to allow people who have similar questions in future to benefit from the answers that have already been written. If the Question is one that would likely be found by people seeking the answer for the question you answered, your answer would be of benefit to those people whether or not it is of benefit to the person who asked the original. If the Question has changed so that it would no longer be found by such people, it may be worthwhile to post the question which you had answered as a new Question, copy your answer to that, and remove it from the original where it no longer applies. Moderators may have tools to migrate answers without having to delete and re-post, but I don't know how that would be done.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4019", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/46184/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4030, "author": "padawan", "author_id": 15949, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/15949", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p><strong>Padawan's answers</strong></p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>Question 1</strong></p>\n<p>What activities on the site suggest that you would be a good\nmoderator? How have you used the moderation tools available to you at\nyour current reputation level?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>My comments on the ways to improve a question is usually received well. I have 203 comments, and a big portion of them is for other users' posts. Either for the purpose of improving the question or clarifying the answer. I am trying to edit and reopen as many questions as I can. Also, I am trying to omit unrelated details in long questions to make them more readible. I never hesitate to flag a discouraging comment, regardless to the total votes of the post.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>Question 2</strong></p>\n<p>How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of\nvaluable answers, but tends to generate a large number of\narguments/flags from comments?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>&quot;Valuable&quot; here is subjective. I cannot judge the value of an answer. I can only decide if it goes against some community rules, or not. Therefore, I would carefully examine every flag and comment, whether they are legit or not. If the user indeed posted an answer that is strictly agains community rules, then there is no option but banning the user.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>Question 3</strong></p>\n<p>How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc\na question that you feel shouldn't have been?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>If I feel that question does not deserve to be deleted, I first edit the question, and reopen. If it is deleted once more based on the flags, I then have no option to leave it closed.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>Question 4</strong></p>\n<p>As a moderator, I find that comments are a tricky thing to deal with.\nUnder what circumstances will you delete comments?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Other than the clearly stated rules, these are the conditions for me to delete a comment is as follows.<br />\na) The comment is just posted for upvotes, containing a pun or a joke that is slightly related to the question.<br />\nb) The comment is taking the micro-discussion to a totally different topic.<br />\nc) The user is ranting about the post because of some previous venom.<br />\nd) The user is discriminating another user because of their ethnicity/status/policital view.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>Question 5</strong></p>\n<p>A user posts something you consider off-topic/not-an-answer/offensive\nand you close/delete/migrate the post. The user takes the issue to\nMeta and the question as well as answers supporting and opposing your\ndecision get a lot of upvotes. How do you decide what to do next?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>As far as I have observed, the votes in Academia.SE are pretty reasonable. However, in some rare cases, people go with their own ideas instead of being objective about the matter. In these cases, I would first state the reason why I decided to delete the particular post, and ask for a clear contradiction in the rules. If one states a clear contradiction, also approved by majority, I would discuss undeleting the post with other moderators. Unless it is an argument like &quot;this is a major nowadays&quot; or &quot;if this happened to you,&quot; I would undelete the post.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>Question 6</strong></p>\n<p>What question or answer of yours on meta best exemplifies your\nphilosophy on moderation? Why do you feel this is the best example?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3899/what-is-unclear-about-my-question/3900#3900\">This</a> is the one. Yes, this post of mine has -5 votes. However, I lay out my justifications to close a question clearly, one by one. Also, you can see that I am not judging a question by the OP, and I am eveluating the question by its last state because <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/100104/in-how-much-detail-should-one-describe-their-past-and-projected-future-work-for\">I have not voted for closing the question</a> again.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>Question 7</strong></p>\n<p>What is your field of study in academics?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Computer science and mathematics. Specifically, computational geometry.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>Question 8</strong></p>\n<p>In your opinion, what do moderators do?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Moderators make this site a better, more readible and joust-free environment. They act to resolve the issues which do not add any value to the content of this site. Usually, there is an obvious solution according to most of the users.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>Question 9</strong></p>\n<p>A diamond will be attached to everything you say and have said in the\npast, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you will\ndo will be seen under a different light. How do you feel about that?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>That is a big privilege for me. However, the things I write, or comment to hall not carry more weight than any other user. I humbly accept that I have a great responsibility, but I do not consider myself as a &quot;god&quot; like <a href=\"http://matrix.wikia.com/wiki/The_Trainman\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">The Trainman</a> in Matrix Revolutions.</p>\n<p><strong>As a side note</strong> I would suggest adding the options &quot;Technical question about Google Scholar&quot; and &quot;This is a rant rather than a question&quot; for the reasons of closing a question, as those are two of most common closing reasons.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4031, "author": "Fomite", "author_id": 118, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/118", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p><strong>Fomite's Answers</strong></p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><strong>What activities on the site suggest that you would be a good moderator?</strong></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>There are three main activities I try to engage in as a regular user of the site that I think translate well to being a good moderator:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>When possible, I try add comments that might encourage a question/answer to be more fleshed out. I think one of the first goals of moderation should be to render a question/answer suitable to the site before approaching the idea of removing it.</li>\n<li>I try to make room for the idea that there are alternate opinions, different field-specific norms, etc. I think balancing \"Academia is not homogenous\" with the population of the site and the desire for general questions is one of the inherent challenges of Academia.SE</li>\n<li>I make time to go through the review queues when visiting the site. Though I confess the new GUI indicator for this threw me for a loop for awhile.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><strong>How have you used the moderation tools available to you at your current reputation level?</strong></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I've earned a number of \"moderation-esq\" badges, and use the review tools to try contribute to the overall moderation workload as much as possible. Additionally, I try to use the flagging system fairly actively so the moderation team doesn't necessarily need to be combing through everything, and have what I'd like to think is a decent \"Helpful\" rate of 86%.</p>\n\n<p>Beyond that, as mentioned in the answer above, I do my best to try and help users - especially new users - craft an answer that's suitable to the site, even if it takes a few iterations.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><strong>How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of\n arguments/flags from comments?</strong></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I think the first order of business with a user like that is to try to engage with them to figure out where those flags are coming from. Is there a particularly hot button issue that provokes those reactions, or is it a more widespread problem?</p>\n\n<p>That might help craft a solution - either the user just knowing this about themselves, perhaps engaging in a little self-moderation, etc.</p>\n\n<p>Past that, I think one needs to figure out if this is merely creating more work for the moderators, or actively driving down the environment of the site. It's possible that heated discussions might not result in hurt feelings, users leaving the site, or otherwise productive comment chains being dragged down. On the other hand, it's entirely possible that, even if they are valuable contributors to the site, that their \"style\" is sufficiently detrimental to Academia.Se that some sort of more formal sanction needs to be considered.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><strong>How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?</strong></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I think there's a difference between \"I wouldn't have done that\" and \"This is a hill I'm willing to die on\" in terms of disagreeing with another mod. Generally, I've found the moderation team on Academia.SE to be excellent, so if anything for most disagreements I might try to gauge why they thought it should be closed/deleted/etc. to understand their reasoning, learn from their experience, etc.</p>\n\n<p>For things where there's a genuine disagreement and I think the closing/deleting was a <em>mistake</em> rather than merely something I wouldn't have done, I think engaging with the other mod to understand why, and then helping the user of the question change things to address their issues is how I would approach it. But when it comes down to it, I think that a moderator - who is by definition a very committed member of the site - deciding something should be closed is a pretty reliable proxy for there being at least a reasonable argument that it should be.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><strong>As a moderator, I find that comments are a tricky thing to deal with. Under what circumstances will you delete comments?</strong></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I think the most important considerations for comments is that SE answers are supposed to be useful beyond solving the OP's original problem. I think comments that address things that have sense been resolved by edits, etc. are prime candidates to be cleaned up, because their context is now missing.</p>\n\n<p>I also think rude and abusive comments fall under the category of not adding much - I think they're more likely to drag a conversation down than they are to improve the content of a question or answer. I'll admit, looking at what I've flagged vs. what's been accepted in that camp that I might have a wider definition than some of our current moderators.</p>\n\n<p>On the other hand, I don't think moderately long comment chains, as long as their being productive, need to be removed.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>A user posts something you consider off-topic/not-an-answer/offensive\n and you close/delete/migrate the post. The user takes the issue to\n Meta and the question as well as answers supporting and opposing your\n decision get a lot of upvotes. How do you decide what to do next?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Try to take the answers opposing my decision to heart, reflect on them, and improve my moderation in the future.</p>\n\n<p>For things that are genuinely split, I tend to err on the side of pruning over not pruning, especially for the latter category. A lot of votes on either side (for Meta definitions of a lot of votes) suggests that while this needs to be reflected on more, there's no inherent call to change my original decision.</p>\n\n<p>On the other hand, if one of the opposing answers genuinely makes me rethink my logic (this has happened to me more than once), I'm perfectly happy to do what I can to reverse the decision, and avoid it coming up again.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>What question or answer of yours on meta best exemplifies your\n philosophy on moderation? Why do you feel this is the best example?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This is, for the record, a very good question.</p>\n\n<p>I'm particularly proud of this question: <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1093/time-to-expressly-ban-i-want-to-do-x-heres-my-life-story-questions\">Time to Expressly Ban &quot;I want to do X, Here&#39;s My Life Story...&quot; questions?</a> which did start us down the road to a custom close reason.</p>\n\n<p>I think this is my best example because I found myself at least growing somewhat impatient with the volume of \"Lets talk about my specific edge case\" questions that weren't answerable without being on the admissions committee of University X, and editor at Journal Y, etc.</p>\n\n<p>Declaring those unanswerable and genuinely out of scope was, I think, a good thing. I also don't think it had the downstream consequences of closing some otherwise worthwhile question that people were worried about.</p>\n\n<p>We still get some of these questions, usually answerable with a comment \"Have you asked your advisor?\", but I think it helped the signal-to-noise ratio of the site.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>What is your field of study in academics?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I'm a computational epidemiologist. I make virtual people sick for a living.</p>\n\n<p>Importantly, this also means I have a fair amount of exposure to both computational science and biomedical science. I think having diversity of fields in both users and moderators is useful because there are often answers on this site that are <em>very</em> field specific (see: anything involving LaTeX or arXiv).</p>\n\n<p>Having a broad range of voices is, in my mind, a good thing.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>In your opinion, what do moderators do?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Moderators gonna moderate.</p>\n\n<p>There are, naturally, the administrative aspects of moderation. The \"Super-Close\", being able to migrate questions, etc. - but as noted, users above a certain reputation have many of those same tools. I think there's also an aspect of moderation that comes in the form of trying to be a guiding/calming influence on improving questions and answers, modeling behavior, etc. And in that aspect, I think the difference between a moderator and a user is one of obligation - it's non-optional for a mod.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>A diamond will be attached to everything you say and have said in the\n past, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you will\n do will be seen under a different light. How do you feel about that?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>While I post under a pseudonym, that pseudonym is pretty weak, and I try not to say anything I wouldn't be comfortable saying with my name attached to it. The same is true of the moderator diamond.</p>\n\n<p>Somewhat related to this, from IIRC the CrossValidated election questions awhile ago, is the idea that a diamond might make one's behavior change. While I expect that, if elected, the volume of my moderating-type tasks will increase, I already treat things like voting to close a question as if they're the final say.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4034, "author": "Massimo Ortolano", "author_id": 20058, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/20058", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n <ol>\n <li>What activities on the site suggest that you would be a good moderator? How have you used the moderation tools available to you at your current reputation level?</li>\n </ol>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I've tried to participate to the life of this site by highlighting unclear points in questions, by suggesting duplicates, by proposing to close off-topic questions or reopen possibly on-topic ones, and by protecting questions when necessary. I'm an active participant of our Meta, and I can be found in the Ivory Tower chat for informal discussions. </p>\n\n<p>I vote a lot because I think that voting is an important aspect of the Stack Exchange communities. And even though it is a kind of Lepreuchan money, which disappears in real life, it helps encouraging writing good questions and answers, and it can be attracting to new users. </p>\n\n<p>I admit that I don't use too much the review queues because I frequently access this site from my mobile phone. Thus, most of my moderation activity (close/reopen/delete votes) is done from the front page. I'm aware that if I would be elected, I'll quite probably have to change this aspect of my participation.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <ol start=\"2\">\n <li>How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?</li>\n </ol>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I wouldn't deal alone: I'm convinced that problematic cases like this one should be discussed among all the moderators. I'd first propose to have a private chat with the user to convince them to avoid this kind of disruptive behaviour. I'd consider suspension as a last resort.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <ol start=\"3\">\n <li>How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?</li>\n </ol>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I think that for borderline cases we should leave the decision to the community. Therefore, I wouldn't reopen or undelete the question unilaterally, but I'd propose to the other moderator to agree on publishing a meta question to see what the community thinks about the closure/deletion/etc.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <ol start=\"4\">\n <li>As a moderator, I find that comments are a tricky thing to deal with. Under what circumstances will you delete comments?</li>\n </ol>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Comments are really a tricky point for at least two reasons. First, there is a clear discrepancy between the intended usage of comments from the Stack Exchange staff and the intended usage from many users. Second, it appears that moderators have limited tools to deal with comments. For instance, at present, comments can be moved to chat only once (there are suggestions to improve these tools, but we don't know if and when they will be implemented).</p>\n\n<p>In principle, I think that comments should be deleted only when they are rude or offensive, or when they become obsolete. A long list of comments can be moved to chat, but I'd avoid deletion. However, for answers, I think that comments that point out significant technical, regulatory or legal flaws should stay attached to the answers and not moved to chat or deleted. Of course, this principles might not be fully applicable because of the limitations of the moderation tools.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <ol start=\"5\">\n <li>A user posts something you consider off-topic/not-an-answer/offensive and you close/delete/migrate the post. The user takes the issue to Meta and the question as well as answers supporting and opposing your decision get a lot of upvotes. How do you decide what to do next?</li>\n </ol>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I'd reopen or undelete the post, and then I'd open on Meta a broader discussion to see up to which point we can really extend the borders of on-topicness around that example, to achieve a wider agreement.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <ol start=\"6\">\n <li>What question or answer of yours on meta best exemplifies your philosophy on moderation? Why do you feel this is the best example?</li>\n </ol>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This one:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2027/20058\">https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2027/20058</a></p>\n\n<p>Even though at first glance it might not seem directly related to moderation, I choose this answer because I think it exemplifies well my understanding of people's way of voting, and the way in which complains about up or downvotes should be handled.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <ol start=\"7\">\n <li>What is your field of study in academics?</li>\n </ol>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I'm a metrologists, and metrology is likely the most underrepresented field in any kind of community, especially that of grammar-checkers. Along my life, I've actually worked in several different subfields of metrology: first that of fundamental constants, then that of time and frequency metrology and now that of electrical metrology, mostly resistance and impedance metrology.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <ol start=\"8\">\n <li>In your opinion, what do moderators do?</li>\n </ol>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I think that they do two essential activities. They clean up the mess and they actively gauge the community about critical topics, to better guide the direction of the site.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <ol start=\"9\">\n <li>A diamond will be attached to everything you say and have said in the past, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you will do will be seen under a different light. How do you feel about that?</li>\n </ol>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Certainly, a bit ashamed of a few things I had written, but conscious that I'm working to avoid making such mistakes again.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4036, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<h3>Wrzlrpmft’s answers</h3>\n\n<blockquote>\n <ol>\n <li>What activities on the site suggest that you would be a good moderator? How have you used the moderation tools available to you at your current reputation level?</li>\n </ol>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I performed a lot of community moderation such as reviewing, raising flags, and editing.\nDuring this, I always aspired to do more than what is necessary, but salvaged posts that would likely have been closed otherwise, left comments that helped users understand and address problems, or identified problematic patterns, e.g., vote abuse.\nMoreover, I contributed to addressing issues with site on Meta by adjusting our scope, providing guidance for new users, and similar.\nBeing a moderator on two other sites, I am familiar with the tools and capabilities, and I know what to expect from the job.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <ol start=\"2\">\n <li>How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?</li>\n </ol>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The contributions of a single member cannot be so valuable that they justify tolerating a disruptive behaviour.\nThus, I will start with a moderator message (without suspension) explaining why their behaviour is problematic.\nShould this not work, I will resort to more drastic actions such as suspension.\nDuring all of this, I will take into account what the exact problem is: It’s a considerable difference if somebody is rude or just likes to discuss a lot.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <ol start=\"3\">\n <li>How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?</li>\n </ol>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I’ll talk to the moderator to find out where exactly we disagree, if at all.\nShould this not resolve the situation, I will consult a third moderator or the community on meta, depending on the situation.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <ol start=\"4\">\n <li>As a moderator, I find that comments are a tricky thing to deal with. Under what circumstances will you delete comments?</li>\n </ol>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I will not hesitate to delete comments that are rude or have become obsolete due to edits, answers, or similar.\nI will also generously move comment discussions to chat that have digressed from the actual post, since this does not destroy any content but keeps the main site focussed.\nAs for the more tricky cases like answers posted as comments and single chatty comments, I will decide on a per-case basis, but usually act only upon flags as they indicate that some other user sees a problem (barring the occasional flag abuse).</p>\n\n<p>Should I feel that general deviations from this policy are necessary, e.g., due to an epidemic of answers in comments, I will bring the issue to Meta.\nI also may use my authority for general reminders on hot network questions (e.g., “please do not post answers in comments, they will be deleted without warning”) and act accordingly.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <ol start=\"5\">\n <li>A user posts something you consider off-topic/not-an-answer/offensive and you close/delete/migrate the post. The user takes the issue to Meta and the question as well as answers supporting and opposing your decision get a lot of upvotes. How do you decide what to do next?</li>\n </ol>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>If the Meta discussion yielded a clear consensus for undoing my action and convinced me of it, I will act accordingly.\nOtherwise, I will leave the decision to another moderator, as I cannot avoid being biased.\nShould this not be possible (e.g., if time is of the essence) or when being the other moderator in such a situation, I would consider the arguments and votes on Meta, whether the decision can actually be undone without causing additional problems, and potential third ways.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <ol start=\"6\">\n <li>What question or answer of yours on meta best exemplifies your philosophy on moderation? Why do you feel this is the best example?</li>\n </ol>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3318\">Obviously insincere posts – how should users/reviewers react?</a>.</p>\n\n<p>When I posted this, Academia was being haunted by malicious posts by tenacious trolls as described in the question.\nSince this was a new problem for Academia, many users were unaware of the general issue and did not know how to delete such posts efficiently without a moderator.\nTherefore these posts caused some bad blood (and thus success for the troll) before moderators would even see them.\nI am quite confident that my post helped to break this vicious cycle.</p>\n\n<p>I chose this post for several reasons:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>I took a quick and effective initiative when needed.</li>\n<li>It employs and encourages community moderation.</li>\n<li>It reflects parts of my general approach to problem users: Avoid public dispute, in particular if this what they appear to be seeking, and use existing mechanisms to get rid of problematic content.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<blockquote>\n <ol start=\"7\">\n <li>What is your field of study in academics?</li>\n </ol>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I am a physicist by education, but due to the interdisciplinarity of my research, I have ventured into mathematics, medicine, neuroscience, biology, and computer science.\nI am aware that <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1212/7734\">academia varies more than I think it does</a>.\nThus I will be very careful before making moderation decisions based on what I believe to know about academia’s workings – but then I do not expect this to happen very often.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <ol start=\"8\">\n <li>In your opinion, what do moderators do?</li>\n </ol>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Moderators mainly handle issues that cannot be handled by community moderation due to privacy, extremeness, or time pressure.\nThey also act as a liaison between the community and Stack Exchange.\nFinally, they can steer community discussions, which happens mostly through the authority of the mandate and the <a href=\"/questions/tagged/featured\" class=\"post-tag moderator-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;featured&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">featured</a> tag.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <ol start=\"9\">\n <li>A diamond will be attached to everything you say and have said in the past, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you will do will be seen under a different light. How do you feel about that?</li>\n </ol>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I am fine with that. Should I be elected, I do not intend to change how I speak except that I sometimes will speak explicitly as a moderator. The only possible exception for this is that I have a knack for asking questions where my intentions are misinterpreted and will try even more to avoid this.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4025", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/72/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4044, "author": "Massimo Ortolano", "author_id": 20058, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/20058", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think that your answer is not bad but a bit naive, as coming from someone who hasn't really seen how much time and energy a crackpot is able to drain if one tries to be understanding. During the newsgroup era there were crackpots who went on for years with the same arguments. But I also think that your answer doesn't deserve so many downvotes, and there's no need to delete it.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4048, "author": "Discrete lizard", "author_id": 72231, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/72231", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I think the main reason your answer is rather massively downvoted is that in addition to the naïveté you're a bit too positive about people academics call 'cranks' and also that your first phrase sounds like an accusation and immediately triggers an emotional response (retracting the accusation doesn't retract the emotions I'm afraid).</p>\n\n<p>So it's mostly the severe cultural mismatch (with academic culture) and lack of neutral tone in the answer that gives the downvotes, I presume. I can edit the post to be more neutral and more 'culturally fitting' if you'd ask. (I propose this here instead of editing myself, as this would be (at least likely perceived by reviewers as) conflicting with 'original intent') </p>\n\n<p>Although actually, that likely won't remove the downvotes. You could consider deleting your answer and starting over with a new one, rewriting it from scratch with what you learned here and take care to be neutral on this slightly sensitive issue where your view can be easily seen to be controversial. If you do that, I don't think you'll reach as much downvotes again.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4069, "author": "aparente001", "author_id": 32436, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/32436", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Since your reputation balance is not very high yet, if I were in your shoes, I would delete it. That's what I personally would do. However, if you want to leave it up, that would be fine too. If your reputation goes too low you lose certain basic functionalities and that would not be fun.</p>\n\n<p>I disapprove of massive downvoting (except perhaps in Meta). So, for me, another reason to delete would be to stop massive downvoting in its tracks. To me, massive downvoting is like chicken pecking. Once the chickens have smelled a drop of blood, they all have to descend on the poor chicken with the drop of blood, and have at him themselves. I'm not happy when I see Academia SE participants behaving in such an uncivilized way.</p>\n\n<p>Now, in general terms, if you've written an answer that you think is going to be helpful for someone, then you might want to leave it up despite the damage it's doing to your numerical rep (and your street cred reputation).</p>\n\n<p><em>Some small suggestions to facilitate more successful communication here: use a spell checker. Work on your English, outside Academia SE. Until your English is more reliably understandable and less annoying to read, try to stick to simple sentences. (Think Hemingway.)</em></p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4041", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/83888/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4044, "author": "Massimo Ortolano", "author_id": 20058, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/20058", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think that your answer is not bad but a bit naive, as coming from someone who hasn't really seen how much time and energy a crackpot is able to drain if one tries to be understanding. During the newsgroup era there were crackpots who went on for years with the same arguments. But I also think that your answer doesn't deserve so many downvotes, and there's no need to delete it.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4048, "author": "Discrete lizard", "author_id": 72231, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/72231", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I think the main reason your answer is rather massively downvoted is that in addition to the naïveté you're a bit too positive about people academics call 'cranks' and also that your first phrase sounds like an accusation and immediately triggers an emotional response (retracting the accusation doesn't retract the emotions I'm afraid).</p>\n\n<p>So it's mostly the severe cultural mismatch (with academic culture) and lack of neutral tone in the answer that gives the downvotes, I presume. I can edit the post to be more neutral and more 'culturally fitting' if you'd ask. (I propose this here instead of editing myself, as this would be (at least likely perceived by reviewers as) conflicting with 'original intent') </p>\n\n<p>Although actually, that likely won't remove the downvotes. You could consider deleting your answer and starting over with a new one, rewriting it from scratch with what you learned here and take care to be neutral on this slightly sensitive issue where your view can be easily seen to be controversial. If you do that, I don't think you'll reach as much downvotes again.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4069, "author": "aparente001", "author_id": 32436, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/32436", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Since your reputation balance is not very high yet, if I were in your shoes, I would delete it. That's what I personally would do. However, if you want to leave it up, that would be fine too. If your reputation goes too low you lose certain basic functionalities and that would not be fun.</p>\n\n<p>I disapprove of massive downvoting (except perhaps in Meta). So, for me, another reason to delete would be to stop massive downvoting in its tracks. To me, massive downvoting is like chicken pecking. Once the chickens have smelled a drop of blood, they all have to descend on the poor chicken with the drop of blood, and have at him themselves. I'm not happy when I see Academia SE participants behaving in such an uncivilized way.</p>\n\n<p>Now, in general terms, if you've written an answer that you think is going to be helpful for someone, then you might want to leave it up despite the damage it's doing to your numerical rep (and your street cred reputation).</p>\n\n<p><em>Some small suggestions to facilitate more successful communication here: use a spell checker. Work on your English, outside Academia SE. Until your English is more reliably understandable and less annoying to read, try to stick to simple sentences. (Think Hemingway.)</em></p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4045", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/38446/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4050, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<h3>Short Version</h3>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Re-tag those questions that are clearly not about ethics.</li>\n<li>Ask the asker whether it is really ethics they wish to ask about.</li>\n<li>Ethics needs not be “heavy” ethics.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<h3>Long Version</h3>\n\n<p>Going by the examples provided, I see three kind of problematic questions:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Questions that are just mistagged and do not mention ethics in the question body at all, like: <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/104867/7734\">Is it considered rude to address a PhD holder as sir or miss?</a> \nWe should just retag these and move on. It is the nature of this site that many questions are poorly tagged (also see <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1679/7734\">this</a>).\nI have subscribed to <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/research\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;research&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">research</a> for some time just to remove it from questions that have nothing to do with research as per the tag’s definition at all – which is about half of the questions tagged with it.\nYou could do the same with <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/ethics\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;ethics&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">ethics</a>.</p>\n\n<p>(Sidenote on this question: With etiquette, the line is quite clear to draw in my opinion: Etiquette is a codex, whose rules are mostly orthogonal to ethics. Either somebody asks what the etiquette is or what the ethics are. There may be questions about whether it is ethical to follow etiquette, but apart from that a question is either about one thing or the other. We should however not forget that some cultures hold etiquette to such a high value that it may be difficult for their members to distinguish between etiquette and ethics.)</p></li>\n<li><p>Questions that explicitly asks for the ethics of a situation, even though it seems likely that this is not what the asker actually cares about or at least this is not what we would care about in this situation. (This is a variation of the <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/66377/255554\">XY problem</a>.) For example: <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/104740/7734\">Is it okay to critique my already published paper?</a> Here we should ask the asker as soon as possible whether they really want to ask about the ethics of the situation, and if yes, why they even consider that something may be unethical or ethically compulsory.</p>\n\n<p>Now, if the asker confirms their interest in the ethics, I don’t consider this a big problem: The question and answers may not be as interesting, but the asker (or somebody else) can always ask a different question about other aspects.\nThere may be a slight problem with questions where the asker gives us no clue as to why they have ethical concerns and we can answer nothing but: “I see no ethical issues.” or similar.\nI think we can close such questions as <em>unclear</em> on a per-case basis.</p></li>\n<li><p>Questions which are not about “heavy ethics”, such as: <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/105557/7734\">Contacting EiC on social media</a>.\nIn this example, the asker specifies an ethical concern (taking unfair advantage by exploiting their personal connection to the EIC).\nIn this case, <em>ethics</em> in the common meaning of the term certainly applies.\nOne might debate whether <em>ethics</em> in the sense of the tag description applies, i.e., whether we would consider this part of the common academic ethical policy.</p>\n\n<p>However, the latter is unwritten and at least I wouldn’t know where to draw the line between “heavy” and “light” ethics and whether there is anything to be gained from it.\nI certainly wouldn’t consider questions on “light” ethics off-topic.\nIn this respect, I would at most edit the tag description a bit (and particularly make the tag wiki a proper tag wiki instead of a Wikipedia copy).</p></li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4054, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I suspect some number of “ethics” questions are really “etiquette” questions.</p>\n\n<p>But the big thing to remember here is that tags aren’t static. Users with sufficient reputation can edit tags if they think something is amiss.</p>\n\n<p>So if something isn’t addressing ethics, feel free to adjust the tags appropriately.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4058, "author": "henning", "author_id": 31917, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/31917", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Many questions asking about the ethics of some course of action are really asking whether the action is <em>appropriate</em> in a certain social, cultural, or professional academic context. </p>\n\n<p>As <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4054/31917\">aeismail</a> says, <code>ethics</code> tags that are used in this overly loose fashion can and should be removed. But I would also advocate for liberally editing out the terms \"ethics\" or \"ethical\" and replacing them by \"appropriate\", \"tasteful\", \"polite\", etc. as applicable, especially in question titles. This is to avoid confusion about a question's actual substance, and to avoid dilution of the term \"ethical\".</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4049", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/118/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4052, "author": "SK19", "author_id": 83888, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/83888", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>My personal opinion: I'm... baffled that something like this exists. I mean, given human nature it was sure to happen eventually, but still... Wouldn't such a site only serve to strengthen superstitious believes of people? Isn't this necessarily a bad thing? I mean, I'm not saying such people should not allowed to express their opinions on the Internet, but for that purpose using Stack Exchange, a site that, forgive my enthusiasm, strengthens scientific and expertise knowledge around the world, seems just... wrong... to me.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4053, "author": "Discrete lizard", "author_id": 72231, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/72231", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>First of all, I'm <em>not</em> sure this question is really appropriate, but that's just my opinion. I do think there's no reason to be vehemently against such a proposal without seeing how it'll turn out.</p>\n\n<p>In my opinion, 'paranormality' is actually a sort of 'parareligion'. Since we have serious sites that manage to seriously and objectively discuss Christianity, Buddhism, Islam or theological matters, I don't see what prevents serious and objective discussion of 'paranormality'. </p>\n\n<p>Anyway, this site is still in the definition phase. Many sites don't even get beyond that phase. Only a minor fraction of all proposals reach the beta stage. So I wouldn't worry. Just sit and wait. You might consider mentioning in chat when (if!) it reaches public beta.</p>\n\n<p>Also, I do think there is a <em>tiny</em> overlap between academia and 'paranormality': 'Cranks'. Questions about cranks and how to deal with them (for some academic) are very much on topic here. Paranormality appears to be a 'field' with more cranks than non-cranks, so I think 'dealing with crank questions' might appear on that site (although most likely from the cranks perspective). Still, experts from Academia.SE could share their expertise their. The serious, scientific investigation of 'paranormality' (Yes, it exists!) might overlap a bit, but I think that leans a bit too much towards 'questions inside a field' than questions about academia itself.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4051", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/83888/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4057, "author": "Massimo Ortolano", "author_id": 20058, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/20058", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p><em>Non c'è due senza tre</em> (poor man's translation: from two follows three): An Italian saying that welcomes your well-deserved third moderator appointment Wrzlprmft! Congratulations and keep up the good work! </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4060, "author": "Fomite", "author_id": 118, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/118", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Congrats Wrzlprmft. It’s well deserved and I think Academia is in excellent hands.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4068, "author": "padawan", "author_id": 15949, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/15949", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Congratulations! I wish you a good moderatorship.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4101, "author": "Krunal", "author_id": 90883, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/90883", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Congrats Wrzlprmft.</p>\n\n<p>Welcome to Academia cleanup zone. Academians are waiting for....</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/5X4um.jpg\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/5X4um.jpg\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></a></p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4056", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7682/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4061, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>There are 5 questions in your question. Each of which could probably stand on its own and receive an in depth answer. It is hard to see the single thread that runs between the questions and without that it is unclear how to write a single comprehensive answer that answers your unstated question.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4070, "author": "cag51", "author_id": 79875, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/79875", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I noticed this question as well. To me it seemed a bit, well, broad -- question #3 is basically \"how do I network\", and the other questions broaden the scope still further. Your first two paragraphs explain why you ask the question, but don't make your question any more specific.</p>\n\n<p>In my view, <em>all</em> researchers struggle with the question of how best to network -- that's part of the game, and SE is for Q&amp;A, not comprehensive tutorials. If you want to reopen the question, I would focus on what makes your situation different than that of every other researcher. Examples -- maybe you work in an esoteric subfield? Or in an country without a strong research infrastructure? Or don't have an advisor? Or can't afford to attend conferences? Or have never published anything? Or...?</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4095, "author": "aparente001", "author_id": 32436, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/32436", "pm_score": -1, "selected": true, "text": "<p>The multiple questions are bound together by McEnerney's use of the term <em>community</em>. Scaahu wrote, <em>Unless we watch the video, how could we know what he meant by \"community\"?</em> Some of the close votes and lack of reopen votes may have come at least partly from a similar lack of clarity. So let's get on the same page about that first.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><a href=\"https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/community\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Oxford</a> 1 A group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common. <em>‘Montreal's Italian community’ ‘the gay community in London’ ‘the scientific community’</em></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><em>Community</em>, used in this way, is a term that's come into vogue in recent years in at least some parts of the US. (Note, in \"I attended a small, supportive liberal arts college that had a great sense of community,\" it has a slightly different meaning.) Maybe some of our participants haven't come across this usage yet, but what McEnerney appears to have talking about is the set of people who have an interest in the particular area (or sub-area) of study.</p>\n\n<p>I would like to respond to StrongBad's argument, \"It is hard to see the single thread that runs between the questions and without that it is unclear how to write a single comprehensive answer that answers your unstated question.\" (I don't understand \"unstated question,\" since he was pointing to the <em>multiple, supposedly unconnected questions</em> as being the problem.)</p>\n\n<p>Sometimes one person will have an easier time understanding a particular question than someone else. That's why the system requires five closure votes rather than just one. But, following StrongBad's logic, the existence of an answer that holds together well and responds to what was asked, shows that the unclearness was subjective -- some people got it and some didn't.</p>\n\n<p>About the video link. Posting a link to a video in a question is helpful. This is done regularly on many SE sites. <em>Not</em> posting a link to the material the question is about -- that would be bad.</p>\n\n<p>I hope others will join me in voting to reopen.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4059", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/34643/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4064, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>Historically, this community has had a strong policy of staying away from assessments of (most) specific organizations, commercial or otherwise. I believe that this is a good policy for several reasons:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Assessments are often highly relative and based on perspective</li>\n<li>There is a temptation for advocacy, whether for personal (\"Go Tech! Beat State!\") or financial (\"Buy our widgets!\") reasons.</li>\n<li>Complementarily, people are likely to become upset if others place harsh judgement on an organization that is important to them.</li>\n<li>Many organizations (especially new entrants to a field) will change quickly in their nature, impact, and significance, and answers will tend to become rapidly obsolete.</li>\n<li>Allowing any assessments of organizations opens the door to a potentially unbounded flood of requests to assess other organizations.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>I think that this should apply no matter how large the organization, <em>when the question is about assessing the organization</em>. </p>\n\n<p>Instead, I notice that most well-regarded questions about organizations seem to fall into two classes:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Questions about established places like LinkedIn, ResearchGate, Facebook, Google Scholar, IEEE, etc., which already assume that organization is notable and legitimate but which are asking advice about how to manage some aspect of one's interactions with it with respect to some aspect of academia. Thus, we take the organization for granted and ask for experts in it to share their experiences.</p></li>\n<li><p>Questions about whether to trust a possibly sketchy organization. These are often something that can be generalized to a class of organizations, like how to assess whether a conference or journal is predatory.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>In neither of these cases do we need to assess an individual organization, and thus we avoid the tar-pit of associated problems.</p>\n\n<p>Thus, if a question cannot be edited into one of these two classes, I think that it should be closed. I think the Academia.edu question <em>might</em> be able to be turned into a question in the first class, but I don't think the Peer.us question can be.</p>\n\n<p><strong>TL;DR: Evaluating an organization is not OK. Evaluating a class of organizations is OK.</strong></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4096, "author": "aparente001", "author_id": 32436, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/32436", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Note that we have allowed questions about a specific possibly predatory journal, e.g. <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/34065/32436\">How is publishing in JoVe (a &quot;video journal&quot;) perceived?</a>.</p>\n\n<p>What I see in this particular question that seems to me to make it well posed is</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>How do they compare with similar services; and how they want to monetize their product</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Furthermore, I think the deleted controversial answer can easily be edited and restored, as it answers the business plan aspect.</p>\n\n<p>Where to draw the line? This will be easier to figure out if and when we start getting more of this type of question. (Right now we have a total of two, if I understood right.)</p>\n\n<p>How to deal with opinionated answers and comments, i.e., answers not focusing on objective observations but mainly on bashing or praising the platform? In the same way we deal with other opinionated answers that are presented without documentation or specific support for the position being presented.</p>\n\n<p>The business side of academia is starting to change, as business models in the modern world are changing. Let's not put our heads in the sand and refuse to question and understand these changes.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p><strong>Edit</strong>: Responding to the question in the comment (To what answer are you referring?) -- in the question post, I read</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>This was cited in favour of questions going into the same direction: <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/106706/7734\">Is Peer.us useful?</a> The latter question in turn has attracted a controversial answer originating from the operators of that platform.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>When I go to the link, there is a notice at the bottom of the page about a deleted answer.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/qJtm8.png\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/qJtm8.png\" alt=\"screenshot of notice about deleted answer\"></a></p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4062", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4078, "author": "Discrete lizard", "author_id": 72231, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/72231", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I'd say the best behaviour is to vote to close and wait. This doesn't confuse the question asker. And when the question is reopened, you can slightly adapt the answer and submit.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4089, "author": "Jessica B", "author_id": 20036, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/20036", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I would argue there can be circumstances where answering and voting to close together makes some sort of sense. There are many questions asked that are not really suitable for this site, but it is clear that the OP is hurting. Answering could be a way of pointing them in the right direction, which achieves its purpose in a short timescale (long enough for the OP to read it), while longer term the question will be deleted.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4094, "author": "aparente001", "author_id": 32436, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/32436", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I can support \"Please don't answer if the question is obviously poorly posed\" as a guideline, as long as it isn't enforced blindly as a hard and fast rule. </p>\n\n<p>You say that it doesn't happen very often. I tried to find some examples with careful googling (\"closed as unclear what you're asking by\" OR \"closed as off-topic by\" OR \"closed as too broad by\" academia stackexchange). I couldn't find any closed questions where the same person voted to close and answered the question. (Although I have occasionally written an answer to a question that was clearly poorly posed, e.g. <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/107357/32436\">https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/107357/32436</a>.)</p>\n\n<p>Could you post some links to some examples that concerned you?</p>\n\n<p>I'm a bit more bothered when I see a high-rep participant contributing an answer which gets wildly upvoted, and dozens of people getting involved in very involved discussions, while the answer gets closed. This suggests that we have more work to do as a community to get on the same page about when to close questions.</p>\n\n<p>Also, I think it would be helpful if we put together a set of <strong>canonical questions</strong> or <strong>common questions</strong>. Benefits:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Easier for askers to find the information they need.</p></li>\n<li><p>We'd see fewer questions that are variations on certain basic themes.</p></li>\n<li><p>It would be easier to close repetitive questions.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>We already have some questions and answers that would be candidates for such a tag (although they might need a bit of adjusting).</p>\n\n<p>Some possible topics:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>How does funding work in country X</li>\n<li>How do I go about changing fields</li>\n<li>What should I do if the professor seemed agreeable to something but is not responding to email now</li>\n<li>How do I strengthen my application to grad school given such-and-so weak areas</li>\n</ul>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4077", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/20058/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4080, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 6, "selected": true, "text": "<p>Excellent question! Thank you for taking the time to ask it.</p>\n\n<p>Academia is a subculture. Like almost every other subculture, it has its own social mores and norms. Many of the questions here are asking about those \"you have to be there to know it\" aspects of academia. To that extent, (in my opinion,) if the question seems to requires knowledge of the field, its probably best to leave those for other academics. What may seem to be good advice from the outside may actually be harmful to those familiar with the culture.</p>\n\n<p>That said, a good chunk of questions more broadly defined as, \"is this a good idea?\" We've had some very good answers from outsiders to some of those questions^{[citation needed]}, and I would welcome anyone to contribute there.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4081, "author": "Discrete lizard", "author_id": 72231, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/72231", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Well, I'm just a Masters' student, so most of my academia knowledge is very basic.</p>\n\n<p>However, note that all answers are judged by their content (and form), not their <em>creator</em>. Hence, as long as an answer that is useful, but not necessarily from an academic perspective, it can be accepted.</p>\n\n<p>One example of such an answer could be this one:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/104079/phd-in-mathematics-science-communication-jobs/104092#104092\">phd-in-mathematics-science-communication-jobs</a></p>\n\n<p>No academic knowledge required, yet still an useful and well-received answer.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4084, "author": "Nij", "author_id": 50067, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/50067", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>As a user can obviously garner several hundred rep or more without a direct or deep or active involvement in academia, there are obviously questions you can answer successfully and appropriately.</p>\n\n<p>However, being aware of the lack of direct experience means you must carefully consider whether, by virtue of not being involved, there are things you don't know that critically undermine your answer accuracy and relevance.</p>\n\n<p>Given the number of academicians that fail to do this (a small but still identifiable superminority), and given an apparent awareness of the issue, you're probably fine as you are.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4086, "author": "Bryan Krause", "author_id": 63475, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/63475", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Just in peeking through your answers on the site so far, although you've gotten a lot of upvotes on some (likely through the HNQ bloat, as others have pointed out), lots of your answers don't answer the actual question, and are more like extended comments on other answers.</p>\n\n<p>Some of this might be because you lack the \"insider information\" necessary to answer the original question, or it might be just a style in your answering that is outside the normal guidelines for what make good StackExchange answers. Given the topic of this meta post, I'll assume the former:</p>\n\n<p>I think that laypeople who are not part of Academia should not use partial answers to address only parts of questions when they are not prepared to answer the whole question. There may be some questions here that can be answered by anyone, but in most cases those questions either belong on a different stack, or the user answering them may not have sufficient understanding of Academic culture to recognize when an question actually has an academia-unique answer.</p>\n\n<p>As just an example, completely independent from your personal answering history, the role of an academic advisor as both a \"boss\" and a mentor is completely different from that of a boss in the outside world. Advice for how to deal with a bad boss at work is often completely inappropriate for an academic context, even if the interpersonal problem is the same.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4102, "author": "usr1234567", "author_id": 78796, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/78796", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Some question actually can only be answered from an outsider's perspective. Applying for industry jobs is a prominent example. Many PhD students will have questions related to this topic but a typical academic career path does not include leaving academia.</p>\n\n<p>If you post stupid stuff, you will be downvoted. Similar to other SO site, bad answers will move down, good answers move up. Your answers with upvotes were considered helpful - write more of these!</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4105, "author": "Pete L. Clark", "author_id": 938, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/938", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I have a pet peeve about nonacademics answering questions on this site. But not with all of them; only with those evincing a certain kind of behavior. Namely, what irks me tremendously is those who answer questions about academia <em>but refuse to comment on or acknowledge their lack of academic expertise</em>. </p>\n\n<p>(In fact this is not limited to non-academics. I am just as bothered by e.g. academics who have never left Continent A but answer questions about academia on Continent B without acknowledging -- or even knowing, perhaps? -- that these answers may well be negatively useful.)</p>\n\n<p>If you want to answer a question as an academic outsider, please include in your answer that you are an academic outsider. As others have pointed out, this does not automatically disqualify or discount your answer: for some questions it will actually improve it. But readers deserve to know this information, whatever they do with it.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4079", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11593/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4091, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I've seen it on multiple sites, so that suggests this needs to be brought up on <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com\">the main meta site</a>.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4092, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p><strong>The duck <em>never</em> accesses your microphone</strong>, even if you say that you have one.</p>\n\n<p>Think about it: If it could access your microphone without a browser-site confirmation, so could every other website, which would be a privacy nightmare.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/308581/255554\">Further reading on Meta</a>.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4090", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/21278/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4110, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 5, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Questions about academic etiquette are not necessarily trivial. There are certain issues related to cultural sensitivity that may arise in particular circumstances. (For example, how to address an email is a non-trivial matter in some countries!)</p>\n\n<p>That said, many of the questions could be included under the header of \"How to ask ask an important question.\" (I do note that at the moment the answer does not address the possibility of a discussion that shouldn't be had by email.)</p>\n\n<p>If the question is of essentially the same nature, then it should be closed as a duplicate, the same way we now use the \"journal workflow\" question to close many similar inquiries as duplicates.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4111, "author": "Massimo Ortolano", "author_id": 20058, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/20058", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>To corroborate <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4110/20058\">aeismail's answer</a>, let me give you a semi-serious example of the possible intricacies of academic communication.</p>\n\n<p>Up to 30-40 years ago in my country, Italy, you would have formally addressed a university professor by starting with</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Ch.mo prof. X,</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The abbreviation <em>Ch.mo</em> stands for <em>Chiarissimo</em>, which can be translated as <em>Most Eminent</em>.</p>\n\n<p>Moreover, if within the text you would have to refer to the professor with a pronoun, you would have quite probably capitalized the pronoun initial.</p>\n\n<p>Nowadays, luckily, these traditions are being abandoned (at least in STEM fields) but sometimes you still get students who use them: maybe they don't use that pompous salutation, but they frequently use capitalized pronouns. When I get such emails, I usually reply: \"I'm not worthy of capital letters!\". A few students reply that they sent emails to a few old-school professors without capitalizing the pronouns, and without starting with \"Ch.mo\", and the professors got mad at them.</p>\n\n<p>However, nowadays, many Italian students attend courses which are taught in English, and I've been teaching for about ten years in one such course. And I frequently receive emails in English where every single \"You\" is capitalized:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Dear Prof. Ortolano,<br>\n Could <strong>Y</strong>ou please [...]</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>At this point I tell them that they should definitely avoid writing emails in English with capitalized pronouns, especially if they're going to write to people around the world because that, yes, would look weird.</p>\n\n<p>So, sometimes, yes, also a simple email can cause headaches for students (and that's why I've answered a few questions of that type along the years).</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4120, "author": "famargar", "author_id": 63518, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/63518", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p><strong>No: those questions are not off-topic</strong> </p>\n\n<p>Academia has its own rules and to deny that is to deny that there is a world outside academia. As a student, I had to bow in front of Magnificents, Eminents, and other medieval titles mentioned in another answer; once a professor myself, I begged my students to avoid titles with me - leaving them only more perplexed. They don't need to thank profusely when I answer their questions, as it is (part of the reason) why I get my paycheck; contrarily, they regard me as very generous as I am setting time apart from saving the planet/evolving mankind. At times I was offered gifts, a practice that I thought was confined to doctors - a similar priest-like profession in our modern world -always smiling but firmly returning the presents. Academics in many of the world best institutions occasionally adorn themselves as high ranking priests of some archaic religion. The rest of the time, they wear blazers with elbow patches and sandals. </p>\n\n<p>Professors talk and behave very differently from the high school teachers you just said goodby to, or the office manager you are running away from. Students often enroll in universities in distant countries, with very different cultures. Professors everywhere are often dismissive toward undergraduate students. They often have life/death power over their subjugates - no parents-teachers meetings to mediate, no Human Resources offices to help you solve workplace disputes. For as much as we love academia, we need to recognize it's a very quirky world.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Yes, most of those questions are duplicates</strong></p>\n\n<p>That is something that is very common to StackExchange websites, and we shouldn't be dismissive either. Your comment is very timely as it goes along very well with <a href=\"https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/04/26/stack-overflow-isnt-very-welcoming-its-time-for-that-to-change/?cb=1\">this recently published apology by StackOverflow to its programming newcomers</a>. The average response from experts to beginners in StackOverflow is: this question is trivial/this question is duplicated, followed by a rain of downvotes and condescending comments. I find Academia to be thousands of times gentler than StackOverflow. Still, the same sectarian attitude is there.</p>\n\n<p>The average Academia recent user is a young student who for the first time is facing what is typically a workplace issue - aggravated by the super-human aura of the professor. This site is here to help people; we should try to help. If a question is really a duplicate, we should kindly point to the question it refers to. If we don't, it means it isn't a duplicate. Let's remember that all those unwritten rules we are so familiar with in Academia, were learned by us making the same trivial mistakes, having the same goofy hesitations we smile at on many of the questions we see on this site. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4109", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/87026/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4113, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>You don't \"announce\" <em>anything</em> on the main board. Stack Exchange is <strong>explicitly</strong> a Q&amp;A forum, so such links are considered to be spam, and are therefore always off-topic.</p>\n\n<p>You may mention it in the chat room, but that's about it.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4114, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I consider it acceptable to make such announcements on Meta Academia or in chat, as they generally pertain to parts of this community. You can also try to get sufficient upvotes on a <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3961/7734\">community promotion ad</a> such that it is shown on the main site.</p>\n\n<p>That being said, you are kind of announcing something that is likely viewed as a competing platform or community or a platform for questions that we do not allow for good reason. Either way, do not expect that such a proposal is met with much enthusiasm.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4117, "author": "cactus_pardner", "author_id": 88197, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/88197", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1623/is-it-ethical-to-promote-another-stack-exchange-website-in-about-me-section-of-t\">From a previous meta question here, it also appears that you could include a link to that in the \"About Me\" section of your profile</a>. That is seen when someone mouses over your identification information, so if you answer questions about academia in India, people who find your answers useful will be more likely to see it. </p>\n\n<p>This next part is perhaps more controversial, but if you encounter a question that is closed as off-topic here (such as polling questions or shopping questions or very situation-specific questions seeking advice) and you think that the subreddit might provide useful answers, you might comment with a suggestion to try that resource.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4112", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10403/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4122, "author": "Tobias Kildetoft", "author_id": 12592, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/12592", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Something that was pointed out in a recent answer on another question here on meta:</p>\n\n<p>Often a newcomer will ask a question which turns out to be a duplicate. This question will then be marked as such, and often nothing further will happen.</p>\n\n<p>While this is all as it should be, it may leave the newcomer feeling like they did something wrong for not finding the duplicate themselves.</p>\n\n<p>For this reason I propose that when we mark such questions as duplicate, we also make some remark indicating that this is not a fault with the question, and that the existence of this new version will help future visitors to find the answer they need. Hopefully, this will make the newcomer feel more welcome and they will be more inclined to stick around and ask other questions or even answer some.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4123, "author": "henning", "author_id": 31917, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/31917", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Adding to Tobias' plea for better explanation of duplicate flags, I suggest we give an explanation more often (whenever we can?) for any close-votes.</p>\n\n<p>Sure, we already have \"canned\" explanations that come with a close-vote, but since they are necessarily phrased in general terms, the OP may have difficulties to understand what specifically makes their question (for example) opinion-based.</p>\n\n<p>In fact, we <em>should</em> always be able to explain how the general close-reason relates to the specific question. Such a reason-giving requirement would not only \"be nice\" to new users, it would also help safeguard borderline off-topic questions and make us less \"trigger-happy\".</p>\n\n<p>I sometimes find myself wanting to close questions for being \"too broad\" just because <em>I</em> can't think of an informative answer, or for being \"unclear\" just because <em>I</em> don't quite understand what the issue is. But that doesn't mean that someone with better expertise cannot give a useful answer to a somewhat broad or (to me) opaque question. If others here have similar impulses, it might be a good idea to ask for specificity or clarification, wait if edits are made or useful answers are given, and only then, after a while, decide whether voting to close is actually helpful.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4124, "author": "The Doctor", "author_id": 83941, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/83941", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Is it possible to change the minimum reputation to unlock the chat privilege? Or changing it from \"privilege\" to a \"basic right\".</p>\n\n<p>If new users had the opportunity to be redirected to the chat they would feel more welcome, having the opportunity to discuss opinion-based questions or being helped by others when facing some confusion/misunderstanding.</p>\n\n<p>Recent example: <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/108865/should-i-do-bsc-in-mathematical-physics-or-theoretical-physics#comment284904_108865\">Should I do BSc in mathematical physics or theoretical physics?</a> </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4133, "author": "Blaise", "author_id": 84989, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/84989", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>As a relatively new person here, I think the response about duplicates up above is a good one. Just to add to that, I feel like there are times where a question has maybe one answer, and it's not at all comprehensive or directly relevant to the new question being asked, but close enough where some would automatically close it. </p>\n\n<p>I know this is basically asking for more lax standards in closing a duplicate, but I really do feel like there are sometimes pretty unsatisfactorily answered questions from a few years ago and it would be nice to seek a fresh and more relevant (and hopefully comprehensive) response.</p>\n\n<p>Last point (and unrelated to the first)... I was directed to SE by a few colleagues, and they warned that it's mostly for STEM/comp people, and if you're humanities, social science, etc. you won't get much out of it. I guess I don't have an explicit suggestion here, but that feeling has certainly rung true for me so far.</p>\n\n<p>Edited to add: I don't intend this at all to be snarky, but one relatively simple fix would be to figure out how to incentivize more people to answer more questions. I was searching through the first few pages of recent questions just a moment ago, and most questions had 0, 1, or 2 answers. If someone asks a question for the first time and gets 1 answer, they may not think it worth it to return and engage further. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4134, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p><strong>Lighten up on enforcing rules for the sake of enforcing rules.</strong> This is a problem all over StackExchange, and academia.SE is no exception.</p>\n\n<p>Comment deletion is a good example. Newcomers may not remember that comments aren't for answers, and may think comments are for short responses. But their (possibly highly upvoted) comment may get deleted for no other reason than too many other comments accumulated below it, so a mod moved ALL the comments to chat. Which is the same as deleting them, for people who have no interest in using chat. A lot of thought goes into some comments, and nothing discourages new users more than semi-arbitrarily deleting the content they contributed. (In fact, I am not a new user, but I still struggle with this. Sometimes, the thing the OP most needs to hear is not a direct answer to their question, so it wouldn't fit as an answer. I have had such comments removed <em>without even getting a notification</em>, and it makes me want to contribute to the site less.) At the very least, there should be an upvote threshold above which comments aren't removed so willy-nilly. (Or maybe they can be automatically converted to answers in some situations?)</p>\n\n<p>We should also not be such sticklers for whether something is on-topic. Blatantly off-topic questions should of course be removed, but there seems to be a culture of \"when in doubt, say no\" just because people like to be sticklers for rules. It's not hard to see how this discourages newcomers. If we're not sure, why not leave the question up and see if any good answers result. </p>\n\n<p>We need something like \"Rule 0\" which would roughly state \"ignore the rules when following them would make the site less useful.\" This would not only make the site more welcoming, it would make it better.</p>\n\n<p>(The obvious response would be: if the rules are hindering us, we should make better rules and follow those. But life is not so simple. We know good content when we see it, but we can't always write down a finite set of rules that will reliably sort good content from bad.)</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4141, "author": "theenigma017", "author_id": 91637, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/91637", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think users should have some better way of selecting tags or some tags should automatically be assigned to a question rather than the user having to explicitly search for a tag that may not necessarily exist.</p>\n\n<p>Also, off-topic questions by new users should be automatically migrated to the suitable SE site rather than closing the question or deleting it which may leave a bad impression on the new user.</p>\n\n<p>Downvotes for answers and questions should be attached with a 'reason' for the downvote so that the user knows what went wrong , this might also help avoid random downvoting.</p>\n\n<p>And i personally think , questions from low reputation users who are fairly new should be put on hold for 10 minutes at a checkpoint once the user submits the question so that the moderators and bots have a chance to filter out very far off or inappropriate questions rather than having to clean up later , also to make up for the 10 minutes , new users can be allowed to post every 30 mins and all the questions that the moderators didn't get a chance to check will get posted automatically after the said 10 minutes.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4147, "author": "SmallChess", "author_id": 42080, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/42080", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Please don't overcomplicate yourself. We just need to answer their questions, and they will feel welcome. What about this? We force our lovely moderators to answer each and every newcomer question, no matter what they ask. The new users will see exactly 5 answers from our moderators, they will feel very happy.</p>\n\n<p>I think it will work as our moderators spend most of their awake time on this site anyway.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4121", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4126, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>This is the first time I’ve seen such behavior as a moderator. However, we try to stay on top of getting rid of trolls as soon as they crop up. So please flag any such behavior and we’ll take care of it. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4127, "author": "Massimo Ortolano", "author_id": 20058, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/20058", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>According to <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/169225/300001\">this question on the main Meta</a> you cannot actually award bounties to deleted answers, even though the +100 button looks active.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4131, "author": "Nobody", "author_id": 546, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/546", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<blockquote>\n <p>does it happen with some regularity?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Yes, I saw it before. Copy and paste the answer from somewhere, leave a comment asking for bounty and then delete the account. Actually, this is how I caught it. The moment I saw it, I knew it's coming again. So, I took the first few lines of the answer and Google it and then found where it came from. I then flagged it.</p>\n\n<p>I am going to provide another example of an incident of this kind. Hopefully, the Mods can tell us whether they are the same user or not.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/85475/546\">A deleted answer</a> for the question <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/84244/546\">What to do when a good article is published in a predatory online journal that disappears?</a></p>\n\n<p>The deleted answer was copied and pasted from <a href=\"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0917504017300217\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0917504017300217</a> as pointed out by @InquisitiveLurker <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/84244/what-to-do-when-a-good-article-is-published-in-a-predatory-online-journal-that-d/85475#comment215085_85475\">at that time</a>. </p>\n\n<p>And as you can see the comment (now deleted) left by the poster</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>@Joe74-Now that I have given an answer to your question,please award me a bounty worth +100 reputation within 5 days from today </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>To me, if this is not the same user, then the user who trolled this time must be a copy cat (pun intended).</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4136, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Please adhere to the following with these posts:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Flag as rude/abusive (it’s abusive of our community). Six such flags suffice to kill the post. Using custom flags or NAA/VLQ flags just slows things down.</p></li>\n<li><p>If nobody has done so before you, leave a comment linking to whatever was copied. (This way, it only has to be searched once.)</p></li>\n<li><p>Do not do anything else.</p></li>\n</ul>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4125", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/19607/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4137, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It’s not possible to report gender data, because it’s not something that Stack Exchange asks for or collects.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4138, "author": "Nat", "author_id": 38709, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/38709", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "\n\n<p><strong><em>tl;dr</em>-</strong> This post's a data dump for:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>demographic data and other diversity facts;</p></li>\n<li><p>links to SE content about diversity.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>This post is a community wiki, so please feel free to contribute edits!</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<h1>Demographic info, informal polls</h1>\n\n<p>Several SE sites have performed informal polls, though it should be understood that informal polls like these tend to suffer from strong sampling biases.</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/467/\">SE.Academia poll</a> and <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/468/\">corresponding discussion</a>.</p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://tex.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1564/\">SE.TeX poll</a> and <a href=\"https://tex.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1581/discussion-about-tex-community-polls\">corresponding discussion</a>.</p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://reverseengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/213/\">SE.ReverseEngineering</a>, no corresponding discussion.</p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://mathematica.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1310/\">SE.Mathematica</a>, no corresponding discussion.</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<h1>Demographic info, for StackOverflow</h1>\n\n<p>Most SE sites don't collect demographic info, but the big exception is the annual developer survey for StackOverflow:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2015\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">2015 developer survey</a>;</p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2016\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">2016 developer survey</a>;</p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">2017 developer survey</a>;</p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">2018 developer survey</a>;</p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">2019 developer survey</a>.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p><em>Figures below are from the <a href=\"https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">2018 developer survey</a>.</em></p>\n\n<h3><a href=\"https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/#geography\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Geographic location</a></h3>\n\n<h3><a href=\"https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/#demographics\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Gender</a>:</h3>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p><strong>Male:</strong> 92.9%;</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Female:</strong> 6.9%;</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Non-binary, genderqueer, or gender non-conforming:</strong> 0.9%.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<h3><a href=\"https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/#developer-profile-race-and-ethnicity\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Race/ethnicity</a>:</h3>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p><strong>White or of European descent:</strong> 74.2%</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>South Asian:</strong> 11.5%</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Hispanic or Latino/Latina:</strong> 6.7%</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>East Asian:</strong> 5.1%</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Middle Eastern:</strong> 4.1%</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Black or of African descent:</strong> 2.8%</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Native American, Pacific Islander, or Indigenous Australian:</strong> 0.8%</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<h3><a href=\"https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/#developer-profile-sexual-orientation\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Sexual orientation</a>:</h3>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p><strong>Straight or heterosexual:</strong> 93.2%</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Bisexual or Queer:</strong> 4.3%</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Gay or Lesbian:</strong> 2.4%</p></li>\n<li><p><strong>Asexual:</strong> 1.9%</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<hr>\n\n<h1>Demographic info, by field in American academia</h1>\n\n<p>Bachelor's degrees in the US, though probably reasonably reflective of graduate degree distributions as well as the student body academics at universities see everyday:</p>\n\n<p>&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;&ensp;<a href=\"http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelors-degrees-conferred-to-women-by-major-1970-2012/\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/BfAWh.png\" width=\"550\"></a></p>\n\n<p>Key observations:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Computer Science and Engineering are both heavily male-dominated.</p></li>\n<li><p>Health Professions, Public Administration, Education, and Psychology are heavily female-dominated.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<hr>\n\n<h1>StackExchange posts on diversity issues</h1>\n\n<h3>Q&amp;A about general diversity issues:</h3>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>From SE.Academia:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/77123/\">\"What is the purpose of women-only meetings, panels, conferences, etc. in academia?\"</a></p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/97267/\">\"Why are women even less represented in engineering than in other STEM?\"</a></p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2113/\">\"What is being done to make the academic environment more women friendly?\"</a></p></li>\n</ul></li>\n<li><p>From SE.ComputerScienceEducators:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://cseducators.stackexchange.com/questions/2875/\">\"Why did the percentage of CS bachelor's degrees going to women peak in 1984?\"</a></p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://cseducators.stackexchange.com/questions/2942/\">\"Why did interest in CS majors plummet in the United States after the mid-80s?\"</a></p></li>\n</ul></li>\n<li><p>From SE.Skeptics:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/39232/\">\"Do biological males who were castrated at birth and raised as females often behave like stereotypical men?\"</a></li>\n</ul></li>\n</ol>\n\n<h3>Q&amp;A about StackExchange-specific diversity issues:</h3>\n\n<ol>\n<li><p>Related to the recent blog post, <a href=\"https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/04/26/stack-overflow-isnt-very-welcoming-its-time-for-that-to-change/\">\"Stack Overflow Isn’t Very Welcoming. It’s Time for That to Change.\"</a> (2018-04-26):</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>This question.</p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/366867/\">\"What examples are there for Not Being Very Welcoming?\"</a>, StackOverflow.Meta</p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/366937/\">\"Is Stack Overflow really racist/sexist?\"</a>, StackOverflow.Meta</p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/366665/\">\"Does Stack Exchange really want to conflate newbies with women/people of color?\"</a>, StackOverflow.Meta</p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/41176/\">\"Is the Implicit Association Test effective at determining an individual's biases?\"</a>, SE.Skeptics</p></li>\n</ul></li>\n<li><p>General discussion unrelated to the recent blog:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3484/\">\"Gendered pronoun usage\"</a>, SE.Academia.Meta</p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3280/\">\"How do we feel about gender specific terms?\"</a>, SE.Academia.Meta</p></li>\n</ul></li>\n<li><p>Specific cases of reported issues:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://interpersonal.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2838/apologies-and-parting-notes\">\"Apologies and parting notes\"</a>, SE.InterpersonalSkills.Meta</li>\n</ul></li>\n</ol>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4139, "author": "cactus_pardner", "author_id": 88197, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/88197", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think a particularly valuable part of this question is the encouragement for everyone on Academia SE to take part in <a href=\"https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdCQNtu4KHesQz-2AzRSl8z6d4_cLgPj4B7cjNpPePc-04seA/formResponse\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">the SE survey</a>, which allows a space for some short comments, as well as an opportunity to volunteer for follow-up research. The more that active users engage with that, the better a picture we'll get of what's working and what opportunities there are for change.</p>\n\n<p>The more that this is qualitative research, rather than just counting people up in categories, the more useful I think this effort will be. That sort of user experience work can surface complex issues and potential solutions. On the other hand, it's hard to tell what benchmark Academia SE demographics should be compared to. </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>For instance, it's a worldwide site, so the meaning of certain race/ethnicity categories is hard to interpret. \n\n<ul>\n<li>People of South Asian and East Asian descent are 16.5% of the SE developers (according to Nat's great answer), but 35% of all people in the world live in China and India. </li>\n<li>Should it be benchmarked against the world's English-speaking population? Maybe not, since most academics around the world are incentivized to work in English.</li>\n<li>More deeply, asking about race/ethnicity is not based on some idea that all people who are white or of European descent are interchangeable or share a deep set of characteristics. Rather, the category provides useful information in the context of a given country; a particular race/ethnicity means they are likely to have been treated in a certain way or that we are more likely to be able to predict other correlated traits. </li>\n<li>So far in the academic literature, I haven't seen treatment of how to ask meaningful world-wide questions about race/ethnicity, other than tailoring the questions to different countries/cultures to capture the distinctions that matter in that society. (I am very aware that many people find the idea of \"race\" itself offensive, particularly Europeans.)</li>\n</ul></li>\n<li>SE users are self-selecting in a lot of ways. \n\n<ul>\n<li>I speculate that Academia SE users are more likely to be early career rather than late career academics, which might make the pool more demographically diverse. (Not sure the extent to which undergraduates and grad students are involved.)</li>\n<li>Because SO and SE are built on programming questions, people who do programming and computational work are more likely to discover and sign up on Academia SE. I believe that even within academic disciplines in the U.S., more quantitative and computational work tends to be done by men. (Definitely my own experience; I believe I've seen documentation of this, and would edit in a reference if anyone has one off-hand.)</li>\n<li>Are there elements of SE culture that are further causing self-selection? In bad ways? </li>\n</ul></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>A lot of measurements seem like their meaning should be self-evident, but that's rarely the case. It's also very easy for people to list statistics and for others to infer blame from those statements. Further, when people know stats but aren't used to social science or stats about people, it's easy to come up with calculations that are technically correct but misleading or misinterpreted. It may be most productive if we can agree on some basic descriptive facts and withhold normative judgment from those numbers alone. </p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>When I saw this question, I became really worried it would explode into the conflict we've seen on other parts of the site in response to this issue. My initial thoughts were that the most productive way forward might be to not press the issue but to keep doing useful things, like Atlanta's rebranding itself as <a href=\"https://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/the-night-atlanta-truly-became-the-city-too-busy-to-hate-\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">\"The city too busy to hate.\"</a></p>\n\n<p>I don't think avoiding the real problems people experience is the right thing to do, but in this case I think that those problems are better explored by people discussing their experiences, rather than reading into demographic numbers.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Edit: I took a look at the questions in <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/467/20058\">the poll Massimo Ortolano commented about</a>, and those seem like they may be helpful for Academia SE to understand its users.</p>\n\n<p>Edit: Why am I hesitant about this conversation? Because it's being addressed in different ways across SE/SO. <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/309513/stack-overflow-isnt-very-welcoming-especially-marginalized-groups/309538#309538\">This answer on SE Meta covers a lot of it</a>. Then there are various ones (responses to the blog post and others on the topic) that demonstrate how volatile these discussions can be:\n<a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/309513/stack-overflow-isnt-very-welcoming-especially-marginalized-groups\">SE Meta 1</a>, <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/309612/does-stack-exchange-have-an-ethical-responsibility-to-address-global-discriminat\">SE Meta 2</a>, <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/309514/inclusion-project-emphasize-stack-exchanges-culture-of-inclusion\">SE Meta 3</a>, <a href=\"https://interpersonal.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2838/apologies-and-parting-notes\">Interpersonal Skills (IPS) Meta 1</a>, <a href=\"https://interpersonal.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2811/is-this-a-site-that-wants-to-exclude-people\">IPS Meta 2</a>, <a href=\"https://interpersonal.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2776/does-the-be-nice-policy-cover-potential-rants-about-general-groups-of-people\">IPS Meta 3</a>, <a href=\"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/366645/please-ask-if-there-is-a-problem-before-telling-us-there-is-a-problem\">SO Meta 1</a>, <a href=\"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/366665/does-stack-exchange-really-want-to-conflate-newbies-with-women-people-of-color\">SO Meta 2</a>, <a href=\"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/309908/declining-numbers-of-women-in-programming-what-can-so-do-to-help\">SO Meta 3</a>, <a href=\"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/281295/does-the-so-community-view-itself-as-gender-neutral\">SO Meta 4</a>, <a href=\"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/366937/is-stack-overflow-really-racist-sexist\">SO Meta 5</a>, <a href=\"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/366867/what-examples-are-there-for-not-being-very-welcoming\">SO Meta 6</a>, <a href=\"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/366858/when-is-stack-overflow-going-to-stop-demonizing-the-quality-concerned-users-who\">SO Meta 7</a></p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4135", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/32436/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4149, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n <p>Further to this, I imagine, there were equally controversial statements that were removed simply because they didn't fit with such meta-philosophies. If that's not the case for this particular question, then at least it's probably the case for other questions so-marked as controversial.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Your views here are incorrect. There are two deleted answers. One was deleted by the owner of the answer and one was deleted by the community bot in response to spam flags. The spam answer was clearly spam. The only things deleted by moderators were a few chatty comments (e.g., +1 great answer). A couple of comment conversations were also moved to chat and comments on those questions/answers have been repeatedly pruned since then. As we can only move comments to chat once, those additional comments were deleted.</p>\n\n<p>The post notice is relatively new and while I have not gone back to every question that it has been applied to, I can assure you that moderators have not been indiscriminately deleting content.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>My point is this: the controversial post mechanism, which by its nature does not require the consistent removal of controversial or opinion-laden statements, but only gives moderators the option of removal, consequently confers inordinate power to moderators and allows them to impose their political views and personal opinions upon others to a much greater extent than can be considered necessary or morally sound.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The post notice does not confer any power to moderators. We have the power to indiscriminately and unilaterally remove whatever content we want in the absence of the notice. We were elected mods because the community believes that we can use the additional moderator powers to improve the site and that when we make mistakes that we will take responsibility for those mistakes and make sure they get corrected. What the post notice does is remind users that if things get heated, a moderator might clean things up. Which of course we can, and do, do even if we haven't warned users. </p>\n\n<p><strong>Why was the post notice added</strong> You might be asking yourself if we don't delete stuff, why even add the post notice. I added the post notice because there were a large number of answers and comments on the question. This generated a flag which alerted me to the question. I protected the question, as we usually do with questions that have lots of answers and comments and are on the HNQ list. I also moved one comment chain to chat. I felt that the question would likely generate a large number of additional comments and even with the post notice and comment saying <em>additional comments will be moved to chat</em>, it has. Since we can only move comments once, I felt an additional warning that comments would be deleted was in order. At some point a moderator will need to read through the new comments and decide if they should be deleted. The post notice is designed, in my opinion, to cut down on these situations.</p>\n\n<p><em>Note that I have edited the post in reaction to finding out another mod deleted comments after the comment thread was moved to chat. As you may have heard the comment moderation interface is not the best. I applogize for missing these comments the first time around</em>.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4150, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Moderators do not delete or censor posts because they contain opinions we disagree with. If they run afoul of community guidelines—such as using obscenities, posting spam links or nonsense—that’s different. (The former is cleaned up as “lightly” as possible, the latter gets deleted.)</p>\n\n<p>Even in the case of controversial posts, though, there is the possibility of discussing it in chat. Remember that part of the goal of SE is to provide curation for future users. Having long, tangential discussions that do not help understand, clarify, or improve the question do not help towards that aim. We do not typically resort to that designation—as I’ve gone on record, it should be used extremely sparingly—but from time to time it becomes necessary. </p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4148", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/18380/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4154, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think the question should stay/be closed for a number of reasons. First, I do not agree with the arguments that</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I think it is wrong to assume that no part of this is specific to academic culture (if that's the case, that's part of the answer)</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I cannot possibly see how a comment about women's lingerie can be construed as having anything to do with academia. While the comment was made at an academic conference, it would have been just as offensive at any other event (e,g., a trade show). In fact, none of the current answers provide any academic specific context.</p>\n\n<p>Second, the question fails 3 of the 5 <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask\">don't ask</a> tests</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Why I find X offensive is no more or less valid than why someone else finds it offensive (or not)</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This is essentially what is being asked</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>your question is just a rant in disguise: “______ sucks, am I right?”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I cannot help but think one of the motivations for asking the question is that the OP feels the sanctions (and negative press) were unfair.</p>\n\n<p>Third, the question is rather broad and I believe requires an answer that covers the history of sexual harassment/discrimination and the <a href=\"http://allthetropes.wikia.com/wiki/Elevator_Floor_Announcement\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">\"Elevator Floor Announcement\" trope</a>. While it is possible that someone will provide a sufficiently broad answer, I think it is unlikely given the number of answers the question has already received.</p>\n\n<p>Finally, I think the question is reasonably clear in asking \"in what way is X offensive\". The problem is that the answer really depends on the person you ask. I can assure you there are a number of topics that my grandfather would not find offensive, that I find astonishingly out of place. I think the answers are going to continue to be based on personal experience/views which are controversial and lead to extensive discussion in the comments.</p>\n\n<p>I do not think editing the question can address the fact that I do not see how a comment about women's lingerie can be construed as having anything to do with academia. I also do not see how anything short of a major rewrite would transform the question from a bad subjective to a good subjective. The broadness of the question is not a huge issue in my opinion and if everything else could be addressed through edits, I think could be ignored in reopening the question. It might be possible to address the personal experience/views issue by rephrasing the question as \"Why might groups of individuals construe the comment as offensive?\", but I am not sure that is the case and it does not address the boat programming and bad subjective nature of the question.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4155, "author": "aparente001", "author_id": 32436, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/32436", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<h3>The question should be open to receive answers, but with lots of structure.</h3>\n\n<p>First, I'll respond to the specific points raised by StrongBad.</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>\"I cannot possibly see how a comment about women's lingerie can be construed as having anything to do with academia.\"</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>It wasn't the underwear that had to do with academia, it was the <em>setting</em> where the underwear remark occurred, that created the connection with academia, and the nature of the question \"How can I avoid a faux pas of this type?\".</p>\n\n<ol start=\"2\">\n<li><p>\"The question fails 3 of the 5 don't ask tests.\" </p>\n\n<p>(a) \"Every answer is equally valid, as in, “What’s your favorite ______?”. Why I find X offensive is no more or less valid than why someone else finds it offensive (or not).\"</p></li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>I believe it's possible to provide a comprehensive answer which explains each of the levels on which the elevator remark was offensive. There are innumerable answers on this site that involve a <em>list</em> of points. Just because a question has a multi-part answer doesn't mean it isn't well posed. </p>\n\n<ol start=\"2\">\n<li>(b) \"There is no actual problem to be solved, as in, 'I’m curious if other people feel like I do.' This is essentially what is being asked.\"</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Actually, OP starting out by saying, Such-and-so respected body found that the remark was offensive. He goes on to say, help me understand <em>how</em> it was offensive, and suggest how I can avoid being inadvertently offensive. So, OP isn't curious if others share the respected body's determination that the remark was offensive. In fact, he asked that people not get into a debate about that, and simply take the respected body's position as a given.</p>\n\n<ol start=\"2\">\n<li>(c) \"Your question is just a rant in disguise, as in, '______ sucks, am I right?'. I cannot help but think one of the motivations for asking the question is that the OP feels the sanctions (and negative press) were unfair.\"</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>I didn't take the question that way. It seemed to me that OP was asking how to avoid giving offense <em>because he wanted to know.</em> The question wasn't a rant in disguise because rants in disguise don't go past the complaining stage, or if they do, the constructive part is of less importance than the complaining part. (For hybrid posts, that combine rant + constructive part, there's an easy rescue -- edit out the rant part; and this leaves a well-posed question that can be left open.)</p>\n\n<ol start=\"3\">\n<li>\"Third, the question is rather broad and I believe requires an answer that covers the history of sexual harassment/discrimination and the 'Elevator Floor Announcement' trope. While it is possible that someone will provide a sufficiently broad answer, I think it is unlikely given the number of answers the question has already received.\"</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>I looked at your link for the trope; it appears to be tangential. Regarding the history of sexual harassment and gender discrimination, while that's a fascinating topic, the question can be answered without writing a historical treatise.</p>\n\n<p>There are other questions on this site that someone might feel tempted to answer with an overblown answer. That doesn't mean the questions are badly posed.</p>\n\n<ol start=\"5\">\n<li>\"I think the answers are going to continue to be based on personal experience/views which are controversial and lead to extensive discussion in the comments.\"</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>In my opinion, a subjective answer based purely on personal experience wouldn't be a well-constructed answer.</p>\n\n<p>(If you're still concerned about this, the moderators <em>could</em> create a ground rule for this question, that answers that consist of nothing but the OP's subjective experience will be removed.)</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>One of the major challenges Academia SE faces has to do precisely with gender. Each question related to gender issues is a learning opportunity for individuals who participate here, and for the community as a whole.</p>\n\n<p>I do appreciate the headaches this question creates for the moderators; but I have a lot of confidence in our moderators. I think they're up to the job of keeping things organized and civilized -- with the help of community members responsibly raising flags when needed.</p>\n\n<p>One or more good answers to the question OP raised would add to the value of the site.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4156, "author": "Azor Ahai -him-", "author_id": 37441, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/37441", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It makes no sense to open it.</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>If you make it generic, and remove the actual quotation there is no\nquestion in the question. It would basically be asking \"What are some\noffensive things you could say to women at a conference?\"</p></li>\n<li><p>If we leave it open with the quotation intact, that means we're OK\nwith people posting rude comments they hear at a conference and\nasking \"Was this woman overreacting to this comment?\" ... which\nreally isn't the point of this site.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>There <em>are</em> some questions about taking offense that would make sense here. For example, someone insisting on \"Miss\" over \"Doctor\" or \"Professor,\" but we're not here to judge passing rude remarks an academic is subjected to.</p>\n\n<p>I find it hard to believe the OP thought there was some specific academia-related reason the comment was in poor taste, and agree with StrongBad's opinion they disagreed with the negative press.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4157, "author": "jakebeal", "author_id": 22733, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22733", "pm_score": 5, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Having just reviewed my supervisor's training on workplace harassment, I have strong opinions on this question. <strong>Short version: it can have a simple and definitive answer, and should be edited and re-opened</strong></p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>This is not really an Academia question, but a general question about professionalism in the workplace. As such, one might argue that it should be migrated to Workplace.SE.</li>\n<li>At the same time, a lot of the questions and answers on this site boil down to \"yes, academia is also a workplace, and professional behavior is required.\" I think this is important, because many people seem to hold beliefs that academia is otherwise.</li>\n<li>As such, I believe the question can be answered quite simply and in much the same way that it would on Workplace.SE.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>In my opinion, the core problem with the question is that it invites \"explain this joke to me\" answers. It should be edited to focus more clearly on the \"How do I avoid workplace harassment?\" question instead, and answers should be dealt with similarly.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>More concretely, I believe the answerable concern in the core of the question is:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I am worried because I don't understand precisely what was offensive, so I fear that I might do something similar.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I would consider the question to basically be suffering an X-Y problem because the asker has jumped to an attempted solution of \"understand why this joke is offensive\" rather than sticking with the problem of \"I fear that I might do something similar.\"</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4158, "author": "David E Speyer", "author_id": 1244, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/1244", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think that this is a good faith question which we should attempt to give a good faith answer to, and I like several of the answers which were given before it was closed. It could also go on workplace or IPS, but I do think academic norms are different enough that it would do well here.</p>\n\n<p>There are a number of academics who don't see how what, from their point of view, seems like a light joke, can feel exclusive and unwecloming to others. Off the top of my head, I remember <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9396\">Should academic papers necessarily carry a sober tone?</a> , <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/100620\">Would students feel uncomfortable if I include in my lecture a quote which is somewhat sexually suggestive?</a> and <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/57074\">Is it appropriate for my professor to include gender offensive material that is unrelated to the class subject matter in the course notes?</a> . \nI think the answers to those questions are helpful to academics who are proceeding in good faith but don't see the problem.</p>\n\n<p>One of the things I love about most of the stackexchange network is that it is a place where you can ask very basic questions and get clearly written answers. Not every place should have to be like that (indeed, my primary SE site, mathoverflow, is very explicitly not!) but I think it is good that most of the SE network is.</p>\n\n<p>As regards the question of whether this would be the same in any workplace: I don't think so. As an academic, I continually receive the message from my employers and my community that they are very concerned about gender representation and have put a lot of thought into issues of microaggressions. I hear the same thing from people I know who work in tech, but I don't hear it from doctors, lawyers, musicians or chefs. I think gender issues are more tense in this community, so I think an answer explaining the norms in this community would be helpful. Indeed, I suspect that math is different from political science, and it might be best if we got an answer from someone in the political science world. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4181, "author": "LateralTerminal", "author_id": 82586, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/82586", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Honestly I don't understand why </p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/109937/how-can-i-avoid-inadvertently-offending-my-female-peers-and-getting-into-trouble\">How can I avoid inadvertently offending my female peers and getting into trouble for it?</a></p>\n\n<p>is open and</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/109789/what-was-offensive-about-the-ladies-lingerie-department-joke-and-how-can-i-av\">What was offensive about the &quot;ladies lingerie department&quot; joke, and how can I avoid offending people in a similar way?</a></p>\n\n<p>Is closed.</p>\n\n<p>They are both still basically asking the exact same question in a different way.</p>\n\n<p>I think the original question was formatted in a much better way with more context.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4190, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>My 10 cents, it would be good to see it on the site, and open, if people are able to control their emotions and address it in a methodical and rational way. Particularly if commenting is monitored. </p>\n\n<p>These types of topics can become highly charged quickly and this can circumvent constructive discussion and possible resolution of these issues.</p>\n\n<p>Is it relevant, yes. It is interesting and elucidating what type of behaviour is acceptable in this type of situation and breaking it down into the basic parts of why something is not appropriate. Academic situations abide by strict codes of conduct, so exploring what breaches these is important.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4153", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4160, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Not sure what \"level of research\" implies, but I imagine that would not be a good question for this site, as that's fairly subjective. I can't imagine what we'd post beyond what you already were able to find for yourself.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4161, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The question you propose would be a <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3657/7734\">shopping question</a> as it asks us to evaluate an individual university.\nWhat you can ask about is <em>how</em> to evaluate the research level of an anonymous university (unless we already have a question on that).</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4159", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/60994/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4168, "author": "Anonymous Physicist", "author_id": 13240, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/13240", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>No. A question about a product (free or not) which is marketed to academics is not a question about academia. Questions about individual products are similar to questions about individual research problems in that way.</p>\n\n<p>Example: \"What color should an academic CV be?\" is on topic but \"How do I change the color of my academic CV in LaTeX?\" is not. \"Why do academics use preprint services?\" is on topic but \"How do I submit to ArXiv?\" is not.</p>\n\n<p>The degree of technicality of a question is subjective. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4175, "author": "Ooker", "author_id": 14341, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/14341", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Based on the received responses, I guess that we want to keep them, for the reason has been discussed in the question? I think it's the unheard of OSF that make it sounds like off-topic. If needed, a sentence explaining what it is is enough. So I'd say this type of question is on-topic.</p>\n\n<p>However, I don't know which point in the question doesn't say that it's not a preprint service?</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4176, "author": "Kimball", "author_id": 19607, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/19607", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I didn't vote either way on closing this question, and don't know about the reasons of the people who did, but my first guess would be the question doesn't sound like it will be of interest to too many people. What is on topic is certainly subjective, but the most important thing is that it is of interest to other people on the site.</p>\n\n<p>To me, the question sounds like it may be a reasonable question for this site in terms of topic based on other questions I've seen, but I have never heard of OSF, and apparently it hasn't been mentioned too many times on this site, compared to things like arXiv or Google Scholar, so I'm not sure that many users of this site know what it is. Possibly the people who voted to close don't know what it is either, and it is hard to ascertain this from your question, so one thing you could try is to give a little more background and detail in your question. (Of course, if no one here uses OSF, you're unlikely to get an answer anyway.)</p>\n\n<p>And yes, I would say in general we don't want questions about how to use specific software/applications on this site, that doesn't mean questions involving specific software is necessarily off topic (e.g., if you should post on the arXiv or use LaTeX in such and such a situation).</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4214, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I am going to ignore the big-picture question posed in the title and focus on the issue of wether or not <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/109866/is-there-a-way-to-move-a-preprint-from-one-service-to-another-within-the-osf-sys\">Is there a way to move a preprint from one service to another within the OSF system?</a> should be opened or closed.</p>\n\n<p>To me this is a clear cut case of a question that is too specific and should be \n(left) closed. The exact answer depends on the specifics of the generic OSF preprint service and MindRxiv. While it might/might not be possible to move a preprint between two services, that may not hold for all services. Maybe there is an edit that can be made to make the question more general, but it is not obvious to me.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4162", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/14341/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4166, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I was initially skeptical that edits could address <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4154/929\">my concerns</a> about the original question: not specific to academia, bad subjective (all answers equally valid, no problem to be solved, and rant like), too broad, and likely to lead to tangential discussion. I was surprise and think the new questions addresses all of my concerns.</p>\n\n<p>Academics blur the lines between professional and social interactions. Further some academics are hypersensitive to issues of harassment while others are socially oblivious. The actions we can/should take are sufficiently different from the actions that should be taken in other workplaces that it seems reasonable to ask here.</p>\n\n<p>By asking for actions that can be taken, not all answers will be equally valid. Some actions will be more effective and others will be easier to implement. There is clearly a problem with harassment in academia and hence knowing how to avoid it is important. The question does not imply that the behavior is not offensive and does not seem like a rant in disguise.</p>\n\n<p>While the question is still broad, it is clearly a topic some members of the community wish to tackle. Any discussion that arises from the question and answers seems like it will lead to better answers as opposed to simply disagreements.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4167, "author": "Bryan Krause", "author_id": 63475, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/63475", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I think the question would have been improved if it removed the citation of the original article to keep focused.</p>\n\n<p>Instead, the answers seem to be based on a reading of that article, and so the intended refocusing of the question has been lost. For example, the question says nothing about the process of apologizing nor about the way Prof Y responded, and the answers and discussion in the comments has become largely a discussion about those topics.</p>\n\n<p>However, I am wary to suggest an edit to the question at this point since it already has several answers and a lot of attention.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4169, "author": "aparente001", "author_id": 32436, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/32436", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I'm happy about the efforts to rescue the essence of the question.</p>\n\n<p>However, I felt that the question needed some sharpening of focus. I'll explain here what my thinking was in the edits I've proposed.</p>\n\n<p>The quote from the linked article showed that this was a gender issue -- yet the title and the tags were a whitewash. So I proposed an edit to the title.</p>\n\n<p>I also added two additional paragraphs from the cited article, so that readers will understand that Prof. X didn't <em>just</em> make an insensitive, silly \"joke\" in the elevator -- in fact, he dug himself in deeper by emailing the complainant and calling the complaint \"frivolous.\" It will be easier to explain to the original OP (and people in his shoes) what was wrong with Prof. X's actions, and how to avoid doing something similar, if this information is included.</p>\n\n<p>And I made the asker's gender explicit.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4170, "author": "SSimon", "author_id": 41198, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/41198", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>lingerie–elevator question is exculisivly a gender issue question.</p>\n\n<p>It is a perpetual struggle of females in academia to be taken seriously.</p>\n\n<p>Lack of female moderators and female members of academia SE, made the question about something else.\nThis, as I suppose, is coming from the male members. Most of the people here feel irresponsible to female struggle in academia, they fail to recognize assaults that are sex-based.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=13&amp;v=h3Yrhv33Zb8\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=13&amp;v=h3Yrhv33Zb8</a></p>\n\n<p>Why men cannot recognize their fault and appologize?</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4171, "author": "Daniel R. Collins", "author_id": 43544, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/43544", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Having just read the new question, there are two things about it that currently bother me/signal a poorly-formed question.</p>\n\n<p>(1) The double negatives in the title. \"How can I avoid being intolerant and unsupportive ...?\". This has the flavor that something is getting bent or overworked in an attempt to take something trashy and make it marginally acceptable. Imagine if the title instead was, \"How can I be tolerant and supportive ... ?\" That's shorter, clearer, more direct, and doesn't have the \"odor\" of some ulterior motive being masked. It's also a totally different question, of course. </p>\n\n<p>(2) The line after the quote about the OP's deep-seated fears, \"As a male member of academe, I am worried. I feel bewildered and fear that I might also offend someone some day.\" That seems ridiculous; it's hard to imagine someone so oblivious as to be terrorized at not understanding that mentioning ladies' underwear is a faux pas; or that some amount decorum must essentially be practiced. Rather, this has the scent of a propagandist. I don't think this line adds anything to the question. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4182, "author": "LateralTerminal", "author_id": 82586, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/82586", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<h1>The original question was fine.</h1>\n<p>People just didn't like it because it looked like the original question was invented just to get rep on the site. I'm honestly not sure. OP could have been a troll but we can't know that. The original question could have been the legitimate fears of someone.</p>\n<hr />\n<h3>The new question is just bad because it's a totally different question!</h3>\n<p>The original question asks this:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><h1>Help me understand why this is offensive?</h1>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p>The new question is mostly heavy pandering. The new question asks this:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><h1>How do I not accidentally say something offensive?</h1>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<hr />\n<p>Both questions are not great but the new question is awful and removes all intent of the original question.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4186, "author": "henning", "author_id": 31917, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/31917", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Regarding the close-vote due to the question being allegedly off-topic, because it better fits in <em>the workplace</em> or <em>interpersonal skills</em>: If I member correctly, our policy is that relevance on another site does not imply irrelevance on this site. I've voted to reopen.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4165", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4178, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>I think the question is a good fit for this site in its current state as it does not solicit mere opinions and tries not to incite political debates. </p>\n\n<p>However, given the inevitable attraction of political debate, the question shall be equipped with a notice that all answers not providing a reference will be deleted without warning (and are fair game for not-an-answer flags) and the same applies to political discussion in the comments. As a rule of thumb, it should not be possible to deduce the political opinion of the author from a post.</p>\n\n<p>This means that some existing answers, including upvoted ones, need to be deleted, but they are not valid answers to any question that is suited for our site (and thus “had it coming”). Regarding <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/110063/7734\">Maarten Buis’ highly upvoted answer</a> in particular, it mainly builds upon the clarification of liberalism, which may be interesting, but not the point of our site.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4179, "author": "Massimo Ortolano", "author_id": 20058, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/20058", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Another possibility is the following:</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>Revert the question to the original state and keep it closed with the initial answers.</li>\n<li>Invite the OP to ask a new question according to the latest edited version.</li>\n<li>If the OP is not interested in asking the edited question, someone who edited it can go on asking.</li>\n</ol>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4180, "author": "zibadawa timmy", "author_id": 19768, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/19768", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The question, as it is currently phrased, just wants to know about the existence of \"serious\" research into the (alleged) phenomenon. Such a question is easily resolved with a google search, as <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_views_of_American_academics\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">there is an entire wiki page</a> dedicated to the topic. This page is heavily sourced with thirty references. This includes several analyses of <em>why</em> the phenomenon occurs. This is more than sufficient for anyone to resolve the question immediately at hand.</p>\n\n<p>I don't think questions which boil down to \"provide me a list of things readily obtained by googling or even just wikipedia\" is a suitable question anywhere on the Stack Exchange. It definitely demonstrates a lack of research effort, which is one of the default reasons for down-voting a question.</p>\n\n<p>The attention the question has received is not because it asks a good question which admits a quality answer, but because it asks a trivially answered question on a contentious topic.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4183, "author": "Dave Harris", "author_id": 65735, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/65735", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>There is an additional problem with this question. If you follow the citations to the base article, it is poorly done. I do not believe it was peer reviewed and the editor is a co-author. While it may be factually true, there was much about it that was concerning. I had sufficient concerns to be unsure of the veracity of the article itself. It read as a disguised tool for polemics.</p>\n\n<p>If the question is reopened, there should be a direct link to the underlying article so that others could read it. I would tend not to reopen the question because the underlying article is suspect.</p>\n\n<p>It is true from other research that academics are more liberal than others, but it also matters to be careful as to what material is cited to begin the discussion.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4177", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4185, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>As its name suggests, the Stack Exchange network grew out of CS-based websites, so there is likely to be a lot more questions from scientists than from the humanities, because that reflects the user base.</p>\n\n<p>It’s also worth noting that there aren’t nearly as many resources geared toward STEM faculty: most of the books I’ve seen addressed to faculty have been written from the viewpoint of someone who is working in the humanities rather than the sciences.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4187, "author": "Flyto", "author_id": 8394, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8394", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<p>As Aeismail points out in their answer, the Stackexchange network grew out of the StackOverflow site - which is for programming queries. Therefore, people who program in their daily lives, i.e. people in STEM subjects, will be more likely to think of coming here.</p>\n\n<p>But it's perhaps also worth noting that a huge number of questions that are closed for being off-topic are from computer scientists; for some reason they seem to assume that \"academia.stackexchange\" means a place to ask academic computer science questions. This has always baffled me. Maybe it's for the same reason? </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4188, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>While there is an actual prevalence of people from those fields here (due to reasons elaborated in other answers), this even gets emphasised due to the fact that they are somewhat peculiar due to their subject of research and history, for example:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>The research process in many subfields of mathematics and computer science can be quite different from, say, an experimental field.</li>\n<li>Publications in mathematics are put to special scrutiny (for a reason).</li>\n<li>Computer science has a mostly unique tradition to publish at conferences.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Compared to this, many other scientific fields are rather homogeneous – they form the default backdrop, against which the above peculiarities can be seen. Therefore, for mathematicians and computer scientists, their field is more likely to be a relevant factor to mention in a post – and thus more visible.</p>\n\n<p>Note though, that there are other fields with similar peculiarities such as law, which you will hardly ever read about here, because they are indeed underrepresented.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4184", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4192, "author": "Nobody", "author_id": 546, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/546", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Your question title </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>What is an illegal or/and inappropriate question in a job interview?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>is an open end question.</p>\n\n<p>There are a lot of things that could be illegal or/and inappropriate to ask in a job interview depending on the local law and the local culture.</p>\n\n<p>Legal and appropriate are two separate questions. Legal in one place does not necessarily imply the question is appropriate in another place.</p>\n\n<p>These are the reasons I voted to close as \"too broad\" and \"leave it closed\" when I reviewed the Reopen queue.</p>\n\n<p>However, in your question body</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>it is illegal to ask a candidate in a job interview about what would friends or/and family think about your job appointment with the institution.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>sounds like an answerable question to me if you add a location to it.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4193, "author": "MJeffryes", "author_id": 31487, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/31487", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>First, I want to say that I think that the question posed about how to handle job interview questions about family is important, and is answerable within the framework of the site. I've expanded in more detail some of what I said in the comments. Also, I don't have close or reopen vote privileges, and I up voted the original question in any case.</p>\n\n<p>I would say that the title doesn't quite match the body of the question. The question in the title \"What is an illegal or/and inappropriate question in a job interview?\" has infinitely many answers, and therefore doesn't fit very well in the Q&amp;A format. However, what you're discussing in the body of the question <em>is</em>, in my opinion, focused enough for it to be answerable in the Q&amp;A format.</p>\n\n<p>The other aspect is that the legal question is very specific to location. If you ask \"Is it illegal to ask about spouses in a job interview?\" and you want answers for both the USA and the UK, these are basically different questions. The site discourages asking multiple questions in a single question. Aside from this, I think the legal question may not be best suited to this site. In my opinion, it might get better answers on workplace.stackexchange.com, although having said this, the Stack Exchange network in general shies away from legal advice. Still, I think this question is a valid to ask here and should not be closed provided it is asking about a single location.</p>\n\n<p>Apart from the legal question, you also asked \"How should I respond to these questions as an early stage career academic?\". To me, this is the part of the question which this site is best equipped to answer. As you said, even if the question is illegal, you still need to handle it somehow if it's sprung upon you. It perhaps could have some geographical focus, but I think it doesn't need to have one to be a valid question.</p>\n\n<p>In summary, to me, the legal question and the \"how to handle this\" questions are separate, and should be split off into separate questions. The \"how to handle this\" question is good, and is exactly the sort of question this site ought to be able to provoke good answers for.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4191", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/41198/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4192, "author": "Nobody", "author_id": 546, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/546", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Your question title </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>What is an illegal or/and inappropriate question in a job interview?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>is an open end question.</p>\n\n<p>There are a lot of things that could be illegal or/and inappropriate to ask in a job interview depending on the local law and the local culture.</p>\n\n<p>Legal and appropriate are two separate questions. Legal in one place does not necessarily imply the question is appropriate in another place.</p>\n\n<p>These are the reasons I voted to close as \"too broad\" and \"leave it closed\" when I reviewed the Reopen queue.</p>\n\n<p>However, in your question body</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>it is illegal to ask a candidate in a job interview about what would friends or/and family think about your job appointment with the institution.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>sounds like an answerable question to me if you add a location to it.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4193, "author": "MJeffryes", "author_id": 31487, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/31487", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>First, I want to say that I think that the question posed about how to handle job interview questions about family is important, and is answerable within the framework of the site. I've expanded in more detail some of what I said in the comments. Also, I don't have close or reopen vote privileges, and I up voted the original question in any case.</p>\n\n<p>I would say that the title doesn't quite match the body of the question. The question in the title \"What is an illegal or/and inappropriate question in a job interview?\" has infinitely many answers, and therefore doesn't fit very well in the Q&amp;A format. However, what you're discussing in the body of the question <em>is</em>, in my opinion, focused enough for it to be answerable in the Q&amp;A format.</p>\n\n<p>The other aspect is that the legal question is very specific to location. If you ask \"Is it illegal to ask about spouses in a job interview?\" and you want answers for both the USA and the UK, these are basically different questions. The site discourages asking multiple questions in a single question. Aside from this, I think the legal question may not be best suited to this site. In my opinion, it might get better answers on workplace.stackexchange.com, although having said this, the Stack Exchange network in general shies away from legal advice. Still, I think this question is a valid to ask here and should not be closed provided it is asking about a single location.</p>\n\n<p>Apart from the legal question, you also asked \"How should I respond to these questions as an early stage career academic?\". To me, this is the part of the question which this site is best equipped to answer. As you said, even if the question is illegal, you still need to handle it somehow if it's sprung upon you. It perhaps could have some geographical focus, but I think it doesn't need to have one to be a valid question.</p>\n\n<p>In summary, to me, the legal question and the \"how to handle this\" questions are separate, and should be split off into separate questions. The \"how to handle this\" question is good, and is exactly the sort of question this site ought to be able to provoke good answers for.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4194", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4198, "author": "David Richerby", "author_id": 10685, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10685", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The reason given on the question page^* is</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>This question is not within the scope of this site as defined in the help center. Our scope particularly excludes the content of research, education outside of a university setting, and undergraduate admissions, life, and culture.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I suspect this may have been a knee-jerk \"it's about undergrads so it's off-topic!\" reaction. Unfortunately, if people vote to close for multiple reasons, the site only displays the most common one.</p>\n\n<p>Obviously, I don't remember my reasoning from six months ago but, looking at the question today, I believe my close vote would have been because:</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.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I think sources of funding fall within \"or similar\". The question is just soliciting a big list of funding sources, and <a href=\"https://stackoverflow.blog/2011/01/17/real-questions-have-answers/\">lists are generally discouraged on Stack Exchange</a>.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>^{* Quoted for context, in case the question is reopened.}</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4199, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I believe the reaction is to the request for a list of funding sources. However, the question about whether or not it's appropriate to cold call companies and corporations could be a valid and appropriate question for Stack Exchange, particularly since it's funding undergraduate research (which is on-topic, even if many other UG issues are not!).</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4197", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/90299/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4202, "author": "Buzz", "author_id": 27515, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/27515", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Yes. There is no reason not to include additional pertinent information.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4203, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Please don’t. This would degrade your question into a <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3657/7734\">shopping question</a>, i.e., the evaluation of an individual journal, which is something we really do not like to here. The information you give completely suffices to answer your question.</p>\n\n<p>Given the plethora of journals out there, it is very unlikely that somebody here is familiar with that specific journal even if it is reputable.\nThus all we can do, is to study its website and make a judgement from this.\nAnswers based on this are dangerous, since they can become invalid once the journal turns bad or is similar – and this site is not suited to be a database for the reputability of journals.</p>\n\n<p>On the other hand, your question without the specification of the journal is much more general and useful to future visitors.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4207, "author": "arboviral", "author_id": 52346, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/52346", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>To answer the question in the title (\"Can I [...]?\"): yes.</p>\n\n<p><strong>To answer the question in the text (\"Should I [...]?\"): probably not.</strong></p>\n\n<p>The answer from @wrzlprmft gives an excellent reason not to (it turns it into a <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3657/why-was-my-question-put-on-hold-for-shopping\">shopping question</a>). Another is that a journal publicly accused of being predatory would probably have grounds to sue for defamation, and several have tried. For example, <a href=\"https://www.chronicle.com/article/Publisher-Threatens-to-Sue/139243?cid=at\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">the OMICS group tried to sue a librarian in the US for $1 billion for including them on a blacklist of predatory journals he curated</a>. Although the legal article under which the case was brought <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_open_access_publishing#Beall&#39;s_list\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">has since been struck down by the Supreme Court of India</a>, other countries may have similar laws allowing such cases to proceed.</p>\n\n<p>@wrzlprmft also mentions that journals may 'turn bad' - I'd suggest the opposite is more likely; a journal with low standards and flawed reviewing processes which charges high fees might not be intentionally 'predatory', it might just be managed badly, and could potentially tighten things up with a new editor etc. I can't think of many examples though - and in line with my own advice above would be reluctant to name them anyway :)</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4201", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/46977/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4205, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>If a question is about an admissions system that is replicated throughout a country, and it’s not covered by a canonical question, there’s no reason not to ask it, particularly if it’s a country not often represented. However, if it’s a feature covered in one of the systems here, we should point that out and refer the reader to the appropriate existing question.</p>\n\n<p>If it’s about the practices at an individual institution (“How many recommendations do I need for the PhD program in Widget-Making at The University of Northern Southern Azkaban?”), it should be closed for being institution-specific.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4206, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I disagree. There are questions about admissions that are a good fit for the SE Q/A format and questions that are a bad fit. The SE model is to help people get good answers to the questions that fit and close the questions that don't fit. A while back, we decided to deviate a little from this model and create a canonical question about <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38237/how-does-the-admissions-process-work-for-ph-d-programs-in-the-us-particularly\">PhD admissions in the US</a>. The canonical question is not a great question for the SE format, but it grew out of a <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1560/what-should-we-do-with-the-can-i-get-into-x-program-with-3-xx-gpa/1563\">meta discussion</a> where it became clear that our community did not want to just close these <em>bad</em> questions as depending on individual factors (that is usually what makes the questions a bad fit) and instead wanted to do our best to help these, often new, users. The existence of the canonical question should not influence what happens when we get a <em>good</em> (i.e., one that works well with the SE format) admissions question, we still answer those.</p>\n\n<p>I think my feeling is that we should continue to close highly specific admissions questions for which the answer depends on individual factors for countries other than the US. If at some point in the future we reach a critical mass of these types of questions for a particular, somewhat unified, system, then we can make another CW question, if we have someone who will answer it (creating a canonical question without an answer is not so helpful).</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4204", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/15723/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4210, "author": "Massimo Ortolano", "author_id": 20058, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/20058", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>First, a premise. I was the first to vote to close <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/111017/20058\">your question</a> as duplicate, and I'm still convinced that it is a duplicate. </p>\n\n<p>In fact, in the <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/110970/20058\">first question</a> you conclude (bold mine):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><strong>What should I do in this situation?</strong> So far I've just been explaining\n to them how there might have been some confusions, but with their most\n recent response, it seems to me that most probably, they misunderstood\n my documents, and might have even completely missed one of them! <strong>I'm\n afraid of pursuing this more seriously and directly because the\n department is one of my favorite departments and I like to keep the\n option of going there later in my academic career open.</strong></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>In the closed question you conclude:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Do you think I should forget about working in that department if I start an appeal process at the court, or could I assume that everyone could just be adults and behave professionally?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>To me, even if worded differently, the bold sentences in the first question and the conclusion of the second question are asking for exactly the same thing.</p>\n\n<p>Finally,</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Wouldn't it be better if there was a measure to discourage users from false flagging and encourage them to read the questions more carefully before flagging it as duplicate?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I instead encourage you to edit your questions to make them really different.</p>\n\n<p>That said, your feature request should be probably asked on the <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/\">main meta</a> because it'd be better implemented network wide. However, I suggest you to first check the already existing questions about <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/exact-duplicates\">duplicates</a>, and in particular <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/309178/why-does-marking-someones-question-as-duplicate-incite-such-rage-or-hurt-feelin\">this one</a>.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4212, "author": "henning", "author_id": 31917, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/31917", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I don't agree with the view that both questions are full-fledged duplicates. However, I would encourage you to thoroughly edit the second question (or write a new one) and entirely focus on the issue that makes it partly different from the first, namely the probable impact of mounting a legal challenge on the attitude of the admissions committee toward you and your application. I would omit the backstory as far as possible, which also has the added benefit of making the question more generally applicable.</p>\n\n<p>Coming to your actual meta-question, there are already two mechanisms in place </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>to discourage users from false flagging and encourage them to read the questions more carefully,</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>namely the requirement of five close votes and the possibility of reopening. The first mechanism makes sure that alledged duplicates are quadruple-checked after the initial flag. Even then, the second mechanism allows correcting remaining errors, in addition to taking into account revisions of the question that were made after it has been closed. Also note that after the first duplicate flag, you are <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/250981/255554\">prompted to edit your question</a> to clarify why it isn’t a duplicate before closure.</p>\n\n<p>It is true that on urgent matters, this can be frustrating, but I consider this a lesser evil compared to less thorough vetting, which would lead to many more closings, reopenings, and ultimately more duplicates.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4209", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/83029/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4218, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Yes, this question is a good fit for our community and should be reopened.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4219, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>No, this question is not a good fit for our community and should be left closed.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4217", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4235, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Less than two weeks ago, I implemented <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4145/7734\">a similar renaming</a>: Before, there was only <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/research\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;research&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">research</a>; now, there is a synonym <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/research\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;research&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">research</a> → <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/research-process\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;research-process&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">research-process</a>. While this tag was blatantly misapplied on a daily basis before (I subscribed to the tag just to remove it), it has not happened since then. This shows two things:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Renaming the tag is indeed effective.</p></li>\n<li><p>Only the master tag matters – very likely because this is what is shown when typing <em>research</em> into the tag field when <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/ask\">asking a new question</a> (best try for yourself).</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>I also second <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4221/rename-review-articles-tag-to-lit-review-articles#comment12871_4221\">Federico Poloni’s comment</a> that abbreviations should be avoided in tags.</p>\n\n<p>I thus suggest to have the following tag structure:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/review-articles\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;review-articles&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">review-articles</a> → <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/literature-review-articles\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;literature-review-articles&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">literature-review-articles</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/review-papers\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;review-papers&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">review-papers</a> → <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/literature-review-articles\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;literature-review-articles&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">literature-review-articles</a></li>\n</ul>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4236, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I just wanted to comment regarding logistics: the best way to rename a tag is</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>post on meta to find out if the community supports or is opposed to the tag renaming.</li>\n<li>if there is community support, moderators will \"merge\" the tag which effectively renames it.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>It's generally not recommended to just start adding or replacing the tag manually, especially for a tag with many questions. (1) This can be confusing for people who are new (\"what is the difference between these tags, which should I use for my question on a survey paper?\") or who are used to the old tag schema. (2) It also bumps a bunch of questions to the top of the home page, which some people don't like.</p>\n\n<p>(For reason #1, I have renamed the <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/lit-review-articles\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;lit-review-articles&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">lit-review-articles</a> back to <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/review-articles\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;review-articles&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">review-articles</a> for now. Once there is agreement on a new name for the tag, and the need for it, a moderator can rename <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/review-articles\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;review-articles&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">review-articles</a> again.)</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4221", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/20418/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4223, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>My interpretation of what the consensus opinion of our community is, is slightly different than yours. I believe that <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4162/are-questions-asking-technical-issues-on-academic-services-on-topic\">Are questions asking technical issues on academic services on-topic?</a> has led to a consensus that in general questions on technical issues are on topic. I also believe our community has expressed that a consensus opinion can be formed from indirect evidence based on <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4211/is-there-a-consensus-if-there-is-only-indirect-evidence\">Is there a consensus if there is only indirect evidence?</a>. I think you agree with those two statements.</p>\n\n<p>Where I think I disagree with you is what the voting on <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4217/should-this-question-on-the-osf-system-be-reopened\">Should this question on the OSF system be reopened?</a> means. I think you think it suggests that a mod should be called into action to reopen the question. Mod intervention for opening and closing questions in our community is usually limited to cases where an unedited questions gets repeatedly opened and closed and a mod has to decide if the final state is open or closed. In general, at most a simple nudge (e.g., a comment in chat), is enough to get our community to reopen questions that it is interested in. After nearly a month and numerous posts in meta and chat and trips through the review queue, the community was unable to generate enough support to reopen the question. I see nothing in the voting on <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4217/should-this-question-on-the-osf-system-be-reopened\">Should this question on the OSF system be reopened?</a> that makes me think the community wishes are not being fulfilled and hence have no desire to wield the mod hammer to reopen the question.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4224, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The question \"Should this question on the OSF system be reopened?\" only has 4 positive votes. The original question has, in its lifetime, received reopen votes from 4 unique users. </p>\n\n<p>It doesn't seem like most \"people only vote, but don't act\"; it just seems like the specific question does not have enough support from the community to be reopened. (The threshold is 5 reopen votes from users with the reopen vote privilege, which hasn't been met here.)</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4222", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/14341/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4229, "author": "JBentley", "author_id": 42802, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/42802", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The answer is simple, of course. The comments should be moved into the existing chat. If the moderator can't because comments can only be moved once, then this strikes me as a serious flaw in the system.</p>\n\n<p>I had a related issue recently. I posted a comment on an answer explaining my vote and ways to improve the answer, and the comment received several dozen upvotes. A long series of irrelevant comments followed. The entire block of comments was moved to chat, including mine. I queried that and was told that there's no way of selectively moving comments to chat. To me that seems to defeat the point of the comment system, which is <em>supposed</em> to be used for suggesting improvements to the answer.</p>\n\n<p>I would suggest that moderators need finer tuned controls for deleting and/or moving comments, and site policies should also be finer tuned. Comments should be deleted or moved based on their individual merits, and not as an entire block (which is akin to throwing out the baby with the bathwater).</p>\n\n<p>As a final point, deletion really ought only to be used on comments that have serious problems (e.g. are abusive). With the availability of move-to-chat, there is little reason to delete a comment.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4232, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 5, "selected": true, "text": "<h3>First of all</h3>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>It […] deprives the community at large of important follow-up content.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Almost nobody wants to read a discussion spanning twenty or more comments.\nThis apparently even applies to comment authors – going by comments that add nothing to existing comments.\nIn fact I would wager that the only people who read all the comments on the answer in question are its author and some moderators.\n<a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4230/7734\">The point of moving comments to chat</a> is to make those comments visible that are the few ones that are of high interest to future readers <em>on their own</em> – be these existing or potential future comments.</p>\n\n<p>Also, please remember that comments are mostly intended to be temporary, i.e., to be made obsolete with an edit or similar.\nThe main exceptions to this are relevant links, but even those can be edited into the post.\n<strong>If you want to say something of lasting value, do not say it in a comment.</strong> </p>\n\n<h3>What should have happened</h3>\n\n<p>Ideally, almost none of the fifty-something comments following the initial moving to chat should have been posted as a comment but in chat.\nThis is not because those comments were entirely pointless, but these comments were either very likely to incite further replies or were only of value in the context of the entire debate surrounding this answer. (Please see <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4230/7734\">this</a> as to what kind of comments I consider worthy of being comments after comments have been moved to chat.)</p>\n\n<h3>What should happen in a similar situation in the future</h3>\n\n<p>In the future, moderators should include a link to <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4230/7734\">this FAQ</a> to every moved-to-chat notice.\nIf you post a comment after such a notice you have to live with the possibility that your comment is removed without warning.\nIf you do not like this, do not post a comment but in chat.</p>\n\n<p>Comments that do not follow the FAQ above should be removed as soon as possible to avoid the strong broken-window effect that this situation has on some comment authors (“If that opinion deserves the honour of being a comment, so does my contrasting opinion.”).</p>\n\n<h3>What to do with the post in question</h3>\n\n<p>After the initial moving to chat, <strong>not a single message</strong> was posted in chat.\nAny of the comment authors could have said or thought:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>We are having a longer discussion here, let’s move to chat.</p>\n \n <p>My comment is essentially a reply to a chat message (being a comment moved to chat); I’ll post it as such.</p>\n \n <p>This comment will likely incite a longer discussion, I’ll post it in chat.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>They didn’t – despite a moderator’s comment saying that comments are not for extended discussion.</p>\n\n<p>On the other hand, we moderators are not completely without fault either. We could have intervened earlier or more clearly.</p>\n\n<p>I exploited some special properties of the situation, abused quite a few features, and spent a considerable amount of time to move the entirety of comments into <a href=\"https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/79371/discussion-on-answer-by-dan-romik-dealing-with-a-phd-student-reneging-on-an-agre\">one chatroom</a>.\n<strong>This is a one-time thing. Do not expect this to ever happen again.</strong></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4233, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I know your answer has been controversial and you received a lot of both positive and negative comments. You have handled that, often hostile, feedback well. Your responses to the feedback have been on point. The main issue that I see as a moderator is your point</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The deletion of the comments thus seems quite detrimental to a high-quality discussion and contrary to the goals of the site.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I strongly disagree with this statement. The goal of this site is not for high quality discussion, it is for high quality answers. The point of comments on answers is to help improve the answer. That improvement process might require a back and forth discussion, but the end result should be an improvement to the answer.</p>\n\n<p>When reading the comments and responses, it was clear to me that you thought about the comments and were not going to integrate the concepts in your answer. Given the nature of many of the comments, that is a reasonable decision and yours to make. At that point all the comments became obsolete as they were no longer going to make your answer better. If someone felt strongly about the views expressed in those comments, they could have written an answer.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4234, "author": "Alecos Papadopoulos", "author_id": 8575, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8575", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The answer by @Wrzlprmft states</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Almost nobody wants to read a discussion spanning twenty or more\n comments.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Come on. \n<strong>Almost <em>everybody</em> wants to read a discussion spanning twenty or more comments.</strong> More people prefer to talk-and-listen than to read-and-write. </p>\n\n<p>But the Will of the People is not my concern here. On the contrary I understand why a website that wants to be and remain a serious Q&amp;A forum, must come down hard on things like comments: we are here to play \"too short; didn't read\" rather than \"too long; didn't read\". </p>\n\n<p>So the official policy explicitly <em>scorns</em> comments, and canonizes about their lowly nature. But, whatever the SE team wants the comments to be (and maybe rightfully so), they are stubbornly much more, and re-iterating the rules and the official intent around comments will not really help. And indeed, Many-many times comments contain precious content. </p>\n\n<p>In light of the above, the rule \"comments can be moved to chat only once and then they can only be deleted\", is a dysfunctional SE operational rule (alongside a few others). </p>\n\n<p>The compromise is obvious: sure, keep pushing comments to Chat (after all if you are here to chat, go to Chat), but scrap the \"move only once, and then delete\" rule. Let the moderators be able to easily preserve all Chatery, without needing to go to the extraordinary lengths our brave-with-the-spear moderator went, which apparently was so frustrating that he ended it with the grave warning \"don't ever expect for this to happen again\". I agree. Moderators have more important things to do than perform workarounds for inefficient SE rules. The point is to have the SE team change the functionality.</p>\n\n<p><strong>This is officially a \"feature\" request</strong>, and I would ask the moderators to consider forwarding it to the SE crew.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4228", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/40589/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4238, "author": "Scott Seidman", "author_id": 20457, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/20457", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I can think of dozens of questions about LGBTQ issues here. Your assertion that this is considered off topic is simply wrong.</p>\n\n<p>Further, the question about underrepresentation in STEM is a question for the main site, not the meta.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4239, "author": "Jon Custer", "author_id": 15477, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/15477", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>After some thought, I think that there is a core issue here that Academia should be interested in. That issue closely parallels concerns about under representation of (females, Hispanics, ...) in higher education, either as students or faculty. I would say that, having run a few journal queries, that the topic of LGBTQ demographics in academia is pretty new, and in general the topic of LGBTQ in overall society is still pretty new (consider the wide range of various estimates for simply the number of LGBTQ individuals in the general population). </p>\n\n<p>However, the question as asked contains various elements that made it possible to vote as unclear or off-topic. These included</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>That \"people in STEM tend to be more feminine\"</li>\n<li>The whole second half of the question about hiding piano playing</li>\n<li>A fairly aggressive tone insisting on 'academia' relevance and ignoring comments asking to clarify things. </li>\n<li>(I'll note in passing that the linked Nature item is a commentary, not a technical article)</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>So, given that, I would suggest that a simpler, broader question on LGBTQ in academia would still be appropriate. One more focused on what do we know now about LGBTQ demographics at least through undergrad -> faculty (actual data). A second question might revolve around what, if anything, is out there pointing to acceptance of LGBTQ in academia (perhaps focused just on faculty, may differentiate based on area).</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4240, "author": "1006a", "author_id": 58598, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/58598", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Here is a possible edit, incorporating comments from both the main question and this question, that might help clarify your point and address concerns about the question. I'm not going to just make the edit because there's only one chance at getting put into the post-edit re-open queue, but please feel free to adopt any of it that you think is useful.</p>\n\n<p>Note that I did add the second footnote wholesale, to address questions about \"what does <em>representative</em> mean?\" Of course you are free to edit or ignore that bit (or any other part of the suggested rewrite) if it doesn't match your intent.</p>\n\n<h2>What the edited question would look like:</h2>\n\n<p>According to the Nature article \"<a href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05587-y\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">LGBTQ scientists are still left out</a>\"\nthere are some \"heteronormative assumptions\" in the STEM field which artificially suppress the number of LGBTQ people in the field. This view of the sciences¹ doesn't match my own experience and anecdotal evidence. (I have seen evidence of a sexism issue but it is a separate issue from LGBT.) In my (admittedly subjective) experience, people in STEM tend to be more open-minded than any other profession. </p>\n\n<p>The Nature article cites a few studies, but none seems to be directly on-point (one study focused on government workers rather than scientists in academia-proper, and another had results that were not statistically significant and whose authors admitted they had made mistakes). Again maybe I'm wrong, but I would like to see a more relevant peer review study (gender studies or social science) explaining this problem.</p>\n\n<p>**What robust studies exist on the representation of LGBTQ individuals² in STEM fields within academia?</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>¹ _{The idea that STEM fields are especially constrained comes up in other contexts, too. For example, according to <a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/05/opinion/manil-suri-why-is-science-so-straight.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">an opinion piece by Manil Suri</a> published in the New York Times, in science it is also not appropriate to talk about hobbies.}</p>\n\n<p>_{Manil Suri is a famous scholar, his description of the situation in academia is worrying, and gives the impression that behavior is constrained and under close scrutiny.} </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>_{Being too expressive of personal identity can be viewed as running counter to scientific neutrality. In competitive venues, where complete immersion in one’s field might be the promoted ideal, the mention of an extracurricular pursuit can even be seized upon as a lack of commitment. I remember a young mathematician at a prestigious research institute sharing his love for piano playing after hearing I wrote fiction. “Don’t tell anyone in my department I own a piano,” he requested in the next breath.}</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>_{This is a shock to me because I perceived the STEM field as most openminded.}</p>\n\n<p>²Representation could measure the percentage of LGBTQ faculty in STEM fields in comparison to other academic disciplines, or something like dropout rates for LGBTQ students in STEM fields compared to dropout rates for other students.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4237", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4246, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Would you rather them be closed as too specific and go ask the journal? If the answer depends on the specific journal, it is not a good question for us. If it is more of a general question, then the canonical question provides the answer. If there is something missing from the answer on the canonical question, let's fix that.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4247, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I would categorise “What is happening to my paper” questions as follows:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Questions which are directly answered by the canonical Q&amp;A¹. These should clearly be closed as duplicate.</p></li>\n<li><p>Questions where the asker tells us little about what happened and what they already know. <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/114030\">Your example question</a> is typical for this category and leaves us with the following questions:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Did another instance of <em>ready for review</em> precede <em>review in progress?</em></li>\n<li>Is the asker aware of how the peer-review process generally work?</li>\n<li>Did the asker already make the guess that the peer reviews did not happen or were disatisfactory and either excluded that option or just wants a third opinion?</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Voting to close or closing such a question as duplicate of the canonical Q&amp;A¹ <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/250981/255554\">prompts the asker</a> to clarify why their question is not answered by the canonical Q&amp;A.\nIf it isn’t, this will ideally allow the asker to clarify all of the above and leave an interesting question, where we do not need to reiterate the typical workflow – something we did again and again before we had the canonical Q&amp;A.</p></li>\n<li><p>Questions where the asker makes clear why the canonical Q&amp;A¹ does not answer the question, but which can be answered by a slight addition to the canonical Q&amp;A, usually by adding some name used for some stage in the process. In that case, there are two options:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Answer the new question and perform the respective edit to the canonical Q&amp;A, linking back to the new question.</li>\n<li>Close the new question as duplicate, perform the respective edit to the canonical Q&amp;A, and leave a comment that it is now addressed.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>In most cases I would lean to the latter option, but if the answer was difficult to obtain, I would clearly prefer the former one.</p></li>\n<li><p>Questions which do not fall within the canonical Q&amp;A’s scope, e.g., questions about an atypical case. These should be left open.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>My impression is that we mostly get the second kind. However, I also observed users voting to close questions of the fourth kind as duplicate of the canonical Q&amp;A.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Some sidenotes:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><blockquote>\n <p>[the community question] doesn't say anything about status changes for example.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I beg to disagree. There is an extensive diagram how statuses change into each other and text explaining how and when this can happen.</p></li>\n<li><p>If you ask me, the main problem with <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/113996/how-to-nail-a-ph-d-interview\">How to nail a Ph.D. interview?</a> is that it is too broad. Interestingly, nobody voted to close as such yet.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>^{\n¹ <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/55665/what-does-the-typical-workflow-of-a-journal-look-like\">What does the typical workflow of a journal look like?</a>\n}</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4245", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/84834/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4255, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>It sounds like you want the opposite answer from what the question asks. I think you want to know what the upsides of brexit is for UK science. The answer to your original question make it clear that this community believes that on the whole brexit is bad, but the question does not really ask for the upside, it only asks for the downsides. If this is in fact what you are after, you should ask a new question.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4256, "author": "AppliedAcademic", "author_id": 90681, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/90681", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I would suggest asking a new question, something like 'What are the upsides to Brexit for UK scientists?', and further ask if there's a reason that scientists appear to have an opinion opposed to the larger electorate. </p>\n\n<p>This will make the question seem less loaded, and hopefully draw in more views from across the spectrum.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4254", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/84834/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4260, "author": "ff524", "author_id": 11365, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p><strong>tl;dr</strong>: Since your answer was duplicate text and a lot of it didn't directly address the question that was asked, it gives the impression of someone who hears a few key words (\"gender\" \"STEM\" \"underrepresented\") and posts a whole screed without taking the time to give a thoughtful answer to the question that was actually asked. </p>\n\n<p>On Academia SE, answers should directly address the question as asked. When you post an answer that includes lots of stuff that isn't specifically targeted to the question, it is likely to get deleted.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>In the case of (for example) your answer to <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/97267/why-are-women-even-less-represented-in-engineering-than-in-other-stem\">Why are women even less represented in engineering than in other STEM?</a>, the question begins with the following statement</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>women are approx. half of the students in biology, chemistry and maths (check e.g. here ) but barely 20% in engineering.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>as the premise of the question, then it goes on to ask a question about the reasons for this. Specifically, it asks for studies that give possible reasons for the different gender ratios in engineering vs. other STEM fields.</p>\n\n<p>Then the bulk of your answer is devoted to text and images that reiterate the <em>premise</em> of the question, rather than answering the actual question.</p>\n\n<p>Thing stated as a given in the question: </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>women have high representation in some STEM fields and low representation in other STEM fields.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Your answer: </p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>women have high representation in some STEM fields and low representation in other STEM fields. <strong>Already assumed as a \"given\" in the question.</strong></li>\n<li>women have high representation in some non-STEM fields too. <strong>Not relevant to a question that is specifically about STEM fields.</strong></li>\n<li>two paragraphs at the end that address the \"why\" question - <strong>this is the only portion of the answer that seems to answer the question as asked</strong>. </li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>(Although I haven't looked at the studies you cited and whether they were specifically about motivation for pursuing other STEM fields vs. engineering.) Also, it seems you didn't read the part of the question where the OP wrote </p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>It is often stated that women tend to choose careers where they feel more useful towards society but that is difficult to reconcile with the fact that the share of women in Chemistry is 50% but only 35% in Chemical Engineering</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>as a part of your answer was \"women are driven by a biological urge to help people\" without addressing the difficulty the OP stated with this particular reason.</p>\n\n<p>Your second answer contained much less irrelevant content, but about half of it was again reiterating the premise of the question.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>An answer that directly answers the specific question, \"(Cite studies to explain) why women have lower representation in engineering than other STEM fields\", without extra content that doesn't answer this question, would not be deleted.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4261, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<blockquote>\n <p>What exactly is it that I do wrong?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Your behavior was generally fine in that you did not violate the golden <em>be nice rule</em>. What you did wrong was post identical answers to different questions. Our community does not like duplicate answers that are not tailored to the question. It makes users feel like the answerer is trying to make a point. This is especially true for controversial views on <em>soft</em> questions. \nAlso, when we see *duplicate/revised versions of deleted answers with down votes, we get a little worried that users are trying to game the voting system. I am not saying you were, but it is something we think about. Overall, your behavior (posting duplicate answers and a new answer instead of an edit) is/was no big deal and I just wanted to steer you towards more acceptable behavior.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>(2) What makes the deleted answer different in nature from the one that didn't get deleted?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Flags. User raised flags make all the difference. Moderators tend to only find issues when they are flagged or brought up in meta/chat. We don't generally go looking for issues. The answer I deleted was flagged by a user as being identical to another answer. The ones that didn't get deleted had not been flagged and I (and likely the other moderators) did not know about them. Now that we know about it, it is probably worth looking into more, but hopefully this meta question will help you see a way forward so that we don't need to step in.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>(3) How can I post an answer to the question that does not get deleted?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>If two questions have identical answers, then they should be considered duplicates and closed as such. If there is a difference, or even a perceived difference, then the question should get left open. In that case, the best answer would point out the differences and perceived differences and explain how they do not affect the answer. Then provide a link to your previous answer and a brief summary of the key points of that answer. This is essentially the same way we answer all questions for which the answer is available online. In other words, don't just provide a link, but summarize the content that is being linked and explain why that <em>general</em> content is relevant to the question.</p>\n\n<h2>For completeness, I also want to address a couple of your comments about moderation.</h2>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>I sent the moderator message. The message was signed \"moderation team\" because I didn't change the default signature. The system used to default to signing the individual moderators name and I generally do not think about it. Sorry for any confusion.</p></li>\n<li><p>When I deleted your revised answer, I sent you a moderator message instead of a comment. I wanted to be clear about what was going on, but did not feel that discussing the contentious nature of the answer in public was the best course of action.</p></li>\n<li><p>I didn't respond to your follow up message, because I haven't had a chance yet. The gist of my message would have been, please ask in meta. While you found the right path on your own, steering some users to meta (and the right question), can be difficult and it takes time to write an appropriate mod message.</p></li>\n<li><p>The content of the answer did not affect my moderation decisions. I looked at the two answers and thought that they were duplicates and that the newer one was not tailored to the question. That said, I looked at the answers because they were flagged. The flags quite possibly were raised because of the content.</p></li>\n</ul>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4259", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/37939/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4266, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>As a general rule, the best way to make a question a good fit is to ensure the question could be asked by someone else not in your exact situation. Asking about very specific details of policy manuals is probably not a good idea, but if the question could be expanded to cover different agencies or cover different research areas, then it’s usually OK.</p>\n\n<p>But there’s certainly nothing wrong <em>a priori</em> with research admin questions. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4268, "author": "Industrademic", "author_id": 9181, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/9181", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p><strong>Research administration is certainly on topic.</strong></p>\n\n<p>Notably, practically every academic starts as their own research administrator. Even if you are provided shared staff with this specialty, you must check everything as you learn the strengths and weaknesses of those that support you. I think learning good research administration is as important to achieving success as good research design. Sadly, possibly more so...</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4262", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/23912/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4264, "author": "nengel", "author_id": 71814, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/71814", "pm_score": 4, "selected": true, "text": "<p>You can't delete the question, but doing so also won't solve your problem anyway.</p>\n\n<p>When you post a question on stackexchange, you agree in the terms and conditions that you don't have the right to delete the question. (You may only remove your name from it.) The question may be deleted by moderators, administrators, or the anti-spam bot if it is considered not to have any value, but questions with value can't just be removed by the user. People have taken the time to answer your question, so you shouldn't be able to make all their hard work worthless in a fit of pique (there have been problems with users deleting all their questions when ragequitting, and then the answers don't make sense any more). A moderator may make an exception for you based on the circumstances.\nSee also: <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5221/how-does-deleting-work-what-can-cause-a-post-to-be-deleted-and-what-does-that\">How does deleting work? What can cause a post to be deleted, and what does that actually mean? What are the criteria for deletion?</a>, under \"When can't I delete my own post?\"</p>\n\n<p>Turnitin regularly scrapes content from various websites, including stackexchange. Now that turnitin knows about this text, it is in its database and won't be removed from there just because you delete the question on the site.</p>\n\n<p>However, everyone knows that turnitin sometimes finds duplicate passages that are not instances of plagiarism. For instance, generally all references are highlighted, because other people have cited the same paper before. Another case is, as here, publication of the same text by the same author in another location.</p>\n\n<p>Therefore, the solution is simply for you to add a note when you hand in your essay saying that you wrote this question.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4265, "author": "Nobody", "author_id": 546, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/546", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It took me a while to figure out what you are trying to solve.</p>\n\n<p>I think the solution is to cite the question on Philosophy SE and the answer to that question to avoid the plagiarism issues. </p>\n\n<p>Please refer to <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/1580/546\">Attributing contributions to academic work that occur in Stack Exchange</a></p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4263", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/96653/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4270, "author": "Nobody", "author_id": 546, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/546", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>There is a question\n<a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/43260/546\">What is the average postdoctoral salary in China?</a></p>\n\n<p>and the question listed in this meta question, I think we should either close those salary questions altogether or open them all because the US is a country, China is a country, Germany is a country, Canada is also a country, <strong>…..</strong></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4272, "author": "Allure", "author_id": 84834, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/84834", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I don't understand why these questions were closed. The closing rationale is given as \"depends on individual factors\". While undoubtedly some universities will pay more than another, one can still give an answer based on salary range.</p>\n\n<p>For example here's the rough salary of <a href=\"https://www1.salary.com/Professor-Computer-Science-salaries.html\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">a Computer Science professor in the United States</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The average Professor - Computer Science salary in the United States is $110,787 as of July 31, 2018, but the range typically falls between $87,575 and $155,093. Salary ranges can vary widely depending on many important factors, including education, certifications, additional skills, the number of years you have spent in your profession.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The equivalent for engineering teachers in Pakistan/India would answer the question.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4279, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I am conflicted. While on the face of it all questions for the form</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>What is the average salary for position <em>X</em> make in field <em>Y</em> in country <em>Z</em>?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>seem to be a good question for the SE format since there is presumably a concise evidence based answer that will not become rapidly outdated. Assuming position <em>X</em> is related to academics, then these questions are relevant to our community and potentially one that someone may not have easy access to resources to answer. For example, a US trained Postdoc looking to move to Japan might not know where to begin to lookup salary info and there may not be a specific job that they are applying to during the early stages of researching job opportunities.</p>\n\n<p>I think the issue I see with them is that there are an awful lot of permutations of <em>X</em>, <em>Y</em>, and <em>Z</em> and we would get bored answering these questions. That in and of itself is not a reason to close the questions. I however am not intrigued by any of the listed questions and have not upvoted any of them (and have only left a somewhat snarky answer on one of them).</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4280, "author": "Nate Eldredge", "author_id": 1010, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/1010", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I propose that any such question should be rephrased as follows:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><strong>Where can one find</strong> salary data for job type X / country Y / field Z?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>If the question is just \"What is the salary range?\", then what would an answer look like? If it just gives specific figures, then it can't be expected to be valid into the future. If it comes from someone's personal experience or guess, then it's purely anecdotal. What you really want are statistics based on large-scale data from a reliable source. So if such a source exists, then why not simply link to it? That way, people will be able to find well-referenced data into the future (assuming the source continues to update their data, which many do).</p>\n\n<p>Also, if the source turns out to give a broader range of data (covering multiple job types / fields / countries) then the question can be broadened retroactively, so that people searching for any relevant combination can find their source in this question, and not have to ask separately.</p>\n\n<p>This way, instead of giving people fish, we're teaching them to fish, or at least telling them how to get to the river.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4269", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/20058/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4273, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Firstly, it's worth you asking yourself why you are seeking to participate on this site. This is a forum about academia, where people can ask and answer questions about academia. This is <em>not</em> an \"ask an academic\" website... its goal is to help academics navigate the world of academia. If you're not in that field you may have a hard time participating, as there's a lot unfamiliar to you. That's not a judgment call, it's simply an observation; I'm not a plumber, so I would have a hard time participating in an advanced discussion about plumbing. The same is true here.</p>\n\n<p>Secondly, the second page is really where you should be looking. Specifically:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>If you have a question about...</p>\n \n <ul>\n <li>Life as a graduate student, postdoctoral researcher, university\n professor</li>\n <li>Transitioning from undergraduate to graduate researcher</li>\n <li>Inner workings of research departments </li>\n <li>Requirements and expectations\n 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>Your questions should be about those things. If they're not your question will likely be closed. If it <em>is</em> on those topics but too broad, unclear, or any of other other close reasons, it will likely be closed.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4278, "author": "Ooker", "author_id": 14341, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/14341", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I don't have 10k rep so I cannot know what the question is really about, but base on the title I think it arguably falls into the category:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Requirements and expectations of academicians</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Or in this case, non-math-researchers. The 404 page suggests me this question, and I think it's the same with the question in discuss: <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/79796/14341\">Is there a place in academia for a physicist who reads mostly about math?</a> Therefore, I think this question is on-topic.</p>\n\n<p>I find this question on Mathematics, perhaps it will help you reword your question: <a href=\"https://math.stackexchange.com/q/310317/157643\">What fields of math would be most interesting for non-mathematicians?</a> </p>\n\n<p>If your question cannot be asked here, you can ask it on Reddit or other forums as well.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4271", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/64021/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4275, "author": "user97255", "author_id": 97255, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/97255", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>What you describe is a common phenomeon here (and even worse on many other SE sites - I myself experienced it under a different account). You may not know me but I liked your questions and answers. I wish you all the best!</p>\n\n<p>(I do not know if I am allowed to say this here, but \"AskAcademia\" on Reddit is a very good resource - in my opinion, the quality is not as high as here (in this regard, Stack Exchange is really extraordinarily great) but the atmosphere is really, really welcoming and friendly which makes up for this.)</p>\n\n<p>Thank you!</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4276, "author": "peterh", "author_id": 10234, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10234", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>You are mainly right, but deleting your account is a bad strategy. With it, you give up all your hard earned privileges. You could use them to make the system better.</p>\n\n<p>Between the SE sites, the Academia SE seems to me mainly friendly, except some... sensitive, mainly political topic.</p>\n\n<p>It is the internet. Here people can anonymously give, what they want to, without any too serious retorsion. It doesn't have always the best effect.</p>\n\n<p>The best what you could do, in my opinion, would be that you don't delete your account, but silently become inactive. On this way, you could have the possibility to once go back and start to fix.</p>\n\n<p>Furthermore, after so many work, it would be better if you wouldn't deattach it from your name in a sudden upset. I would suggest, think a week and go away only if you think the same after cooling down.</p>\n\n<p>Having more than 2000 rep, you are only from steps away from the last really useful privilege, you could cast close and reopen votes. The real influence of the users with much higher reputation is not much bigger. With these votes, you would have some saying to move the <em>whole system</em> into a better direction, if you are unsatisfied with it.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4277, "author": "xLeitix", "author_id": 10094, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10094", "pm_score": 5, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It's a pity to see you leave, but as somebody who has been around this community (at times more, at times less) for a few years now, I feel you are misjudging the intentions of the community.</p>\n\n<p>Particularly, I am talking about this paragraph:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I also do not like how quickly sincere questions of (new) participants are downvoted or labelled as a duplicate because a couple of years ago a similar question was asked. These responses are mostly targeted at questions that criticise (or question) current practices in science.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The reason why these questions tend to be closed as duplicates isn't that people hate to challenge the status quo (I would wager that the average community member here is significantly more progressive than most of our colleagues), but that we <strong>literally had all of these questions before</strong>, usually multiple times.</p>\n\n<p>You may respond that some of these questions are important enough that they should be revisited every so often, but that's unfortunately not at all how a Stack Exchange works. Once a question is asked and answered, the topic is done. I would argue that this is primarily what differentiates a Stack Exchange from a forum. I agree that this does not work well for certain types of questions, but those tend to not be overly well-suited for a Stack Exchange in the first place.</p>\n\n<p>You may also respond that the fact that the person asking the question is a minority makes it a different question which should not be closed. This is <em>absolutely</em> a fair comment. If the circumstances of the poster are made clear in the question (ideally already in the title), and these circumstances actually make the situation and likely answers differ from previous questions, I would personally be more than happy to leave a question open or vote for re-opening it. In fact, I would argue that questions related to problems minorities face in academia are generally handled pretty well. Take, as a recent example, <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/94644/is-obtaining-a-professorship-contingent-upon-the-ability-to-secure-federal-grant\">this question about whether not being able to apply for state funding is a problem on the academic job market</a>.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Personal attacks in answers or comments are of course not ok. These can and should be flagged and removed.</strong> However, closing a question as duplicate or downvoting a question is not a personal attack, even if you disagree with the closing or voting (not saying that this is what you meant with \"indirect personal attacks\", but I have seen cases where posters were offended when their question was closed).</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4286, "author": "Allure", "author_id": 84834, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/84834", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>A few thoughts about this:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>This is Academia SE, which means it's read mostly by academics. Academics as a demographic have certain characteristics, e.g. they're liberal as opposed to conservative, they think their profession should be paid more, etc. So if anyone expresses a contrary view, they can expect to be downvoted.</li>\n<li>Ultimately, answering questions on Stack Exchange is a recreational activity. I do it because I find it fun, and I suspect most others think the same way as well. It's not appropriate to dictate what others should or should not find fun. So I think questions such as <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/113783/telling-phd-supervisor-i-published-a-paper-about-my-thesis-without-telling-them/\">this one</a> should not be closed. The 19k views and 10 answers indicate people find the question fun. Besides the stated close reason is \"unclear what you are asking\", which is ironic because at least ten people do understand what the question is asking. That's not to say that no question should be closed, but I do think we should err on the side of leaving questions open, especially if they've attracted lots of views and / or answers.</li>\n<li>About marking as duplicate: I personally don't think it's a problem because if it's indeed a duplicate then the question suddenly has multiple answers already. Still, unless the question is an <em>exact</em> duplicate (not common), to actually close the original question seems rather unnecessary.</li>\n<li>Personal attacks are unfortunate and it's very possible that one person finds something offensive while others can't see what the problem is at all (<a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/109789/what-was-offensive-about-the-ladies-lingerie-department-joke-and-how-can-i-av\">example</a>). It's a pity we don't have an ignore option. </li>\n<li>Downvotes are sometimes necessary but bad. To go from 0 to -1 is significantly worse psychologically than going from +10 to +9, even though in both cases it's just one downvote. So I've been upvoting things if they're negative just to get them back to at least zero. It's a good thing that it takes rep to downvote (I'd even increase the amount required), and a single upvote outweighs multiple downvotes. </li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>In the end everyone has a right to their own happiness, so if you find you no longer enjoy participating here, you should absolutely leave. Best wishes!</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4290, "author": "Scientist", "author_id": 66782, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/66782", "pm_score": 3, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It unfortunately took me too long to find this discussion: user93911 has already committed 'digital suicide' by now.</p>\n\n<p>I have a few comments that might help others in a similar situation, or even our dear ex-user93911 reading this from another plane of existence.</p>\n\n<p>(i) I always say that one should be ready to quit in order to feel stronger. Being ready to leave makes you ruthless: never leave without a good fight. Fighting makes you feel swell, and helps improving the world. When you think you've brought out all you could and you loose interest, then you may leave holding your chin up -- however, usually you will find that your enemies are cowards and that there is still more war to be fought. On the other hand leaving suicide notes intended to bring tears will instead bring out the laughter of your aggressors and further lower local standards. <strong>Fighting in social &amp; business circles cannot kill you, whilst depression will.</strong></p>\n\n<p>(ii) As someone said, you left at the brink of exerting the power of voting for closing/keeping/editing posts. All your issues could vanish just with a tad more patience. <em>This is how life works</em>. I have just now voted to keep this post open, while writing my answer!..</p>\n\n<p>(iii) Modern Academia is unfortunately full of opportunistic gamblers and abusers, worldwide. I have probably seen the worst of them. Don't lower your gaze: look at them straight in the eye. So many colleagues believe in playing sheep and goose to succeed in the field, out of cowardice and brainwash. This is making the weak oppressors stronger with little effort -- any veiled threat and all of their wishes are granted. <em>They</em> are not many, but they may look powerful and confident. Experience though will show they are scared to the bone inside, all too aware of their incompetence. This is why any opposers and potential rivals are quick to be targeted with passive-aggressiveness, cold treatment, lies, scooping. These guys are desperate! Listen, don't give them a good time: resist, don't play minion. They won't stop using you and everyone else. Play smart, see through the lies, sabotage their goals (usually petty and in the short-term). And the most important: <strong>never leave a good colleague alone</strong>. If someone asks you for help, <em>help them</em> in whatever way you can. </p>\n\n<p>Anyway, this is getting too long. Hopefully this user will come back, stronger. I will proceed with sapping some bad guys. You know where to find me, here. You might find me in the real world as well, next door. </p>\n\n<p>Fight the good fight!</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4364, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I completely agree with you. I feel like all my questions are automatically down voted. I also hate that questions are marked as duplicates. Everyone's situation is different and these people are reaching out for help online, because maybe they don't have anyone else their life to ask. They want professional help from others in academia. Even if it's duplicate maybe you would help someone by answering and their situation is probably different. I understand if it's duplicate and the question is something that does not change through time, like for example \"how can I get into grad school?\" but the majority of people who are new are reaching out and asking for help for something they probably couldn't find answers for online easily. </p>\n\n<p>I don't understand this negative energy people have here. </p>\n\n<p>This place has the opportunity to be a ask and answer platform that can help new graduate students or in general everyone in a academia and instead the people who are ancient here spend all their time trying to get more points by editing other new user's questions, marking duplicates that are probably not duplicates exactly, and belitting others. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4413, "author": "goblin GONE", "author_id": 18380, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/18380", "pm_score": 0, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I don't know what happened, and I'll offer no advice on whether to delete your account or not. Judging by what you wrote about minorities, I probably disagree with you on a lot of issues. However, I also strongly agree with what Scientist wrote. The only path to earning the respect of those who <em>actually</em> matter is through fighting injustice, even when the task seems thankless. I strongly, strongly, <em>strongly</em> hope you keep fighting evil even when it's hard and bears no rewards. It's the only good fight there is.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4274", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4291, "author": "Massimo Ortolano", "author_id": 20058, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/20058", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>For many of the questions that we receive here it's important to specify the field of interest (not to mention the country). Indeed, Computer Science has some specificities (e.g. importance of conferences), Mathematics has other specificities (e.g. author order, long revision times), the Humanities have others (e.g. books may be more important than journal papers) and so on.</p>\n\n<p>Thus, generally speaking, I don't think Computer Science should be singled out in tags, because otherwise we would have to go through all tags to add the specifities of all other fields. </p>\n\n<p>What we should do is to encourage through comments the questioners to add information about the field whenever we feel that that piece of information is relevant, whether it's a question about conferences, publications, hiring etc. </p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4298, "author": "Flyto", "author_id": 8394, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8394", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Suggestion: Add something to the tag wiki encouraging askers to describe the <em>type</em> of conference: e.g. is it one with peer-reviewed proceedings, and so forth.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4308, "author": "E.P.", "author_id": 820, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/820", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>My feeling is that the tag wiki excerpt won't be particularly effective at transmitting this information, since they're hardly ever read. By the time the user gets to tagging the post they've already finished writing it and they're just trying to get it up and running; reading each tag description in detail is simply not something that's going to happen very often.</p>\n<p>However, this is precisely the situation where a tag warning could really help. They look like this:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/xvXIT.png\" alt=\"\" /></p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>(<a href=\"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/274634/1305553\">source</a>) and they show up when the user adds the tag. The procedure for requesting them is <a href=\"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/298887/whats-the-protocol-for-requesting-a-tag-warning\">here</a>.</p>\n<p>As a starting point for that discussion, I would propose wording of the form:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Tip: different fields treat conferences differently, from primary publication venues (as in computer science) to optional extras.</p>\n<p>Questions about conferences get better answers if they specify what field you're working in, so people have enough context to answer well.</p>\n</blockquote>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4289", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/8513/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4295, "author": "Bryan Krause", "author_id": 63475, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/63475", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The highly-rated question you linked was created as a community wiki as a way to close numerous related questions as duplicates, since these types of questions are quite common here. As such, it includes an answer to a question that would ordinarily be far too broad to be accepted.</p>\n\n<p>See this <a href=\"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1560/what-should-we-do-with-the-can-i-get-into-x-program-with-3-xx-gpa/1563\">meta discussion</a>.</p>\n\n<p>Had that question not been created as a community wiki question based on a discussion in meta, it would have been closed just like yours.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4296, "author": "Massimo Ortolano", "author_id": 20058, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/20058", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>I don't know about the UK system, but as I gather from the comments below your question, there might not be a sufficiently uniform admission process there, and there may be not specific advice that can be given for weak students.</p>\n\n<p>For instance, if you asked the same question about my country (Italy), I'd have voted to close too, because there are probably as many different admission processes as universities, and the criteria may even change year after year (the admission process for me 20 years ago was completely different from the current one in the same university, and we changed the process at least another couple of times). And I wouldn't have any specific advice to give to a weak student before the application, it would be too late to do anything.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4297, "author": "StrongBad", "author_id": 929, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/929", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>The thing that is fundamentally with your question about the UK is the same thing that is fundamentally wrong with the one about the US. The questions are both too broad and too narrow at the same time. The admissions process in both countries is a huge topic with books and books written about it. At the same time a good answer depends on the individual department and individual student.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I am not understanding why the former was closed while the later one bagged 110 votes.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Your question on the UK was closed for that reason (i.e., not a good fit for the SE system). The one on the US was not closed, most likely, because it was the result of a meta discussion that concluded that the community wanted to make an exception for the US. As for the up votes, my guess is a lot of people found it helpful and some people up voted it simply because it helped solve the problem of the influx of bad admissions questions.</p>\n\n<p>There is nothing special about the US question and we can make another exception. All it would take is a clear demonstration of the problem and how the question would solve that problem. As it stands now we do not get a lot of UK admissions questions. This means that there may not be a problem to be solved.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4307, "author": "Community", "author_id": -1, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "pm_score": -1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>It's called <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">American exceptionalism</a>.</p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4294", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1/" ]

[ { "answer_id": 4300, "author": "Wrzlprmft", "author_id": 7734, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "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<blockquote>\n <p>The line weights have been adjusted. When shrinking the image, the weights were too fine and made the image look fuzzy or undefined. We'll get a better weight for them. Clock face also has hands now!</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The line strength for the buildings in the top right is too thick given the shrunk buildings. I acknowledge that it has to be at least one pixel, so my best suggestion is to remove or shrink the clock tower and clouds and increase the size of the buildings, as long as they have enough space at the top without looking crammed.</p>\n\n<p>Also, in case you keep the clock tower, the face of the clock could be made more recognisable. You still have space for more than three pixels.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4305, "author": "eykanal", "author_id": 73, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/73", "pm_score": 4, "selected": false, "text": "<h1>General comments:</h1>\n\n<p>University image: <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<blockquote>\n <p>The line weight has been adjusted. When shrinking the image, the weights were too fine and made the image look fuzzy or undefined. We'll get a better weight for them.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Empty space: <a href=\"/questions/tagged/status-bydesign\" class=\"post-tag moderator-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;status-bydesign&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">status-bydesign</a></p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>It's important to remember that, while there's white space on <em>that</em> page, elements live in those empty spaces on other pages, like the <a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ftxr6.png\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Questions</a>, <a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/e43vC.png\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">Tags</a>, or <a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/aZNoh.png\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">search results</a> pages (links go to screenshots). Additionally, due to the responsive design, how much white space you see depends on your page width. </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Ask Question button placement: <a href=\"/questions/tagged/status-bydesign\" class=\"post-tag moderator-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged &#39;status-bydesign&#39;\" rel=\"tag\">status-bydesign</a></p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>See the empty space images... The placement for this button needs to be easy-to-find and consistently in the same place. Right now, the only time this button isn't in that spot on a page it exists on is on question pages themselves, where it's been moved slightly to the right to make more space for question titles so they don't wrap so much.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/Qm5uI.png\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/Qm5uI.png\" alt=\"comments on new page\"></a></p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Specifically on the kerning issue, it looks like the text is just bolded, which makes it look really bunched up. Comparing it to existing text, the existing is actually pretty bunched as well... may as well fix it if possible.</p>\n\n<p><em>Old:</em></p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/r4cLh.png\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/r4cLh.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></a> <a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/ceteD.png\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/ceteD.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></a></p>\n\n<p><em>New:</em></p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/uuhrZ.png\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/uuhrZ.png\" alt=\"enter image description here\"></a> <a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/oNPTr.png\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/oNPTr.png\" alt=\"![enter image description here\"></a></p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4306, "author": "E.P.", "author_id": 820, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/820", "pm_score": 4, "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<blockquote>\n <p>These are now blue instead of pink.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>What's with the pink OP highlighting?</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/xkiZa.png\" width=\"500\"></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>(from <a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/11766/820\">this answer</a>.) </p>\n\n<p>On the plus side, the jarringness of the pink has brought my attention that the OP signature gets highlighted in question and answer bylines just like it is in comments, even in the old styling, so there's that.</p>\n\n<p>But why is it such an awful shade of pink? Why is it the same pink as deleted posts? (OK, it's <a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/7UcpK.png\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\">not quite the same colour</a>, but it's close enough that they register as the same colour if you don't have them in direct contrast.)</p>\n\n<p>And to make things worse, the same awful transformation has attacked the comment highlighting:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/2MUEr.png\" width=\"500\"></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Pretty please, choose a more neutral colour for this notation :-).</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4314, "author": "Azor Ahai -him-", "author_id": 37441, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/37441", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p><a href=\"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/116559/is-it-considered-ethical-to-sign-yourself-with-name-followed-by-phd-when-in-fact\">This header</a> doesn't exactly look great:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/PWxJy.png\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/PWxJy.png\" alt=\"A bad title\"></a></p>\n\n<p>It seems like the title should only go as far as the divider between the question and the right bar. Right now, it doesn't seem like it's part of the same element. And, with two-line titles like this one, there's a lot of awkward empty space.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4321, "author": "aeismail", "author_id": 53, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53", "pm_score": 1, "selected": false, "text": "<p>There isn't enough contrast between \"open\" questions and questions with an accepted answer on the landing page. The box around the answer is nice, but some shading would make it clearer—and break up the monotony.</p>\n" }, { "answer_id": 4337, "author": "Roland", "author_id": 9482, "author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/9482", "pm_score": 2, "selected": false, "text": "<p>Accessibility issue: I'm wearing glasses but have generally very good eye-sight with them. However, since recently I'm finding it hard to read the titles in the list of questions on the front page. I can only imagine how bad it is for people with poor eye-sight. The blue seems to be an even lighter color than on the Stack Overflow front page. </p>\n\n<p>You should change this to something with more contrast to the background as soon as possible.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Edit:</strong></p>\n\n<p>I've realized it looks different on different systems. Here is a screenshot of what I see with Firefox 61 on Windows 10.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/AKTRk.png\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer\"><img src=\"https://i.stack.imgur.com/AKTRk.png\" alt=\"screenshot\"></a></p>\n" } ]

[ "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4299", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com", "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/37330/" ]