qid int64 1 2.78M | question stringlengths 2 66.6k | answers list | date stringlengths 10 10 | metadata list |
|---|---|---|---|---|
491 | In my opinion, [this question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/9604/5851) and its answer [here](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/9606/5851) are inviting speculations, comments without proper backing of evidence, and argumentative discussion over an Institute being good or mediocre (again, based on the opinions of users and not facts). So...
1. Does the community agree with me over these? If 'NO', then kindly point where I am wrong.
I don't have the reputation to vote-to-close, so someone else needs to, if required.
2. In general, how should our community look upon such questions-answers which are inviting more opinions than facts. | [
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"text": "I disagree that the question and corresponding answer is argumentative, but I do agree that it is not a good question... | 2013/04/25 | [
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494 | [Here](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/9667/958) aeismail comments:
>
> One-line answers aren't allowed per our FAQ's. You should either expand your answer, or it'll have to be converted to a comment
>
>
>
Is it true? I have skimmed through the FAQ, and it doesn't seem like there is such a restriction. Besides that, that answer looks ok to me - it's synthetic, to the point, and clear enough to stand as it is. Maybe we should rather change the FAQ? What is your opinion on this? | [
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"text": "I think that if one-liners are not explicitly forbidden in the FAQ, then we should forbid them explicitly. The only... | 2013/04/27 | [
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500 | Currently questions closed as duplicate are what I will refer to as singly linked. A link appears on top of the closed duplicate question pointing to the original question. Nothing is added to the original question. Sometimes the duplicate question has useful answers and comments. By definition, we marked it as duplicate because we think the question itself has useful terminology and wording that is helpful for future searches.
I propose that whenever a question is closed as a duplicate, a link should be added to the original question pointing to the duplicates. This would only be viable if it was an automatic process and did not require any suer intervention beyond simply voting to close the question as a duplication. Obviously some question may have a lot of duplicates so this list would need to be dynamic, realizable, sortable, and possibly searchable. The idea would be to allow a new user to easily find all the knowledge on the site about the question.
Maybe this is better for the main SO meta, but I haven't really thought about how this scales by a couple of orders of magnitude. | [
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"text": "My first thought is \"that sounds like a lot of work\".\n\nMy second thought is, \"what's the point?\" The whole poin... | 2013/04/29 | [
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503 | The question <https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9794/importance-of-going-to-university-in-the-21st-century> was closed on the main site, and identified as non-constructive, although it has received 5 different answers.
How could this question be changed to be more constructive? | [
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"text": "If you're looking for an alternative location for discussion, there are a number of places you can try:\n\n* [Quora](... | 2013/05/03 | [
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509 | This [question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9818/international-variations-in-addressing-academics) essentially asks: In my country we do things like X, how do they do them in your country. That seems like the definition of a big list question to me. I have wanted to ask a similar type question, and I asked for input in [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/9145020#9145020).
To me it seems that these "country poll" questions are not a good fit for academia.se.
Do you think we should keep these type of questions open? | [
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"text": "This [question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2467/what-does-first-authorship-really-mean) turned... | 2013/05/05 | [
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513 | The new display at the bottom is not very good, in my opinion: I would expect to see "Acafitoa" under "Professional," but that's not even in one of the categories shown in the display below—you have to click through to get to a site where you then have to hunt around to find it. That's not a very good system in my opinion.
But, at the very least, we should list Acafitoa where it makes more sense. But is that "Professional" rather than "Life/Arts?" | [
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"text": "It looks like the full list of categories are:\n\n* Technology\n* Culture/Recreation\n* Life/Arts\n* Science\n* B... | 2013/05/12 | [
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517 | There is an abundance of questions relating to Computer Science, which is great.
However, when a question is discipline-dependent, IMHO it is crucial to advertise this fact in the title (unless it's otherwise clear) AND in tags (in this case: [computer-science](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/computer-science "show questions tagged 'computer-science'")).
Otherwise many questions and answers for things like publishing and conferences are misleading, as (in some cases) practices vary among disciplines (and in some cases, e.g. publishing=conferences, CS is rather an exception than a typical example).
Do you agree with it? Or do you propose an alternative approach to this issue?
(That said, I think that discipline-dependent questions are important.) | [
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"text": "It looks like the full list of categories are:\n\n* Technology\n* Culture/Recreation\n* Life/Arts\n* Science\n* B... | 2013/05/15 | [
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524 | There has been several questions recently about tags, and topic related tags in particular. I was wondering: **how do you use tags? Why do we care about them?**
Personally, I don't use them at all, I only search for questions through the search bar. It would therefore be helpful to see what kind of usages the community has for tags. | [
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"text": "I think the usefulness of tags varies across different SE sites. Besides StackOverflow and Academia, I am active i... | 2013/05/21 | [
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532 | I noticed that there are quite a few users with questions that are little open-ended, which is not a good fit for the Q/A format that we have on SE sites. I suppose a lot of us, grad students, would like to have a medium of communication where we can *discuss* matters and questions about previous experiences of the more senior members of AC.SE.
The chat room is a good fit for this purpose, however it appears as there isn't much activity there. For instance just before writing this meta question the last entry on chat room was from 6 days ago. So here comes my suggestion/proposal:
1. We hold regular discussion groups on the chat; for instance once a week or every second week ...
2. ... where the subject to be discussed is voted here on meta
I am not sure if there has been anything like this before, here on AC.SE. CrossValidated has journal clubs with article discussions on the chat, a concept which I find pretty cool despite my lack of interest in statistics :)
What do you think? Is this a desirable or sustainable | [
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"text": "I think this is an interesting idea. However, I'm pretty sure that this is something that would need to be community... | 2013/05/27 | [
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534 | I accidentally noted that [a particular question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10247/why-are-cs-researchers-reluctant-to-share-code-and-what-techniques-can-i-use-to) does not appear on the list of questions when I am not signed in. The question comes up in the top five once I am logged in. Why is this so?
Is it a bug in the feature?
 | [
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"text": "The ordering of questions when unlogged seems to be quite different from that observed when logged in. I can observ... | 2013/05/27 | [
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541 | We all love [Academia Stack Exchange](http://academia.stackexchange.com), but there is a whole world of people out there who need answers to their questions and don't even know that this site exists. When they arrive from Google, what will their first impression be? Let's try to look at this site through the eyes of someone who's never seen it before, and see how we stack up against the rest of the 'Net.
The [Site Self-Evaluation review queue](https://academia.stackexchange.com/review/site-eval) is open and populated with 10 questions that were asked and answered in the last quarter. Run a few Google searches to see how easy they are to find and compare the answers we have with the information available on other sites.
Rating the questions is only a part of the puzzle, though. Do you see a pattern of questions that should have been closed but are not? Questions or answers that could use an edit? Anything that's going really well? **Post an answer below to share your thoughts** and discuss these questions and the site's health with your fellow users! | [
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"text": "I am a relative newcomer (and seemingly a chatty one at that), I have found that this site is very welcoming and wi... | 2013/06/05 | [
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544 | Given that the consensus here has become "undergraduate questions are off-topic unless relating to graduate admissions", we need to support the proposed Undergraduates.SE so that these questions have a place to go.
>
> [Undergraduates SE](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/49571/undergraduates)
>
>
> | [
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"text": "The observation that \"Undergraduate questions are off-topic here\" does not lead to the conclusion that \"We need to... | 2013/06/09 | [
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551 | There's only been one such question so far, but, depending on weather this question is accepted as a good one or not, it could set up future standards for the site, so I feel it is important:
<https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10735/en-shs-comment-participer-a-la-grande-conversation-scientifique-sans-renoncer-a>
There is a small part of the question in English, which actually sounds partially interesting to me. But then, there's a *big chunk of French!*
I sometimes come to this site to read up on life in Academia and inform myself about how things work where I'm not. I do participate a little, but much, much more, I *read the questions and answers that seem interesting*.
Seeing this question, I couldn't help but feel just a little bit disappointed. There's this question, that might be nice, but I'm missing half of it. Seeing what Google Translate does to it just makes it more disappointing.
And then, there's this two interesting *answers*, on which *I do not want to vote*, because *I do not know if they are relevant*.
As it could determine a future standard (accept or not questions in other languages), I think it is important that there's an discussion within the community. | [
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"text": "This question has been [answered by Jejf Etpiod on the Stack Exchange blog](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/07/non-... | 2013/06/24 | [
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553 | In many fields (traditionally, Medicine but also increasingly the social sciences), applying for IRB approval is an integral part of being an academic. Are such questions on topic, and if so under what parameters (e.g. focusing on standard procedures vs. slippery ethical questions)?
The IRB has been the subject of [an answer to a question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/10466/775), but not yet a question. | [
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"text": "This question has been [answered by Jejf Etpiod on the Stack Exchange blog](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/07/non-... | 2013/06/27 | [
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561 | Recently, the question [How often should one evaluate a plan for an academic career?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10928/how-often-should-one-evaluate-a-plan-for-an-academic-career?noredirect=1#comment20098_10928) has been closed without a single comment explaining why it should be closed, while there was already an upvoted answer.
I decided to reopen the question, because the next logical step is to delete the question, and I have no idea why it should be the case, and it's likely we're stuck with an "on hold/closed" question. As I already stated [here](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/455/the-more-comments-the-better), comments are very helpful to maintain the site, especially that we are still on beta, and that we don't exactly have hundreds of questions each day. Helping a new user understanding why his/her question is too broad or off-topic is important to help the community grow.
To be clear: I'm not saying that this question should necessarily be kept open or should be closed, but if you know why you're closing the question, then leaving a comment should not be that difficult, and if you don't know why you're closing the question, then perhaps you should not be voting to close in the first place. | [
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"text": "Expecting users to offer justification for why they're closing questions is part of the spirit, if not the letter, o... | 2013/07/04 | [
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563 | About this question:
<https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/10959/96>
Which asks:
>
> I'm hoping to enroll onto a PhD program. I've heard that twitter might help me find a PhD program. This question is inspired by this video in the British Ecological Society Careers YouTube channel: <http://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=plcp&v=J9uEYEcCcFY> I have not used twitter before. How can I use twitter to help find a PhD? For example, is there a particular group/channel on twitter that advertises PhDs?
>
>
>
And the OP also commented:
>
> I've Googled virtually daily for the past two years without success
>
>
>
This just seems a terrible question to me. But I see no close votes, and when I look through the close menu, I'm not sure I see anything that really fits.
But do we really want this and questions like it?
Is this question's continued existence, evidence that we are we missing a close reason? And if so, what is that reason? | [
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572 | This is quite discouraging. Why was my answer to [this thread](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11165/how-to-respond-to-someone-plagiarizing-my-work/11173#11173) deleted?
It says converted to comment, but I do not see it anywhere. This is the 2nd time (according to my reputation record) that an answer of mine has been removed in a week (and I am using the term in the aforementioned record 'removed').
I like to think that I am making some contribution to this site, but clearly this seems not to be the case. | [
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"text": "I transformed your answer to a comment, because it didn't any new comment w.r.t. the other answers. Your answer was... | 2013/07/16 | [
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577 | Why do I get a yellow “0 flag” alert on the top bar, on Academia, where I am not a moderator? It links to the “tools” page, where there is nothing for me to do:
Same situation exists on Meta:
It's weird to get an alert for “0 flags”, especially on a site where I am not moderator anyway… And it's stable, it's not a transient issue, it's been that way for a few minutes. | [
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"text": "This might very well be just a glitch in the system—if there are no messages to be moderated, then nothing should be... | 2013/07/22 | [
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581 | There is a lot of spam in the replies [here](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5170/what-systems-are-most-effective-for-monitoring-student-attendance), the reply from Ian Pack is a blatant one as a quick search shows he works for the company that he is "recommending", I would not be surprised if more are spamming.
Another one in the thread, Dusid Fegtev, is the Training Manager of the company he is touting.
I don't want to link to these spammers' websites.
I did a search of the name, product and company and both cases are employees spamming their products. | [
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"text": "I'm not sure it is our responsibility to \"report them to their company bosses\". \n\nWhat you did was I guess the ... | 2013/07/24 | [
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584 | I wanted to either vote to close or flag <https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11360/form-get-method-prints-viewstate-value-in-addressbar> as suitable for SO.SE, but I could only suggest it belongs on ac.meta.se (which it doesn't). If something belongs on another SE site how do I vote to close for that reason? | [
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"text": "It is quite counter-intuitive, but here is how it should be done:\n\n ![image with hand-drawn circle](https://i.s... | 2013/07/24 | [
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586 | Following on the question [What's the policy regarding localized (read: country specific) questions?](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/415/4394) and [Are US-specific questions OK?](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/188/4394) My own opinion is that country specific questions are fine. But, I think that even if the OP is asking about their home turf, there should be space to provide general answers. Since this site is inclusive I think the Q-A should be made general if there are general interest in the question as such.
An example: the post [How much vacation time is typical during a PhD( in the United States)?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/11336/4394) (the parenthesis indicates an addition edit to the original question indicates a problem. As indicated the post was a general question applicable everywhere although it was clear from the question body that US conditions were at the heart of the OP. The question was later edited to show its US identity.
The edit now makes the question very narrow and opens up for questions about vacation in each and every country. This is really not constructive and what we want. On the other hand I can see that a non-country-specific question would open up for answers from each country, in other words wiki-type posts. However, when somebody looks for a question on vacation having the question, in my opinion unnecessarily, limited makes little sense. I think that providing a wide spread of answers to a more general question is the better way. I realize this is probably not easy to resolve but as I see it: *should we try to be very specific and excluding or try to be general and including in the these types of posts?* | [
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"text": "To riff off of Einstein, \"SE questions should be as specific as possible, but no more specific!\" \n\nWe don't want... | 2013/07/24 | [
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589 | When recently voting to close an off-topic undergraduate question, I saw this screen:
with the phrase:
>
> 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?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic)
>
>
>
Note, however, that this description is absent from the linked help center page. Nor is it at [What types of questions should I avoid asking?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask). We do note that questions that are very specific to one person's situation are not likely to get very far, but we don't outright discourage questions specific to undergraduates.
Some SE sites explicitly discourage certain off-topic questions. Mathematics has a detailed list: <https://math.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic>
Can we add a section like this to our help center? | [
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"text": "Note that the section you linked to on the Mathematics section is from their \"on-topic\" page, [which we also use t... | 2013/07/24 | [
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596 | I found [this question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11411/is-there-any-scientific-rigor-in-scientometry) interesting so I took a few minutes to remove a variety of typos ("gouvernemental", etc.).
I saved the edits, double-checked the question and closed the page.
Later I come back to check responses for the question and the typos I had fixed have returned.
Why?
Did I waste my time editing the question? | [
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600 | I am unable to understand the comments and the down-votes on [this question of mine](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/11470/5851).
[The question is deleted now, original text reproduced below]
>
> I realize we do not have a definitive answer/guideline on the purpose of pre-print archives. I guess it will be useful for our users who are new to academia.
>
> I would like to see details in terms of:
>
> What is the purpose of archives for electronic pre-prints of scientific papers, such arXiv, vixra, SSRN etc.?
>
> Why are they needed when conferences/journals already exist to publish papers?
>
> Can a published work (i.e., post-print) also go to arXiv?
>
> Will my paper accepted by arXiv count as a 'publication' for me?
>
>
>
Is it such a bad idea, say, if we make it a community wiki with one pre-print/e-print service per answer? This is one way of improving it which strikes me. Can others point out the flaws and give inputs on improvement? | [
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603 | I understand that questions on AC.SE are going to be "softer" in nature than the programming questions typical of SO.SE, but I think our answers often are "softer" then needed. I often read answers and think "Citation Needed". Are we answering questions based on our personal experience when we could be providing answers based on well conducted research? Should we be up voting "easy" answers that we agree with when they are void of references? | [
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"text": "This is a very difficult area for our forum, as most of the answers and advice dispensed here is not borne of thoroug... | 2013/07/29 | [
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610 | There are several questions with with the words "high school" and teaching on academia.
Can a public school teacher be considered an "academician"? I haven't found any other stackexchange site that is likely to allow for questions about teaching, much less at the secondary level. Has anyone found another site that allow such questions? | [
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"text": "Welcome to Academia.SE, this site is about those involved in higher education (postgrad, research etc). There is a P... | 2013/08/10 | [
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622 | I was under the impression that URL shortners were either discouraged or outright banned. I recently edited a question to replace a bit.ly link with a direct link, and that edit suggestion was rejected. What is the official policy of this site for URL shortners? Certainly there's no need for them. | [
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"text": "There is no official policy on shorteners, except that \"Let me google that for you\" links are banned. However, lin... | 2013/08/23 | [
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626 | We all love [Academia Stack Exchange](http://academia.stackexchange.com), but there is a whole world of people out there who need answers to their questions and don't even know that this site exists. When they arrive from Google, what will their first impression be? Let's try to look at this site through the eyes of someone who's never seen it before, and see how we stack up against the rest of the 'Net.
The [Site Self-Evaluation review queue](https://academia.stackexchange.com/review/site-eval) is open and populated with 10 questions that were asked and answered in the last quarter. Run a few Google searches to see how easy they are to find and compare the answers we have with the information available on other sites.
Rating the questions is only a part of the puzzle, though. Do you see a pattern of questions that should have been closed but are not? Questions or answers that could use an edit? Anything that's going really well? **Post an answer below to share your thoughts** and discuss these questions and the site's health with your fellow users! | [
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629 | The question would have to be very specific and answerable, but would hypothetical (and realistic) questions be permitted?
What I mean by this is, would situations that do not necessarily happen to the person asking the question, but could happen (and may have happened) be permitted? | [
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631 | I rejected an edit suggestion to that post: <https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/12489/49>.
However, just after my click I realized that I should keep some parts of the edit, as they improve the answer (my quick reject was based on edit on a quoted material).
1. Does comment justifying the rejection reaches the editor? (If it does not, it would discourage an eager editor...)
2. Is it possible to lookup the history of rejected edits (for a particular post, or globally)? | [
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640 | Say, a question that is not a perfect fit for the site was posted - mostly some consider it to have some merit, some do not.
What if said question generates some very useful answers (not just upvoted, but generate comments that indicate the usefulness). Will the question (hence, useful answers) still be deleted eventually (if not improved)? | [
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"text": "Ignoring duplicate questions, I believe the SE philosophy was that there are two fates for closed questions (edit... | 2013/09/13 | [
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645 | We have some [tag synonym suggestions](https://academia.stackexchange.com/tags/synonyms) that have not been voted on, despite being quite old. I'd like to suggest people visit the [tag synonym page](https://academia.stackexchange.com/tags/synonyms) and vote on existing suggestions:
Click on the links of the left column (freehand circle!) to go to the voting page.
---
This should help people submit more tag synonyms in turn, which will improve our tagging system and the overall experience on the site (especially searching by tags)! | [
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"text": "To use this question as a discussion on the proposed synonyms, the [writing](https://academia.stackexchange.com/quest... | 2013/09/16 | [
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647 | I voted to close [this question on programming](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12854/in-c-programing-a-single-variable-cannot-take-a-character-to-it-continuously), and wanted to vote to send it to StackOverflow, but noticed that I couldn't choose to do that:
Notice that I cannot click "Vote to Close" on the second screen unless I select the meta site, which is not the appropriate site for this question. Is there a way to add either a list of .SE sites, or be able to type in a site, or at least leave it blank so it can reflect that it should be on another site? | [
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652 | Some Stack Exchange sites, while enforcing regular policies/limits, allow for a little fun now and then, either by letting some “fun” soft big-list questions exist, or by prompting them on specific occasions (I think the site on Judaism has regular fun/soft session near Pessach, but I cannot find a specific reference for that). As [this SE blog post explains](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/01/stack-overflow-where-we-hate-fun/), it's OK to have some fun, we just don't want the site to be overrun with “fun questions”.
What should our policy be? Do we allow fun questions? Do we need specific occasions for that? Or if we accept them unconditionally, do we have some sort of tacit agreement to keep their number (active fun Q’s at the same time, I mean) reasonable? Do we want them to be community-wiki, as some sites do, so as not to game too much the reputation system? (or do we simply not care?)
Example of “fun” questions I could see, and which I would personally enjoy, would be something like (or subsets thereof):
* what's your favorite research abstract? paper title? TOC graphics? conference title
* what is the most bizarre/extravagant/longest position title you've ever encountered?
* what's the most ridiculously harsh review you've ever received?
* etc. | [
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657 | User [All](https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/406/all) has been asking a lot of questions. I am starting to get the feeling that they fall under the
>
> you are asking an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if \_\_\_\_\_\_
> happened?”
>
>
>
part of [don't ask](https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask). In particular I am thinking about this question
[Who should recommend applicants for administrative positions?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13029/who-should-recommend-applicants-for-administrative-positions)
While I think the topics in general are okay, the questions just seem to be a little bit off. I think the question would be a lot better quality if the person who asked it was actually applying to be a Diap.
Do we want to do anything to discourage the asking of question like this? Do we want to encourage All to ask different questions? | [
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666 | In [this](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13342/is-it-a-good-practice-to-choose-my-undergraduate-research-topic-on-my-own-can-i) question, JeffE says that academic research questions are firmly on topic. However, [this](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13368/what-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-choosing-my-own-research-topic) question is about undergrad research and it seems the question could just as easily relate to graduate level research but it was closed as being off topic.
It seems either the rules are unclear or they are being followed inconsistently. Or, am I simply not seeing something that other people can see? | [
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"text": "I think that I would not be nearly so categorical as Lefd—or perhaps I'm viewing what he perceives as \"academic res... | 2013/10/15 | [
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681 | This post is provided so that people can, in the answers and comments below, test formatting features of Academia Stack Exchange. | [
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"text": "Hеllo\n\nAnd this is a community wiki answer, so people can try things out.\n\nTest est Test"
},
{
"answer_id... | 2013/10/25 | [
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683 | In the post [What does the “application” tag mean (and what should it mean)?](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/169/4394) a brief exchange indicates that the [application](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/application "show questions tagged 'application'") tag should concern applications for, for example, jobs (as opposed to applying something). The tag at the time of writing this has been applied to 89 posts. A relatively new tag has appeared, [faculty-application](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/faculty-application "show questions tagged 'faculty-application'") (currently on four posts). I can see that there are two ways to go here, to either use the [application](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/application "show questions tagged 'application'") tag as a base and adding tags such as [research](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/research "show questions tagged 'research'"), [faculty](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/faculty "show questions tagged 'faculty'") and [graduate-school](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/graduate-school "show questions tagged 'graduate-school'") to narrow down the scope of [application](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/application "show questions tagged 'application'") or to accept "hybrid" tags such as [faculty-application](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/faculty-application "show questions tagged 'faculty-application'"). I would opt for the former but what would be preferable. With only four tagged posts it would be easy to make the change.
I see this also reflecting on how the tags are built and used in general. | [
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686 | I recently added the new tag 'student-evaluation' to the question [Is it appropriate to include additional materials in an academic job application?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13669/), but this was quickly removed. However, from what I could find, there are no tags describing this subject, even though such a tag should be relevant for many questions here on AcademiaSE (both current and future ones).
Searching the main site, 'evaluation + teaching' turns up [62 results](https://academia.stackexchange.com/search?q=evaluation+%2B+teaching), and from scanning these the tag would clearly be relevant for many of them. The specific phrases '"teaching evaluations"' and '"student evaluations"' shows up 6 and 7 times respectively.
When adding the tag I initially chose between 'student-evaluation' and 'teaching-evaluation', and chose the former. However, either one would fit the purpose, and on a second thought the latter option might be more general (could encompass 'student-evaluation' but also other types of evaluations of teaching skills).
Do you think that there is a need for such a tag? From what I can see there seems to be a "research-bias" in the current tags, with relatively few tags that deal with the teaching side of academic activities. | [
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689 | I wanted to vote to close [Creating an central multi-purpose dictionary / database](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13711/creating-an-central-multi-purpose-dictionary-database), but under "off-topic" I only find the following pre-canned motivations:
* cannot be generalized to apply to others in similar situations
* about problems facing undergraduate students
* belongs on another SE site
* other (insert your own).
In particular, there is nothing along the lines of "this is off-topic because it has little to do with academia", or "it is a [boat-programming](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/14470/what-is-the-boat-programming-meme-about/14486#14486) question", or even "off-topic question is off-topic".
Is this deliberate? | [
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697 | I have been trying to locate a particular answer but couldn't find it, even when using every bit of information I remember from the answer in question (in my case: it was an answer about dealing with the impostor syndrome and contained lots of links, if I remember correctly written by F'x)
I figured that could be a good meta question; what can you do if you cant find some material on AC.SE even though you are sure it exists (or -ed at some point)? | [
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711 | In [my answer to "How to write a white paper for a non-academic"](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/14659). I mentioned that I know a true story, an example of such a situation with a "happy end". Now, it was requested that I relieve more information about this, which I originally didn't want to.
**What do I know:** I know who are the authors, I know one of them in person (from a conference) and he made a conference talk from where I know the information. I know quite well the topic of the papers.
**My question:** Is it non-ethical to publish this information here?
**My view of pros:** it's all positive, therefore it's not really speaking behind their back.
**My view of cons:** I don't want to be a paparazzi that publishes such information on a random webpage/blog/... without the people's consent. | [
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731 | I'm not sure if this is the appropriate place to raise this issue, but:
The stated purpose of the forum seems to be that the questions should benefit both undegraduates, graduate students and academicians.
A question about writing a cv for an internship was put on hold on vote because it was deemed off-topic and unhelpful to the rest of the community [Preparing a curriculum vitae for an undergraduate internship](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15291/preparing-a-curriculum-vitae-for-an-undergraduate-internship)
Fair enough. However similar questions about obtaining research jobs [What options does college dropout with great grades, research projects and CV have to return to university (or thinktanks)?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15316/what-options-does-college-dropout-with-great-grades-research-projects-and-cv-ha) or getting into grad school without an undergrad [Is it possible to be admitted to a Master's program after not completing Bachelor's degree due to academic dishonesty?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15288/is-it-possible-to-do-a-masters-degree-without-obtaining-a-bachelors-degree) seem to be accepted without question, or relevance to the stated purpose of the forum.
So my question is, what is the policy (if any) to ensure consistent moderation? It's not fair for some questions to get put on hold/deleted for being irrelevant when other equally irrelevant questions are allowed to stay up. | [
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740 | Should we have MathJax support on Academia?
I think it would be useful if questions about math in academic writing are common here.
I just asked [this](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15559/referencing-non-equations-see-eq-15-see-ineq-15) question and there it would have been nice (but not necessary). | [
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"text": "I believe Stack Exchange's position on MathJax support is on an \"as needed\" basis. First we have to demonstrate th... | 2014/01/10 | [
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744 | I am worried that the rep system is leading to careless moderators coming into power. Part of my answer was:"What is unclear to me is whether someone like you who feels somewhat unsure is even less likely at all to graduate with a PhD than someone who goes in thinking R1 Tenure or death. Your waffling MIGHT even be a sign of mental health is what I'm getting at." The deleting mod's comment concerning this passage shows a lack of reading comprehension, which is almost assuredly due to carelessness rather than lack of intelligence: "Suggesting that someone who is not sure if they want to do what it takes to get a PhD might have mental health issues is over the top." I clearly said mental health, a positive attribute, but he deleted my answer from a careless reading, perhaps done due to the dissenting nature of my answer. What can we do to encourage mods not to delete things they haven't really read, and to encourage the promotion of people to power based on quality, not quantity? | [
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"text": "Using my Super Sekrit Mod Tools, I can assure you that this is something that happens to everyone; old mods, new mods... | 2014/01/12 | [
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752 | In this [question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15783/re-typesetting-an-old-paper-what-to-do-with-the-result) the OP links to a nature paper that s/he is interested in re-typesetting. The link appears to be to an illegal copy of a non-open access paper that is available (presumably behind a paywall). Should we allow links to pirated papers or force people to link to the non-free version?
For some questions you might need to be able to see the paper in order to answer the question, but in other (e.g., this case) you might not need to see the paper to answer the question. Does this affect or decision? | [
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"text": "We shouldn't be posting unauthorized links, if at all possible to avoid doing so. I don't want to say \"absolutely no... | 2014/01/17 | [
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756 | I asked five question and two of them are being put on hold by viewer. Seriously, there are really no right to judge other people's question as no question is stupid. If you have no interest in my question or opinion conflict with mine, just go away please? I have no idea why ppl like bad fire work so much. | [
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"text": "I only see one of your questions put on hold and that appears to have supporters who want it re-opened. While I... | 2014/01/21 | [
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765 | I am unsure about the appropriateness of the question <https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16215/modafinil-for-academics>.
For background, Wikipedia informs us that modafinil is better known in the US by its brand name, Provigil, and is a "vigilance promoting" drug currently approved for the treatment of various sleep disorders. The question seems to ask about using it in what we might call a "performance enhancing" role, rather than for a specific medical condition. In the US, modafinil is available by prescription only and is a controlled substance, so using it without the supervision of a physician would probably be illegal (IANAL).
There is a long history of academics using psychoactive drugs to improve their work, and arguably questions about drug use in academia are on-topic. However, the current question has a "how-to" flavor which makes me less comfortable. I would rather not see this site move in that direction.
If any SE moderators/admins wish to weigh in on potential legal issues, that would be welcome as well.
Thoughts? | [
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"text": "This is an example of a [\"boat programming\" question](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/14470/what-is-the-b... | 2014/01/27 | [
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769 | I've now seen a series of questions from [user10694](https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10694/user10694) that paint a picture of a completely dysfunctional advisor-advisee relationship (Rather than list them here, it might be easier just go to the user page: all of this user's questions are on the same general topic)
In each case, the community has tried (as far as possible) to answer the question as a stand-alone situation, because in all fairness each question *by itself* does merit attention.
The problem here is the sequence. It's not at all clear to me that the answers are being taken to heart at all: one piece of evidence is that not one of the questions has an accepted answer.
It's also becoming more and more difficult for me to answer yet another of these questions knowing the history of this user's questions. The tone in the questions also doesn't appear to help very much.
Of course the easiest solution is for me to ignore these questions in the future. And maybe that's the right answer. But I'm wondering whether it's worth encouraging this user to try and dig deeper into the apparent dysfunction, or at least show some indication that they're trying to act on the numerous sound bits of advice the community is dishing out ? | [
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"text": "> \n> The problem here is the sequence. It's not at all clear to me that the\n> answers are being taken to heart... | 2014/01/28 | [
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776 | Layla has asked a question on [advice for starting a research group](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16618/how-to-start-a-small-research-group-in-a-institution). While such a question at first does seem too broad, it also strikes me as exactly the kind of question that should be a "community wiki" question. It's a very pertinent and relevant question, but it should be a crowd-sourced solution, not an individual writing a single all-encompassing answer. | [
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"text": "Just asked about this in the mod chat room, they linked to [this blog post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/the... | 2014/02/06 | [
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779 | Working in academia is not just navigating university politics. It is also about conducting research and teaching one's field to students.
Academia already has an explicit policy of accepting questions on "university pedagogy". This covers the teaching part of a university employee's life.
But research is as least as important as teaching. (In fact I know many academics who are willing to do research without teaching, and none who would like to do teaching without research, so maybe it is even considered more important by academics?). So people in academia need to know how research is done.
And I don't mean the nitty gritty stuff of choosing a varimax or quartimax rotation for the factor analysis in a given experiment. This can be asked on stats.stackexchange.
But generations of researchers have created a body of theory of science and philosophy of science. Starting with epistemological vs. ontological definitions of knowledge, and going into different theoretical perspectives and methodologies. This is a topic which is field-independent; every scientist's work is touched by it, no matter whether she is in psychology, molecular biology or material science.
Doing research without this kind of knowledge is like hacking circuits without knowing Ohm's law. I know it, because I've tried doing research that way for the last four years and wondered why I am in a downward spiral of doing something, getting feedback from my supervisor or from reviwers that it is not the right thing, then trying to correct it (less motivated this time), and still not getting it right. Graduate students need to know it, else they do the wrong things. Professors need to know it, so they can explain to their grad students why the wrong thing they are doing is wrong, and how to find the thing which is right.
There is need for this knowledge within academia. The everyday worklife of people within academia is affected by it. Academics are also currently the only people who *have* that knowledge. The theorists of science are scientists themselves. The professors who guide us, who define daily what good science is by deciding which article to publish and which to reject, by applying for grants for projects which are compliant with scientific principles, by evaluating their grad students' work, they all have an understanding of what proper research looks like, whether on an explicit or on an intuitive level. Experienced academics are the experts on this type of knowledge, and unexperienced ones are very much in need of it, in order to become better academics.
I think that this situation perfectly reflects the spirit of StackExchange as a place where the experts in one topic answer the questions of the people starting out in their area, in order to make this type of knowledge available to everyone who struggles with becoming better in what he or she is doing.
Therefore, I think this should be part of the on-topic areas for Academia.Stackexchange. It is the right place for it, and the community can only gain from allowing it.
---
This post was prompted by the fact that [I asked a question on this topic](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16671/what-is-the-difference-between-criterion-validity-and-reliability-equivalence) and got several reactions from community members who found it off-topic. I don't know why they think so. Butif it is just because "this is not the kind of question we are accustomed to seeing around", then this shouldn't be a barrier. Just because nobody before has thought of asking this kind of question doesn't mean it isn't interesting for the people who ask it and the ones who answer. (And several people expressed interest too).
I would also like to note that they couldn't think of a site which is better suited, and I think I made it clear in my argument above why *this* is the community to which it is suited, and not any other.
It is up to the community to decide whether it wants to accept or reject this type of question. I would find it very sad if it decides to reject it, because this site would be its natural home, just like in real life, the university is the home of scientific theory. | [
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"text": "I believe the linked question (and other similar questions) is on-topic and if it is not, then it should be. I ... | 2014/02/07 | [
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787 | Today I tried to flag a [question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16851/how-the-gap-of-5-years-after-my-graduation-going-to-affect-me-in-job-hunting) as off-topic, because it has nothing to do with academia.
The three options given to me for the reason for this were,
* cannot be generalized to apply to others in similar situations
* about problems facing undergraduate students
* belongs on another SE site
These are three very specific reasons that do not cover a wide swathe of other possibilities. [This question](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/689/no-closing-reason-for-nothing-to-do-with-academia), which may superficially appear as a dupe (but is not a dupe), shows a fourth option being offered: "Other". However, I do not see the "other" option.
I suspect that "Other" is shown in the vote-to-close dialog, but not in the Flag one (but I can't confirm this as I can't vote to close on this site). Hence, effectively, "Other" is only available to those with certain rep.
Is this discrepancy deliberate? Without an "Other" option for those without vote-to-close rep, it is very difficult to provide a helpful flag for an off-topic post.
---
Following comments:
The exact steps taken:
1. Click "Flag"
2. Click "It should be closed for another reason"
3. Click "off-topic because..."
4. See the screen shown below:
It sounds as though perhaps the "Other" option is only shown to people with enough rep to vote to close, which is why most people on Meta are unable to replicate :-) | [
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"text": "This is not the behaviour I see. When I click flag>>it should be closed>>off-topic I get:\n\n![enter image descri... | 2014/02/12 | [
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789 | In [this question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/16969/2692), the OP believes that studying by MOOC should be on-topic since it deals with the idea of gaining knowledge from a teacher in a more-or-less formal way. However, the question was closed as off-topic by several, including myself, who believe academia to be focused on universities and the like.
While I can see the OP's argument, we do generally say that undergraduate studies is off-topic. Not that all MOOC are for undergraduates but rather there is a clear statement that not all learning is on-topic. This question is to help find the line between on- and off-topic.
So, where does this question fall? On- or off-topic? | [
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"text": "If I can say something:\nMOOC courses are followed by people not only in their undergraduate degrees, but also at m... | 2014/02/14 | [
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795 | I recently deleted a few comments (mods, you can see them [here](https://academia.stackexchange.com/admin/posts/17053/comments)) which had been flagged as off-topic. Briefly, the OP had [asked a question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17050/acknowledging-the-discussion-with-someone-in-the-paper-but-excluding-this-person/17053?noredirect=1#comment33712_17053), a community member answered, and then a separate discussion took place in the comments about a different academia-related topic. I removed the comments that weren't immediately related to the question. The answerer took issue with my removing the comments, as he had put work into finding the answer.
My question here is: did I act inappropriately in removing those comments? | [
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"text": "Yes—and no. \n\n**Yes,** you acted inappropriately in the sense that the discussion was still very much ongoing at t... | 2014/02/17 | [
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800 | I was reading [this question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17085/why-do-professors-sometime-hide-the-book-from-which-they-are-really-teaching) which was migrated from Mozh.SE. Although this question was closed as a rant it made me wonder about migrated questions.
This question was asked by someone without an A.SE account (I think that's the case) so, for example, the username shows up but there is no link. I'm not sure if that user will get comments or answers. I also wonder if that user can (or would) ever accept an answer.
All of this begs the question, when non-A.SE-users are the asker of a question, should we delete and re-ask the question so that it belongs to someone who can actually answer clarifying questions and who can accept answers? | [
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"text": "My gut answer is: *no*, you shouldn't. \n\nA user who wants to follow up with a migrated question can join our site.... | 2014/02/18 | [
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805 | Fellow Users of Academia.SE,
Recently on academia.SE and meta.academia.SE, I wrote that I was unwilling to have longterm participation in a site for which content -- specifically comments, although my own perspective is more of a blanket one -- which is on-topic for the site are being deleted. My feeling is that this is a mild form of academic censorship. I am very passionately against the encroachment of academic censorship, however mild, and I think the SE model is in some ways a credible threat to making inroads on this.
Although the moderator who deleted my comment apologized very nicely, two moderators found a statement of mine similar to the above "unconstructive", "vacuous" and "distasteful". When I pointed out that comments are treated the way I want them on mathoverflow.net and math.SE, the response was that this site is very different from those sites. [**Added**: The original comment was "Suffice to state, Mozh.SE is run far differently than any other SE site, this one included." I believe this comment to be inaccurate, which is why I did not repeat it exactly. If it is seriously intended that experience built-up on math.SE and mathotherflow is somehow *a priori* inapplicable here, someone should certainly speak to that.] That seems to be true, but also this site is in the "beta phase" because there is not enough involvement, so questions about what future course the site could take seem maximally on-point.
In other words: maybe academics don't like participating in a site which has such a highly gamified / follow-the-rules approach to what is largely volunteer work / networking on their part. This is certainly not a hypothetical question: this was the main tension in the decision of whether to move mathoverflow.net to the SE2.0 model. This was finally done only after many concessions from the SE developers, and the whole thing happened at least a year after the "negotiations" were first started: in the end the SE people agreed to several things which at the beginning they were adamant would not be possible.
Also a colleague of mine tried to start a math-education stack exchange site. I told her that this could be a good idea but also warned her that there were a lot of strange-looking (to us) rules and hoops to jump through, especially at the early stages. She tried it anyway, and the site didn't make it past Area 51: the cultural disconnect between interested math educators and people who like and enforce the SE platform was a little too high. More recently she -- assisted by my PhD student -- made an independent site which is similar to the SE platform but adapted to be less gamified and rigid: this is the [Mozhematics Teaching Community](https://mathematicsteachingcommunity.math.uga.edu/).
I am very interested to know whether other academics feel that there any cultural mismatch between the mainstream SE model and the goal of getting academics involved in such a question and answer site. Please let me know how you feel about the censorship question above and/or also this broader issue. I would appreciate answers from users who identify themselves with their real name and academic affiliations (past or present), although that is certainly not required.
**Added**: I remember now that I did once before raise the issue of censorship with respect to comments [here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/97283/dont-remove-the-part-of-my-comment/97942#97942). The practice I was talking about was different but, in my opinion, less severe than deletion.
**Added on November 27, 2014**: A comment of mine was recently deleted without warning or acknowledgment. This comment was pertaining to a question that was unilaterally closed by a moderator. My comment expressed -- wholly civilly -- an opinion about in what circumstances moderator closure was appropriate. It included the information that I had been typing an answer while it was unilaterally closed (another user had just said the same). Thus my comment about how moderator intervention literally wasted my time and nullified my actions on this site was deleted by a moderator. I have made my views on this clear in this question. When moderators delete relevant comments which pertain to them, they participate in the most troubling form of censorship. At the present time I will take a break from this site to reflect on these issues. | [
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819 | I read a few (OK, too many) academic blogs. Often, readers write in asking the author of the blog to post a question they have about academia. Then the readers of the blog answer and discuss in the comments.
These are often very interesting questions that are on-topic for academic.SE, and I think that this community would have useful answers that I'd like to hear. However, the help center says that
>
> You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on **actual problems that you face**.
>
>
>
Is it appropriate to ask questions here that I've read on a blog, to find out what this community has to say? | [
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"text": "Personally, I say **yes**.\n\nThe problem with asking questions you *don't* face is that you end up with many philoso... | 2014/02/28 | [
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822 | We all love [Academia Stack Exchange](http://academia.stackexchange.com), but there is a whole world of people out there who need answers to their questions and don't even know that this site exists. When they arrive from Google, what will their first impression be? Let's try to look at this site through the eyes of someone who's never seen it before, and see how we stack up against the rest of the 'Net.
The [Site Self-Evaluation review queue](https://academia.stackexchange.com/review/site-eval) is open and populated with 10 questions that were asked and answered in the last quarter.
Run a few Google searches to see how easy they are to find and compare the answers we have with the information available on other sites.
Rating the questions is only a part of the puzzle, though. Do you see a pattern of questions that should have been closed but are not? Questions or answers that could use an edit? Anything that's going really well? **Post an answer below to share your thoughts** and discuss these questions and the site's health with your fellow users! | [
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"text": "In general, I like shape of Academia.SE. And I am still being surprised, that with so many subjective questions,... | 2014/03/02 | [
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823 | I am confused by the instructions about [editing](https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/editing)
>
> Edits are expected to be substantial and to leave the post better than you found it. Common reasons for edits include: To fix grammar and spelling mistakes ...
>
>
>
This seems to be a little contradictory to me. Is correcting a couple of typo like misspellings "substantial". In particularly, I am curious because of the edits made to <https://academia.stackexchange.com/posts/16976/revisions>. The first edit was by a high rep user and fixed a single typo in the question title by adding a character. The second edit was by a new user and changed an American English spelling to British English and fixed two typos by changing a single letter in each case.
How do we fell about seemingly minor edits of these types? | [
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"text": "Not all typos and misspellings are created equal.\n\nTypos in question titles should always be fixed, in my opinion,... | 2014/03/04 | [
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834 | I have recently noticed a trend in the answers on academia.se to question the situation about which OP is asking because *not every single detail* is provided, instead of answering what is being asked.
Most recent examples from a few days ago include:
[Should professors intervene if a student is wearing offensive clothing in their classroom?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/17739/4249)
* The question asks what to do about *clearly offensive clothing* worn to class as a TA or other person of authority
* Some answers, instead of answering, argue that the OP is easily offended, or that what was offending to her is not offending in general
[Is it ethical to apply different criteria for graduate admissions based on country of undergraduate study?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/17658/4249)
* The question is asking if it is ethical to design admission criteria according to a certain statistics their research revealed (it is a bit of a controversial admission criteria). ([example](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/17771/4249))
* Instead of answering, some answers were suggesting that the statistics and the research they did must have been wrong and the results are not valid. ([example](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/17675/4249))
These are just two more recent examples. I know when I was asking a question lately, I was sure to cover all my bases (e.g. explicating that everything was done ethically and in good will) to avoid answers questioning my motives and methods, since I saw this kind of non-answers prevail and even be the most-upvoted answers often.
I understand that questions asking clearly unethical things, such as **How do I best cheat on the admission process**, or something similar, should not be answered, but this is not the case I am talking about.
One other thing is that people say "if you do not want to disclose the details, there is something wrong or unethical in your methodology, *because you don't want to disclose the details*." I understand the need for anonymity, or the wish to generalize, so I don't think this is a good trend
While some of the opinions might be valid *in case the OP really made a mistake*, those kind of answers still do not answer the question actually asked, and it is not our place to question the facts presented.
Yet, the community seems not to be condemning those kind of answers very strong: neither of the examples I linked to has negative score (one has a positive one!), even thou, (and, please, correct me if I'm wrong), *they do not actually answer the question*.
**Do we really want to collect such answers?**
And, as a secondary questions, **what do we want to do with such answers that already exist?** Should we flag-delete them? We could wait for the down-votes to push them sufficiently down, but especially on a bit controversial questions, those answers seem to get support from part of the community because of their attitude towards the controversial issue in question, and not because they actually offer an answer. | [
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838 | I am currently a sophomore, but just looking for some statistics on graduate school admissions, and if possible chances tailored to my own statistics. | [
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842 | As I already mentioned, [some questions provide too much detail](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/831/49), making it a multi-thread open-ended requests for life advice.
However, in some cases the question lack enough details, and people are confused or ask for more details. Especially things dealing with social relations, norms, ethics, etc: levels of sensitivity varies by persons, laws varies by countries, different people have different first- or second-hand experiences, etc.
I am clueless when I see `offensive`, `inappropriate`, etc. So do many other readers, what end up in long comment ping-pong, people questioning if the issue is serious enough to call it. Or maybe actually OP downplays it and the behavior is not "a bit inappropriate" but deserves "Don't walk. Run." or legal actions?
For example, compare
>
> What to do if advisor, when talking with me, holds my arm and I feel uncomfortable?
>
>
>
with
>
> What to do if advisor, when talking with me, behaves inappropriately and I feel uncomfortable?
>
>
>
The first will start an idle discussion. The second won't.
Let us remember that Academia.SE has way more subjective questions than StackOverflow (or, say, MathOverflow). And the SE system works the best for clear, answerable questions. StackOverflow won't work with:
>
> this library gives undesirable results, but let me not go into details.
>
>
>
The only exception I can foresee is privacy (but, I guess, more than often a *different but of similar calibre* example can be given). Otherwise explicit situations or verbatim phrases are the best (with, possibly placeholders to mask obscene words).
And as examples, questions which without explicit examples would end in guessing games (but, as they are, attracted good answers):
* [What to do if assignment is against student's religion?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17815/what-to-do-if-assignment-is-against-students-religion)
* [Why do many talented scientists write horrible software?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17781/why-many-talented-scientists-write-horrible-software)
This meta question was started because of [Should professors intervene if a student is wearing offensive clothing in their classroom?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17739/should-professors-intervene-if-a-student-is-wearing-offensive-clothing-in-their)
and being a sort-of follow-up of [People denying the situation in the questions instead of answering](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/834/people-denying-the-situation-in-the-questions-instead-of-answering).
In any case, IMHO, the most important factor is not my feeling about providing examples, but:
* it is clear what is the question?
* do they attract good answers?
* do they minimize overhead (in people asking comments)?
What do you think? | [
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850 | There seems to be some disagreement about whether professional non-research degree programs (law, business, medicine) and entry into such programs is on-topic.
One the one hand, in a comment on [York Undergraduate student looking to get into medical school?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/18055/york-undergraduate-student-looking-to-get-into-medical-school) (on hold):
>
> Moreover, questions related to professional schools are also generally considered off-topic (unless they're related to research-driven degrees, or looking to pursue an academic career—an MD-PhD program, for instance)
>
>
>
and
>
> the point of the restriction is to avoid having the board overrun with pre-med/pre-law/pre-business questions (which is decidedly not what this site is about).
>
>
>
Then the opposite view on [What preparatory steps should I be taking for admission into med school?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1010/what-preparatory-steps-should-i-be-taking-for-admission-into-med-school/):
>
> This is a straightforward question about admission to a post-graduate academic program; I think it's perfectly in scope.
>
>
>
I also believe the [help-center](https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) text, which refers to "professional students," can be interpreted to include professional law, medicine, and business degrees (and others like them). If the consensus is that such questions are not in scope, perhaps this text should be clarified to unambiguously exclude questions about professional graduate-level degree programs. | [
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"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "I think the cited question should be closed for being too localized, but NOT for being about med school."
},
{
... | 2014/03/12 | [
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855 | We currently have 76 questions tagged [research-undergraduate](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/research-undergraduate "show questions tagged 'research-undergraduate'"). By the definition of the site scope, either:
1. these questions are about research that's not applicable to postgrad students and academic staff, in which case they should be closed and deleted; or
2. they are applicable to postgrad students and academic staff, in which case they are about [research](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/research "show questions tagged 'research'")
**Either way, the research-undergraduate tag is irrelevant**. So [I've proposed making it a synonym of research](https://academia.stackexchange.com/tags/research/synonyms).
So, I'd welcome your contributions to voting on that syonym: but I'd also welcome discussion of whether this synonym is appropriate. [We have discussed undergraduate research here previously](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/666/96), and the top-voted answer says:
>
> if it's a question a PhD student (or higher) could reasonably ask. If so, then it's appropriate
>
>
> | [
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"selected": false,
"text": "I certainly agree that \"undergraduate research\" is a subset of \"research\". But \"research\" is so broad -... | 2014/03/12 | [
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866 | We've recently had a few questions that say, "Does anyone know of a degree program that meets requirements X,Y,Z."
For example, [Where can I take online MBA courses without being admitted?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/18289/where-can-i-take-online-mba-courses-without-being-admitted):
>
> Next year I will enroll in a full time MBA program. Until then, I would like to take transferable online courses to count towards my degree. I talked with admissions, and they will accept up to 6 credits from an AACSB accredited school. Unfortunately, I cannot find a university that offers individual online MBA courses. Does anyone here have suggestions?
>
>
>
Or [Cheapest online degrees](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/18283/cheapest-online-degrees):
>
> What are the cheapest online degrees in Computer Science?
>
>
>
Or [What is the best way to choose an MBA school for someone in lighting industry?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17667/what-is-the-best-way-to-choose-an-mba-school-for-someone-in-lighting-industry):
>
> Is there a university MBA programme featured with lighting industry? Or is it just famous for global marketing/management?
>
>
>
It is my feeling that these questions are off-topic, but I don't see a lot of consistency in the reason given for closure, and they sometimes end up being closed for tangential reasons. (In these three examples: "This question appears to be off-topic because it is not about academia," "Questions about problems facing undergraduate students are off-topic," and not closed, respectively).
Are questions in this category off-topic, and if so, is there a canonical reason for closing questions in this category? | [
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"text": "Such questions are usually poor fits, but there's not a single canonical reason to reject. For instance, they might ... | 2014/03/20 | [
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874 | I tried to write a response to [I believe I have solved a famous open problem. How do I convince people in the field that I am not a crank?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/18491/i-believe-i-have-solved-a-famous-open-problem-how-do-i-convince-people-in-the-f) that mentioned an achievement of my own that I thought was much bigger than it was, and respectful empathy for referees instead of viewing them as obstacles. It was deleted, ironically enough. Did I do wrong by including a link to my website, or did I come off as a crank, or something else? There were no comments, positive or negative, and it had two upvotes before being deleted five hours after it was posted.
I'm not sure it's my best work but I tried to have a heart to heart comment to someone dealing with being outside of the climate of opinion whether he made a legitimate discovery or was a legitimate crank. Is this kind of heart to heart (or attempt) outside the purview of academia.stackexchange.com? Was it deleted because of execution or intent, or was part of it just too strange for the person reading it?
I made a distinction (which I invented or reinvented) in the theory of other minds as discussed in reference to the spectrum: I distinguished within theory of other minds issues between a theory of like minds (which can be described as "Other people have minds just like mine"), and a theory of alien minds (which means "Other people have minds as much as mine, but they're often different from mine."). Was the reference to "**alien** minds" construed as ufo stuff or the like?
Thanks, | [
{
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"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
"author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "Your answer received multiple flags from the community indicating it as *\"not an answer\"*, and was therefore dele... | 2014/03/30 | [
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882 | There was an interesting discussion at the stats Cross Validated site about [(mis)use of statistics in academic papers](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/92213/5739). I think the audience of Academia will benefit from it, but I am not sure what the best way is to link to that discussion. | [
{
"answer_id": 883,
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"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "What you've done here is probably the best way. The Stack Exchange sites are set up to answer questions, not really to... | 2014/04/04 | [
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/882",
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com",
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891 | I’m Stéphane, senior product designer at Stack Exchange. First, I wanted to congratulate you because this site is now starting the process of moving out of beta to become a fully-graduated site! Well done!
### Graduation and Your Site Design
Graduation comes with a few perks. I have already begun work on your site's design, which will give you your own unique theme that reflects your topic and culture. This will help brand your site as unique, even while you share common elements with other sites that show you are part of a bigger Stack Exchange family.
Once the design goes up, you will receive a link in the footer of other sites in the network, along with the ability to migrate content to and from other sites — and the notoriety of a public launch that says, "Congratulations, you finally made it!"
### Design Concept
For our academia.se community's site design and branding, I wanted to have a "campus life" feel. I think it's most effectively conveyed with a hand-drawn illustration style. It has a personal and lively feel to it. I've gathered some artwork I found online for setting up a mood board.
### Mood Board
### Color scheme
This color scheme reminds me of autumn. It's warm and inviting. Fall is also when a new academic year starts. All the pastel colors bring calm and harmony and they are lighted up by the green and the red. This way we can balance our design from calmness to more contrasted and focused area.
### Logo
All the knowledge has always been passed on by books through the years, they are the origins of teaching. The idea was to evoke some books in a bookcase but in a non figurative way.
I believe this modernized logo works in other mediums to promote our site as well.
### Swag
Business cards / stickers / t-shirt
Click on the image to view it at full size.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZHdGb.png)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xfOkZ.png)
### Overall site design
Click on the images to view them at full size.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KDSU6.png)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zSLMh.png)
### Main illustration
Click on the image to view it at full size.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/AIAOV.png)
I believe the design captures the mood I was going for. I'd love to hear your feedback. If there are no major design changes, we're hoping to launch the site soon. Thank you for being an awesome community!
---
### Edit:
Thank you for your valued feedback! I've changed the badges based on your answers and comments. They now are **mortarboards**.
Click on the image to view it at full size.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tvAWf.png)
Regarding the question list, I will tweak some vertical space and font size during the coding to have the most perfect rendering across browsers. | [
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"text": "A few comments on the design so far:\n\n* The \"medals\" icons should perhaps be closer to mortarboards, with gold, ... | 2014/04/11 | [
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907 | You guys have gotten your own design and graduated, hurrah! And with that, you now have the opportunity to setup Community Promotion Ads for your own site, not just to apply to other sites.
### What are Community Promotion Ads?
Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.
### Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?
This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:
* the site's twitter account
* academic websites and resources
* interesting campus story blogs
* cool events or conferences
* anything else your community would genuinely be interested in
The goal is for future visitors to find out about *the stuff your community deems important*. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are *relevant to your own community's interests*, both for those already in the community and those yet to join.
### Why do we reset the ads every year?
Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. We reset the ads once a year, every December.
The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a year of exposure.
### How does it work?
The answers you post to this question *must* conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored.
1. All answers should be in the exact form of:
```
[![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]
[1]: http://image-url
[2]: http://clickthrough-url
```
Please **do not add anything else to the body of the post**. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.
2. The question must always be tagged with the magic [community-ads](/questions/tagged/community-ads "show questions tagged 'community-ads'") tag. In addition to enabling the functionality of the advertisements, this tag also pre-fills the answer form with the above required form.
### Image requirements
* The image that you create must be **220 x 250 pixels**
* Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)
* Must be GIF or PNG
* No animated GIFs
* Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB
### Score Threshold
There is a **minimum score threshold** an answer must meet (currently **6**) before it will be shown on the main site.
You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats [here](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/ads/display/907). | [
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"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "[](https://twitter.com/St... | 2014/04/23 | [
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914 | 
I think it's a bit unpleasant, lots of wasted space... is it a bug or a feature?
Using Chrome on OSX Mavericks, btw.
**EDIT:** I double checked with Lafere and FF, it looks ok. Also Chrome running on Mint 14 looks fine as well. The problem seems to be specific to Chrome on OSX :s | [
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"author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/72",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "[](https://twitter.com/St... | 2014/04/24 | [
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/914",
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com",
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917 | Now that we're out of beta, will we get access to the full set of stackexchange sites for migrations ? | [
{
"answer_id": 918,
"author": "aeismail",
"author_id": 53,
"author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/53",
"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "Not sure what power users get to see. I know moderators have the ability to migrate anywhere on SE."
},
{
"a... | 2014/04/24 | [
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/917",
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com",
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922 | A nitpick but with the new format, when I'm reading answers, I keep seeing the answer below as a comment. I scroll down and I get the realisation "oh it's an answer, not a comment".
To give an idea of what I mean:
(Screenshot from [this question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/19756/how-can-we-promote-better-writing-skills-in-academic-education).)
... my immediate visual reaction is that "1. HAVE them write ..." starts a comment under the answer, not a new answer.
---
Or is it just me? | [
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"selected": false,
"text": "I'm noticing it too, and would like some better/bolder visual seperation - I was comparing this site to CrossValidat... | 2014/04/24 | [
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927 | I was checking out the recent questions and came across [this one](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/19881/should-teachers-be-entertainers), which is essentially an opinion poll regarding the role/attitude teachers should have in class.
As I wrote on my comment, I do like what the question is going after but I can't help thinking that it is essentially not a good fit based on how we (and other SE sites) normally operate. As it stands, there is no right answer to this question. Consider this hypothetical answer:
>
> "*yes, I think the teacher is also responsible for the catching students attention by entertainment, if necessary. I tried this in class **X** for **n** semesters and it works like a charm...*
>
>
>
I don't think anyone of us can claim that the answer is *wrong* by any merit. We can disagree on to what extent we agree, but essentially any semi-serious (no spam, or one-liner) answer would be a valid answer to the question. Am I mistaken?
Would it be too harsh to vote/flag this kind of question? | [
{
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"selected": false,
"text": "There might be a correct answer, which might not necessarily but absolutely true, but which might at least quote en... | 2014/04/28 | [
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932 | In connection with the moderator elections, we will be holding a Q&A with the candidates. This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation. Participation is completely voluntary.
>
> **The purpose of this thread was to collect questions for the questionnaire. The questionnaire is now live, and you may find it [here](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/990/2014-moderator-election-qa-questionnaire).**
>
>
>
Here's how it'll work:
* During the nomination phase, (so, until Monday, May 12th, at 20:00:00Z UTC, or 4:00 pm EDT on the same day, give or take time to arrive for closure), this question will be open to collect potential questions from the users of the site. Post answers to this question containing any questions you would like to ask the candidates. Please only post *one question per answer*.
* We, the Community Team, will be providing a small selection of generic questions. The first two will be guaranteed to be included, the latter ones are if the community doesn't supply enough questions. This will be done in a single post, unlike the prior instruction.
* This is a perfect opportunity to voice questions that are specific to your community and issues that you are running into at current.
* At the end of the phase, the Community Team will select **up to 8 of the top voted questions submitted by the community** provided in this thread, to use in addition to the aforementioned 2 guaranteed questions. We reserve some editorial control in the selection of the questions and may opt not to select a question that is tangential or irrelevant to moderation or the election. That said, if I have concerns about any questions in this fashion, I will be sure to point this out in comments before the decision making time.
* Once questions have been selected, a new question will be opened to host the actual questionnaire for the candidates, containing 10 questions in total.
* This is not the only option that users have for gathering information on candidates. As a community, you are still free to, for example, hold a live chat session with your candidates to ask further questions, or perhaps clarifications from what is provided in the Q&A.
If you have any questions or feedback about this new process, feel free to post as a comment here. | [
{
"answer_id": 934,
"author": "JRN",
"author_id": 64,
"author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/64",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "Under what conditions will you delete comments?"
},
{
"answer_id": 935,
"author": "ff524",
"author_id": 1... | 2014/05/05 | [
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/932",
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com",
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933 | The 2014 Community Moderator Election is now underway!
Community moderator elections have three phases:
1. Nomination phase
2. Primary phase
3. Election phase
Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends on how many candidates there are.
Please visit the official election page at
<https://academia.stackexchange.com/election>
for more detail, and to participate!
If you have general questions about the election process, or questions for moderator candidates, feel free to ask them here on meta -- just make sure your questions are tagged [election](/questions/tagged/election "show questions tagged 'election'"). | [
{
"answer_id": 1029,
"author": "Suresh",
"author_id": 346,
"author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/346",
"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "It seems like we have four winners ! Congratulations to aeismail, eykanal, ff524 and StrongBad (if I ran the correc... | 2014/05/05 | [
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/933",
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com",
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] |
937 | This applies to a few questions out there, especially the ones asking for personal career advice.
Was this function removed during graduation of the site? Or is it just me who can't access it anymore?
**Edit** My guess is that when the site graduated I lost the moderation privilege due to my low reputation. This option used to show up immediately upon hitting the 'close' link, and now I don't see it anymore but buried 4 layers down the flagging dialog. | [
{
"answer_id": 938,
"author": "Fomite",
"author_id": 118,
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"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "I don't have that option either - the closest thing I can see to it is just \"It needs moderator attention\".\n\nIt ... | 2014/05/06 | [
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/937",
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/10643/"
] |
949 | In a comment to [this answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/20399/10094), rocinante wrote:
>
> And while I get that the site is heavily skewed to ignore or shut down any hint of criticism of professors in academia, rosy pictures of idyllic collaborations do not serve anybody who is not in that ideal position. If the questioner was in the ideal position, they wouldn't have a problem in the first place.
>
>
>
While I disagree with the strong wording in the comment, it made me wonder.
* Are we in fact presenting an idealised view of academia, where professors are always helpful and competent, where advisors and mentors only have the best interest of their mentees in mind, and where research is always about contributing to the body of knowledge and never about politics?
* If so, is this a good or a bad thing?
* If it is a bad thing, can it be changed and how? | [
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"answer_id": 951,
"author": "eykanal",
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"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "Not sure who the \"we\" is in your question. Assuming you're referring to people who answer questions on this site...... | 2014/05/07 | [
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/949",
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954 | So I've embarked on something of a tag wiki editing project, and as I'm working through my list, I've hit `reference-request`. This appears to be used in two different cases, rather than just one:
1. Requests for citations, references or documents to support a question
2. Questions about asking a recommender for a letter of reference
These are clearly two very different types of questions. Thoughts on the best way to split the tag to make it more clear? | [
{
"answer_id": 957,
"author": "Piotr Migdal",
"author_id": 49,
"author_profile": "https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/49",
"pm_score": 3,
"selected": true,
"text": "On Stack Exchange sites [reference-request](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/reference-request... | 2014/05/07 | [
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/954",
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com",
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] |
975 | If we have a meme on this site, it's "**Don't walk. Run.**" It is like an inside joke for the community ... but the joke might not be clear to newcomers.
If we could get past the semantic satiation for a minute, somebody quitting their real-life position and looking for employment/studies elsewhere is a serious issue and should be treated seriously.
I think it's especially problematic coming from hugely successful academics working in rock-star departments who don't know the culture in other areas and departments.
Lots of questions are coming from inexperienced researchers and typically paint a one-sided picture. Highly-upvoted comments in bold left by experienced academics telling inexperienced academics that they leave their job as soon as possible ... I sometimes find it uncomfortable.
A couple of examples of where it made me cringe:
* [Handling credit with advisor](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5656/handling-credit-with-advisor): a question that seems almost too simple in terms of not being the whole story. The first piece of advice isn't "have you tried talking with her?" but rather "**Don't walk. Run.**" ... with 18 upvotes.
* [What to do: PI lied to me and is keeping my grant!](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15229/what-to-do-pi-lied-to-me-and-is-keeping-my-grant): a difficult question that requires legal advice, not a pithy comment.
* There was another example I can't find right now where a student mentioned that in their school, they require the permission of their supervisor to publish. This was met with "**Don't walk. Run**" from JeffE which seemed entirely inappropriate. A school guideline requiring students to clear affiliated publications with their supervisor seems pretty reasonable (if a tad distrustful) ... certainly not grounds to quit.
---
Anyone agree that this meme is potentially damaging? It just doesn't seem worth the risk.
Folks using this meme should have some respect for the fact that they're advising another human being to quit their job/studies ... and they should keep in mind that they are simultaneously communicating with thousands of vulnerable people from a variety of areas who see such questions and who might project themselves as being in similar situations. | [
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"text": "Actually, \"don't walk—run\" is a shorthand for a different situation, in my opinion:\n\n> \n> \"Don't walk. Run.\" ... | 2014/05/10 | [
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983 | I have a question that is not a problem, but rather something that I'm curious about and could elicit a good answer. I would like to know the reasons for what I believe is a trend relating to the kinds of facilities offered by campuses.
It's not about academia per se, but I think it *could* fall under the [allowed topic](https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) of
>
> Life as a graduate student, postdoctoral researcher, university professor
>
>
>
and maybe even
>
> Inner workings of research departments.
>
>
> | [
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"answer_id": 984,
"author": "ff524",
"author_id": 11365,
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"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "Questions on university facilities should be on-topic if they pertain directly (as you point out) to \"life as a ... | 2014/05/12 | [
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/983",
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com",
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] |
987 | I wrote this question: [How should academics handle communication with the media?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/20532/10643) and think it would benefit from people editing it by adding their personal experience so that we can cover more aspects of this issue.
Is it a candidate to become a community wiki? If yes, what is the procedure for a low-rep worm like me to suggest it might be? | [
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"answer_id": 988,
"author": "eykanal",
"author_id": 73,
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"pm_score": 1,
"selected": true,
"text": "To answer the **why**, there isn't much of a reason anymore; the added feature of \"suggested edits\" made it mostly s... | 2014/05/12 | [
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/987",
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com",
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] |
990 | In connection with the moderator elections, we are holding a Q&A thread for the candidates. Questions collected [from an earlier thread](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/932/2014-moderator-election-qa-question-collection) have been compiled into this one, which shall now serve as the space for the candidates to provide their answers. Not every question was compiled, but apparently when I posted the original Q&A collection, the self-answer containing our suggested questions failed to be submitted. For this reason, I've opted to collect 10 questions from the community in lieu of the usual selection of 8 plus our 2.
As a candidate, your job is simple - post an answer to this question, citing each of the questions and then post your answer to each question given in that same answer. For your convenience, I will include all of the questions in quote format with a break in between each, suitable for you to insert your answers. Just [copy the whole thing after the first set of three dashes](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/revisions/4116ef36-2ef1-4c9b-b6d6-f5c95a9c43b0/view-source).
Once all the answers have been compiled, this will serve as a transcript for voters to view the thoughts of their candidates, and will be appropriately linked in the Election page.
Good luck to all of the candidates!
---
>
> A user posts something you find (off-topic/wrong/offensive) and you (close/delete/migrate) the (question/comment). The user posts about it in Meta and the post gets a lot of upvotes. Answers are posted both in favor of you action and and criticising your action; both get upvotes. How do you decide what to do next?
>
>
> A quite specific question: **what is your position with respect to undergraduate questions?** A significant part of my moderator actions have been to arbitrate if a question was on-topic or not, because it was somehow related to undergraduate studies. It can often be argued that some questions can however easily generalise to graduate studies, which would make them on topic. So, what is your position? [Some example positions](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/963/)
>
>
> How will you use your "binding vote" moderator privileges? Let the community weigh in first on most close, reopen, delete, undelete, etc. operations? Let the community decide on things that could conceivably be subjective, but take action on non-controversial matters immediately? Act to deliberately to keep the direction of the site on track? Vote as if you were a normal user, disregarding your role and the binding nature?
>
>
> What change would you like to make in how the site is currently moderated, and how would you go about implementing that change?
>
>
> Under what conditions will you delete comments?
>
>
> What is your position on boat programming questions? [See here for examples](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/965/).
>
>
> How would you moderate postings where your opinion or the community's opinion and official SE policy disagree?
>
>
> What is your position on the following statement from aeismail: "In the long run, Stack Exchange sites are not just about answering people's questions, but providing long-term curating of the answers"? We have some very active users who look at old questions/answers, and curate them, for instance by flagging for comment removal (typically because they are obsolete, too chatty, not constructive, etc). Will you support them in this task? Or do you rather think that content should be left unchanged as much as possible?
>
>
> What is your time zone? What is the time period you are available for moderating our site everyday? Please specify the answer in UTC format.
>
>
> What activities on the site suggest that you would be a good moderator? If you are currently a moderator, do you believe you've carried out the role effectively?
>
>
> | [
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"selected": true,
"text": "To answer the **why**, there isn't much of a reason anymore; the added feature of \"suggested edits\" made it mostly s... | 2014/05/13 | [
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"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com",
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] |
992 | Retu Zlerc recently asked a question which is, essentially, a [list of things](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20901/compiling-ethical-standards-for-coauthorship-across-academic-fields-and-regions). In the past, we've had differing thoughts from the community on this topic ([for](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/50/questions-involving-lists), [against](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/749/big-list-questions)). Thoughts? | [
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"answer_id": 993,
"author": "StrongBad",
"author_id": 929,
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"pm_score": 0,
"selected": false,
"text": "I don't like big list question in general. In this particular case, I like it even less. My guess is someone has ... | 2014/05/13 | [
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1,005 | The accepted answer to [this question](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/987/how-and-why-should-a-question-be-made-a-community-wiki) suggests that community wiki is deemed sort of a *legacy feature* that serves no real purpose anymore, as people are supposed to just edit additional information into existing answers, if they feel that a given answer is good but is missing "something".
Both, Jigg and Poko R. Xlark remark that this in practice basically never happens (essentially all edits are just grammar or spelling fixes, with the occasional do-over for clarity and style). This is also my impression - I have been reasonably active on the site in the last few months, and from the top of my head I cannot remember a single case where I have seen an edit that *actually added content to an existing answer*. Personally speaking, I would also see this as highly inappropriate, as there is no guarantee that the original author even endorses a given change. Poko R. Xlark goes into detail in [his answer](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/991/10094) why people seem reluctant to do anything but minor style edits to other people's answers.
My question is now as follows:
**If we encounter a question that already has one or more answers that we consider really good, but we feel some minor-ish detail needs to be added. What is the right way to do it?**
1. Post a comment and ask the original author to edit it in.
2. Edit it in directly.
3. Provide a new answer, which starts with something along the lines of "The existing answer by XY is good, but ...". I have done something similar [myself today](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/20927/10094).
Option 1 is ok but cumbersome. The question linked at the top seems to suggest to me option 2, but how do we guarantee that the original author even has the same opinion on the topic? Option 3 seems to be the common way how it is currently done (my impression at least), but brings us close to community wiki territory. | [
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"answer_id": 1006,
"author": "Community",
"author_id": -1,
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"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "I personally agree with the [global SE policy on editing](https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/editing):\n\n> \n... | 2014/05/14 | [
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1005",
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com",
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1,016 | One of my questions—[Topical tag cloud generator for researchers/academics](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/21005)—was [migrated](https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/4160/topical-tag-cloud-generator-for-researchers-academics) to a site I'm not a member of and have no intention of signing up for. Thus I can no longer interact with it. It was migrated with about 5 upvotes and an answer with 4 upvotes (that I never had the chance to upvote). I shall speak of it using the past tense, [may it rest in peace](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QsJRwCx_vvQ/UWQcu_uPb8I/AAAAAAAATJs/THt3Xmfz17A/s1600/Dead+parrot+2.jpg).
Seemingly it was migrated after @EnergyNumbers put forward in a comment that it was a "boat programming" question. His comment got some upvotes and (I guess) close votes started to appear afterwards and it got migrated somehow (I don't know the process). Hence this seemed to be an important comment.
I did not know what "boat programming" meant before but [based on the discussion here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/14470/what-is-the-boat-programming-meme-about), @EnergyNumbers was putting forward that my question was analogous to asking "[What is the best boat for an academic](http://donmillereducation.com/journal/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/we-re-gonna-need-a-bigger-boat.jpg)" ... the argument being that adding "for an academic" doesn't make a question about boats a relevant question. Now I had previously added discussion to my question specifying the reasons why a generic tag cloud generator would be insufficient, and why I was looking for something specific for academic papers. One could argue that it was still a boat programming question since one could argue why a programmer needs a certain type of boat ... it needs a good coffee machine for example.
The other part of the comment was that it was a "shopping question", which I understand is like asking (as an academic) for your favourite *x* from a set of well-known *X* or something. I would argue that my question was not asking for one's favourite anything from a set of well-known anythings. It was looking for software packages to extract and visualise topics from research papers. Others could argue it was a shopping question I guess because I was asking for things.
The last part of the comment was that it was relevant to another StackExchange site—Software Recommendations—where it eventually migrated.
Was it a "boat programming" question? ...
Was it a "shopping" question? ...
Was it ...
---
I went looking through [the FAQ](https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) to see what I missed. I didn't really find anything. I mean I can see that one could make arguments that my question was doing *X* or wasn't doing *Y* in the FAQ but far from anything clear-cut and far from anything umpteen other questions (including highly voted questions) on the site do.
---
But okay, I tried to take as given the explicit/implicit premises applied to my question, akin to a perfect storm:
1. **boat programming**: making a generic question and sticking "for academics" after it;
2. **shopping**: "my favourite *X* is *x'*, what's yours?";
3. **software request** for which there is a dedicated SE site.
... and apply it to other questions on the site. Here's just some (not-so-)quick examples where I roughly tried to use my question as a yardstick (of course I'm biased, so make up your own minds):
1. [Software to use for creating posters for academic conferences?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1880/software-to-use-for-creating-posters-for-academic-conferences) (28 upvotes, 11 answers.) [Boat programming. Shopping. Software recommendation.]
2. [Mapping connections between topics covered in academic papers - does such a tool exist?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/18399/mapping-connections-between-topics-covered-in-academic-papers-does-such-a-tool) (3 upvotes, 1 answer) [Shopping. Software recommendation.]
3. [Tools for data organising and processing](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17495/tools-for-data-organising-and-processing) (5 upvotes, 2 answers) [Boat programming. Shopping. Software recommendation.]
4. [Saving handwritten notes for future reference](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7242/saving-handwritten-notes-for-future-reference) (18 upvotes, 9 answers) [Boat programming. Shopping. Software recommendation.]
5. [Software to draw illustrative figures in tables](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1095/software-to-draw-illustrative-figures-in-papers) (**57 upvotes**, 12 answers) [Boat programming. Shopping. Software recommendation.]
6. [Is there an open source tool for producing bibtex entries from paper PDFs?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15504/is-there-an-open-source-tool-for-producing-bibtex-entries-from-paper-pdfs) (6 upvotes, 1 answer) [Shopping. Software recommendation.]
7. [Searching for a quotation manager](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5246/searching-for-a-quotation-manager) (10 upvotes, 3 answers) [Shopping. Software recommendation.]
8. [Issue tracking when writing a paper](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5553/issue-tracking-when-writing-a-paper) (19 upvotes, 3 answers) [Boat programming. Shopping. Software recommendation.]
9. [Note taking software: referencing text to searchable keywords](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12761/note-taking-software-referencing-text-to-searchable-keywords) (2 upvotes, 1 answer) [Boat programming. Shopping. Software recommendation.]
10. [Do you find a computer-assisted qualitative data analysis tool useful?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9654/do-you-find-a-computer-assisted-qualitative-data-analysis-tool-useful) (2 upvotes, 1 answer) [Boat programming. Shopping. Software recommendation.]
11. [Internet Git repository for collaboration on a paper](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5253/internet-git-repository-for-collaboration-on-a-paper) (18 upvotes, 3 answers) [Boat programming. Shopping. Software recommendation.]
12. ...
I am not arguing one way or the other that these questions are off-topic for this site. I'm trying to highlight that the reason(s) my question was commented on/voted to close/migrated apply to many other questions.
None of these questions have been migrated. None have close votes. None even have comments along the lines of the ones I got on my question.
---
Likewise there's the ([`software`](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/software)) tag itself (which I didn't see until later):
>
> Queries related to various software used in academia. Questions shall not address highly technical aspects of the software but shall address features/issues highly relevant to academia.
>
>
>
---
In any case, aside from being confused, I [feel](http://www.quickmeme.com/img/f9/f9aa925d576d3e1459ce99e1120c4ca290e05ecd9e68376e8d6494f3f5137eaf.jpg) like I have already spent too much time on this and other topics. I'm not going to be engaging on this question. But maybe it helps give examples of something or other. I dunno.
Having come to the end of this long meta-question whose effort–reward ratio is seemingly vanishingly small, irrespective of what you thought of the question itself, all I can put forward is the request to not view moderation tools as nails for which you have the hammer, and to moderate with clarity, consistency and common sense ... and reluctance.
Ciao! | [
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"text": "There are questions that clearly are out of scope and there are questions that are clearly in scope. I think the... | 2014/05/16 | [
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1,020 | [This](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/21095/5674) question here is practically asking whether or not a particular scheme used at his/her school is fair/ethical. Specifically the heart of the question says (emphasis mine):
>
> Do you ***think*** this is ethical? Is this a wise way to deal with cheating?
>
>
>
Not so surprisingly the answers are opinionated, and sometimes not even answering the question at hand but instead providing different perspective (i.e. "*at our institution we do...*").
[This answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/21100/5674), just as an example, focuses on how it's done in France, and has very little reference to it is fair or ethical, or wise for that matter.
I like the question, *per se*, but as I understand the scope and *modus operandi* here on SE sites, this type of question is a bad fit. I have raised similar concerns [before](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/927/on-topic-within-scope-but-subjective-question-that-is-likely-to-generate-discus), but haven't really gotten a whole lot of feedback. As I don't want to go on a downvote spree based on a hunch I would like to get some feedback/discussion on the matter.
Opinions? | [
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"text": "There are questions that clearly are out of scope and there are questions that are clearly in scope. I think the... | 2014/05/19 | [
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1,023 | There has been much discussion recently over when to to migrate questions away from the site. A while back, I found a question on meta.stackexchange which outlined the criteria one should use to make that decision. I can't find the question, but the process is as follows:
1. **Is the question on-topic at your site?** If yes, it should stay. (Whether it should be closed for other reasons is not relevant to migration.) If no...
2. **Is the question on-topic at a different site?** If yes, then...
3. **Would the question be closed after migration?** Some questions are on-topic but too broad, or poorly phrased, too detailed, or problematic for whatever reasons. Mods will generally handle this communication in the mod chat rooms, simply because posting a new question on meta anytime a potential migration comes up would quickly become unmanageable for both sites. This should be handled via flags, a mod will see the flag and we can ask the site whether they want it.
So, I'm proposing that we use this as our template for migration. | [
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"pm_score": 3,
"selected": false,
"text": "I agree with this policy, I would like to extend it to consider the case **where the OP asks for the migration**. ... | 2014/05/20 | [
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1,026 | I flagged a [comment](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1363/women-in-academia/21219#comment44343_21219) because it referred to somebody as a
>
> known, rabid male-hating feminist
>
>
>
which seems rather rude and offensive to me.
The flag was declined. Anybody have any insight on this? | [
{
"answer_id": 1027,
"author": "eykanal",
"author_id": 73,
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"pm_score": 1,
"selected": false,
"text": "It appears that you flagged that multiple times. I cleared one of those flags because of the discussion we had [here... | 2014/05/20 | [
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1026",
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com",
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1,038 | The entries in the question listing on Academia.SE are much bigger vertically than other SE sites. There appears to be a lot more spacing above and below each question entry.
Is there a reason Academia is different than most (all?) SE sites in regard to the question listing? I find it more difficult to scan and it requires more scrolling. The vast amount of emptiness makes me feel as if it is an oversight or a bug.
Can this be changed???
EDIT: This was also asked for in a [reply](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/910/746) on the original design post. | [
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"pm_score": 3,
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"text": "I think this is a relatively simple fix—it's the extra padding around the question. However, I also think that the ... | 2014/05/25 | [
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1038",
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com",
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1,049 | I am not an academic, I am however a regular SE user. I see several Academia.SE questions in the "hot questions" sidebar. It seems that many of these questions go something like:
* "Is it appropriate to... ?"
* "Is it polite to... ?"
* "Is it normal to... ?"
Why are there so many etiquette and protocol type questions at Academia.SE?
Is this unique to Academia.SE or are there radically different standards for civility in real life academia?
Some numbers from the SE API. There are 4614 total questions, a search for "appropriate" returns 665 results. Roughly 14%. | [
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"selected": true,
"text": "Your 14% figure is quite misleading—it includes all questions and answers containing a variant of the term \"appropr... | 2014/05/28 | [
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1049",
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com",
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1,053 | Since graduation, I've observed that quite often, the number of tasks in the review list is not consistent. For instance, in the attached screenshot, the top-menu bar displays 3 tasks to review, while I can't see any to actually review.
I've tried to open the site in a new browser, to avoid any cache issue, the problem remains the same.
Note that this behaviour does not last, and after a while, the number disappears. Intuitively, it would seem like a refresh problem.
 | [
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"pm_score": 3,
"selected": true,
"text": "This is by-design. From the [SE meta](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/233535/review-counts-in-top-bar-an... | 2014/06/02 | [
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1053",
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] |
1,057 | I'd like to draw your attention to this question:
[Is it bad for one's future career prospects if the PhD thesis topic is broad?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21888/is-it-bad-for-ones-future-career-prospects-if-the-phd-thesis-topic-is-broad)
My concern is that we're rather quick at jumping to serious conclusions:
* Firstly, the [etiquette](https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/behavior)
>
> **Be nice.**
>
>
> Civility is required at all times; rudeness will not be tolerated
>
>
>
* but even more important, I see harsh judgments (e.g. [this answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/21901/725) but also in the comments of @krammer which I cannot link) for which I do not see proper grounds based on the available information. This is not only rude, but it is IMHO also bad scientific practice.
The 2 judgments are:
* **bad supervision:** While I think it perfectly reasonable to ask about clarification whether the OP has discussed the question with their supervisor, and also to state in calm words if there is a smell of bad supervisor, IMHO
+ it should be respected if the OP explicitly states "My question does not ask for your opinion about my supervisor."
+ And I actually think that this statement is a symptom/follow-up reaction of the comments beeing rude.
+ There is at least one rather obvious and perfectly harmless situation that could have lead to the OP's question:
The supervisor may have told the OP (or didn't need to tell because the OP knows) to update the working title of the thesis to a final title, and the OP has trouble formulating this title. Which is a perfectly reasonable task towards the end of the thesis, and a perfectly normal difficulty.
Thus, *I don't see objective grounds for the **exclusive** judgement that it is the supervision that is bad.* IMHO there is a huge difference between stating that the supervision is *the problem* and that problems with the supervision is *one possible* underlying reason.
* **the thesis does not deserve the grade:** This is an extremely serious judgment.
In a cursory search, I could not uncover the OPs real name and the papers. Noone else so far stated that they actually know the papers, not even after asking (besides the fact that the thesis may be long-form, and thus may have considerably more content than can be judged by us right now).
Yet we have statements that "set of loosely connected papers [...] would be called outcome of a good literature survey at my university." (Which may or may not be true, but in fact we don't even know whether the papers are just loosely connected) and "It will depend on the institution, but at the institution I work, you would not be two months from completion. You'd be two years from completion."
Again, there are perfectly harmless possible explanations, e.g. as @adam.r pointed out in the comment to [@MHH's answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/21904/725): "Sometimes, a student is so absorbed in his work that it all seems obvious, and the student does not recognize how advanced his work really is."
I think the underlying concern that we need to behave ourselves better is related to @badroit's concern with the "bad supervisor meme" at
[Don't walk. Don't run either](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/975/dont-walk-dont-run-either) | [
{
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"selected": false,
"text": "This question and the answers is really hard to follow, due to too many comments deleted, making other comments ob... | 2014/06/04 | [
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1057",
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com",
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1,066 | As it currently stands [this question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/23897/challenge-the-caste-based-reservation-policy-system-in-supreme-court) is off topic and not a good fit for our site since it is mainly about legal issues. That said, it sounds like the Indian university system has some issues. I think a great question for us would be one that focuses on how to go about changing a fundamental university policy that is controversial.
Does anyone else think this question is salvageable? | [
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"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "I think one way to salvage the question is to ask how other universities have dealt with similar situations. ... | 2014/06/24 | [
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1066",
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com",
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1,071 | I found this [question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/24028/how-should-a-student-act-towards-a-prejudiced-instructor). The titular question is "How should a student act towards a prejudiced instructor?" This seems like a great question for us. Looking at the question itself, the OP seems to be suggesting that there was sexual discrimination because the professor is a feminist. Again, that is a perfectly fine topic. The issue I see is that I don't see any evidence of sexual discrimination. The professor's response to discussing grades with a 200-pound 6'3" professional boxer was that she felt intimidated. A question about how to deal with a professor who feels intimated by you is on topic. To me the two issues (dealing with sexual discrimination and a professor who feels intimidated by you) are so unrelated that I wanted the question clarified especially since claims of sexual discrimination often seem like acts of sexual discrimination. Is it possible to clarify the question? | [
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"pm_score": 4,
"selected": false,
"text": "If you don't see evidence of reverse sexual discrimination in this scenario, you can write as much in your answe... | 2014/06/27 | [
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1071",
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com",
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1,080 | My question is about how the moderators decide on the questions and comments.
Every person has the right to express his opinion. In case of the questions posted on this site, the opinions can be either in favor of a comment or question or they may not be.
Moderators have that much access that when they feel that a question is out of the policies of the site, put the question on hold. But, this should happen in case that they find a question in *direct* conflict to the policies of the site, not in direct conflict to what they prefer or their emotions.
Because of the level of access these guys have, when they find a question either in conflict to the policies or what they like, they immediately put the question on hold. So, how the website minimizes the moderators' faults and tries to avoid them from emotional decisions. We are all human and we all may make mistakes in our decisions.
I think that putting the questions on hold or locking the questions should not happen immediately and this level of access should be decreased.
Moderators should express why they think that the question conflicts the policies, put their opinion on poll and if some number of other users and moderators agreed, (for instance, two moderators and two users who are not moderator's access) then they put the question on hold. The site can even put some keys on each comment that the users tell that the question is broad, the comment is impolite and this way moderators can be informed what other users think about a question.
I am posting this because something like this happened to [a question of mine](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/24278/is-it-necessary-that-an-academic-person-be-online-or-it-is-just-waste-of-time). The moderator put a comment that this question is too broad and [subjective](https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask). In this link we read:
>
> **Constructive subjective questions:**
>
>
> * inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”
> * tend to have long, not short, answers
> * have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone
> * invite sharing experiences over opinions
> * insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references
> * are more than just mindless social fun
>
>
>
When you read that question, If we consider and accept that the question is subjective (while I do not think so), it can be assumed that it is a **Constructive Question** because; It inspires answers that explain “why” and “how”; tends to have long, not short, answers (as some answers were discussed on the page); invites sharing experiences over opinions (as users answered the question with their experiences); and is more than just mindless social fun (the question is not for fun at all!).
That is why I think the question has never had to be locked and put on a hold. I explained this to the moderator and they did not pay any attention to this comment.
I do not think that this question needs any edit for being completed and come out of the hold. It is a complete question.
This is what happens to the similar questions: One moderator marks the question as problematic question, two or three other moderators come and give minus mark to the question and use their access to put the question on hold. Nobody even thinks about that their decision (even it is the decision of two or three moderator) may be wrong and can be discussed more.
I think that the way moderators lock a question should be revised, their access on locking the questions should be limited and become dependent on a different policy; moreover, they should be advised to be more **polite** to the users (regarding to the words they use **and** they way they treat them and their actions).
***After discussions:***
>
> The post on Academia edited thoroughly based on the discussion made here on Meta and the title of the question changed to [How to encourage researchers to make more use of online resources to improve their career?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/24278/how-to-encourage-researchers-to-make-more-use-of-online-resources-to-improve-the); however, with respect to the people who talked about the problem here and made policies more clear; I am still not convinced by the behavior of the moderators who acted on that question.
>
>
> | [
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"text": "There is a lot in your question and I am only going to tackle a bit of it now. There is a big difference between... | 2014/07/02 | [
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1,087 | One or two questions of mine are correctly marked as duplicate in the community.
How can I find the duplicate of my question before I post the question in the site?
Because it is not easy to find similar questions by simple search in the community. | [
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"pm_score": 4,
"selected": true,
"text": "Unfortunately, it's really just mostly searching. You can limit your search using tags—just include the tag name, sur... | 2014/07/06 | [
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1087",
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com",
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1,093 | Inspired by talking to a fellow Academia user at SciPy:
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".
There questions have, in my mind, three problems:
1. Many are too specific - they only generalize to someone specific.
2. They're *also* too broad, because they're not actually asking an actionable question.
3. 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.
While these get closed fairly frequently, should we consider adding language discouraging these types of questions in the FAQ? | [
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"text": "The fewer unique criteria and guidelines we have, the better, in my opinion, If questions can already be handled un... | 2014/07/08 | [
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1093",
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com",
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1,101 | By a review on the tags lists, we see that some of the tags do not have any wiki or excerpts. I just want to know, which one is more prefered, a tag without any wiki or excerpt; or a tag with a wiki excerpt that just says "{topic}: this tag is for questions about {topic}" is better than nothing? | [
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"selected": false,
"text": "The fewer unique criteria and guidelines we have, the better, in my opinion, If questions can already be handled un... | 2014/07/11 | [
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1101",
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com",
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1,106 | In [this question of mine](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/25754/should-professors-help-masters-research-students-to-find-a-research-topic?noredirect=1#comment53330_25754), something is asked which I strongly believe that it is not opinion based and can be precisely answered by members of academia. However, one of the users thought this question is basically opinion based and became so angry with it. His main problem seems to be that if the person asking question is not a faculty member, it is not his duty to ask why something seems odd in the university and because he is a student, he should never think about the logic behind the actions.
My question here is, even if a question seems opinion-based; the memebrs of community have some strong reasons for and againts it. If every one has his own way of doing something, it does not mean that everybody is right because it depends on the opinions. Even there are different ways of doing something, by comparing the reasons and experiences, we can reach the point that there is an answer to the questions (which are almost seem to be opinion based).
Could you please help me understand what the problem is with this question and how should I avoid such conflicts in the community? | [
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"pm_score": 2,
"selected": false,
"text": "\"However, one of the users thought this question is basically opinion based and became so angry with it.\" ... | 2014/07/12 | [
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1106",
"https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com",
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1,116 | Many of my tag edit suggestions are rejected. Despite the fact that some of them are correctly judged, for many of those rejections I can not find any good reason. Could you please explain your reasons for rejecting some of them?
* [education](https://academia.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/12334)
What is the reason that the tag edit is rejected because of **incorrectness** and **minor edit**? Which tag excerpt is better? The previous five word excerpt or the suggested one with two exact sentences that address the questions under the tag?
* [homework](https://academia.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/12329)
Where is incorrectness in my edits?
* [repository](https://academia.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/12328); [recommendation-letter](https://academia.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/12356)
Looking at the proposed edits to these two tags, I can not understand why that edit is **too minor**; why the suggested edit **is not substantive improvements addressing multiple issues in the post**. The question here is was the previous tag better than the suggested one?! I don't think so.
* [publishing](https://academia.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/12354)
Why do we need the exact copy and paste of excerpts and wiki notes? The reader goes to the excerpt and reads the exacet copy of the wiki. I think the excerpt should be deleted and give the chance to the tag to be seen and better excerpts be provided to it. Exact copy and pasting was useless so the excerpt was deleted.
* [poster](https://academia.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/12345)
In this question, why do we need to always have the word "Questions about..." or "Queries about..." every body know that this site is a Q&A website. The only use of excerpts are to give a clue to the reader that what is being questioned. So, those extra words are omitted.
* [nsf](https://academia.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/12340)
in this tag, the complete information is written in the wiki, so in the excerpt we only need to attract the reader's attention to the abbreviation of NSF, why do we have extra information in the excerpt? | [
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"text": "I think there are two issues at play here:\n\n* None of the above edits are substantial. They are all adding very ge... | 2014/07/15 | [
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