Questions tagged [discussion]
The question you're asking is designed to solicit opinions or best-practices on a particular topic, with the goal of reaching community consensus.
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Updating statement on closed reason for no work shown
The statement for closing based on no work shown I believe shouldn't include the word homework. Not everyone posting a PSQ (problem statement question) is actually doing homework. When they read:
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What should be done with questions of low or poor quality?
I have only really been active here for about 3 months, so I’m not very familiar with this site’s policies and ambitions. My main site is EL&U.
I often come across questions that exhibit no ...
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Are questions about creationism or intelligent design on-topic here?
Our first creationism/intelligent design question https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/649/is-cell-division-irreducibly-complex#question has received a lot of downvotes, some close votes and a ...
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Voting to close a question as off-topic because it is based on a faulty presupposition
Over the last maybe 6 months or so (I haven't really been keeping track), I've noticed a number of questions either nominated for closure or actually closed with some variant of this custom close ...
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Biology.SE and professional biologists?
@Terdon made an interesting observation in the chat room recently:
The simple truth is that we've never been a site for biologists. Those
of us who answer are usually biologists or in similar ...
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What are some good, informative comments I can leave for new users?
Many questions on this site are from new/low-reputation users who may not know all of the common rules and expectations of Biology and SE sites in general. Compounding this is the fact that users ...
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Rethinking the "Homework" close reason
Reading through Meta after seeing a lot of homework-related closures, I found quite a few questions that address our community's confusion with the homework close reason:
Is it right to close “easy ...
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Shouldn't we be more tolerant with newcomers and non-biologists?
I am often disturbed by how easily the community of Biology.SE close and down vote questions asked by newcomers and layman.
When I go on other SE websites, I often have to ask unclear questions or ...
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Should we worry about the amount of non-expert content on the site?
We're nearly 100 days into the beta now, and we have accumulated some nice content here on the site. But one aspect I'm a bit concerned about is the amount of laymen questions compared to expert ...
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Where do we draw the line for questions about medicine?
There is a large overlap between medicine and biology, a lot of medical questions are in the end questions about human biology. Where do we want to draw the line on medical questions, when are they ...
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What is to be done with questions that have no answers yet?
The issue of unanswered question fraction is always in discussion (and it being a factor for site graduation).
In my opinion a lot of mechanisms are unknown in biology (even for some commonly ...
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Should we [always] ask for references?
I have possibly spent too much time on Skeptics.SE... but I think we should be a bit more strict in requiring good references for answers.
Take for instance these questions (I hope the answerers do ...
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Should we encourange the relevant questions from non-professionals?
There are already a couple of questions from non-professionals, like this question about action potental, for example. This question is likely to be closed soon, there are already some closing votes ...
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General quality of BioSE questions vs other SEs
At the risk of this being the very thing I'm kind of moaning about, I'm wondering what others think of the general quality of BioSE questions?
My contributions to SE outside of Bio are mostly ...
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Homework Policy for FAQ
The answer to this question explains how to ask your homework question here on Biology and have it well received by the community.
Related:
What is the policy regarding homework questions? (Old)
Are ...
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When are citations needed in an answer?
With the site's graduation and increase in low-rep visitors, some of whom are beginning to answer, I (and many others) have had to comment a number of times that answers need to be supported by ...
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Redesigning Biology Stack Exchange (extended)
Recently I (and some others in chat) realised that there is some scope for improvement in the site's structure, graphics, fidgets, etc. So we have decided to give it a shot. But since Stack Exchange ...
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Inadequate moderation by the community
Recently, I have been observing that moderation by community is not happening adequately and hence the review queue becomes quite long. Sometimes I have seen close to 80 items in the review queue (...
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When will Biology SE become a "full' SE site?
I've checked Biology SE on the area51 site and it's been in beta phase for 1196 day as of today. I was wondering when will this site become a full site? What are the requirements?
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Should bioinformatics related questions be considered off-topic?
I know there is biostar, which is specific to bioinformatics questions. However, I feel that there are quite a few parts of bioinformatics that have a lot of biological relevance. Perhaps we should ...
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Site design for Biology community
EDIT 02:
Here is the updated main illustration including most of your feedback.
EDIT 01:
Thanks for your great feedback! This is exactly what I needed, it's hard to know some of the details when ...
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"Vote early, vote often"
This is a reproduction of Scott Morrison's post on meta.tex.SE; I believe it is very much applicable to this community as well:
I'm a moderator from MathOverflow, and this "question" is ...
user132
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Do we need to change voting patterns?
It is obvious that voting patterns differ dramatically between topics. From my personal experience, answers that lie closer to my own work and the ones I put most effort into receive relatively few ...
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Clarifying our scope with regards to medical questions
There is a rather large amount of overlap between biology and medicine, and as we get more questions that are rather far on the medical site it is time to revisit the issue and clarify where exactly ...
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Plant Identification Questions
Regarding this question: Help identifying the following plants, it seems like we should set a meta precedent for dealing with such posts should they arise in the future.
Update
The question was moved ...
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Questions about teaching biology: Off-limits?
Are questions about how to teach/explain biology (so called soft questions) on topic here. I've noticed that some sites allow it. As an example I've noticed that Math SE allow question like, how to ...
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Should "let-me-google-it-for-you" questions be tolerated?
There was a simple question about the initiation of gut flora, asked by an undergrad student. I just googled it and pasted a simple wiki explanation. On one hand, this site could be a good compilation ...
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Species Identification Questions
Similarly to the discussion of plant identification questions, we now have examples of identify this animal type questions. What should the position be as to whether such discussions are on topic?
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Why aren't people answering their own questions?
Given the lack of questions being asked here on Bio.SE, I was wondering whether or not we should be encouraging all members to be answering their own questions. It's certainly encouraged by Stack ...
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What's the point of closing well answered and well received questions?
It's about What are the advantages of forgetting?
I just do not see any benefit of close voting a question that
received an accepted answer 5 days before question closure;
was well received by the ...
AliceDMod
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Can we find a better way to support users who ask questions based on a flawed concept of evolution?
Most users of this site subscribe to the evolutionary origin of species as opposed to intelligent design - but some of them seem to operate from a wrong mental model of evolution which supposes it ...
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Should we be concerned about the lack of quality answers?
I've been making an effort to ask quality questions regarding actual biological problems. I'm sure people have been able to figure out what type of experiments I'm doing on a regular basis.
I am ...
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An effective measure to counter unreferenced answers
One of the big problems we are having is the number of poorly referenced answers on the site. They often make unsubstantiated and contentious claims without any supporting material, and that's not the ...
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Proposal for rephrasing the “homework” off-topic explanation
There are various problems with ‘homework’ questions, several of which have been discussed before. I am addressing just one problem, focussing on this because I have what I think is a practical ...
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Creationist "canard" refutation type questions?
Let's just say that proponents of creationism and "intelligent design" have a ready stable of canards and distortions out there. Would it be appropriate to post such canards here as questions, and ...
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Community Promotion Ads — 2019 [duplicate]
2019 is here! And with the new year, as usual, comes a new iteration of Community Promotion Ads! Let’s refresh these for the coming year :)
What are Community Promotion Ads?
Community Promotion Ads ...
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Is it on-topic to ask for the identification of any living organism?
Is it on-topic here to ask for the identification of any living organism? If not, on what site would this be accepted as a good question?
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Are users only asking for homework help welcome?
Following up the post about homework question policies, this user has asked 11 questions, all homework in nature, and has not attempted to answer at least some of them, nor tried answering any other ...
user560
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The "Homework Questions" page needs to be updated
The question What metric is used when quantifying muscle tightness? was put on hold on the grounds that, given that it is a homework question, the OP should show their attempt at an answer.
In the ...
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Flagging incorrect answers
Related post
What is wrong with flagging answers that are grossly incorrect? Why should flags "not be used to indicate technical inaccuracies, or an altogether wrong answer"?
I understand that it is ...
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On answers that are basically "extended comments"
Answers should ideally not be "extended comments" but in certain cases they seem to be useful. I am reluctant to remove such answers for being "not an answer" which as per strict SE rules should be ...
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Why are medical questions inherently off topic here?
I did a search of the meta posts and I couldn't find anything on this. In fact, what I found suggests that questions about things related to medicine or medical procedures are ok, as long as they ask ...
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Why don't many of 'us' users vote more often?
A comment by Rover Eye which can be found here got me thinking.
I'll have to agree with @canadianer on this one. Bio SE has a bit of a lower voting and acceptance rate, in the SE ecosystem. – ...
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Questions asking for evolutionary reasons
We do get a lot of questions that ask for why evolution did not lead to situation-X?
Recent examples:
Why don't mosquitoes evolve towards muting themselves?
https://biology.stackexchange.com/q/...
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Why are we STILL in Beta? How can we fix this?
I asked this question more than two years ago:
What are the chances that we make it out of Beta?
One of my favorite "quotes" from that question:
It is mid-September and things don't seem to ...
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Not all questions featuring something biological are biology questions
Something I think we need to clear up in terms of what is and is not on-topic, are questions where the user asks something that is not a biological question and then attempting to justify it being ...
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Is this SE site / community dead?
I'm new to this SE site and as a geneticist i liked the idea to be able to help newbies and explain simple genetic facts to the community. But after one week following this site activities, I found ...
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Permanent Off-Topic criterion: Questions based on religious/mythical stories and intelligent design
This has been discussed before but these types of questions keep coming.
Should we add questions about creationism/mythical stories/intelligent design as one of the permanently listed off topic ...
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Community Promotion Ads - 2015
Congratulations on receiving a new design! Included with your new design is the Community Promotion Ads system. For those who are unfamiliar with how this works, please read onwards!
What are ...
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2015 Moderator Election Q&A - Question Collection
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 ...
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