Questions tagged [feature-request]
You have an idea for a new feature, or for a change to the existing functionality.
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Shall we have MathJax?
For people not familiar with this name -- MathJax is a plugin which converts LaTeX math markup like $X_1^2$ into proper math notation, in this case .
On one hand equations may appear here too rare to ...
user59
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Species Identification tag warning proposal
One of my numerous proposals from the Redesigning Biology Stack Exchange Bio.Meta post was to create a template or instruction guide for species-identification questions.
The goal is to improve the ...
- 30.3k
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This website is incredibly unfriendly to interdisciplinary discourse
was excited to come to this website and start regularly sharing my in-depth knowledge of modern biological research, but it seems the biology sub frequently decides, inaccurately and inconsistently, ...
user47696
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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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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 ...
- 14.1k
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s.tk url for Biology SE
What shortened URLs are available through s.tk?
Shouldn't Biology.SE have a shorthand URL like the rest of the sites in beta? For example:
s.tk/biology or s.tk/bio should redirect to biology....
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Superscript / Subscript buttons
This is just technical and mainly for the site developers. $\TeX$ does take up some resource I believe, and its usage should be limited to only those places where it is really necessary. Most of the ...
- 35.6k
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Communication with moderators over posts needing citations
Yesterday an answer I posted to a question was flagged with the following notice:
Want to improve this post? Add citations from reputable sources by
editing the post. Posts with unsourced content ...
- 26.3k
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Functionality Request: Community Voting for Answers: Citations Need Banner
There have been a number of examples, (Why does evolution not make our life longer?, Is evolution a fact?, If evolution is not about increased complexity, why does so much complexity evolve?), where ...
- 5,035
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Is there a demonstrable need for MathJax?
According to Shall we have MathJax?, to enable MathJax would require a demonstrable need.
How can we demonstrate this need? Perhaps by creating a CW list of questions that would benefit from proper ...
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Can we have the option to recommend moving a post to se.bioinformatics?
Occasionally we get posts which would be more suited to the bioinformatics.se. However, there isn't an option to suggest the post should be moved under the 'community specific' flag:
Can we get this ...
- 2,359
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Why are all traces of deleted questions removed?
I'm wondering why all connected comments and answers(?) of questions that are deleted by the questions owner are also removed without a trace? This has happened to me twice recenty, and it is rather ...
- 16.8k
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Any way to embed sounds?
I would like to embed a sound (a bird song) for a question, but I could see how other people might want to embed sounds for other biological questions.
Is there any way to do this?
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Tag rename request
Can we rename pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic to pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, respectively?
The current tag names are used as adjectives and are not the names of the fields of study.
- 35.6k
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Is it possible to reverse the dominance of the "eyes" versus "vision" tags?
Right now "vision" is synonyming into "eyes" which to me is backward...there are a lot of vision-based questions that aren't really about eyes per se, whereas the inverse is not true. I don't know if ...
Bryan KrauseMod
- 46.5k
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Add a clear statement on references in the "How do I write a good answer?"
At the moment there isn't a clear statement on the help page "How do I write a good answer?" saying that answers should preferably include references to back them up. For "good answers" I would say ...
- 16.8k
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Move to Health SE custom offtopic
Now that the Health SE has opened, it seems that there is a good reason for questions to be moved there, since as far as I can tell there are a large number of questions here that get closed for the ...
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Ability to retract flags
Is it possible to retract flags? It has happened a couple of times that I have flagged a post and in the time between flagging and a mod getting to it, it gets edited. I normally only flag if it looks ...
- 16.1k
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Is there a syntax for adding wikipedia links?
For example:
(wiki)[Deinococcus radiodurans]
because normally I must do it this way:
...
- 101
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Impossible to flag question for migration to Cross Validated
I just found this question. I believe this question to be off-topic, because it is really a statistics question, belonging to Cross Validated. However I couldn't select Cross Validated in the list of ...
- 3,685
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Feature suggestion: queued homework answers
We get a lot of homework questions which get closed for lack of research effort. Many of these are otherwise good questions and it would be valuable to have these remain open in the long term. This ...
- 16.1k
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Closing personal questions
Often there are these very personal questions. They may be closed as home-work or as self-help, but often I have to write a personal message to OP. For example, these recent questions are 1) about the ...
AliceDMod
- 52.6k
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Are we able to flag users?
Some users of Biology SE struggle to grasp how the site works and find it very hard to work within it's framework.
Generally these will be new users, happening increasingly often, that come along ...
- 16.1k
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How to deal with posters of consistent poor quality/incorrect answers
Sometimes new users are answering multiple questions in a short period of time but, as is often the case with new users, the quality is low (formatting, research, lack of good sources) or information ...
- 16.1k
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Is there Biology Careers like Stack Overflow Careers?
I'm quite a new user here on StackExchange. I just got an invitation the other day to Stack Overflow Careers and I was wondering if is there something similar for Biology as well? If there isn't, are ...
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Are there search tools for answers?
I have answered quite a few questions and what is bothering me more and more is that there are no search tools to sift through my answers. Some new questions overlap to some extent with old, answered ...
AliceDMod
- 52.6k
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Why do "naked" urls to other questions automatically format nicely in question bodies, but not in comments?
When you paste in the URL of another Bio.SE question into your question body, it formats itself nicely. Comments don't do this. Why not? Is there a suggested way format links to other questions in ...
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Can the link to the Help section be restored?
Since the new look of Biology SE there is no link from the main page to the Tour or the Help section. This is bad as it means that people who wish to cannot find the guidelines on asking (especially) ...
- 26.3k
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What adjustments to the new site theme should we request?
As you're all aware, Stack Exchange has implemented a unified theme structure across all network sites, which impacted the appearance of Biology Stack. (See Biology updated site theme is ready for ...
- 30.3k
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Chat room access minimum rep override?
I just had an extended discussion with a new user about how to write good answers and how to earn rep etc. which had to take place in the comments section of a post. About 15-20 comments were ...
- 16.1k
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Private chatroom for trusted users?
Recently there has been a big drive to clean up the quality of the site by removing obsolete, low quality, off topic, and unanswerable questions. This has largely been down to the efforts a couple of ...
- 16.1k
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May be time for a flag to Cognitive Sciences SE
I have been seeing a number of questions come up that are more neuroscience related and are likely more appropriate for Cognitive Sciences SE.
I realize that this has come up before in this Biology ...
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Can we see the predominance of certain tags along time?
I would like to see the evolution of certain tags along time. For instance, questions involving genetics/biochemistry/DNA had grown, while those involving ecology/zoology/natural sciences declined?
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Will there be a review counter / indicator feature?
I interested in that will there be a counter / small indicator around the review link for users who are eligible to review posts, to indicate that there are actions to be taken? I mean a small counter ...
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Do we have a questions per day and month limit here?
Do we have a question posts per day and month limit on Biology.SE?
I thought system wide limits were adopted: max. 6 posts/day, max. 50 posts/month.
It was kind of hush-hush, but I thought it was ...
- 25.9k
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Does SE allow groups to follow users
I think this could possibly go against the philosophy of SE, but are you able to adjust setting to follow particular users: when they post and answer questions etc? Is this something that could be set ...
- 3,705
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Accept answer reminder when OP upvotes?
I have noticed a couple of times that when I answer a question it is fairly obvious the original poster (OP) has upvoted my answer but they then don't accept the answer - looking at when they were ...
- 16.1k
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Why is the homework policy hard to find in the help pages?
Has anyone else noticed it is hard to find the Biology SE help page which refers to homework questions? Go to the help centre and search for 'homework' and it will not show up - I think this should be ...
- 16.1k
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Publicizing homework policy
Although this has been a topic before I wanted to re-raise this issue as an ongoing concern in Biology.SE.
Is there something we can do to make the homework policy more visible especially to first-...
Bryan KrauseMod
- 46.5k
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Feature Request: Modification to the "citations needed" banner
Following an upvoted answer on this question, I'm reposting as a feature request.
I think the "citations needed" banner is too ineffectual (see examples in this post) in its current form, and should;
...
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How to remove or substitute a tag
I am wondering if the tags should be cleaned up. I made a few several unsuccessful attempts, because I don't know how to delete or merge tags.
For example experiment is a tag with 5 hits or so, but ...
AliceDMod
- 52.6k
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Encourage social media
Is it possible to add new badges or introduce points for sharing links to questions? I think it would be good to encourage more social media sharing of the site - it would help to improve the profile ...
- 16.1k
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Synomymize energy with bioenergetics
Can energy be made a synonym of bioenergetics.
The former is a broad term and makes sense in biology only in the case of bioenergetics. Ironically the former had more tagged posts (which I retagged ...
- 35.6k
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Feature while asking questions
Currently, while asking any question on SE, you get suggestions from already existing questions. Is it good idea to show user quick wikipedia or google results for same query ? As I noticed, many user ...
- 2,406
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Moderator tools / mobile app
Are moderator tools available on mobile app (I'm using iOS)? If yes how do I access them? If no are there any plans for such?
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Isn't it irritating not to know who is online?
For me, it is quite irritating when I have to wait for the reply to a comment thinking that the person is online. I often check the profile for knowing if a user have logged in recently but have no ...
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Change homework policy to disallow Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs)
Current homework policy is to allow questions where the user has shown evidence of trying to answer the question. This is reasonable if there is a definite biological question, the answer to which may ...
- 26.3k
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Masking answer votes
I'm sure we've all noticed that there is a big advantage in being first to answer a question, it gives an opportunity for upvoting to occur before other (potentially better) answers are added. This ...
- 16.1k
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gentic-linkage is misspelled (filler text to please auto-filter)
The tag gentic-linkage is misspelled. It should be genetic-linkage. How can we fix this?
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Can more options be added for flagging for migration? [duplicate]
I review posts in the queue, and I am often am flagging some posts. I will sometimes flag posts as those that need to be closed because they are off-topic, but this is the only option available:
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