All Questions
843
questions
61
votes
1
answer
513
views
Site Graduated!
As you can see the new design just went live. Which means this site has been officially launched! Congratulations! Thank you for your valuable design feedback.
We have also themed the twitter account ...
- 101
42
votes
15
answers
2k
views
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 ...
- 101
35
votes
3
answers
287
views
"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
30
votes
2
answers
1k
views
Information about coronaviruses (how to ask, and external resources)
Stack Exchange Biology receives many questions about the outbreak of a novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV/SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19) that has spread worldwide. This is understandable. However, ...
29
votes
3
answers
473
views
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 ...
- 68.1k
28
votes
4
answers
483
views
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:
...
- 2,187
26
votes
7
answers
362
views
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
26
votes
6
answers
467
views
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 ...
- 3,344
25
votes
4
answers
475
views
Biology —Top User Swag!
This has been shipped today (August 2nd)! Enjoy your swag, everyone :)
If you still don't have yours and think you should have it by now, please send me an e-mail so I can look into it instead of ...
- 100
23
votes
3
answers
254
views
What is the long-term vision for this site?
I have only really been active here for about 3 months, so I’m not very familiar with this site’s policies and ambitions. On some sites I participate in, there is a vision that seems to be shared, ...
- 25k
23
votes
0
answers
212
views
2015 Community Moderator Election Results
Biology's 1st moderator election has come to a close, the votes have been tallied, and the 3 new moderators are:
They've replaced the pro tempore crew — please thank both teams for volunteering, ...
- 101
22
votes
8
answers
543
views
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 ...
- 9,184
22
votes
8
answers
260
views
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 ...
- 16.7k
22
votes
1
answer
272
views
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 ...
- 15.3k
21
votes
4
answers
2k
views
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 ...
- 15.3k
21
votes
2
answers
255
views
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. – ...
- 2,187
21
votes
1
answer
393
views
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 ...
- 29.9k
20
votes
4
answers
539
views
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/...
- 35.6k
20
votes
1
answer
239
views
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 ...
- 3,338
20
votes
2
answers
214
views
Drive for the use of correct English on Biology SE
I realise that for a great number of users English is not their native language, and therefore the English writing will frequently contain mistakes. I have no issue spending some of my time making ...
- 16.1k
19
votes
6
answers
650
views
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 ...
- 5,709
19
votes
4
answers
322
views
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 ...
- 6,705
19
votes
5
answers
337
views
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 ...
- 9,184
19
votes
1
answer
154
views
2019 Community Moderator Election Results
Biology's third moderator election has come to a close, the votes have been tallied and the two new moderators are:
They'll be joining the existing crew shortly—please thank them for ...
- 231
19
votes
3
answers
210
views
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 ...
- 9,184
18
votes
2
answers
144
views
Is it bad to mention if a specific article is open access or paywalled?
I received an edit on the question Why “Having chlorophyll without photosynthesis is actually very dangerous” and “like living with a bomb”?
Removed reference to paywalling. Nature is a print ...
- 5,466
17
votes
4
answers
708
views
Ethical considerations on use and abuse of animals
I wish to raise the attention on ethics and animals. It was fueled by https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/35902/producing-artificial-gunnison-prairie-dog-calls-or-scent-to-attract-the-prairie, ...
AliceDMod
- 52.4k
17
votes
3
answers
304
views
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 ...
- 1,301
17
votes
5
answers
281
views
Is wikipedia authoring here necessary and allowed?
I'm very glad this site finally launched after the long area51 odysee. But one of the first and highest voted questions I saw today looks very dissappointing to me, esp. when trying to attract experts ...
- 209
17
votes
1
answer
386
views
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
17
votes
0
answers
194
views
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 ...
- 16.1k
16
votes
1
answer
150
views
Including health advice in the personal medical questions off-topic reason
The current custom off-topic close reason for medical advice is the following
Personal medical questions are off-topic on Biology. We can not safely
answer questions for your specific situation ...
- 9,184
15
votes
2
answers
206
views
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 ...
- 9,184
15
votes
4
answers
282
views
Replacement for "Homework" close reason
I'd like to prompt suggestions for replacement of the "homework" reason.
I've taken the format from https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4710/new-audience-specific-texts-for-our-...
Bryan KrauseMod
- 45.7k
15
votes
3
answers
268
views
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 ...
- 35.6k
15
votes
1
answer
977
views
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 ...
- 13.5k
15
votes
3
answers
249
views
is this question about epidemiology on-topic?
Having a small comment-debate about this question. All I can find in What topics can I ask about here? is that this site is for
[questions about] biology and closely related fields, including ... ...
- 5,354
15
votes
2
answers
240
views
This is the title of the meta post I just wrote
Annoying isn't it? The title on this question tells you nothing about the content of the post. Yet this happens. Its been happening a lot recently here on biology SE. And some users are repeat ...
- 16.1k
15
votes
1
answer
167
views
What is the usefulness of closing poorly researched questions?
I had an interesting debate elsewhere on SE about closing poorly researched questions. Basically the consensus came down to the following meta posts:
Embrace the non-Googlers
How should we deal ...
AliceDMod
- 52.4k
15
votes
0
answers
246
views
2017 Community Moderator Election Results
Biology's second moderator election has come to a close, the votes have been tallied, and the new moderator is:
They'll be joining the existing crew shortly — please thank them for volunteering, and ...
- 231
14
votes
4
answers
306
views
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 ...
- 354
14
votes
3
answers
374
views
What to do with Bioinformatics programming questions
This recent question on Bioinformatics is an example of pretty hardcore programming questions. An excerpt is given below. Apparently 'Owl' is used for gene sequencing, but I had to google it up with ...
AliceDMod
- 52.4k
14
votes
1
answer
174
views
New Bioacoustics Stack Exchange Proposal
We have created a new proposal on Area51 for a Stack Exchange site focusing on Bioacoustics. Bioacoustics is a multidisciplinary field focused on sounds produced by or affecting non-human animals, or ...
- 399
14
votes
0
answers
131
views
Wrong helix handedness for badges
Can we please fix the left-handed helices in the badge icons?
The site icon uses the “correct” right-handed helix (i.e. the one more commonly found in biology). Just mirroring the icons along the Y ...
- 5,729
14
votes
0
answers
163
views
Comment templates to provide to new users or users who need a reminder
This post inspired to start a comment template thread for Bio. Many SE sites make use of type of thread to added new and experienced users alike to provide clear, constructive comments to users who ...
- 2,187
13
votes
20
answers
721
views
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 ...
13
votes
8
answers
183
views
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 ...
- 101
13
votes
4
answers
522
views
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 ...
- 15.3k
13
votes
8
answers
250
views
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 ...
- 35.6k
13
votes
5
answers
341
views
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 ...
- 6,882