31
votes
Accepted
Biology.SE and professional biologists?
Good question. It's always a good idea to now and then reflect on what our purpose and target audience is, as it often changes over time. Basically, I agree with the OP that biology SE is not really a ...
- 5,675
20
votes
Accepted
What are some good, informative comments I can leave for new users?
Please adapt these for the situation at hand, and don't just post them blindly.
Please read the comment editing help page for a list of shortcuts you can use in comments (some of which I use below). ...
17
votes
Is it bad to mention if a specific article is open access or paywalled?
If you are unsatisfied with the edit, please feel free to rollback the edit or simply re-edit your question as you please.
I agree that the edit is inappropriate and likely would have been rejected ...
- 29.7k
17
votes
is this question about epidemiology on-topic?
In my opinion, yes, epidemiology can be on-topic because epidemiology has an interdisciplinary relationship with biology. Existing tags as a mark for what is on-topic can sometimes be misleading, but ...
Bryan KrauseMod
- 44k
15
votes
Accepted
Permanent Off-Topic criterion: Questions based on religious/mythical stories and intelligent design
No. As I have already said here, in my opinion, such questions should be welcome here as long as they are good questions by the standards of SE. In my experience, such questions fall into two broad ...
- 12.8k
15
votes
Redesigning Biology Stack Exchange (extended)
Species ID question template
Problem:
Being especially focused on species ID questions here, I notice I spend a lot of my time asking for addition/ clarification of specimen details (e.g., better ...
- 29.7k
15
votes
Accepted
Is this SE site / community dead?
A long comment here really -
First off, you're most active at puzzling. As a scientific stack, answers need to be backed up by references. For sites like puzzling, folks can just take a bash - their ...
AliceDMod
- 52.3k
15
votes
Accepted
Should the answer that appears on "top" be the OP's "accepted answer" or the answer with most votes?
The top-voted answer should appear on top, even if a different answer has been accepted (this is the new behavior on Stack Overflow).
I've accepted this answer as the current meta consensus, total ...
Bryan KrauseMod
- 44k
14
votes
2019 Community Moderator Election Results
Congratulations to both new moderators, thanks for joining the mods.
I would also like to thank WYSIWIG for being a mod since this site graduated and also for his effort to achieve graduation. I hope ...
ChrisMod
- 51.5k
14
votes
This website is incredibly unfriendly to interdisciplinary discourse
My overall experience has been unfriendly and negative. Lots of negative reinforcement, no positive reinforcement.
It looks like you have seven active answers and one question. These all have a net ...
Bryan KrauseMod
- 44k
14
votes
Replacement for "Homework" close reason
Close reason:
This text is shown when selecting a reason while flagging or voting to close:
Needs references, support, or an attempt to solve
This question needs further content before it can be ...
Bryan KrauseMod
- 44k
13
votes
2017 Moderator Election Q&A - Questionnaire
AliceD
Question 1
Several posts in meta have raised the possibility that our closing policy is inconsistent and applied too often. However, no clear
consensus seems to exist. Do you think this ...
AliceDMod
- 52.3k
13
votes
Do we have a beauty troll?
Always flag suspicious sock puppets so that the mod team can look into it. Mods have tools to cross-check users and identify such users. In fact, using multiple sign-ins, although not recommended, is ...
AliceDMod
- 52.3k
12
votes
Homework questions?
Jordi made some good points, I'd like to add a few.
While preparing for our exams we dont have so much time to write each and every detail....why cant the community just provide the answer without ...
- 15.2k
12
votes
Redesigning Biology Stack Exchange (extended)
Ability to search Species ID posts using pictures
Problem:
Most people coming to Bio.SE to have their unknown specimen identified have two options: either browse through dozens (or hundreds) of old ...
- 29.7k
12
votes
General quality of BioSE questions vs other SEs
Biology is extremely influential
It is easy for a science and tech savy person to overweight the technological impact of, say, computer science, and down weight the social impact of biology.
The ...
- 68k
12
votes
11
votes
11
votes
When are citations needed in an answer?
My opinion on when is citation needed.
References are always appreciated but are strictly required in certain cases such as:
Answers stating non-obvious facts and recent experimental findings.
...
- 35.2k
11
votes
When are citations needed in an answer?
Don't cite everything.
In my undergraduate honours degree I came from the other end of the stick and referenced too much; an equally unhelpful filter. I cited almost every sentence and statement with ...
- 11.3k
11
votes
2017 Moderator Election Q&A - Questionnaire
theforestecologist
Several posts in meta have raised the possibility that our closing policy is inconsistent and applied too often. However, no clear consensus seems to exist. Do you think this ...
- 29.7k
11
votes
Accepted
You can only post once every 40 minutes?
Any user with less than 125 rep need to wait 40 minutes before posting a question anywhere in the SE network. It was implemented to slow down spammers from asking questions networkwide.
See here for ...
- 3,277
11
votes
Accepted
What does "Be Nice" *mean* to you?
Unfriendly? No, I wouldn't go that far. Not universally (especially compared to other SE sites).
Needing improvement? -- certainly!!!
This has always been an issue I've been passionate about across ...
- 29.7k
11
votes
What is wrong with my question
a small PC2 laboratory
We have no idea what this is. What's "small"? What is "PC2"? The "Programming Contest Control System"? Proprotein convertase 2? DDR2 RAM? A ...
Bryan KrauseMod
- 44k
10
votes
Overuse of declined - flags should only be used to make moderators aware of content that requires their intervention
I am not a mod here so I don't have access to your flagging history. However, based on the public data from your profile, we can see that:
You have raised a total of 91 helpful flags;
You have cast a ...
- 12.8k
10
votes
Biology —Top User Swag!
Wow! Thank you. I am pretty happy with this t-shirt and it feels good to receive a reward $\ddot \smile$. I will be happy to add a Biology.SE sticker on my laptop as well.
How about an Award too?
An ...
- 68k
10
votes
Homework questions?
Your misinterpretation of biology.se
First of all, what I feel like that you are misunderstanding here, is that you think it is our duty to be on biology.se, and that we are probably even getting ...
- 2,603
10
votes
Five years of Biology Stack Exchange... what next for this community?
Personally, I think BioSE is beginning to loose it's way. Over recent months I've noticed a couple of possible worrying signs. In my opinion there has been a change in the type of questions we receive....
- 16k
10
votes
Redesigning Biology Stack Exchange (extended)
Make it clear that basic and trivial questions are off-topic
It seems obvious that if this site has any pretensions to quality, basic and trivial questions should be pulled. When I gained enough ...
- 24.3k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible