What is unclear about my question?

Question

My question about the application process at the CNRS has been "put on hold" for being "unclear". I am truly at a loss regarding what is supposedly unclear about it. I'm asking what is expected about the reports on past and projected work: their level of detail, their length, their structure. I'm struggling to find a way to put this in simpler words.

To be quite honest the experience of asking a question on this website has been less than stellar. First I had to deal with a vindictive user who fought teeth and nails because they did not know what CNRS is and thought it was a single small research center instead of a national institution which employs and funds people in most French labs, even opening a meta question on which I can't even comment. And now my question is "put on hold" for no visible reason with no explanation from the people who did it. Two different moderators looked at it and saw nothing wrong with it, but all it apparently takes is five random users to deem my question "unclear", presumably because they, too, don't even know what the question is about and should perhaps reserve their judgment...

Answer 1

Welcome to AC.SE. I am sorry your first exposure has been so difficult. Please give us a shot, things usually work much better. Things seem to have gotten a little out of hand this weekend.

I think your question about the application process for jobs at CNRS is very clear. Not knowing anything about the CNRS in particular, I have a hard time judging if it is a good question for our community and therefore do not feel qualified to up/down vote on the question or vote to close or open the question.

My concern is related to this meta question in that I am not sure if your question is about a narrow set of intramural jobs at the CNRS or something broader. The US and UK funding agencies that I am familiar with (e.g., the US NIH and UK MRC), have intramural jobs, but don't really offer extramural jobs. I think a question about how to get a job at the NIH would be closed as too localized (SE speak for not being interesting to enough people) just as a question about the application process at Big State U would. That said, employment in France is very different from the US and UK and it sounds like the CNRS has a different model where you apply to and are employed by the CNRS, but work at a university.

My lack of understanding of the CNRS, and the potential that it is different from the US and UK (end even likely the German system) led me to suggest someone asking about the CNRS. This question was not what I had in mind and is way too broad.

Answer 2

For this question, the first (closed) version looked like this:

The competitive application process for CNRS jobs has opened this week, and part of the required documents are a report on past work, as well as a project for future work (together with a list of CNRS labs where this work could be done). There is not much information about what these are expected to contain; the instructions only specifies "Report on research completed" and "Proposed research program".

More specifically, for a "chargé de recherche" (junior scientist) position, how much detail should be given in these two documents? How long should they be? Is there a typical structure that one should follow for them? It is my understanding that the national committee members may not (and in my case are not, I checked) experts in the specific domain of the applicants, there is e.g. a committee for all of sociology, another for "brain, cognition, behavior" and so on.

I will try to write the unclear parts one by one:

First, there is no introduction.

1. What is CNRS?
2. What does it stand for?
3. Who are you?
4. How is CNRS related with you?

After that, you mention some reports out of nowhere.

5. What are those reports?
6. Which instructions specify those reports?

In the second paragraph, it gets worse. You start with more specifically, even though there is not a tiny bit of specification (see 1-4). After you ask multiple questions about those documents mentioned in the first paragraph, you suddenly jump to the committee members.

7. What committee?
8. How are those members related to your question?
9. How are their area of expertise related to your question?

You cannot assume that people know the answers to all nine questions listed above. Usually, four or five of them makes the text unclear. In your case, you had nine.

For this question, I believe nothing is wrong with people. The question seems to be asked at random.

What is CNRS? It's supposedly a research center somewhere in Europe but it's been asked about a few times already on this site. I hope that asking this question is going to clarify things.

If it was asked a few times, why do you ask again? Just upvote the question and wait for an answer. This alone is a reason for closing the question because it is duplicate. Also what things do you want to clarify? Do you assume everyone reads this question also read your first question? Again, this question is not clear at all to me.

Just something popped into your mind and you asked in Academia.SE. As an example, this question also got several downvotes.
The answer to your question is a matter of Google search and reading through the results.

As a side note, it would probably be to your best interest to drop "I'm doing everything right. What is wrong with these people?" and move to "how can I improve my questions?"