Questions tagged [discussion]
Questions that may not necessarily have a clear-cut right or wrong answer and are often subjective. If your question isn't a bug report, feature request, or request for assistance, or question with a concrete answer, it's probably a discussion.
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Rename tag [paperwork] and create new tag for "organizing/structuring" files, papers etc
This is a follow-up to: Is the paperwork tag really necessary?
After removing the tag paperwork from questions where the tag was misused I had a look at the remaing questions and other questions as ...
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Tag cleanup: is the [paperwork] tag really necessary?
I just stumbled upon the tag paperwork when reviewing a question and I am unsure if that tag really makes sense to keep. In many instances the tag is (IMHO) misused for questions related to (...
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Mass downvoting of a well referenced pertinent answer: Why is an answer that is a complement to others considered so bad?
I spent many hours writing this answer and many days preparing it.
Is it fair to desk-reject the above paper based solely on this one
sentence?
The question primarily asks if it is fair to desk-...
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I am an unsung genius. Suggestion for a community answer
There seems to have been an unusual spate of questions on Academia with a similar "unsung genius" theme. I'm not going to highlight any particular post but the bulk of them relate to fields ...
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Are questions about figures and statistics in academia (e.g. number of students, researchers, etc.) off-topic?
To give some context, I have a quite simple question (i.e. the number of international doctoral students in the US), but I have two different sources that give apparently conflicting figures. Would it ...
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Should users with actual or perceived conflicts of interest disclose these conflicts in comments?
Suppose I work for a large multinational corporation that sells reference management software. Due to my job and previous academic career, I have a lot of experience in managing references. As such, I ...
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Dealing with "how long until I hear back?" questions
We frequently get questions like this one, along the lines of "I submitted an application / had an interview, but haven't heard back after X days / weeks / months. Have I been rejected? At what ...
cag51Mod
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Move the "Academia varies more than you think" question to the main site?
I recently linked the "Academia differs more than you think" meta question in a comment on a question on the main site. And started to wonder why this question is on meta and not as a ...
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2022: a year in moderation
As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.
As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange ...
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8
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Why/when are questions posted on the academia.SE twitter account?
When looking at the edit-history of a question, I saw that it had been posted on twitter by the academia.SE twitter account. I do not really use twitter and never knew that this account existed. I had ...
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Canonical answer for "can I message X about Y"?
I recently made a rather misguided attempt to make a canonical answer for all of the questions that take this form.
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/192370/can-i-contact-x-person-about-y?...
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What is a "Hot Question"? Who and how is it defined?
How and what and who define a "Hot Question"?
In fact "This question body does not meet our quality standards. Please make sure that it completely describes your problem - including ...
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May i know the reason of closing the question here
Someone, please tell me why this question is closed. and is the closed question appeared on the screen for others or not? how to reopen it?
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Why is it possible to edit old (older than a couple of weeks), already closed questions?
I would not expect the editing of closed questions to be allowed. If the question need something to be redacted, would it not be easier to do this before closure?
It brings a bit of noise to the SE:...
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Should we have a canonical question about the relation (or lack thereof) between plagiarism and paraphrasing?
As a preface - it is a recurring topic, fragments of the relevant discussion can be seen here on Meta. Even in my relatively short time here, I have seen a few persistent strains of "is X ...
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Automatically-generated text is banned on Academia.SE
Do we have a firm policy on questions, answers, or comments that are automatically generated using a tool like GPT-3?
This post follows a previous request for Academia.SE community input: Should this ...
cag51Mod
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Why was this question closed by 1 person?
Is it normal to reject a peer-reviewed paper and then reject it after accepting it without specifying the exact reasons?
Usually, you need 4, but a moderator was quick to close the question. I just ...
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Should this site take an official position on answers generated by ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is a human assisted AI that can be used to generate reasonable looking answers to questions. It seems to have been used for at least one answer here (now deleted). However StackOverflow has (...
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Should we allow answers that suggest bad-practices even if they're "technically correct"?
This answer is technically correct.
However, it suggests to the author that they adopt practices that are harmful to acadaemia as a whole purely for their own career advancement.
This doesn't sit ...
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I asked for a software solution, question was closed as "shopping" - legit?
I asked this:
How can I generate an elegant (academic) static CV web page?
which got a couple of answers, including a very relevant one. The question was closed as a "shopping question", but ...
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Why was this offensive?
Why would I ever create a new exam when I can just re-use an old exam and then accuse any student of obtaining a copy as cheating? was deleted as rude or abusive. Why?
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When and why did we disable anonymous questions?
SE sites used to allow anyone to ask questions in guest mode, with a user name of the form userXXXXX . See this question. This is particularly valuable for sites which often involve legal or ...
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Should these question closure instructions be included in this canonical question?
However, please be sure that the below answer actually answers OP's question before voting to close! If the question asks about something not covered below (other than the specific fields), the ...
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Should we establish a canonical question for "What to do when receiving no/delayed response to my email?"
Quite often, questions like this recent one are posted, all with the same tenor:
I was in contact with a professor/supervisor/etc. about a position/PhD program/masters program/etc. , and they seemed ...
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Suggestions to improve the use and the findability of canonical questions
2 suggestions for canonical questions:
The recently established canonical question for field switching
after PhD has the following added to note to close voters:
Questions about switching from X to ...
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Should we have a canonical question about changing fields after PhD?
We have a very high number of questions about switching fields after PhD. Most of these are duplicates except for the fields in question. Here are some examples (by no means a complete list, I just ...
cag51Mod
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Can the linked duplicate question on a closed question be changed afterwards?
This question was recently closed as a duplicate of the canonical "Journal Workflow" question. Yet, when looking into it due to it being in the "reopen" cue, I think there are some ...
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Is the following question technically low standard to our main site?
Please read the following question
What all can be understood from more 'Review invitations sent'?
The question received 3 close votes (2 duplicate & 1 community-specific reason) and 2 down votes.
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Why was this question closed as "unclear?"
Can I use Trebuchet MS font for my manuscript on arvix?
I strongly disliked the question, but it seems to me that it is completely clear what is being asked. The only visible "request" for ...
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Passing the torch
Twelve years ago I stumbled across a proposal on Area 51 for a site called "Academia". As a soon-to-be-graduated grad student at the time, I was super intrigued. My own experience as a grad ...
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Questions about old, hard to find sources
Every once in a while, questions about (very) old papers or books pop up and the inability of the OP of said question to find them, e.g. this one or this one, posted recently only a day apart. The ...
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Do we have even high level guidelines on how controversial posts are moderated?
I've been somewhat confused by how the moderation on our controversial questions is conducted. That's not to say that the mods need to be superhuman, but I really do think things are frequently ...
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Is this question about printing an e-book on topic?
Is it legal if I print PDF files of Springer books for personal use?
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Tag Wiki review. Help wanted
I've taken a pass over all of the current tags on this site and provided some wiki for many of those that were without any. Unless I missed one or two, I think every tag now has something. For a few, ...
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Why is this particular question closed as rude?
Why was
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/184049
marked as spam or rude or abusive and is therefore not shown
I can see closing it as off topic for this stackexchange site but I think ...
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Grammar error in close-dialogue
So this is surely not the most important problem ever, but ever since I noticed I cannot unsee it.
Shouldn't the close-question dialogue window (see screenshot below) not rather say:
This question ...
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Why was this answer marked as "spam or rude or abusive?"
It seems unremarkable to me.
https://academia.stackexchange.com/revisions/183046/1
Question:
Invitation to a new conference: possible scam?
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Why was the "monetary benefit for winning grants" question closed?
This question seems very straightforward to me: do professors get any financial "rewards" for winning grants? It seems like OP was wondering whether this explained why professors (who ...
cag51Mod
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On closing questions that Google can answer immediately
There are some questions on the site that can be answered with a few seconds spent with a search engine such as Google or Duck Duck Go. There is no obvious way to close them that I can see. Here is an ...
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modification date / date asked
I pay attention to the active question queue. Posts there are marked with the modification date, which is always essentially "now" since this is the active question queue. I would rather see ...
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conference / url answer deletion
I'm not sure my answer got deleted on the right grounds (rather abruptly I might add).
Why would the organizers of an online conference ask poster presenters not to include any URLs or hyperlinks in ...
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How to deal with a plagiarized answer?
The answer at https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/182163/15446 is a copy/paste from https://www.modernintimacy.com/13-tips-for-how-to-heal-from-a-toxic-relationship/ (as noted in the comments by @...
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Two very similar are asked. Which one shall be closed?
The first question was asked, with all possible tags, but received no long answers.
A few months later, the second question was asked without address the first one. However, the second one received ...
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Are questions related to college preparation on topic?
I had a question about the existence of college prep style schools in Europe, but in reading the on-topic list it's not clear to me whether I can ask such a question.
This question here clearly ...
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Is it Desirable to Extend the Purpose of this Stack Exchange?
In the tour of this stack exchange, it is suggested that questions covering these topics should be posted:
academic careers,
requirements and expectations of students, postdocs, or professors,
inner ...
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Why is "Opinion-based" listed separately within the Close vote dialog, instead of under "A community-specific reason"?
Why is "Opinion-based" listed as a close reason in its own right in the Close vote dialog, and not instead found under "A community-specific reason" (along with other, similar ...
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Questions on drawing software
Questions about drawing software appear periodically on this site, and get either closed as off-topic or closed as duplicate of this one, which is again closed.
I think that this state of affairs is ...
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A question with a lot of non-answers
This question here is asking whether there exists an example of researcher meeting particular criteria, in particular having solved a relevant open problem in the last 30 years and having initally ...
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On answers to reference requests that do not provide references
I have noticed several instances (and there have been a few flags) where the question says quite clearly something like:
I am looking for references about [some topic]. I'm not really interested in ...
cag51Mod
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2021: a year in moderation
As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.
As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange ...
- 101