Timeline for Gaps to Fill Without a 'Homework' Close Reason -- Overview
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
12 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 1, 2019 at 21:32 | comment | added | M.A.R. | Due to higher traffic, or the fact that physics tried to do away with homework altogether. Math tried to solve it with hinty hints AFAIK, and that's a rabbit hole I'm not willing to go down. | |
| Jun 1, 2019 at 14:07 | comment | added | Gaurang Tandon | @NightWriter I agree with all your points, however, regarding your second comment I'd like to also point out that these problems are consistent across several other network sites, and not a challenge specific to ours. On other sites like maths or physics, they may be a lesser problem probably due to higher traffic. | |
| Jun 1, 2019 at 13:01 | comment | added | Buck Thorn Mod | Among the biggest challenges with this site are the "first to answer" fallacy (first answers usually get more upvotes regardless of quality), and the "attention deficit" fallacy (some questions are too complex to answer in a reasonable amount of time and space; interesting questions can get buried even if they are good). There are mechanisms to get around this but this remains a big issue. This does not address the main question of the OP but is relevant to the points you bring up in your quality classification scheme. | |
| Jun 1, 2019 at 12:56 | comment | added | Buck Thorn Mod | Regarding #4 ("boring/obvious/simple") I'd like to add (1) one should not assume that existing answers are correct or complete, not matter how simple they may appear; therefore there is value to a question being asked again; new users may supply a fresh, original and possibly improved (more correct) answer to questions asked before. (2) People ready to answer questions don't generally browse the vaults of chem SE to see if some random question has been asked before. They stumble on stuff as it comes along on the front page. | |
| Jun 1, 2019 at 11:15 | comment | added | M.A.R. | @Ortho yeah, I'm planning to come up with a few meta posts. I just wanna have a general view of how things are, and find out how others find them. | |
| Jun 1, 2019 at 10:21 | comment | added | orthocresol | I think it would probably be useful to have separate meta posts on each of these things, once we work it out, of course. | |
| Jun 1, 2019 at 10:15 | comment | added | orthocresol | There are a lot of things to discuss in this post... I'll just say one thing first. In principle I agree that textbook questions should not be closed (taking the opposite stance to the logical extreme, we should close everything, because everything that we know has already been explained in textbooks or in primary literature). In practice I'm not so sure who would answer them. | |
| Jun 1, 2019 at 9:33 | comment | added | M.A.R. | Regarding erroneous closures of questions simply because of intolerance, rather than the questions being problematic (your "obvious" and "boring" categories, and a good portion of statement-based questions), there is the culture of regulars in smaller sites tending to curate every question, which is awesome, but with its side effects. I reckon a clearer stance on what to close and what not to would help reshape the culture. | |
| Jun 1, 2019 at 9:30 | comment | added | M.A.R. | . . . but the fact that a well-composed textbook answers it far better. Basically, it'd be like the tutorial-related questions of SO; and people have decided that SO is not the right medium for tutoring. 'general reference' would overlap with 'too broad', but that's not a problem. If you've identified questions that the experts in a tag don't want, it really matters only to the few of askers who actually read the guidance what we close their question as. | |
| Jun 1, 2019 at 9:26 | comment | added | M.A.R. | We shouldn't ignore cases where the current policy has worked perfectly. "effort" is only a good metric if you use it as a general means to close the likes of (1) and (2), and my memory is rusty, but I do think the policy defines them to be quintessential homework. It's (3) and (4) that cause problems. I imagine when the reason came to be, people wanted the answerers not to waste time on posts from uncooperative, uninterested askers. Some of (3), and the "simple" questions of (4), are what I compare to 'general reference'. And as I said, it's not "explain enthalpy" itself that irks the expert | |
| Jun 1, 2019 at 7:12 | history | edited | Gaurang Tandon | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
as MAR said, we can work out the specifics of each solution later; this post is a general overview
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| Jun 1, 2019 at 7:06 | history | answered | Gaurang Tandon | CC BY-SA 4.0 |