@terdon The OP said they wanted to design a drug that, I am assuming from the question is a DNA binding protein or something of the sort. If you can get that far, then you should be able to research biologics and delivery systems. Like I said, if the question had been I read X, Y, and Z, and I am not sure which would be best if I was looking to deliver a drug into the cell, then that is a fair question. This is an example of a very good question from probably someone taking
Introductory Biology. It provides the necessary information about where the question arose and how they were thinking about it. It demonstrated that they did think about the information and were getting hung up connecting the dots. I have no problem with those sorts of questions. biology.stackexchange.com/questions/40853/…
@AMR It's not off topic and one of the two main reasons for downvoting is "lack of research".
All I'm trying to say is that downvotes are also useful tools. There's no reason to always resort to flags (and I have no idea how often you've flagged, I am making assumptions here).
Wow, 91 flags in two months is a lot! Those are your helpful flags, you can't have had that many rejected!
I do see that you have only ever downvoted 12 times which does seem to suggest you flag more than you vote.
@TanMath I did not say the person was a creationist, I said to the effect that questions regarding creationism were not welcome on the site. As I said in my rebut, they used a psalm to refer to human lifespan, they used leading questions and stated as fact inconsistencies that were not indeed inconsistencies in evolutionary theory. It is a tactic that sites like Answers in Genesis and its backers often use to attempt to refute Evolutionary theory. I flagged it and posted the comment a day
@AMR But why would you flag that instead of downvoting it?
Where does it say that creationism is off topic here? If you come from an educational background that teaches creationism or ID as truth, you may well believe that they are valid topics for scientific debate.
We haven't made them explicitly off topic in the help center, other such questions have been asked and answered on the site and the meta consensus, while leaning towards disallowing them, is not really conclusive.
> Flagging reason: "... this is just an attempt by a creationist to poke holes in evolutionary theory by what they presume is an inconsistency without actually knowing the finer details of the molecular processes involved or how they relate to organismal survival. For that reason this post should be closed."
And, again, creationism isn't actually explicitly off topic. There is no way for a new user to know such questions are not welcome and, more importantly, who says they're not? There are users here who want them, as long as the answers are science and not bullshit.
@terdon It is the way the system is rigged. Once you get enough reputation a down vote doesn't really cost you anything, but when you are trying to build up reputation early on, down voting is a more significant penalty. Down voting also does nothing if the goal is to curate the site so that quality questions answers see the light of day. Do you think Bob the Testicle obsessed person is going to delete is posts if there are 100 down votes?
Down votes only really work for active users who care about the review of their peers and are willing to take those into consideration to delete or edit.
@AMR OK, first of all, there is no penalty for downvoting questions, only answers. Second, the penalty for answers is 2 rep points. If you're not willing to sacrifice that for the benefit of the site, you are missing the point.
Flags are handled manually by moderators. It takes time and effort. Saving yourself from losing 2 rep points is not sufficient reason to increase the workload of the mods.
@AMR No. It is the voting system that does that. Flags are secondary and using them instead of voting only to save yourself some rep is abusing the system pure and simple.
If a question is bad, downvote it, don't flag it. If you've been doing this and the mods have been accepting your flags then they've been leading you on. That's not how it's supposed to work.
@TanMath Where do you get your information from? Unlike many of the tech stacks, most of the answers usually come from vetted users who provide thoughtful answers, so if I have flagged more questions than answers it is because far fewer answers come up in review queues.
We are going to have to agree to disagree, because how I interpret that and how you do are opposed. Voting is about reputation and vetting users. Flagging is about getting rid of what needs to be gotten rid of. They are different.
That's from the link you posted on the improved flagging system. The emphasis is not mine.
@AMR No! I'm sorry, but no. That is very simply not what flags are for. The single most important tool on the network is voting. Flags should not be used as a substitute. This is not just my opinion, it is how the network works.
Voting is not about reputation and vetting users, not primarily. It's main and most important function is to bring up the good and lower the bad.
It cannot and should not be replaced by flagging.
You need to vote so that other people can avoid the bad questions and not waste time on them. Flagging is only seen by mods and in these cases, only wastes their time.
As I said before, you loose no rep for downvoting questions and, seriously, if you begrudge the -2 you would spend on a bad answer you are actively harming the site.
For active users who care about reputation and not for people who are posting to have a laugh of deface the site. And like I said. I only flag things that I think need to be removed. I more often than not ignore or comment, things such as Please provide references, or Please provide more detail as it is unclear.
If you see spam, hate speech or other offensive content, flag and don't downvote. Otherwise downvote first and only flag if it is something that only a mod can deal with.
@AMR Um. I'm one of the most active users on the network. Less so here in recent months but still. I know how it feels to go rep hunting and have been guilty of it myself. Nevertheless, downvote first, flag second.
Or don't and get flag banned by the system. The fact that such a ban exists might be a good indication of how flags should be treated.
I am not saying about reputation hunting. I am saying that voting only influences those active users that care about their reputation or what prompted a down vote in the first place. It has absolutely no effect of drive-by posters. If the system were to auto delete negative voted questions or answers after a set period of time, then I would agree, but it doesn't so the only way to keep the site clean is to flag. At least until 3K when VTC us an option.
@AMR That's just it. For one thing the system does auto delete negative voted questions with no answers. For another, voting is essential for users. It's the only way they can see which answer is "the right one". If you don't vote, we may as well turn this into a forum and be done with it.
Voting is not about reputation, it's about good and bad content. Reputation is secondary and only there to make the whole thing fun.
Related to Meta Super User efforts:
Old unanswered inactive questions with low views/votes
and Meta Server Fault efforts:
Cleaning house, really old, unloved questions
We already auto-remove negatively voted unanswered old questions automatically after 30 days, network wide, with no human int...
A couple weeks ago, I asked for help: How can we stop premature deletion?
And I got some fantastic responses. A big thanks to everyone who participated in that discussion - you're the reason I don't completely hate Meta Stack Overflow.
The big takeaways from that discussion were:
Show users t...
I think the current limit is three months or so but I don't remember if it varies from site to site. In any case, yes, downvoting can indeed lead to automatic deletion.
It also tells me not to waste my time reading that question and I can move on to answer something useful.
It also helps educate new users and show them what we want and don't.
Flagging might get rid of the question faster but i) it is manual and needs to be done by the mods; ii) it doesn't educate the user; iii) you are forcing the mods to take matters into their own hands. We try to avoid that where possible and let the community decide. Bringing out the mod hammer too often is frowned upon.
Ah, no, I should read the answers to the questions I link to. It's 30 days.
@AMR Yes, posts with upvoted answers are not deleted. And, in general, they shouldn't be. There's a reason the answer got an upvote.
Stack Overflow have their mod elections, and one of the criteria is having the Marshall badge, which is for raising 500 helpful flags. Why have that if there is no intention to encourage users to raise flags.
@AMR For one thing, SO is SO. A very different beast. It is quite easy to find 500 things that need flagging. This site is several orders of magnitude smaller, has about a tenth of the mod power and far fewer things that need flagging.
You should flag, no argument there. You just shouldn't use it instead of voting. It should be used sparingly.
Not sparingly, just correctly but I can't find a way of saying that without sounding pretentious. Just don't overdo it is all.
Anyway, it's late here and I'm off to bed. I suggest you try and grab one of the local mods for a chat and see how they feel. I'll try and post an answer to your meta Q tomorrow as well. Good night!
So I used it correctly over 8 out of every ten times. Like I said, I don't use it spuriously, and the some of the ones that were rejected, were closed, but they didn't like the flag I used, which gets back to one of my points in that the flag categories available do not always provide a congruent way to flag.
Here is another one I can't flag... http://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/16272/was-the-mitochondrion-or-chloroplast-first Here is the text of the answer that should be deleted. "yo pooplu goot aranga soot hambladee hambladee ardada gloot
@Remi.b @AliceD @fileunderwater @Chris Please consider responding to Makoto Kato's Meta Post meta.biology.stackexchange.com/questions/3219/… regarding your decisions to close his posts and why he received the block warning. I have tried to explain it to him but he still does not appear to get it.
[All ideas evolve and so did this one, transposing and expanding from the comments]
Definitions
What we have today, here and in many other applications and sites, is a bookmarks system miscalled as "favorites".
So here we have the current vote system, simple, fast (concerning how long we de...
A couple weeks ago, I asked for help: How can we stop premature deletion?
And I got some fantastic responses. A big thanks to everyone who participated in that discussion - you're the reason I don't completely hate Meta Stack Overflow.
The big takeaways from that discussion were:
Show users t...
[All ideas evolve and so did this one, transposing and expanding from the comments]
Definitions
What we have today, here and in many other applications and sites, is a bookmarks system miscalled as "favorites".
So here we have the current vote system, simple, fast (concerning how long we de...
