@terdon About the meta post; I agree that the tone could be more constructive. It is also hard to judge activity and voting by account age, since users might have been inactive for long periods of time.

As a site, we could have higher voting rates though, and I think @AliceD answer makes sense, you should aim to give what you receive. So it's reasonable to say that users that ask/answer many questions should also be voting quite frequently. However, individual users could have all sorts of reasons not to do this.

@terdon I actually found the specific information about user voting interesting, but I can understand that some might object to it. Also, I don't think that the lack of upvoting is necessarily a problem. People should not be compelled to vote just for the sake of voting. Of course, I'm not really active here. Just speaking as an outsider.

@fileunderwater - Thanks for quoting! Give what you receive is indeed a rule of thumb. Most posts around Bio are quite accessible to us I think, and voting feels quite OK. However, other folks (undergrads etc) may not feel too comfortable voting. But then, folks with little knowledge of Bio will not receive much rep, so it may actually hold up for many people

@FaheemMitha Individual voting counts for all users can also be seen clearly here.

@AliceD Also, as has often been said, voting on questions should be more liberal, since evaluating these requires less field-specific knowledge.

@fileunderwater - I agree yes yes! Question votes are scarce. I vote a lot on questions, because my reasoning is that asking a good question is very, very difficult (often more so than answering it, really)

@FaheemMitha Lack of voting is always a problem. The SE model relies on votes and a community that doesn't vote has a serious problem.

I just felt that the meta post was too much "nya-nya, I'm better than you".

@terdon Ok. You thought the person who wrote the question was doing nya-nya?

@terdon Agreed, we need voting, but more votes isn't necessarily better.

@FaheemMitha Yes it is. Pretty much by definition.

Sorry for the late reply, my internet had died.

@FaheemMitha There was no need for it and it read like an attack. For example:

> Consider this I have been a member for 132 days and I have the following vote count: total 725, up 550, down 175 which is about 5.5 votes a day or about 181.25 votes a month.

> kmm with 3 years and 5 months and 1300 votes (should be better since mods go through many post), and Mad Scientist with 3 years and 5 months and 500 votes (I have more than this in 6 months).

How come this guy gets to grade us?

I think much of it might have been the language barrier, I doubt the OP actually meant to use as harsh a word as pitiful but the result was quite unpleasant.

> After the first two rows, the voting counts are pitiful except for fileunderwater who has 1000+ in 2ish years. Out of the the top 16 users, only 3 are really actually voting early and often--Chris, AliceD, and Rory M but there is still room for improvement.

As a general rule, calling out specific users is not a good idea. I myself was quite honestly offended. I took it as a clear personal attack. Especially given the effort I have put into this site over the years.

Can someone please also flag this question for deletion? I did so 22 hours ago but the mods may be sleeping or skipped my flag. biology.stackexchange.com/questions/34524/…

I marked it for deletion, but I need two more votes for it. For some reason delete votes are not appearing in the usual queues but only under the postings.

@Chris - great.. But... I can't vote for deletion since graduation, as many of my poor low-rep Bio.SE friends :( I would recommend flagging it. It's a charade question.

@AliceD Leave it. It's closed and has no answers or positive votes, it will be deleted automatically.

@terdon - Ok, sorry for bothering, but somehow that post is really annoying me. especially because @mdperry and other commenters invested time and effort in this silly joke of a question.

@AliceD It might not be that silly. If we could see a decent image, we might have been able to identify the technique, if there is one.

And no need to apologize, I'm just letting you know that old closed questions get deleted automatically after a while.

@terdon Closed postings with enough clicks will stay.

Greets all

@Alice: Are you still worried about reaching 10k? At your current answer rate, this will only take a few days :-)

@Chris why the race for rep?

For some reason, I don't see it as a hindrance once you are above 1000+ or am I missing something ? @Chris @AliceD

@RoverEye It gives access again to the wider range of moderation tools

it's useful to mark bad questions/answers

You mean the edit/delete privileges ?

yes

Ah I see, well considering I am still at 1k, good luck to everyone in the race !

It is one of the reasons for answering some more questions :)

@Chris Yes, but that one doesn't have them. Closed with negative votes are deleted.

@Chris - no, not so worried :)

@AliceD fair enough. Though never really bothered to check the moderator panel back in beta

But there have been quite some neuroscience questions, which help me a lot

> The system will automatically delete closed (not as a duplicate), unlocked questions with zero or negative score having no upvoted or accepted answers or pending reopen votes, that were closed 9 or more days ago and haven't been edited in the past 9 days.

@RoverEye <-- Irresponsible member of the community :)

@RoverEye - yes, that, but the delete option is nice to have given some questions posted by guys high on LSD :/

@Terdon Ah, ok. I didn't knew that.

@terdon you mean the book cover post

@RoverEye Yes

@Chris For more details, see here: meta.stackexchange.com/a/5222/203101

So happy the site made it launch....funny to come back and see people still stressed on voting

:-)

@AliceD I always wondered which drug it was that was needed to write those questions

@AtlLED - he wrote he was on acid.

Now I really wished i would have chosen another nick :/

You can still change it...

@terdon - thanks for that link. That helps. i should let it go, it's not even worth bothering I guess.

@Chris - yep. Perhaps i will. I wanted to go for Chris, but you voted against :D

Not really against - but some differentiation would still be great :-)

I was surprised when I registered here that Chris was not used yet :-)

@Chris user names are not unique here

I know

We can have a whole army of Chris's. That sounds like a fun prank. Everyone changes there name to Chris## for a day

@AliceD Why?

but it is still a bit confusing having two active users using the same nick

And actually, i don'T mind

@terdon - sorry I lost track, "why" refers to...?

I like the Chris army :D

We are legion - we are Chris.

We are the Chris - resistance is futile. :-))

@Chris :)

I love that we are using our community ad space to send people to PubMed. It makes me want to make a lgtfy analog. Looking at the meta post I was trying to think of any conference that would be wide enough for whole community support but I couldn't think of any

@AtlLED - One thing I systematically try to do is avoid wiki links

that's indeed nice

@AliceD When a chat message has an arrow on the left, you can see what it is in reply to by hovering over it. The corresponding message will be highlighted. And I was asking why you wanted to change your nick. What's wrong with Alice?

@terdon Ah, I didn't know that this was possible. There is always something to learn.

@terdon AliceD ---- L S D

@terdon - just say AliceD out loud once. It's a reference to LSD

@AliceD You mean as a source for information? I try to use original papers as well if possible, but sometimes it is better to use the Wiki and explain it better. Papers are not always perfect for all people.

@AliceD So you are writing your answer not under the influence of acid but LSD? :-))

@Chris yes I try to always link a paper and explain it into my own words in the answer

@Chris - never tried it even :)

@AliceD I try this as well. Sometimes the wiki images/figures are nice.

@Chris yeah not using their pictures is sometimes hard, but I never use wiki's anymore, not even their images

But that's principle, not pragmatic :)

their images can be really awesome, admittedly

generally they are not a real scientific source

although they can be useful to dig up reference papers

@Chris yeah I don't think anyone on the research side was thinking they were...the root of what I was wondering goes back to the Community Promo meta question. The post talks about conferences, but for the life of me I can't think of one that is general enough for wide appeal

@Chris - I use wikipedia a lot, don't get me wrong :) Just not in my (final) answer. I also think that, wherever I can judge, it looks pretty OK. I have seen incorrectness at wikipedia at times, so yes, I think cross-checking information from wiki is important. i have seen circle-referencing on wikipedia too. Where external references were dead (and non-existent using Google scholar, Google) and only internal wiki-links remained. Pretty suspicious.

Links in the Wikipedia are not always checked regulary. That can cause problems as some ressources move or disappear.

And Wiki is good to get a first impression of a topic and to have a starting point for diving deeper.

@Chris - absolutely, it's a good starting point!

@AliceD Ah! :)

@AliceD Why? I use it often when the OP is not a scientist. It is a great resource for getting a basic background. Also, there are some wikipedia pages that are maintained by researchers.

Damn, I can't find it now, but I remember a notice at the footer of a wikipedia page mentioning who was maintaining it.

@terdon agreed - not using wiki is really more of a principle than anything else. The main reason is that I see lots of answers quoting entire passages from the wiki, ending with the link for 'more information'. That, to me, is not an answer (the few answers I downvote are mainly of this caliber). At a certain point I just decided to make a statement :)

By simply not using anything from wiki and either digging up papers or retrieving info from university or hospital websites

@AliceD Oh, yes, that's not a good idea, indeed. However, peppering your answer with links to basic wikipedia pages seems like a very good idea. I often do so for things like codons, translation, transcription etc. Just so the OP can get a general idea of what I'm talking about.

@AliceD There is no reason to assume the webpages will be any better, really. And articles are often way too advanced for the OP to understand.

I will chose one or the other depending on the OP's level of knowledge.

@terdon - yes research articles are just for verification, I try to formulate my answer looking at the question jargon content. Much jargon in question allows me to respond with technical detail. No jargon or even incorrect terminology means laymen's answers. In both cases, however, i always try to refer to academic papers/sources.

@terdon - but I agree I might be better off linking terminology to wiki...

I'll think about it :)

Fair enough. I only use wikipedia for the very basic stuff. I wouldn't refer to a paper to explain what transcription is, for example.

@terdon - oh no, certainly not.

That would be way too much work :)

And way, way too much detail :)

But in turn I am too lazy to link jargon to a wiki. i should perhaps consider that indeed.

@terdon - yes, scraping away too much detail is the art of answering

Ha! Well put :)

Yes, it is the art of writing papers really :)

:21840553 Ha! scared that might come back and bite you? :)

Unfortunately, mods can see deleted messages >:)

I was afraid so - i was thinking of a specification :) Here we go - edit: I am actually slowly getting the hang of it. However, making them short, concise and too-the-point is where I tend to fall short

In all, yeah, I am not really good at it I gues hahaha

You mods can see anything haha :(

I just maxed out my daily rep - now I see it. But no 'warning'

anyway - I should be sleeping :) It was a pleasure chatting

zzzzzz

Good night!

5 points shy of 3000 is about as frustrating as cells that won't grow

@AtlLED There you go :)

@terdon I didn't read it as a personal attack, but of course I wasn't personally involved. I'm not active on this site. I don't think the author meant it as a personal attack either. I think he just meant it to be illustrative. And yes, the word "pitiful" certainly is offensive on the face of it, but I don't think he meant it to be personal - it was just intended as a detached statement on the situation.

I think this is one of these places where cultural expectations/norms come into play. Though I've now even forgotten who the author was.

@terdon So, for example, upvoting questions that don't deserved to be upvoted is better than not? That's the kind of thing I have in mind.

Hmm, busy day in chat today.

@terdon Ok, if the author was saying "I'm better than you", then that is certainly offensive. I guess I should look at the question again.

Of course, part of the reason I don't find it offensive (in a theoretical kind of way) is that, probably unlike many here, I don't think of lots of voting activity as necessarily a good thing, as I already said. Good questions and answers certainly are.

Actually the tone of the thing comes across as a bit juvenile, like a small child boasting about the difficult books he has read "Ooh, look, I just finished reading War and Peace".

@FaheemMitha I know you don't. Grrrr. No voting renders the entire system useless. We need votes to i) rank questions and ii) give an incentive to those who want to play the rep game. No voting is bad for the site and basically negates the whole point of SE.

@FaheemMitha Yes, that's how I took it as well.

@terdon I mean, I do vote. Just not tons, like some people here.

I remember slm saying he regularly ran out of the 40 votes that a user was allowed a day. I can't remember if 40 is right, though.

For me, that would be a huge number. I doubt I would have time to look at 40 questions/answers a day on top of everything else I'm doing.

I guess some people are just fast readers. Though I thought I was too.

@FaheemMitha That's completely different. As long as you do sometimes vote on the stuff you see, it's all good.

I actually tend to vote more on SO, I think. If I find an answer usefl, then I upvote both the question and the answer.

@terdon Yes, of course I vote. I just don't like to downvote (except for spam). But you already know that.

With SO, most of the questions you might think to ask have been answered already. You just have to vote for answers that answer your questions. Which is a lot easier than asking them yourself.

@terdon @terdon Thanks. Proving that stopping and going to lunch can solve many of your problems.

hmm using the mobile app and trying to edit the reply chain is tricky

Chris could change his nick to ArmyOfChris.

@AtlLED Trying to do any editing on a phone is tricky.

@AliceD That's a little harsh. I got the feeling that he really did want an answer. And yes, he might be nuts, but let us think good thoughts about our differentially mentalated brethren (or something). Though delete away by all means.

@FaheemMitha I guess I can take out the text bot comment, that was more for moderators. It really does look like that. I know people that test textbots on SE forums.

textbot comment removed, I'm still questioning the humanity behind it

it's not that it's poorly written, it's how it's poorly written

@AtlLED So you don't think he/she is deranged, you think he/she is actually a machine? :-)

well software

but yes

@AtlLED Hmm. I'd like to meet the person who programmed it, in that case.

Biology has a surprisngly fast dropoff in rep. Top user has 25k. Maybe it's all those people who are not voting. :-/

wired.com/2012/04/…

Bottom of the first page is a little over 3k. But maybe the site hasn't been around very long.

I don't think text bots will be a major issue to anything besides spam, and at the moment I don't think we're a big enough target to hit

Could also be written in a different language and then machine translated, which is an issue we should certainly try to help with.

@AtlLED Well, that author responded to comments too. If it's a bot, it's one hell of a bot.

we may not be talking about the same question: biology.stackexchange.com/questions/34562/…

@AtlLED That's certainly possible. You mean like Google Translate?

Yeah, or Bing. It doesn't really matter which one

@AtlLED No, I was talking about that biology illustration one. So, indeed we were not.

@AtlLED Yes, this question could easily have been written by a machine.

see

I'm going to edit and upvote the other one when I get back to a desktop

@AtlLED That's an interesting article.

It reminds me of 1984 and the machines that automatically write novels. Though, one gathers, not very good novels.

@Faheem The average vote per answer is around 3.5 for biology if I remember correctly

So compared to other sites (tex.se for example) we are relatively bad

@MadScientist you might want to weigh in here. This user has been posting welcome comments on the posts of new users. I'm sure they have the best of intentions, they're clearly trying to be nice and welcoming but I don't think we really want "Welcome to Biology.se!" added to every new user's question.

@Chris Well, as long as the deserving posts get voted up, I don't think it is so bad.

Though 3.5 is low, agreed.

What is the U&L average? Anyone?

While we're on the sobject, sometimes, the reasons why people upvote really mystifies me. For example, this completely nondescript answer (mine) just got 7 upvotes.

No idea why.

It could just have easily got none, and plenty of similar answers I've posted have.

(Just to be clear, this is not an invitation to downvote. I don't think it deserves that.)

@Chris 3.5 isn't bad, most of the sites at the top of the list are either the more subjective sites or entirely different in some way like Skeptics

That's right, it could be distributed more evenly. Popular questions tend to get a lot more votes than "normal" but scientfically interesting.

@Chris close Ro Siv for too broad, or do you want to try and explain to him how/why it's too broad

he might be willing to take a smaller view, but it's sounding like his question is "how do genes work"

I tried, although I am not sure, if this ok already

he has a number of references to read now...

@Chris Well done sir.

I was thinking of a much bigger answer discussing dominance etc.

I think this goes too far.

Although this is not incorrect, but I stick more to the mechanistic model.

I think you did well, even though you answered a better question than he actually asked

And I decided I definitely didn't have the time or desire to write out an answer of the kind I was thinking.

I used to work in pigmentation research, so I have all these references by my hand.

nice

pigmentation I think was the first tag I added when I had the ability...but it's not a field I ever touched

It's faszinating. And pretty much related to melanoma as well.

Why do we have so many stupid questions today where people couldn't even do a simple google search. Is this too much today?

I guess summer break has started in a lot of the US