I also think that since many tags are currently not well-defined in scope (see several ongoing meta discussions), it's not even possible to "properly" tag every question right now
Or even most questions (since the above applies especially to huge tags like "research" and "PhD")
This question was suggested to me by How can I sell my text book to my students in e-book format? which asked about the practicalities, but attracted many comments about the ethics. So this question is to ask about the ethics directly.
Suppose I have written and published a textbook, and I want...
I am at the moment dealing with an academic dishonesty incident in a class I'm teaching (a few groups of students submitting identical code, when the class policy forbids getting help from another person on a graded assignment).
When I noticed indications of plagiarism, I emailed each affected s...
How do I handle silly questions? By silly, I mean questions that are unrelated to the material of the course.
First, I am a TA. Recently, a student asked me a very silly question at the end of a lab session. I say silly because:
it was not related to the lecture,
it was asked at the end of ...
In one of my classes, I had a student who generally understood stuff faster than the others. In tutorials, he would ask a lot of questions, mostly of the kind
"I tried this method instead of what you suggested, is it correct?"
Now, this probably sounds like the dream student, but I quickly...
I can see how one could make a distinction. I'm just concerned that in practice, the distinction is too fine for many users (and the excerpt is not very helpful in clarifying the distinction)
Having just cleaned up about a dozen tags that were used badly/misinterpreted, I'm especially sensitive to this right now :)
I think if pedagogy is going to stay, both tag wiki excerpts need some careful rethinking, teaching probably should be renamed, and a lot of questions need retagging
@ff524 I think the key is that once the tags get cleaned up, it will be easier to keep them orderly. Most sites end up retagging question of new users.
@StrongBad Hi. I check the oldest questions and edit their applied tags. Since, I strongly believe that because the website did not have such good tags in the past (and we have a more complete list of tags now); we should pay some attention to those old posts.
However, you are right, it is better to focus on only one tag at each edit round. But, since some other users also working on the tag edits, I don't know which tags they have in mind and, who's working on which tag. I mean, we should not edit an editted tag twice which may ruin the previous perfect edit.
probably a silly question, I am relatively new around these parts, but woul questions about being an Adjunct Lecturer (and full time teacher) be relevant here?
@EnthusiasticStudent You could always post in either chat or meta that you are going to tackle a tag. It might be best if before taking on a major reworking of a tag that a list of on and off topic questions for that tag is created and discussed.
@Omen Depends if you are asking about how to program in java (off topic) or if you want to know how to teach (on topic).
well, I am thinking of asking about how to convince my workplace (a high school) of the importance of the research as an Adjunct... or something less-opinion based than that
@StrongBad I can not see anyone posting in chatroom, which tag s/he is working on, could your please show me? Do you know who is working on which tag right now? Isn't it better to make a meta question with a title like "Tags under edit" and each person working on a tag post an answer to the question. So, we will have a list of tags under edit, and a list of off-on topic questions relatively?
This helps with the problem of multiple users working on tags, since if it's obvious what should be done it's unlikely someone will ruin a good edit; and if it's not obvious, the community should weigh in first anyways
@Enthusiastic you can propose that suggestion as an answer to
There has been general agreement here on meta that our tags are not in great shape, to say the least.
Big tags like phd and graduate-school are beyond the scope of this particular post, and need major discussion on meta before anyone acts on them. But some (very small) tags lend themselves easil...
@Omen that is going to be close, but I think carving out time to do research when you are not working full time in academia should be fine. It might get closed, but we can always try and edit it to make it better.
@EnthusiasticStudent I don't think anyone is doing it now, but I think that with you and @ff524 both working on tags (which is a good thing) and some others, it might be useful to build a strategy.
Maybe the proposed meta question "tags under edit" would do the trick. I don't have a solution, but I am a little worried that there might be a problem.
I am thinking along the lines of focussing on how to educate non-academic colleagues of the importance and time needed for the research done as an Adjunct
It really just provides the community a chance to improve the question. If you don't risk it, then nothing near the edges would ever get posted. I promise I will try and be nice.
what's worse, is as a PhD physicist, I get the "oh you should run <student activity>, you'll be perfect for it".... I ran 5 last term and darn well nearly burned out