The Ivory Tower

2:11 PM

@enthusiasticstudent what is your strategy regarding your changes to the tags?

Are you just working through all the question from oldest to newest adding tags you think are relevant and removing ones you think are wrong?

I am not sure how I would undertake a huge tag cleanup, but that seems pretty difficult.

Would it be better choosing a tag you would like to improve and removing it from questions that do not need it and adding it to those that do?

That way you only have to keep a good mental representation of one tag at a time. Your approach seems to require you to understand all the tags.

ff524

2:29 PM

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")

StrongBad

3:52 PM

@ff524 in regards to my new pedagogy tag, I created a wiki entry.

I think it is different from teaching, although I would expect most questions tagged pedagogy would also be tagged teaching.

I would say

84

Q: Is it ethical to profit by having my students buy my textbook?

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...

would not be a pedagogical question.

or even

81

Q: Is it ethical/acceptable to give a lighter penalty to students who admit to cheating?

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...

teaching ethics university plagiarism

But questions like

57

Q: "You are paid to answer my questions!" - how to handle silly questions?

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 ...

teaching teaching-assistant

and

80

Q: How to tell an over-confident student they still have a lot to learn?

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...

teaching

are pedagogical in nature.

To me the difference is that teaching is about the roles and duties of a teacher and pedagogy relates to the methods and practice of teaching

ff524

4:09 PM

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

StrongBad

@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.

ff524

Can you propose the tag on meta, with your rationale for it, so we can discuss more there?

academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/lecture-notes

@StrongBad From my latest tag wiki excerpts, you can see that I've become accustomed to predicting all the ways a tag could be misused; see e.g.

Enthusiastic Student

@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.

Omen

hi

StrongBad

@Omen hi Omen

Omen

4:23 PM

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?

StrongBad

@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).

Omen

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

ff524

@EnthusiasticStudent generally if it's not obvious what should be done with a tag, you should ask on meta first (as you did with 'archiving')

Enthusiastic Student

@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?

ff524

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

1

Q: Suggestions for avoiding disruption when retagging?

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...

discussion editing retagging

StrongBad

4:29 PM

@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.

ff524

@StrongBad you should also propose what you said about posting on chat/meta as an answer to that meta post

Omen

@StrongBad hmmm I would rather not write something that would get closed...

ff524

@Omen I actually am very interested in that question, I think you should post it

Omen

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

ff524

It's a question about doing academic-level research, right? I don't see why it should be closed

StrongBad

4:32 PM

@Omen I know having a question closed feels like a slap in the face, but it really shouldn't be.

Omen

closed and likely downvoted

StrongBad

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.

Omen

@ff524 yes, the research also leading to publications

ff524

So, seems perfectly on topic to me

Omen

okay, I'll give it a try

ff524

4:34 PM

Just make it very focused :)

StrongBad

@Omen but once it gets edited and reopened (if it even gets closed and down voted in the first place) you will get lots of up votes.

I think my point is, that it sounds like a potentially good question.

Omen

closure and downvoting feels more like a kick to the crotch than a slap to the face

StrongBad

@Omen I know that feeling.

Omen

sometimes both

Enthusiastic Student

@ff524 I will propose my suggestion as an answer to your question on Meta. Just give me some time. Thanks. :)

Omen

4:44 PM

okay @StrongBad and @ff524, here it is ... academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28687/…

oh, an I always welcome edits

StrongBad

@Omen You got an upvote from me.

Welcome to AC.SE

Omen

thank you :)

StrongBad

I think we have a couple of users who are doing the adjunct and HS teaching combo so hopefully you will get some good answers.

Omen

that would be epic

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

@StrongBad what do you do?

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