@JoshGitlin I'll be blunt, based in popular media is a stupid way to judge things. People should be critical of popular media and use that as a means to learn the facts
@BenBrocka i'm not sure that's necessarily true... i think experts may be turned off by a lot of the 'basic' questions, believing this is not a good venue to get good answers to their own questions
editing questions out the wazoo doesn't turn them into research-level questions
i think foremost, we need more users. period.
but i also think that a good chunk of those users should be "experts"
for this to be a decent site
btw, if its not clear, i use the term "expert" very loosely-- generally grad student or higher in any cogsci field, but even knowledgable undergrads
i.e., not someone who saw an article about brains on NYT
@Jeff we don't want only research-level questions. Plenty of us have degrees in psychology but don't do hard research. That is not a relevant metric of quality
This should perhaps be a comment, but I don't have the reputation. The other two answers mention that a major drawback to the Bayesian approach is its lack of biological plausibility. However, see for instance:
Bayesian inference with probabilistic population codes
Ma, W.J. and Beck, J.M...
Look, that awful user is already citing research papers on other questions
@JoshGitlin that's the god damn point, if it's not constructive it's bad for SE period. We don't need to be jerks about this, we just need to follow SE standards for quality
I agree that's the point. But what we're trying to decide is what our standards are, and where we draw the line between "awful" questions which we close, "poor" questions which we downvote, and great questions
For example, the English Language and Usage site has decided to set the bar higher and closes questions which don't meet rigorous quality standards. So has Server Fault. On other sites a question has to be pretty poor to be closed
Both sites also have high traffic and ELU has a large base of questions that can simply be googled or looked up in a dictionary. There is a very large base of background knowledge required to make sense of a lot of "simple" things in our field, and finding authorative sources is MUCH harder than finding a dictionary or manual
There is no RTFM, at best there's Wikipedia which isn't always readily understandable, well sourced or trusted
What I am hearing from you @Ben is you'd prefer to have only really poor questions closed, and basic questions should not be closed, but downvoted by community members if they're "too basic" -- is that somewhat correct?
@BenBrocka True. So, refrain from calling a question basic, rather call it vague or incomplete, as you pointed out exactly as the SE standards dictate us to do?
@JoshGitlin I wouldn't even down vote basic questions, just don't up vote them.
If they are 'incomplete' because they are 'basic' and have many answers, we could opt to not close as NARQ, but expect answers which state exactly that, instead of answering that as comments.
I'd let the community decide, I'm just concerned that certain, loud members of the community give the impression that everything "basic" is a terrible unfitting question
At UX we're a lot more accepting of basic questions as long as they're not closable by SE standards. We start to expect more once you've earned some rep and proved you understand the field
Telling new users their posts are low quality could be seen as rude, especially when the only bad thing about them is that you dared to read popular science articles
@StevenJeuris I agree but I am guessing here. Also, @Ben, it could be said you're one of the loudest community members. Which is fine! As long as we're all professional
My problem with loud is when it's used to discourage other users in that way, for asking questions that are NOT disallowed in any way. If it were a whole community doing it it'd be a different story
@BenBrocka Ok, so we could actively be adding comments when such a comment occurs asking people to participate on Meta to help decide on the scope, and make clear it's only one point of view?
@BenBrocka last time she checked the site was probably ~2 weeks after public beta. She hasn't been back since. When we get more direction and a larger userbase, I'll send her back
For me, these are the qualities of a good question.
Reading the question teaches me something. A good question is interesting, an interesting question is one that educates me even when I don't know the answer. Take the time to formulate your question with enough initial research such that a non...
It's points @ArtemKaznatcheev raises as e.g. the first point that I really can't agree with.
I previously wrote "Little people seem to be able to do that.". I see now that my reasoning was flawed, of course there is no reason to believe little people are better at it than tall people.
I, like many computer programmers, love to listen to music while I work. I have always believed that music helps me stay focused and motivated, and improves my performance on many types of tasks, espescially "busywork". However my company's CEO disagrees with me, and believes that music is a dist...
@StevenJeuris Boiled down, the upvoted answer concluded:
> Combining these references, I cannot easily conclude that music is taken as a "noise". It seems that music reduces the task performance, by negatively effecting a later step in the listening process
@BenBrocka I don't think answering bad questions will drive away experts, not directly. It will be an indirect effect. If we answer all the bad questions we get, then we will get more bad questions, if the front page is mostly bad questions then an expert will not want to join. Hence, it is an indirect effect. If we close bad questions, then people will be less inclined to ask bad questions. Occasionally this net will catch potentially good questions or users, but it usually won't.
To me it makes sense that would be a big difference.
@JoshGitlin I made a twitter account exactly for stuff like that: twitter.com/#!/StevenJeuris :) I didn't feel like blogging about every little idea I had, so I have twitter for that now.
As you said many times before though, you can't have 100% right off the bat, so we might lose the occasional good user by closing bad questions, but we will do more to dissuade further bad questions.
However the opposite is also true: If we can't get anything on the home page, experts won't want to join the site because there's no interesting content
@ArtemKaznatcheev "if the front page is mostly bad questions then an expert will not want to join." ... I'm still not all too sure about that.
And even if, you also have to look at it from the other angle. If we close all bad questions and don't allow them entirely, we'll end up with a graveyard. Will experts be more inclined to participate then?
@BenBrocka I think this is a common misconception. Take a look at physics.SE or phil.SE are these sites full of experts? Last time I browsed physics.SE it was full of common misconceptions in both questions AND answers, and some of these misconceptions were even upvoted!
@JoshGitlin there is already a front-page :P a person that hasn't joined yet doesn't care about how often the front-page gets updated. Once they join and start worrying about the fact that there are not new questions often enough we are already better off
@StevenJeuris cstheory has a pretty high close rate (although now that CS.SE was created, they are starting to migrate instead) and that does not seem to scare off experts. But once again, I feel like I am a broker record.
The whole point of being a little heavy handed is that it will result in a lower rate of bad questions in the long run
Why aren't they joining then..? If your point is that they are turned off by a lack of interesting questions on the home page, but we don't have experts asking questions to be placed on the home page... isn't this a cyclical problem?
@StevenJeuris I don't think the SE format prevents it. The SE format is a democracy, democracies support common or popular opinions. Thus a common or popular misconception can easily take off.
@JoshGitlin I've only been able to get 3 people to actually post :( and maybe half-a-dozen to make accounts
Wrong facts are usually easy to catch, but wrong tone is much more subtle. Next time I am doing tag editing or looking through questions I will try to write down some of the questions that promote a tone that is not very consistent with current research
but the tone issue is of course of personal preference
I prefer a scientific tone because I fancy myself a scientists and would like to be part of a community of people that love science
@ArtemKaznatcheev As a sidenote, this might have been said before, but I can't stress this enough. Thank you for sticking around here even though the current way the site works doesn't correspond with what you would like it to be. That's a great feat!
@ArtemKaznatcheev That would be really helpful and help your cause!
@StevenJeuris thanks. I have learnt a lot from this site, and I do like asking questions even if they don't get answers since it crystallizes the concepts in my head. However, it is pretty obvious that my activity has dropped a lot in March compared to when I started in February. I see the site now mostly as a fun and not as a resource :(
I can't stress this enough: All of our community's member's opinons are important and if we all keep working together like this, we'll build a site we can all be proud of!
@ArtemKaznatcheev This will change as we grow. (I hope anyway!)
It might be a good idea to talk to people at ling.SE
I imagine they have gone through all the same issues as we have. I have not kept up with the site much recently, since I know nothing about linguistics, but they seem to have more of a core user base.
We could ask them for advice. They also has some sort of balance between different levels of questions. Although I imagine linguistics has a little bit more of an entry barrier than cogsci, and so they might get fewer 'bad' questions
That's probably because 1 sent one of my acquaintances there. :) I don't even recall the topic she was doing her PhD on, but it was linguistics and she thought the site was professional looking.
@BenBrocka I have no problem with accessible content in general. When I say 'pop sci' I mean the category you would find in your usual 'brain' section of Chapters. These are books/comments that repeat the same poorly defined concepts that most researchers try not to deal with because it is nearly impossible to ask a scientific question about them.
It is possible to ask an accessible question that is answerable. However, in the case of cognitive science it is too easy to ask something that looks like a question, but might very well not be
my perception is that a lot of popular media is filled with this.
@StevenJeuris I really liked that question after I understood your intent
Since you identified a popular misconception that is used for accessibility and asked for if it has any justification
goes back to reading through the backlog of chat
@Jeff @BenBrocka I also mean experts in this respect. I don't mean just professors, I think our most salient targets should be grad students in cogsci and related fields. But as Jeff mentions, experts is a loose term that involves anyone who has spent a decent amount of time (i.e. an amount of time that is comparable to a full time job and not to reading a few articles) studying and reflecting on cognition, either as a researcher, clinician, applier-of-cogsci, or other role
@BenBrocka I would like to note that a degree in psychology is not a definition of expert. There are plenty of experts who don't have degrees in psychology, and at many universities psychology is the most popular or second most popular major. All the students that graduate with a psychology undergrad degree are not experts. Some definitely are, but it is not having the undergrad degree that defines their expertise, but the amount of time they spent researching, learning and reflecting on cognition
Hmmm .. there is a Psychology club house in my hometown where I sometimes go to drink a beer and play table football. I could ask whether I'd be allowed to put up some posters.
I don't have the time to create a poster myself now. But I'm pretty sure somewhere within the next month I'll go there once and I could print a few myself if somebody would send me a design.
@BenBrocka you are building a straw man. Nobody said the user was awful, people just said the question was bad. It is definitely the case that sometimes good users will ask bad questions. As for citing a research paper: everyone knows how to use google scholar, so that by itself should not be taken as evidence of knowledge. To me, that user displayed their chops much more in the last paragraph where they identified a common misconception practitioners often have.
@ArtemKaznatcheev I think a healthy site needs those people for sure, as core answerers but I find a site most useful if askers are of every skill level
@BenBrocka I have never said to a new user that "they are bad because they read a popular science article", my anti pop-sci sentiments have only been expressed on meta and chat to other regular users. Please don't misrepresent my actions. If I have told a new user that their question is "bad because they read a popular article" then can you please link me to such an example so that I can go and apologize?
@StevenJeuris I really should have said something like "so that someone can learn something from the question", it is unreasonable to expect a question to teach everyone something
> I included point 1 as evidence of a 'good' question, if you lack point one, it doesn't make you a 'bad' question... but probably just an average question. For me, good questions are something to aspire to. But maybe I should rephrase point 1 as more optional. However, I think it is possible to learn a little something from every question. – Artem Kaznatcheev 57 mins ago
@BenBrocka I don't consider it a necessary quality, will try to make that more clear in my answer, and maybe separate the 'initial research' and 'something new' part... since it is really the initial research part that I find much more important... but I feel like all 4 points are asking for initial research in 4 different ways.
@ArtemKaznatcheev Aha, it didn't come across as such. I believe you almost made it through the chat history. It's definitely more waffles and unicorns from thereon.
@BenBrocka okay, then we disagree on this point. I think there has to be a lower bar somewhere. Note that this bar is not defined in terms of topics, but in terms of how the user asks their question. Most questions can be asked at the level (2) if not level (3), as long as the user takes a little bit of time to try to answer their own question before asking it.
I don't consider a research-oriented audience a worthy goal right now. We're simply not seeing the growth in that area, instead we're discouraging otherwise acceptable questions
We need to actually grow before we can be picky about that. If it's constructive and answerable it should stay
@ArtemKaznatcheev yeah, there are definitely some questions and answers that don't take the site/topic quite seriously, which is definitely grounds for a downvote in many of these cases, or a close vote for the answers
@StevenJeuris yeah, I am usually more sparing with my downvotes for answers. I usually only downvote it the answer is just plain wrong, while for questions I downvote based on tone, too
@ArtemKaznatcheev the rep hit hurts psychologically, but it's pretty minor yet important to maintaining the quality and sorting order of answers, so don't be afraid to downvote
While searching for similar topics I found several discussions which mainly discuss whether or not to downvote in a particular situation. Usually I agree with the accepted answers. It seems to some extent the opinions on meta on when to downvote on other SE sites are in line.
There are little p...
This should perhaps be a comment, but I don't have the reputation. The other two answers mention that a major drawback to the Bayesian approach is its lack of biological plausibility. However, see for instance:
Bayesian inference with probabilistic population codes
Ma, W.J. and Beck, J.M...
For me, these are the qualities of a good question.
Reading the question teaches me something. A good question is interesting, an interesting question is one that educates me even when I don't know the answer. Take the time to formulate your question with enough initial research such that a non...
While searching for similar topics I found several discussions which mainly discuss whether or not to downvote in a particular situation. Usually I agree with the accepted answers. It seems to some extent the opinions on meta on when to downvote on other SE sites are in line.
There are little p...
The Axon Terminal
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