The Classroom

Peter

12:01 AM

true, but is that less valid than an edit to an answer, possibly just for a bump?

(I ask rhetorically)

Parenting duty calls...I'll be on/off for a bit

heather

welp, i've posted my self-nomination for modship.

here's a thought - what do you think of replacing layperson with general-public?

Ben I.

general-public doesn't indicate a non-specialist

Gypsy Spellweaver

I'm of mixed views on the two questions under that tag.

heather

@BenI. you don't think so?

Gypsy Spellweaver

The "to my parents" seems off-topic to begin with. The "elevator pitch" seems off-topic as is, but could be made to fit in "engagement".

Ben I.

12:17 AM

The only reason I can't imagine closing the "elevator pitch" one is because I have to use that literally dozens of times a year at my job

The students don't know what the difference is, the parents don't know what the difference is, the administrators don't know what the difference is, my coworkers don't know... etc, etc, etc.

It could be, though, that I'm responding to my professional need here, and projecting that onto the question, even though the question itself is poorly phrased

Gypsy Spellweaver

I like that question for a different purpose. We can adapt it to our elevator pitch for the site too.

Maybe @BenI. can fix it. I like the story beginning, even though it's not needed. But the final question could be helped some.

heather

well, to be honest, @Gypsy, I think both questions are on-topic - teaching computer science doesn't always mean doing so in the classroom.

Ben I.

@GypsySpellweaver I didn't understand this comment

Gypsy Spellweaver

I was thinking you could rephrase the question to make it "cleaner", without loosing the context. Just because I like the story at the beginning.

Henry WH Hack v2.0

1:00 AM

@GypsySpellweaver Are you in?

Gypsy Spellweaver

briefly

Henry WH Hack v2.0

Ok

@GypsySpellweaver meet me in:

♦

Ben I.

1:30 AM

@GypsySpellweaver I keep looking at it, but it would have to be a whole fictitious new backstory.

What's getting me is that the question, which is probably off-topic, guarantees answers that are on-topic

Gypsy Spellweaver

The backstory is just what brought the question to mind. Not important to the question, and technically "noise"

The question, if worded correctly, is on-topic, as it's part and parcel of being a CS educator

Just as much as student motivation is.

CS education covers two topics, CS and Education.

Ben I.

Do you want to try your hand at it?

Gypsy Spellweaver

Not I :{ I'm too long out of the arena to do it justice.

Applied communications were always my worst subjects.

Ben I.

1:49 AM

If I left the question exactly as is, but changed the title to "How can I explain what computer science is to a layperson?" would that be better?

I did the change and left a note that OP could roll back

thesecretmaster

Thoughts on retagging + synonymizing layperson to introductory-lesson?

Ben I.

orthogonally related?

laypeople get bite-sized summaries. There's no attempt to pull them deeply in - just a quick surface skim to explain what ___ is

thesecretmaster

2:05 AM

But it is an introductory lesson, just more casually

Oh, I just saw the whole conversation from earlier. Hold on, let me read

Gypsy Spellweaver

I have my own definition of Java on my system. :)

Ben I.

I love coffee.

Gypsy Spellweaver

Save trips to the kitchen and recycles the heat from the PSU

thesecretmaster

Also, did this ever get done? -

6

Q: Retagging: Coding style? Conventions? Practices?

Tag proposal number 2: Merge code-style and coding-conventions into coding-style Upvote if you agree, downvote if you disagree, or answer if there are additional considerations.

Oh, wait that's a "lets do it with mods" thing

The +6 means we should definitely do it.

Gypsy Spellweaver

The synonymisation has to wait for mods, or for users with high score in the applicable tags

Ben I.

2:22 AM

@GypsySpellweaver are you a freelance developer?

Gypsy Spellweaver

Among other things. Mostly inactive ATM and doing in-home caregiver.

Ben I.

Do you do web development? (And are you familiar with laravel?)

Gypsy Spellweaver

Yes, and No.

Ben I.

In-house caregiver. Whew. That's God's work right there. I already admire you for that greatly.

Gypsy Spellweaver

Almost everything I do is by hand.

Ben I.

2:25 AM

No MVC stuff?

Gypsy Spellweaver

Years ago I played with some IDEs and WYSIWYG editors. Always end up back in text editors.

MVC is Jave/C++ related?

Ben I.

No, model-view-controller

Gypsy Spellweaver

HTML-CSS-JS

If you follow best practices anyway

Ben I.

It's a paradigm for sequestering web views (user displays/interfaces) from operational logic from databases

Gypsy Spellweaver

That's been my standard paradigm. Modularity is king.

Ben I.

2:28 AM

There are many published libraries that can run a site via mvc logic. My company uses laravel

(my second job) :P

Gypsy Spellweaver

I've wanted to investigate some CMS projects, but haven't had the proper motivation yet.

thesecretmaster

2:49 AM

If you want to learn sinatra/rails (ruby) just ask, I'd be happy to show you.

thesecretmaster

3:16 AM

Well, goodnight all

Gypsy Spellweaver

night

Any active educators still awake in here?

Itamar Green

4:50 AM

Soy

(I am, in Spanish)

Gypsy Spellweaver

Can you give me a simplified run down of what is basically covered by "best practices" for educators?

Scratch thaat.

Itamar Green

Ok

Gypsy Spellweaver

Let me formulate an "is this covered" instead.

Itamar Green

I have a post of mine that I need to add introductory-lesson to. XD

Mischief managed.

Gypsy Spellweaver

When teaching a subject, there are points that need to be grasped before advancing to more. Making sure students do grasp that seems critical. Does best practices cover the idea of verifying that they do, in fact, have it or else finding a new way to present it?

Itamar Green

4:55 AM

In part

Gypsy Spellweaver

@ItamarGreen Didn't know we had a Marauder's Map in here.

Itamar Green

Best practices deals with the best way to handle various situations. Such as assessing skills, making sure students know the material etc.

Gypsy Spellweaver

On Q on the site makes me suspect that best-practices ought to be added to it.

Itamar Green

@GypsySpellweaver happy someone got the reference (*)...

@GypsySpellweaver which question?

Gypsy Spellweaver

6

Q: What makes imperative programming easier or harder to learn?

In my experience, people who have programmed before, whether they're professional or not, almost always consider imperative programming to be obvious. They're usually skeptical that a concept such as variable assignment could be difficult to learn. On the other hand, in my limited experience (te...

introductory-programming imperative-programming

Seems that if "many students struggle with the concept" it's time to find a new method of explaining it.

Itamar Green

4:59 AM

Yes. I'll look at the question on my laptop. One moment

Ok. I read the question...

Yeah, I guess best-practices fits there...

[tag-info:best-practices]. (nope, didn't work. shame)

Gypsy Spellweaver

Don't fix it yet, it's on the list for the general attack

What were you trying to do?

Itamar Green

I know. I like that you called it general attack.

@GypsySpellweaver I was hoping I can link to the tag info. I wish that were possible.

Gypsy Spellweaver

I'm crawling through the list and compiling a list of suggestoins

Itamar Green

which list?

almost 1200 users, and we passed the 500 visits\day

Gypsy Spellweaver

Main site questions tagged introductory-programming all 34 of them

cseducators.stackexchange.com/tags/introductory-programming/…

Itamar Green

5:49 AM

2 suggested edits which I can't review, since they're mine XD

Gypsy Spellweaver

hold that thought

Itamar Green

XD

ok. just wait, 2 more are incoming soon.

Gypsy Spellweaver

I don't see them.

Itamar Green

ohhhh. They're tag wikis. I forgot. Sorry :(

Gypsy Spellweaver

You're at >1K, they just happen :D

Oh, wiki I don't think I can review yet.

Itamar Green

5:55 AM

but that's not too far. answer some questions, ask some more, you know. the regular stuff ;)

Gypsy Spellweaver

That comes at 1.5K rep. I got a ways to go for that. Guess it'll have to wait for the power users to return.

Itamar Green

Well, Ben usually goes online at about 1 pm (which is 4 hours-ish)

Gypsy Spellweaver

Don't you just love timezones?

Itamar Green

no. I am starting to think they're obsolete.

Gypsy Spellweaver

Only if everyone uses the same clock will they be obsolete.

Itamar Green

6:00 AM

So is daytime saving.... With electricity everywhere*, it's not as important.



*not everywhere, but mostly everywhere

Gypsy Spellweaver

Then who decides which "clock" to use

Itamar Green

~\(o,o)/~

oh god. I needed a `\` escape here.

Gypsy Spellweaver

Did you realise that in China, which covers 5 timezones geographically, there is only one timezone?

Now that's some messed up schedules for the farmers.

Sunrise at 3AM O_o

Itamar Green

oh my. That does sound unpleasant.

XD

Gypsy Spellweaver

There be some unpleasant peasants there.

Itamar Green

6:06 AM

well played, pal. perhaps partake in a plan to prepare plentifully alliterative posts?

Gypsy Spellweaver

If the globe goes to UTC, then you'd have sunrise, on average, at around 10AM

Itamar Green

I'm ok with that.

Gypsy Spellweaver

_There be some peasants that be some unpleasant there._
Better?

Itamar Green

Not sure I understand what you mean... I'm trying to review suggested edits on SO. there are 9k close votes. Dammit...

Gypsy Spellweaver

Sounds like some work for you, and the rest of the SO army.

Itamar Green

6:10 AM

yep

Itamar Green

6:28 AM

Hi @thesecretmaster how're you?

Gilles

7:01 AM

@EllenSpertus But how meaningful is it to someone at another college? in another country?

This warrants a meta discussion, but my gut feeling is that these tags are too ambiguous to be useful: different usanians would put different material in them, and non-usanians would have no idea what they mean.

Gypsy Spellweaver

@Gilles I've been grinding that one in my brain for a bit.

While it does provide some framework, even if rather lax by their own admission, it might be useful.

It would, however, require a good wiki on what CSx is supposed to cover. As should, I think AP-CS* which suffers from the same "localization."

Itamar Green

this brings to life Peter's question in meta

about which standards we'll work by.

Gypsy Spellweaver

In a round-about way, yes. I think picking any formal body outside of CSE to determine what CS is in our context would be a mistake. Yet, we do need some kind of line in the sand for our own version of "on-topic".

Itamar Green

Yes.

Maybe we should define it in a meta discussion. Now that we are 1 month old, we might be able to start such a discussion, and actually have it lead to a useful conclusion.

Gypsy Spellweaver

7:18 AM

In addition, "what is CS" is only part of our on-topic list. There's also best practices, which impact CS educators, but are not actually CS in themselves.

Itamar Green

like your answer said. It's Computer Science, AND Educators...

Gypsy Spellweaver

I don't think a meta discussion, or a chat discussion, will - or should - reach a definitive conclusion, even with consensus. A better approach is to allow it to be organic, and deal with edge cases as they appear, on a case-by-case basis. Hoping to establish a trail of precedent for the future.

To pull one from our short history: online saftey.

Itamar Green

I didn't say definitive.

Useful things can be a plan of action to dealing with edge cases. A sort of "generification".

like a list of things to check about a question that borders on the topic. For example: Checking if there's a question already on the site that covers any intersecting grounds. While the site is small, this is a possible thing to do.

Gypsy Spellweaver

BTW, just a note about self: I love what I call "pathological edge cases" which makes me a good code tester, not so good at definition of things.

Itamar Green

But your views definitely help others think of definitions. (Just like a few of your meta posts).

Gypsy Spellweaver

7:24 AM

Part of why I avoid meta answers when I can use comments. XD

Though I'm about to post a whale of my own soon.

Itamar Green

I look forward to reading it :P

8

Q: Explaining basic html structure

I am trying to think of a lesson plan about html, and I am looking for a good way to explain the concept of the structure of an html file. I was thinking if the subject would be better understood if firstly xml was described in general. What I had in mind is teaching a basic xml block: <rootEle...

introductory-programming html front-end xml

Gypsy Spellweaver

That's on my list.

Itamar Green

my old question fits perfectly for retagging to introductory-lesson...

I mean, It's precisely what I mean. A lesson to introduce the subject.

Gypsy Spellweaver

Here's what my notes have for that one: Not sure that front-end belongs here either, it really is about teaching HTML. lesson-ideas might apply to. This is one of the few candidates for the proposed introductory-lesson tag

Itamar Green

I have no idea why front-end was put there.

Gypsy Spellweaver

7:28 AM

I didn't do it.

Itamar Green

rolled back and redid recent edits.

also gave it some publicity ;)

Gypsy Spellweaver

Notes fixed, answer posted. Let the games begin. :)

Itamar Green

Did you see Heather nominated himself? It's great to have active and confident users, who really want to help.

Mind if I make it more organized and maybe easier to read? (not content changes, just formatting)

Gypsy Spellweaver

Go for it. And I voted her up already.

Itamar Green

her? Oops.

It's not a common name where I live, so I had no idea...

Gypsy Spellweaver

7:36 AM

Well, the name is female, normally, in USA. That's where "she" is from, so I presumed that is the case. Never any guarantees online however.

Itamar Green

then there's this

Gypsy Spellweaver

Precisely so

That's ok, until the name change I thought Choirbean was a lady. Not so sure his wife would like that.

Itamar Green

XD

I am specifying how many answers each question received. (As well as the suggestion you wrote for each question)

Do you think that's good?

Gypsy Spellweaver

7:54 AM

Could be, especially if the answer(s) address introductory programming head on. Or somehow affect potential tag choices.

Itamar Green

Well, I didn't differentiate. I have it ready. I'll edit, and you can simply rollback if you disagree :P

Gypsy Spellweaver

You can also add in your own notes and ideas.

This is meta, no rep involved, just keeping our garden pretty.

Itamar Green

And well looked after, and on topic, and well tagged. But yes, keeping it pretty XD

Gypsy Spellweaver

@ItamarGreen Did you say you were a desktop publisher?

CS Educators Meta

1

Q: What is the [student-motivation] for real [engagement]?

I realize that getting the students motivated to learn the subject is often a problem. Even more so when sections of the class can become dry. Students who rapidly grasp some of the concepts can be especially challenging to keep motivated as well. It seems that a common technique is to get the st...

discussion retagging

Gypsy Spellweaver

8:06 AM

I didn't anticipate that ^^^

Itamar Green

No? What's that?...

But it's good. Anyone who comes to the chat will be drawn to look at that massive summary of the problem.

Gypsy Spellweaver

Desktop publishing is using the computer to generate publications, without going through other channels, like editors and typesetters. Computer to press.

Your mods to the post make it look like I know what I'm doing.

Itamar Green

oh. I used n++... But yes, I have some experience with Lyx, LaTex and writing lab reports, which look like scientific publications... So not exactly desktop publishing, but I know my formatting ;)

Gypsy Spellweaver

The post we've created was the white whale, this one the feed just gave us is the red herring.

Itamar Green

Although I am nowhere near as good as a friend of mine. He can make the most boring text look interesting.

Gypsy Spellweaver

8:10 AM

n++? as in Notepad ++? That was my goto editor in my Windows environment

Itamar Green

Yep.

Gypsy Spellweaver

Now I use kate (KDE Advanced Text Editor) which is nearly the same functionally to n++ for my use cases.

Itamar Green

we need more NHQs. We have ~2 now... Although Ben's question got 10k views, which is very neat.

Gypsy Spellweaver

HNQs will happen organically as people respond to what they see. I think we've done quite well for the new kid on the block!

I guess it's all about engagement :)

Itamar Green

I see what you did there. Very nice.

Gypsy Spellweaver

8:18 AM

Q: I'm most experienced on Super User, but on other sites is it fairly common for retag and tag edit requests to be cheeky?

Itamar Green

depends.

on SO, a wrong retag is treated brutally. I'm not sure I understand what you mean by tag edits. Wiki changes?

Gypsy Spellweaver

Our meta posts regarding tag edits and retagging. The titles are slightly humorous in nature.

Itamar Green

oh. Now I get what you're asking. Silly me.

Gypsy Spellweaver

Is that semi-normal in SE, or just on limited sites? I suspect some of the stodgier sites might frown on it, i.e. English Language & Usage.

Itamar Green

It's lovely. Meta is about the site. A meta filled with humor reflects a healthy site, I think... Users are more focused on building the site, rather than on inter-use competition...

Well, it goes back to "you get the site you build"

Gypsy Spellweaver

8:23 AM

I sort of encouraged the "flavor" of the retag request titles with Ben and didn't want to be going to far out of bounds in doing so.

Super User is the only site where I've had much meta activity and that could have been a poor influence on me.

Itamar Green

10:01 AM

Ok, I think there's a new interesting question, site-scope-wise

thesecretmaster

10:21 AM

Hello world

@GypsySpellweaver I'm reading through your meta list now. For 1, I think the edits you propose would be good, but they certainly deviate from the askers intent.

For 3, grammar

Gypsy Spellweaver

If we're killing the intro-programming tag, what else can we do?

thesecretmaster

Remove introductory programming from the Q without editing it

Itamar Green

Some questions only have that tag

And some questions need a tag that puts them in the category of teaching something new to people.

thesecretmaster

Then retag, but don't edit the body

I'm all for retagging all the things. I'm not so sure about editing the body of the question, especially if it would make answers seem less relevant and deviate from the authors intent.

Gypsy Spellweaver

None of my proposed edit touch the question, only the tags.

well, maybe one, not sure

thesecretmaster

10:32 AM

Yeah, the first one

Gypsy Spellweaver

the first one i don't suggest an edit, but do suggest that it should be edited.

Itamar Green

By op?

thesecretmaster

Wat?

Itamar Green

He's not saying how it should be edited, only points out what should be edited.

thesecretmaster

7 is weird. Maybe add code-quality?

None of the ones it has fit

Gypsy Spellweaver

10:35 AM

On that question, actually , I suggested how we should answer it, not changing the question.

thesecretmaster

@ItamarGreen Yeah, I still don't think the body should be edited

For 8, I don't see why we'd add differentiation

Itamar Green

@GypsySpellweaver I suggest pointing that out in your answer.

Gypsy Spellweaver

On #1 we can't edit it, and remain true to the question. I do think that it needs to be edited by the OP however

Itamar Green

@thesecretmaster seconded.

Gypsy Spellweaver

It feels like an X-Y problem

Itamar Green

10:37 AM

@GypsySpellweaver ok, great. Then for that one I think we ought to wait for Ben and Peter and others who may want to share their thoughts.

thesecretmaster

It is, but we can't just edit. We need OP to edit

Gypsy Spellweaver

1 min ago, by Gypsy Spellweaver

On #1 we can't edit it, and remain true to the question. I do think that it needs to be edited by the OP however

Itamar Green

We need a way to go one by one.

thesecretmaster

Lets do 4 a day. Every morning we can discuss 4 then retag them.

Gypsy Spellweaver

Let's wait for a while to gather more input.

Ben and Peter and Ellen all are active on the site, and in the classroom, so they can point out my errors and make corrections.

Itamar Green

10:40 AM

Let's do both. Some are easier to fix than others. We could start with those, going from old to new.

thesecretmaster

But lets wait first

Gypsy Spellweaver

Such as #8 with differentiation

Itamar Green

@thesecretmaster We won't be starting until we have agreement on how we want to do this purge.

Ben I.

I've been trying to catch up on the site for the last 30 minutes - I'm not even up to this meta discussion yet.

Gypsy Spellweaver

A couple days one way or the other won't make much difference

Ben I.

10:42 AM

But I was thinking that we might benefit from a shared google sheet

Itamar Green

YES

I was thinking about the same.

Gypsy Spellweaver

Or community wiki on one of the answers, and use that

Itamar Green

Shall I make one?

@GypsySpellweaver It's difficult to organize what we want for each one specifically when they're all on one page.

Gypsy Spellweaver

Do you have a google account that's clear to expose to this?

thesecretmaster

Let's do a community wiki. SE would want this on site

Itamar Green

10:43 AM

Yes...

Gypsy Spellweaver

If a google sheet is used, link to it from meta, and be ready to keep it live for a long time!

thesecretmaster

But what if e.g. someone deletes their account?

Ben I.

@Peter Congratulations on 3k!

@GypsySpellweaver When we're done with all of the activity on the sheet in a month or so, we can create some kind of archival version

thesecretmaster

Oh, true. Let's do that.

Itamar Green

@GypsySpellweaver some sites use sheets for this. Many do, I think. I remember seeing links in meta discussions on quite a few. Might be imagining it, but still...

So should I create one?

Ben I.

10:46 AM

I've also seen this before

thesecretmaster

No, you're not. It's definitely a thing. Let's also coordinate the effort in a separate room though.

Gypsy Spellweaver

They do. Had one for Super User once. And it's still live, even though it's been final for a couple months

Itamar Green

yay! so I'm not hallucinating!

I'm creating one now... Train internet is slow

Gypsy Spellweaver

Monster it was too, something like 700-800 posts to edit.

Itamar Green

Oh I remember you showed it to me. Wow that was a well organized "attack"

Gypsy Spellweaver

10:49 AM

It was needed. Was also the "trial by fire" for the freshly minted mod :D

It's 857 edits long.

Itamar Green

Ok. So now I'm putting the 34 questions (as they are listed in Gypsy's answer) into the sheet.

thesecretmaster

Link?

Ben I.

I'll be back in about an hour

Gypsy Spellweaver

@BenI. In my answer, there are a few that might benefit from best-practices That's something you and Peter and Ellen can weigh in on.

Ben I.

@GypsySpellweaver Ok :)

Gypsy Spellweaver

10:55 AM

^\o/^

Alfred Thompson has joined the site!

Itamar Green

docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/…

@GypsySpellweaver Yay!

I hope that worked.

Gypsy Spellweaver

@ItamarGreen You need to make it public

Itamar Green

docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/…

now I think that should work

Gypsy Spellweaver

I get the sheet, It has a name, but no data?

thesecretmaster

Yeah, that's what I see

Itamar Green

11:02 AM

Slow internet again.

I'll format them into columns.

Could someone check the tags questions have?

Gypsy Spellweaver

Time for me to take a break, do dishes, then wake the lady for a doctor's trip.

I see you editing it though, so all is good there.

Itamar Green

Ok, See you later

:P

thesecretmaster

11:19 AM

intoductory-programming cleanup!

A room for us to coordinate the cleanup of the introductory pr...

Itamar Green

Good idea

Ben I.

12:22 PM

I can't ping Quid from matheducators

But I remember that he was in this room before

@Quid Could we ask you a question?

Is there a time limit on pinging?

Gypsy Spellweaver

Yes

approx 15 min after avatar leaves the room

Ben I.

But I can still ping Peter

I can't even find the matheducators room again :P

I will favorite it if I can find it

Found it!

That is not an active room.

thesecretmaster

It's anyone who's spoken in the room AFAIK

Ben I.

I've found out

It's anyone who has spoken in the last 2 days

But you can ping someone with a message reply indefinitely

Gypsy Spellweaver

12:40 PM

That was nice of user Martin to have that link handy :)

Ben I.

It really was :)

In the last 10 minutes, my laptop died. I've been trying to resucitate it

I wanted to ask Quid what he would do with cseducators.stackexchange.com/questions/948/…

Gypsy Spellweaver

Well, what do you think ought to be done with it?

Uh oh, The master of the sheet has returned :}

Itamar Green

XD

but not for long. I have to work on something :(

Ben I.

1:03 PM

I can't get my laptop up :(

I only have my cellphone :/

Gypsy Spellweaver

Drop kick it and try again.

jk

Ben I.

1:20 PM

I'm pretty sure it's the charger. I'm seeing if anyone else in my school building has the same charger :)

thesecretmaster

2:32 PM

Don't we dislike list questions?

Gypsy Spellweaver

usually

thesecretmaster

The linked question is literally "List university name + language"

Gypsy Spellweaver

VC and move on

thesecretmaster

As what though

Too broad?

Gypsy Spellweaver

bingo

thesecretmaster

2:38 PM

But it's not "Asking multiple questions at once"

Gypsy Spellweaver

can't get much broader than that

So broad that there is no right answer.

thesecretmaster

I guess it doesn't have "an adequate answer."

It has multiple answers

OK

Gypsy Spellweaver

which answer gets accepted? the longest list?

thesecretmaster

Yeah, I see. I left a comment though

Should we allow programming questions? This question is really a question about "How can I avoid this error" wrapped in "How can I teach my students to avoid this error".

Gypsy Spellweaver

1

A: Concurrent databases

MySQL like all full DB systems supports lots of concurrent operations, within normal transactional and locking restrictions. You're best off solving your particular problem by asking a question on stack overflow. I think you shouldn't set students the task of managing queueing etc. The complexi...

thesecretmaster

2:44 PM

Yeah, that one

Itamar Green

3:55 PM

I think I'll delete that question. It isn't worded correctly, and I'm not sure how to correct it. It's not that relevant, either

Ben I.

4:23 PM

Do deleted questions count towards our A5 1st question total?

thesecretmaster

No? I think it should be closed as a landmark

quid

Hello @BenI. I saw you message in MESE chat. How can I help?

Ben I.

4:38 PM

Hey quid!

I wanted your advice, because matheducators is our closest sister site :)

How would you folks deal with a question like this:

1

Q: Overcoming a friend's self-discouragement

I have had this problem myself: Before I turned 19 and just kind of... fell into coding, I used to think programming is something incredibly hard that only child prodigies and people with a 160+IQ could do (a view often reinforced by Hollywood stereotypes) and that I just wasn't smart enough. S...

introductory-programming layperson

I dislike the question because I disagree, in principle, with working against people's will in general, but I'm trying to put my distaste aside. Does it belong on an educator's SE?

(And thank you for being willing to come out here! Your wisdom is always appreciated)

quid

Question on how to make students do one thing or another are on-topic on MESE, especially if they are not motivated or are anxious to do it; we even have a tag anxiety

Ben I.

Oh, interesting.

quid

The specific question is a bit conversational for my taste, and it is not really in a student - instructor relation it seems.

Ben I.

That's a good tag, too.

quid

The latter is not a problem in itself, though it might play a role.

For the former, on the one hand it adds some context, on the other hand it can be a distraction.

I might try to take out some of the back ground story, and focus the question a bit.

Ben I.

4:51 PM

What do you think would happen to it if it had been on matheducators?

(assuming it had been a math question instead of a CS question)

quid

Maybe somebody would have raised an objection along the lines I described, but overall I think the question would be welcome.

Ben I.

Ok

Thank you!

quid

One might also object it is "too broad". However, in my opinion it is important to recognize that "too broad" is a notion relative to the size of the site. On a small site broad-ish question work better.

Ben I.

Why is that?

quid

There are just much fewer people around to chime in. The issue that there could be tens or even hundreds of answers just does not really exist.

Ben I.

5:00 PM

That makes sense, and jives well with what I've been seeing on our site

quid

Still for this specific question some clarification might be good "What tools are there to show her it is much easier than it looks at a glance?" is just pretty vague. They might try to identify what they feel makes it look hard at a glance.

I think different people might find different aspects make it look hard.

What they have in mind specifically could be useful to know.

Ben I.

I'm running to lunch. Thank you again for coming out here to answer my questions :) I really appreciate it!!!!!

Itamar Green

5:31 PM

I think I will delete the question. It doesn't actually put to words what I wanted to ask, and I haven't been able to find any better phrasing that could work.

Ben I.

We crossed the 500 visits/day threshold. We're now officially up to "needs some work"!! :D

thesecretmaster

Woooo! Yay work! Work is fun!

Aurora0001

Congratulations on 3.5k, @BenI. You have protection privileges now right?

And congratulations to @Peter on 3k

Henry WH Hack v2.0

I want to get moderator privileges.

Although the protection priv is a moderator priv

I mean diamond moderator privs.

Aurora0001

Oh, and for what it's worth with the cs0 and cs1 tag proposals: both mean very little to me as someone not involved in the US education system; seems quite US-centric to me. Just something to think about

Ben I.

5:56 PM

Are they US centric? I don't know enough about them to know whether that's true or not.

Also, would US-centric necessarily mean the tag was a bad idea? (Honest question)

Aurora0001

I'm not particularly involved with CS at degree level, but I've never heard of the terms and googling turns up not that much, which seems problematic

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