Hey, what is this Review thing that showed up on Buddhism? Approve suggested edits? I have never seen that before...
Wow, other people's money, er, posts...
See? Our highest voted are higher than Buddhism, and we've been here a month, and Buddhism over 3 years. More views in general, too.
@GypsySpellweaver my comment earlier today of "there are no variables in nature" meant: no things that you can simply modify by fiat. I can't change te number of petals in a petunia, or adjust how tall the grass grows. Things change and vary, but there is no control mechanism, it is just cause and effect.
When you say there are variables i things like the position of the sun in te sky, you mean that we can model the position of the sun in the sky. We can construct a program that has variables. So, normal people have no notion of a way to change or control anything using something like assignment. Assignment does not exist except in programming.
That is why computers are radically different than any other thing in the universe!
Mutation is the most mysterious thing that humans have ever invented.
I was wondering if the Bioinformatics SE is a good place to post questions relating to the process of research in bioinformatics.
Example:
What is the proper way to format a PK/PD model for a published report?
Question:
Is it okay to ask questions relating to being a bioinformatician,...
I have gotten a few up votes on a question that was voted closed. If a question is closed, can votes on it still be taken and points given? Or is this a bug?
I think Rear Admiral Grace Hopper is perhaps the easiest to explain to new students, and to tie in with an important advancement in computer science.
I try to discuss the transition from early programming in machine language to programming in higher level languages. I'll usually show the student...
Motion to move this line: "If this is your very first time here, a tour of our site is bound to be useful." from the faq meta post, to the almost top of the faq?
Say I have a control panel for something. It has different modules in it, each defining its own controls via the returned struct in the factory method.
e.g. a background module for the controls for the background of the page
and then some other module creates the actual html for displaying the various controls
just by assuming that every control is a button, and adds a textarea to every control, unless its method (set has the setColor method, which has an argument) has no arguments.
how can I make it so that each module defines what kind of control each input (each parameter in the return) is
I might as well as on SO... first: it's time to google
You're not helping me here. Is the example you gave one that might appear? Can you show me one that actually DID appear. A simple linear recursion is pretty easy to trace, but if it interacts with other language features (Ackermann) it gets weird pretty fast.
I would think that a more realistic case for a professional programmer would be one that also comes with some hint about intent of the code, not just a blind trace of code that has no documentation, internal or external.
However, if you do things like this in class to give a general strategy of attack on such things it might be more reasonable. But a working programmer wouldn't try to do it on paper, but with a few trial executions followed by a test or two to confirm assumptions about intent.
There are two questions here, not one. (1) what the devil does this do? and (2) how does it do it? By mixing them you will lead some students into wasting time on the wrong thing. You asked the question focused on (2), but without an answer to (1) I'm really just a human "computer" moving bits with no comprehension. So it gives me little insight into (2).
So, I think that some students will do poorly here because of the structure of the question, not the state of their understanding.
There is a term of art that I can't remember for a question that the best students tend to do worse on than the poorer-overall-performing ones do.
@ItamarG3 If you teach that specific skill then it may test their grokking of that skill, but I question whether it teaches them much about recursion - especially how to write good recursive code. I gave an answer to some question the other day that I think would give a better understanding. I'll go search for it now.
TL;DR Build a world, let the students program in that world.
This is largely a history lesson which, at the end, will give hints about how to teach students to become effective in a modern OOP language quickly.
A deeper principle than Higher to Lower abstraction, however, is the principle of ...
Just something I was thinking about from our voting debate: Vote for the post, not the user. New users should be judged on the same scale as any of us.
Also, I was just thinking about how I vote, and here's a summary: +1 if it's high quality and I agree with it or if it's super high quality and I disagree, 0 if it's OK, -1 if it's low quality. My standard for OK is pretty high though.
But I also think some of the new user resources could be better used, which I'm working on a meta about.
@thesecretmaster I agree, and not. New users are often confused for a while. The training wheels are hard to find. I think we need to be a bit forgiving initially and provide guidance for improvement. OTOH drive-by posters are harder to reach and are unlikely to become better citizens in future.
@thesecretmaster Is there a mechanism that can be applied to someone initially joining a given community to be sent immediately to a learning resource, including this one?
I would wait for several hours before downvoting a total newbie (rep 1). Getting a series of downvotes and comments is overwhelming. Give someone -3 within an hour and two comments suggesting improvements, and I don't care what the potential of the person is, there is almost no way that they're not quitting the site immediately.
I'd be slightly more open to DV'ing a 101, particularly if they have >1k on some other site, because then they presumably understand the system better.
We have to be very careful about chasing people away. In this regard, we will always be fundamentally different from SO for a few structural reasons
First, there are not that many people who constitute our core audience. In the US, I would be surprised if there were 10k people altogether.
Second, no one is coming here with a problem that they are desperate to solve, where they feel like their job or their grades (and thus career prospects) are on the line. In SO, the posters often need the answers.
Here, they come for Professional Development, to expand their practice, to tweak and improve.
If we're not a welcoming community to those actual professionals who are looking to improve, we may as well pack up the site and go home.
@BenI. however, this is what it should become. I ask and answer pretty often in an attempt to change how people teach. But I'd guess you recognize that already.
@Buffy SO, CS, Physics, and many of the other sites get people who are in total panic. Fight-or-flight, must get this answer or I will fail this class. They want narrow answers, and they need them now. They will tolerate downvoting and stick around because they feel like their lives are effectively on the line. I don't think we're ever going to get that. People come because they want to improve. If we make them feel terrible at the start, they will simply seek elsewhere.
I'd love to have a new poster get three comments that say, "Welcome to the community! Come to the chat and introduce yourself! We'll help you learn the ropes here."
Let's overwhelm them with that idea instead of repeatedly reaching for the spray bottle :)
Close a question as fast as possible, let it be known that there's a problem, and respond with help and welcome.
If they don't respond, then at some point (maybe a day or two later) we can delete the answer or question.
I'm going to convert my little soapbox speech there into a meta, so people can dv/disagree/respond. But this feels like a key point of discussion for the site overall, even if I turn out to be dead wrong.
A moratorium on dvs for a period of a few hours, even for a full day, should have absolutely no negative impacts on quality in the long term. There are no broken windows. Bad answers still get dv'd or deleted.
Also, no moratorium on closing questions... that should happen as fast as humanly possible.
@BenI. The system does give us a nice helping hand there. Closed questions are listed as "On Hold" at first. That, coupled with offers of help, lends itself to the welcome impression more that a flat "Closed" notice would do. In line with that, I'd suggest that when we make a comment about "I'm voting to close as too broad", we change our habit to "I'm voting to put this on hold as too broad". Of course the reasons change, but it's the switch in verb that I'm targeting here.
@BenI. i'm afraid i do instinctively dislike the conclusion. i don't think that the difference you've drawn between ex physics and cse isn't really as big as you think it is. i'm not suggesting we shame users, but downvotes aren't about shame. they're about clearing junk off the front page, cleaning up the site, and showing which answer is best - delaying votes literally breaks how SE works.
@BenI. I really disagree. 1) Votes lock in. 2) If a question is +2, 99% of the time it will never get downvoted, and upvoted stuff is harder to reasonably delete.
think of it this way: imagine a troll came on, and posted some non-offensive junk. your rule would have us not downvote for x period of time. some expert/*useful* new user comes on, looks at the question, sees that we haven't downvoted junk, and blows the site off.
@BenI. edit to clean up the answer, downvote, invite her into the chat with a welcoming comment, etc.
She goes through the actual process of making an account to share her resource, and then she posts a single-link answer with about 5 other words. So, from her perspective, she has done something helpful (and gone rather out of her way to do it)
@BenI. except that's not what happens. she gets a downvote or two, and she'll get a welcoming comment saying hey, we like a little bit of information from the link in the answer because links go dead. we're willing to help you out, come drop by chat, we'll give you a hand! thanks so much for coming, we're glad you answered!
Link only answers are useful... until the link dies.
Hence, not useful
@GypsySpellweaver I like all that you said except that you imply that new users should get fewer DVs than more experienced users. If you'd DV it for an experienced user, DV it for a new user.
@thesecretmaster No. editing..... when you have no idea what the OP (it's called Original poster for a reason) would want to add to the answer, should they want to.
If it's a well established user i may be less patient while waiting for repairs. When I do vote, my vote is on content, not user.
Not DV ing today isn't the same as not DV ing ever.
BTW, I have seen old-timers post short answers first, then return and flesh then out larer. I have my theory about why, which don't matter. But, seeing that is what got me in the habit of reserving judgment rather than having an itchy trigger finger.
Usually it's not the first answer, sometimes it is, true. Most of the time I think it's because "this is the short answer" is the initial post, then they check other questions doing the same. Later they come back and add in details and samples or images etc.
Sometimes, while they're gone another user says same thing with more detail and the old timer deletes.
@thesecretmaster That attitude will make this site a barren wasteland, filled with top quality posts. Was your first post on a SE high quality? (Not saying it isn't, but I'm suggesting you try to put yourself in the new user's shoes (unless they're barefoot, in which case you should first give them a pair of shoes)).
btw, the nested parenthesis are a metaphor for how I think you should deal with new users who don't post high quality from day 1 of their membership
@thesecretmaster You have a personal interpretation of a DV. I'm afraid that it isn't universal. There was a commercial for a certain breakfast cereal a few years back. Some kids were skeptical about the new product. One turns to the next and said "Give it to Mikey. He hates everything". Don't be Mikey.
When I was a new teacher I was very strict with students. It took a while, but "seasoning" taught me to seem strict but be lenient. Everyone in my purview did better.
Question: There's a new user who posted a link only answer, it got 3 dvs (one mine) and he wasn't invited to chat. I can't invite him because he doesn't have 20 network points... Should he be invited to the guidance office? This is a yes\no question; not an invitation to discuss the previous subject.
I’m Kristina, the first (and so far, only) User Experience Researcher here at Stack Overflow. As you probably know, on SO we have a bit of a problem with our new user experience. People new to SO (or maybe even new to programming!) come to us to find an answer to a programming issue, and that mea...
We need something like that. 3 mods, even if Aurora also helps out from time to time, is not sufficient if we want to be able to invite users right away to the chat room. Especially when all 3 mods are US-based, there's just not enough coverage.
The current SE system doesn't work with new users basically at all. It's a miserable system. I'm very glad to see that they've finally taken it seriously enough to hire someone to help design a better solution.
If there's need for someone to handle new users because mods might be offline, I'd be more than willing to help. (You have no idea how lonesome and bored I get between 10am and 16pm here)
@ItamarG3 it's wonderful (and I see that you already handle the queues and greet new users during those times... you are such an asset to this community!)
The lack of mods to grant access need not be an issue, just add more RO's, they can also grant access. Don't need super ping either, just use a comment to ping.
We currently require that new users have 5+ reputation to participate in meta support discussions (bugs, feedback, governance, etc). This is primarily because the use case for meta is not intrinsically obvious, so we require a modicum of "experience" with the site before jumping into it.
But th...
@thesecretmaster the SE system probably has mountains of code meant to stop anyone but a moderator from accessing moderator-only stuff. So a userscript like that might do more damage than you know is possible.
somehow i feel foolish. using a bluetooth kbd on my phone trying to hold both in one hand while standing in line.
Looks like the next couple weeks are going to be hectic. Trying to take care of the house and go to the hospital for her supplies (she keeps finding some other color yarn she needs). Still, I'll be around, when least expected :)