Questions tagged [discussion]
The question you're asking is designed to solicit opinions or best-practices on a particular topic, with the goal of reaching community consensus.
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Oddthinking has 100k reputation!
We've just reached a milestone: User Oddthinking has reached an incredible 100k reputation!
I would like to congratulate Oddthinking with this major achievement and his unparalleled contribution to ...
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Some basic skepticism tips when reading the news, and applying this to answers
I've railed against politics questions on this site in the past. I ran for moderator partly on the promise to address the issues with politics specifically. Mostly, my ire is toward the answers, that ...
user11643
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Speaking at CLSxItaly
I will be speaking as part of a panel on how to moderate online communities at CLSx Italy on November 25th.
If anyone is interested in attending, I have a discount code just for Skeptics.SE. Please ...
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Why were some answers deleted on the question about Earth being covered by oceans?
Moderators cleaned up four answers on the Was the Earth one big ocean once? question after leaving a few days to the authors for fixing.
While these answers were interesting and sometimes highly ...
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Can we help you moderate more?
Community elected moderators on this site are very active. This is mostly due to a fact that our rules do require a lot of moderation.
However, this does not mean that everything needs to be done by ...
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Change the "How to ask" section
If you ask a question there is a section on how to ask in the sidebar, currently this looks like the following:
How To Ask
Is your question about scientific skepticism? We prefer questions ...
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2018: a year in moderation
It's New Year's Day in Stack Exchange land...
A distinguishing characteristic of these sites is how they are moderated:
We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in ...
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Please flag trollish questions
Skeptics.SE, along with some other stack exchanges such as history, receives some trolling questions, generally in the form of holocaust denial. They're by users with only 1 reputation, and they're ...
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The Amazing Meeting 2014 - Sponsorship Proposal
The Amazing Meeting (TAM) is coming on Jul 10-13, 2014. Based on my experience with NECSS and what I learned there, I'd like to promote the Skeptical community at the largest skeptical conference in ...
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Why my answer was deleted?
My answer has been deleted with a pretty strange reason: Did planes crash into the WTC on 9-11?
This is a theoretical answer, but we expect answers to be based on
facts - not to make a ...
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Is a claim published on the letters page of a newspaper notable?
I recently asked about a claim that I saw on the letters page of a national newspaper. There was a comment that this wasn't a notable claim. I've asked questions on previous occasions about claims I'...
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2022: a year in moderation
As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.
As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange ...
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Title shown in Google search is not complete
If I search Google for "apple cider vinegar for heartburn" or "apple cider vinegar for acid reflux", this question doesn't show up in any of the first 10 pages of Google results.
If I search ...
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Skeptics.se podcast #3
This episode focuses on Climate Change. We have a lot of questions on the site about it, but we are missing some canonical content. This is an opportunity for the community to look at some old one and ...
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2021: a year in moderation
As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.
As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange ...
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How many users are barred from nomination here due to consequences of The Fall-19 (MonicaGate)?
We saw the fallout of The_Fall-19, also known initially as Monicagate, mainly on MetaSE.
But this is also: the very reason why we need an election now, as two moderators resigned from SkepticsSE in ...
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Podcast # 6 - Quotes
This episode focuses on Quotes.
Although we do allow it on Skeptics, generally this kind of questions is hard to answer. They are too often false claims, and it is a case of trying to assert a ...
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2012 Moderator Election: Town Hall Chat - Friday the 4th at 0:00 UTC / Thursday the 3rd at 8pm EDT
In connection with the moderator elections, we will be holding a Town Hall Chat session with the candidates. This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the ...
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FAQ updated: request for comment
I've updated our FAQ to include a link to our "Must all answers be referenced?" post and our "Welcome to New Users" post.
In practice this
Skeptics - Stack Exchange is for challenging unreferenced ...
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The question excerpts take too much vertical space
The question excerpts shown e.g. on the list of newest questions look unusually large to me, it seems that fewer questions fit onto my screen than with other SE site designs.
I checked this using the ...
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Are any Skeptics users attending the NECSS Conference this year?
At least one Stack HQ staffer will be attending the Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism on April 21-22 in New York City and we would like to know if you will be attending as well! We can ...
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Why was the tag 'spiders' merged with 'entomology'?
I was editing some questions yesterday and adding the tag spiders to them.
Today I noticed that the tag spiders got merged with entomology.
This merging confused me and I'm not sure if it is ...
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2020 Community Moderator Election
The 2020 Community Moderator Election is now underway!
Community moderator elections have three phases:
Nomination phase
Primary phase
Election phase
Most elections take between two and three weeks, ...
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We should get rid of the stage-magic tag
The stage-magic tag has a problem. All of the questions tagged with it, except for one question (Is it reasonable to assume that volunteers in stage-magic shows are aides?), ask about whether a piece ...
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Podcast #5 - The military
This episode focuses on the Military
Throughout the world, we are inundated with images and stories about militaries, their exploits and capabilities, but are these claims really true. This presents ...
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Tweet Me at TAM13
I am currently attending The Amaz!ng Meeting. I will be live tweeting the event as it goes along, so feel free to follow me @LarianLeQuella. Also, if you look over the schedule of events, and see a ...
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Anyone else going to NECSS 2015?
Registration just opened for the North East Conference on Science and Skepticism. I have already put in my registration, so as to make sure that I go! I will be going to workshops as well as the main ...
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Virtual Skeptics Episode #48
Another bit of advertising for Stack Exchange in Episode #48 of Virtual Skeptics. If you notice the shirt Tim is wearing (especially pointed out at 50:50), that was something that I gave him (also, ...
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Reorganizing the medicine and health tags
We've had some discussions on the medicine tag and how to split it up into smaller categories. The current problem is that the tag was applied to broadly, not only to questions directly related to ...
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Please review this - I do not believe it was a duplicate
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/26599/is-bat-gen-a-viable-technology?noredirect=1#comment97719_26599
Just because the question used "thermodynamic law" when I wrote it, does not make it ...
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2020: a year in moderation
As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the past 12 months.
As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network ...
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What does this community consider to be a reasonable amount of time, for a moderator to decide on a simple flag?
Flags can take varying amounts of time to handle, for example a little bit is explained here: How long can a flag wait for review?
I wonder about the case where the flag is something simple. Let's ...
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When to use the various flagging options?
When flagging a question, you are offered these options1:
spam
Exists only to promote a product or service, does not disclose the author's affiliation.
rude or abusive
A reasonable person would find ...
user11643
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Comment on deleted question
This question of mine just got deleted for "not notable, disturbing and as political propaganda. No thanks", before I could answer the comment by Oddthinking:
A common form of anti-abortion ...
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Why would you approve a revision to a copy and paste quote?
This edit modified the words of a direct quote, why would/should it get approved?
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/revisions/42710/5
Source
no harmful equipment would occur on and around the ...
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Tags: health vs environmental-health vs public-health vs healthcare vs medical-science
All of these tags have issues in use. The health tag doesn't even exist. Perhaps it was prohibited because of overuse. As alternatives, the environmental-health (203 question) and public-health (54 ...
user11643
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Are claims made by product advertisements on-topic?
I saw Do Tide Pods laundry detergent have 10 times the cleaning power of other liquid bargain brands? and it got me thinking about this. As is the case in that question, advertisements making dramatic ...
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Site's background causing strange effect on question title
I've opened this question, and I noticed a strange effect on the last two words of the title:
At first I thought about a rendering glitch, but then I noticed the other marks and realized (at least I ...
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Have we cottoned on to [organic-food] needing to be renamed?
organic-food should be renamed to organic-farming to cover farming that doesn't involve food, such as cotton farming.
Previous meta questions about organic farming: Tag merge request: 'organic&#...
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Should the gender tag be split?
I think the gender tag is currently serving more than one purpose, but I don't have a clear statement of what the appropriate tags should be. Also, I am looking for some sort of community support, so ...
OddthinkingMod
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How convince people who are extremely skeptical of science, statistics, and expert authority in general, that science is not always bunk?
I'm thinking here of some kind of primer, blog, etc. for the general public on how these fields can be trusted, but skeptically, and not a review of statistics, etc. I raise this from frustrations ...
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How to ask an 'immature' question without reprecussions
I have a very inappropriate, somewhat immature claim that I want to have verified on this stack. However, even though I am very serious about it, I am worried that it will not be taken seriously, and ...
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What sites are good for peer reviewed analysis?
My answer was (correctly) deleted as it is original analysis rather than cited / peer reviews analysis.
Hi Tim. This is an extensive analysis - Original Research that needs a decent peer review. ...
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How do I know what the scientific consesus is for any given subject?
I've heard from a lot of people that the scientific consensus for global warming is that the Earth is, indeed, getting warmer and it will have catastrophic effects.
However, as it stands right now, I'...
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Where are the rules?
So apparently this site has some strict rules about answers. As best I can tell they are something like some of these lines:
Answers must include references.
Answers must include citations.
Citations ...
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Sound off if you came here from TAM!
I handed out -shirts to folks that signed up from TAM. I was hoping that some of you would say hello, as well as get right into the answering of questions. I know that I spoke to each one of you, so ...
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Are answers that address the (im)plausibility of a claim acceptable when proof cannot be obtained?
This recent question about a Korean orphan run-away is probably impossible to prove one way or another.
The OP comments:
...if there was some documentation available that he lived in an orphanage ...
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Proposed FAQ question: Why was I downvoted?
Sample:
Why was my post downvoted? I ...
have a lot of experience/am an expert in this field
posted a thoughtful answer
and/or
know that I'm right
... and I came to this community to contribute....
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What is fundamentally different between these 2 answers?
Note: This question is for the purposes of improving my answers so they better fit this site's requirements, as the help center is rather vague on this point.
Have 36 bankers died in 2014 from ...
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Is the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research a genuine peer review journal
Is the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research considers to be a peer review journal for the purposes of use and citation on this website.
At link to it can be found here
...
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