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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questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
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votes
0answers
1k views
Site statistics
This meta post will track our stats on Area 51, fortnightly (14 days) or a bit longer if I forget and someone else updates it:
Here's the Quantcast estimate of site traffic, with the mean number of ...
19
votes
0answers
159 views
Moderator Pro Tem Announcement
Throughout the beta, we need members from the site whose focus is to engage the community, both in community-building issues and site management. That's why we select a few members from each community ...
13
votes
0answers
154 views
Please vote for quality content
When we started this site in 2014, we encouraged everyone to vote early and often, and people did. Now this site is not young anymore. In the past 5 years, we have seen a steady increase in the ...
11
votes
0answers
99 views
What are our best Q&As to show off this site?
I'm looking to promote this site and want to hear from our domain experts what our best questions in each discipline are. I'm interested in both questions with great answers and also great questions ...
10
votes
0answers
91 views
Let's clean-up those rock identification questions
We now have more than 200 rock-identification questions. Here on meta, we have a very good guide on what it takes to write a good rock ID question. It doesn't take a geologist to recognise that many ...
7
votes
0answers
40 views
Let's start offering bounties!
Somehow I became the highest rep user on this site, and since I have no use for my rep points (14.5k at the moment) I'll start investing them in bounties for ignored or interesting questions, both new ...
6
votes
0answers
44 views
Do we still need advice how to best describe our rocks?
When I forgot to add a title to a question before posting and clicked "review" I got an error which is good. But since I included the identification-request tag the advice includes ...
6
votes
0answers
81 views
Query on Stack Exchange Data Explorer to show the number of id-questions received by month
Movies&TV query
I found this query on Stack Exchange Data Explorer Movies&TV wrote that shows the monthly frequency input of id my movie questions and total questions on the site. As you can ...
6
votes
0answers
87 views
Asking for help to +500 rep users to close id-request questions [Update: all are closed]
Ok, so to stop receiving those question, we should not appear firsts at Google common searches from users that want to know what is the stone they found. For that the 450 questions we have should be ...
6
votes
0answers
33 views
Standard comment text when VTC ID questions as 'unclear'
As suggested in my comment under Spencer's answer in the Idea - make identification request posts off topic topic, what could be a 'default' comment text that we can quickly cut and paste a question ...
6
votes
0answers
49 views
Please clean up your comments
Please remove all of the comments on the question
What is this old potential stone or relic found in a Kansas pasture?
except for the last one, by gansub. It's the only one that should have been ...
6
votes
0answers
102 views
Is there a consensus on non-substantive edits?
I have just rolled back an edit for (as far as I can recall) the first time on this site. This edit was approved (and improved) by Jan Doggen, a user I respect, so I thought it might be a good idea to ...
5
votes
0answers
30 views
Should we extend the Rock ID guide with photo's of the surroundings?
In section 3 of A guide for asking "Identify this rock" questions?, Describe where you found it, would it be wise to add the sentence?:
Add a picture of the surroundings if you have one.
5
votes
0answers
156 views
Should we include a suggestion for a displacement test in the rock identification guide?
Part 1: We want them to do science, right?
People asking rock-identification questions occasionally say things like "it feels heavy for its size", and when that happens I usually think "shouldn't we ...
5
votes
0answers
53 views
Comments on the possible abiological origin of oil
These comments seem to have degenerated into a slanging match. Can they all be deleted - or the entire question deleted / blocked?
5
votes
0answers
54 views
Should we describe additional tests for identifying minerals?
In the mineral identification questions, we commonly need information in addition to the hardness test suggested in our guidelines. In particular reactivity with acid and streak tests can be important....
5
votes
0answers
54 views
Tackling the unanswered list
This is similar to the thread 90 unanswered questions and counting, I have just tackled and answered 4 unanswered questions - it took a bit of research, but was doable and I think the answers are of a ...
4
votes
0answers
56 views
how can I upload my files to show my question better
I would like to ask my questions by uploading my files to mean my questions, better. But, I can't upload my files. How can I upload my examples file under my questions on this site?
Thank you very ...
4
votes
0answers
52 views
2019: 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, ...
4
votes
0answers
42 views
Are we deleting closed questions?
A very important part of this entire make-rock-id-q-offtopic story was to delete the old questions so it stops bringing this kind of traffic into the website.
My understanding is that questions have ...
4
votes
0answers
96 views
Rock-id and mineral-id questions. Status
Status:
Every question taged with identification request is a closed
question.
Questions related with field or theorical geology were untaged.
Clouds and instrumentation questions were untaged.
...
4
votes
0answers
34 views
Let's not close things that are only off-topic if you already know the answer
See the question,
Why are the Great Lakes not considered a sea?
The actual answer here is "because the naming of bodies of water is a historical, liguistic and cultural matter, not a scientific one".
...
4
votes
0answers
22 views
Vote on tag synonyms
I suggested a couple tag synonyms more than a year ago and they have no approval votes yet. Other tag synonyms suggestions are waiting for approval since 2014.
I guess this is not because people don'...
4
votes
0answers
52 views
Custom close reason for “push questions”?
It's always been difficult for me to decide how to treat questions based on clearly incorrect reasoning such as this one.
A lot of times someone is pushing pseudoscience or a well-discredited ...
4
votes
0answers
20 views
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 ...
3
votes
0answers
25 views
Do we need a review of unanswered questions?
Back after an hospitalization and leaving alcohol, fortunately for my health. I will be quiet.
I realized we have a lot of unsanswered questions. I made a review and four of them were easy to me, a ...
3
votes
0answers
22 views
Should we have a “Sandbox for Proposed Questions”?
Recently I came upon the Sandbox for Proposed Questions of Worldbuilding SE, and it seems like a good idea.
I thought of this also because (as some of you might have noticed) I've played posting some ...
3
votes
0answers
68 views
Biweekly topic challenge: volcanology
I made a post asking for topic ideas for the challenge, and the highest scoring suggestion is for volcanology.
Please use the tag volcanology when posting questions for this challenge, and remember ...
3
votes
0answers
40 views
Overusing TeX
TeX looks great and all for equations and reactions, but, at least on some browsers, there is a significant break in style between it and the body text. Sure, one is serif and other sans, but the ...
2
votes
0answers
47 views
Science stack exchanges helping other science stack exchanges!
The Physics Meta promotes support for all Science sites on Stack Exchange, in this post. The same meta post is now on several other science SE Meta sites.
The Earth Science SE is one of the sites that ...
2
votes
0answers
38 views
Why does an older revision of my question get more views?
Where is the calmest place on Earth?
The above question was on fire getting many views.
The person who edited my question did it good taste but, the views drastically stopped. IMO that is a negative ...
2
votes
0answers
42 views
Anyone for cake?
The Great Geobakeoff has produced some wonderful results : https://www.flickr.com/photos/99330142@N05/sets/72157644551255832/
2
votes
0answers
31 views
A tag for mantle plumes/hotspots?
One question that'd benefit from this already, and as a somewhat controversial topic and an active area of research I'd be astonished if we don't get more. I suggest "mantle-plumes", as hotspot's more ...
2
votes
0answers
86 views
Do closed questions and other items count toward fulfilling your commitment?
As of yesterday, I had six questions and four answers, and the sum of the two is ten. That is versus the required ten questions and/or answers to make up a fulfilled commitment. (Actually I had a ...
2
votes
0answers
57 views
What's our elevator pitch?
From The Real Essential Questions of Every Beta:
4. What’s the “elevator pitch” for our site?
Imagine you’ve just gotten on an elevator with a friendly stranger. You have precisely one floor to ...
1
vote
0answers
49 views
Are we being too quick to close rock-identification questions?
In other Meta questions we agreed to keep rock-identification questions on the site, but to close them if they did not have most of all of the information detailed here. We created a custom close ...
1
vote
0answers
55 views
A tag for Earth's rotation
What about a tag like earth-rotation (synonym rotation maybe)?. For several questions I think something like this one is missing.
0
votes
0answers
28 views
Should we split the waves tag?
I noticed that we currently tag questions about waves at the ocean surface and seismic waves with the same waves tag. There are other topics about waves, which could come up here. Should we split the ...
0
votes
0answers
35 views
Tag recommendations: sea-water
There is no tag for general sea-water related questions. The only tags up until now that come remotely close are sea-level, and sea-ice
