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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Best way to refer to people in posts who have been knighted?
As per tradition, King Charles tapped May on the shoulder with a sword during the investiture
Source: BBC
Per Wikipedia we can see that Brian May has several accolades; he was a graduate student in ...
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What is the best way to tag questions about Xuntian, the Chinese Survey Space Telescope?
What is the best tag for China's Xuntian, i.e. the Chinese Survey Space Telescope?
It's schedule to be launched this year in the Tiangong space station orbit (but phased away from it) and the ...
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Let's make an attempt to answer old, unanswered questions
I have been looking at the unanswered questions on this site for some time (for some days tbh) and in my opinion, most of them are very intriguing and interesting and they deserved to get answered. ...
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Do we need the [nomenclature] and [naming] and [terminology] tags?
The new question Is "monochromatic source" different than "monochromator" in astronomical instrumentation? included a nomenclature tag I hadn't seen before, I usually use ...
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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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Congratulations to James(100)K
Congratulations to JamesK on his 100k-hood on Astronomy SE.
1452 answers (and 5 questions). It's a lot! Also - 2.2m "reached", which is an importantly large number.
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Why do some of our most prolific question answerers (and therefore reputation beneficiaries) rarely-to-never up vote questions they answer?
@uhoh's first two lemmas tell us that Stack Exchange is a collaborative effort to generate good answers to on-topic questions, and that answers simply can not exist without someone taking the time and ...
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Moderator Pro Tem Announcement
As of 2021, the site is no longer under pro tem moderation. It is now under elected moderation. Donald.McLean stepped down, but called2voyage and HDE 226868 have stayed on as moderators. They were ...
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Who should our moderators be?
Our moderators pro tempore have already been selected.
See Moderator Pro Tem Announcement
Original Post:
If your meta site does not have a post to nominate Moderators, start one now! Pro Tem ...
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Community Policy Repository
This is the official repository for general community policy decisions.
On Posts
How do we handle questions with answers on other sites?
Is the use of ChatGPT or other chatbot software forbidden?
On ...
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Should we at least temporarily ban chatbot-generated content (e.g. chatGPT) until it becomes clearer what it means for Stack Exchange?
Higher question-rate sites have already addressed chatbot-generated posting in an essentially universal negative way, for example:
Stack Overflow: Temporary policy: ChatGPT is banned
How can we ...
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Astronomy Jokes
What are the best astronomy jokes you've ever heard? I'm looking for images; however, you can share whatever you like.
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Is it wrong for someone to post an answer that does not meet their own up-vote standard?
A user could have two standards:
A standard by which we think someone else's answer is good enough to up-vote.
A standard by which we think our own answers are good enough to post.
Question: Is it ...
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Do we want to change the link about MathJax help?
Astronomy Stack Exchange has MathJax enabled, allowing us to use LaTeX to write equations. Like other SE sites with MathJax, we have a section in the editing help page on how to use LaTeX. This ...
HDE 226868Mod
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Sourcing papers vs explaining in own words
Is referencing papers like my answer in the below question link (I usually do for complicated questions) good? I saw @Connor_Garcia in this question explained it in their own words while I did so with ...
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The new and increasingly popular "close for insufficient research" close reason, are we headed in the wrong direction here? Is there a way to reduce?
Comment under Why is the moon tidally locked with the earth? with +4 votes
I’m voting to close this question because there's no evidence that OP has done any research.
Comment under Plane of Moon&#...
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An [ultraviolet] tag to go with our [gamma-rays], [x-ray], [visible-light], [infrared], and [radio] tags?
We have these electromagnetic tags
gamma-rays 11 questions
The gamma-rays tag has no usage guidance, can you help us create it?
x-ray 36 questions
Questions regarding the second-shortest ...
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I think that we have no good tags for solar-system-evolution or asteroid-formation or asteroid-evolution. Should we?
The questions
What is the YORP effect exactly? Is it just the non-central component of the Yarkovsky effect?
Where have all the Vulcanoids gone?
(and there are likely other examples) that ask about ...
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Should we avoid calling questions that have answers in other SE sites as "duplicate", which already has a specific and different meaning in SE?
There is some healthy overlap between Astronomy SE and some other sites, just for example:
space telescope optics, operations and orbits with Space SE
astrophysics, cosmology, optics, etc. with ...
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I can't find this question. Was it deleted?
Yesterday I remember I answered a question about the formation of the planets in the solar system by the user Kerry Frost. There was some debate in the comments on whether the question should have ...
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Can we merge tags "tno" and "trans-neptunian-object"?
trans-neptunian-object: Questions about objects orbiting the Sun with an average distance greater than that of Neptune. [24 questions]
tno: A Trans-Neptunian object is any minor planet in the Solar ...
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Should we have a community-specific closing reason for Astrology questions?
Previous discussions:
Should we add non-physical and/or astrology questions to the off-topic list?
Can we consider Indian Astrology as astronomy?
Can we have a guideline about astrology for the on-...
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One tag for LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA or three, or none?
We have
ligo: 14 questions
Questions about the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), a large-scale physics experiment and observatory to detect cosmic gravitational waves.
but ...
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Can we have a guideline about astrology for the on-topic section in the help center?
As it stands now, the Help Center for on-topic questions does not mention anything about questions about astrology, which is off-topic such as this recent question (which might get deleted soon by the ...
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Is 500 reputations enough to be able to "cast close & reopen votes"?
I have just asked 4 questions here, and thanks to other members two of them were received very well.
Now I have surpassed 500 reputations and I have received a new privilege "Casting close & ...
HDE 226868Mod
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Do we need to downvote posts of New Contributors?
I can see nowadays, more than two downvotes on posts of newbies to the site (SE) or instant closure of question. I don't feel one will wantedly ask Low quality posts, either they might lack knowledge ...
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For multi-part questions, are both partial and complete answers encouraged?
If a question has multiple parts A, B, and C, then how to the pros and cons balance out for partial answers vs. complete answers?
Obviously an excellent answer that covers A, B, and C is most likely ...
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Should we make the [starspot] and [sunspots] tags synonyms?
This suggestion was made in the comments to the question Do brown dwarfs have starspots? It is about sunspots (9 questions) vs. starspot (6 questions) . The latter tag I recently created. The user @...
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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 ...
- 101
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Graduation of the Astronomy Stack Exchange
The Astronomy Stack Exchange site is scheduled to graduate from Beta to a full site today, December 16th.
The moderator team would like to congratulate our entire user base for the contributions that ...
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Do we have enough tags to "span the space" of astronomical eclipses and transits? Is something missing or needs changing?
We have
solar-eclipse 143 questions
Questions about the complete or partial blocking of the sun by the moon.
and
lunar-eclipse 60 questions
Questions regarding an event where the Earth goes ...
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Site customization ideas?
Just today, we graduated from beta! :D
@ConnorGarcia notes in his post:
Site customization, such as custom background and badge design isn't immediately planned but may be available in the future.
I'...
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Should this question be reformulated or should I post a new question?
It seems there are many approaches to calculate the speed of Sun (for instance: Oort constant, CMBR, and others). Instead of having a "correct answer", what about "survey answers"? ...
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Post your pictures of the Beaver Moon Lunar Eclipse here!
Last year I posted a place for Great Conjunction photos. As tonight's eclipse will be longest partial lunar eclipse in about 500 years, I just wanted to reach out and offer a spot to compile a list of ...
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Removing the [ar] tag?
This question used to have a tag called ar. I'm assuming this was a mistake, so I edited it out of the tags. Would it be possible to remove it?
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Should we add the eyepiece tag to all questions that are about eyepieces? Or instead delete it since tagging would be a hopeless, quixotic quest?
I've just asked How does eyepiece exit pupil diameter affect image clarity and viewing experience? and added the eyepiece tag. It turns out this is only the 2nd question to use this tag, the first was ...
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Do we want accepted answers to be pinned to the top?
Stack Exchange staff have announced an upcoming change to the way answer acceptance works.
Currently, the original poster of a question can accept one non-deleted answer. This does several things,
...
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Is insta-closing of potential duplicates always the best way? In low Q-rate sites? Is there something to be said for slow-closing or eventual closing?
Constellation search from April 22 2007 received three good answers before it was correctly closed as duplicate to our canonical Where can I find the positions of the planets, stars, moons, artificial ...
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Is "But really you would do better to ask your teacher. They are paid to answer this kind of question." in an answer the wrong message and anti-SE?
This answer to When can Moon occult Venus? feels to me to be the worst possible message. To me it looks like "you are wrong, you used the wrong number, here's the right number, and instead of ...
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Should the E-ELT tag get "sent to the cornfield" and replaced by extremely-large-telescope?
When tagging What two "little observatories" run by a university in Chile and "by Germans" are near the future site of the Extremely Large Observatory? I typed "extre..." ...
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Should we close an unclear question with acceped answer?
I know, if a question is unclear, we should close it right-away, because otherwise people might interpret it in different ways and give inconsistent answers. But sometimes, before we can close it, the ...
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How old is our Astronomy SE?
How old is our Astronomy SE ?. Unlike other sites, why there is poor patronage despite having great reception in Astronomy ? And what is the qualification to "graduate" ?
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New to Stack exchange. What is Meta and Beta in Astronomy SE?
it's been 10 days joining stack exchange ! I observed that there are two Astronomy SE, Meta and Beta ? So what is the difference between them ?
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What exactly count as a "hypothetical question"?
From help-center:
Questions that are purely hypothetical, for example a question such as 'Could a black hole destroy the universe' or 'What if our solar system had two suns' (however, feel free to ...
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How to attract real-world radio telescopists to radio astronomy observational techniques questions?
Here are ten questions about observational radio astronomy that are either unanswered (eight) or have no accepted answer (two). These are selected from my own questions only so far, there may be ...
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Congratulations to @ProfRob for reaching 100k reputation!
Congratulations!!!
I'm quite late to the party after a break from SE, and I've seen that @ProfRob has hit 100,000 reputation, a new milestone for our site!
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What to do when engaged in a never ending discussion
I am fairly new to SE, so I came here to ask for advice from more experienced users.
Sometimes the author of a question comments my answer to ask for clarification or because they don't agree on some ...
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Thought experiment questions that aren't completely scientific?
Should one ask questions regarding some thought experiments on the Astronomy Stack Exchange? (Assuming that these thought experiments are somewhat related to astronomy/astrophysics but aren't ...
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Too many downvote on questions recently?
I found that the downvote for questions is growing larger recently, some questions like mine
and this one from uhon get downvoted, and the people who downvote the question didn't give an explanation ...
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Why don't question-askers accept answers?
Out of idle curiosity, I was looking through some of my (old) answers to questions which have been reasonably upvoted, were often the only answer, but have not been accepted.
Fair enough, you could ...
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