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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Let's ask more meaty questions!
It's been an exciting first (partial) week. We've got 105 questions (and counting) with a number of interesting and useful answers. However, I'm concerned that too many of your questions do not, um, ...
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How to draw a line between Astrophysics and Physics, if there is any posibility?
There is not really much to say. Ideas?
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Do you want to write for our blog?
About a month ago, I set forth the idea for an unofficial blog for Astronomy Stack Exchange. It's garnered some support so far for the idea, but we need to know that people are actually willing to ...
HDE 226868Mod
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Tags "planetary-atmosphere" vs. "atmosphere"?
While looking for tags without any definition (in order to suggest one), I came across the tag planetary-atmosphere vs. ...
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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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Topic of the Week: [astrometry]
Topic of the week is a week where we make an effort to ask and answer more questions around a specific tag, this brings more attention to the topic which in turn should bring us more views and users ...
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Homework policy
Although this issue more than likely won't be as much of an issue as say, Physics.SE and Mathematics.SE, there could still be astronomy-based homework questions. I think we need to hash out a ...
user8
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Attribution of sources used in questions and answers
Any and all sources, particularly when we are quoting from another website, journal article, book etc. must be properly attributed to the source.
Attributions can take the following forms (and folks ...
user8
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Should we revive the Topic of the Week?
Three years ago, Astronomy Stack Exchange had a Topic of the Week, which loosely followed a format Jon Ericson later codified for all of Stack Exchange. I like the idea; I proposed it on Worldbuilding ...
HDE 226868Mod
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Do we need a notice about billionaire space ventures?
It seems that every time a certain billionaire launches a bunch of satellites in his quest to inflict the internet on every last corner of the Earth we get a whole bunch of "what are these objects ...
user24157
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Should we have a blog?
As some of you might know, Worldbuilding Stack Exchange has a blog, which we call Universe Factory. Though less active than it was when it started up a couple of years ago, we still manage 2-3 post ...
HDE 226868Mod
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Where should I expound my theories?
From what I'm understanding, StackExchange is a Question-and-Answer-Only website!
It's NOT for any discussions or hypothesize or whatsoever!
But then, where should I go if I got some theories I like ...
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Concerns about this site
(Apologies in advance if I seem to wander in this post. I'm having a multitude of thoughts and I'm not quite sure how t organize them)
Ever since I've joined, I've been a bit uneasy about this site. ...
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Can we make arguments that Pluto should be considered a planet off-topic?
It has been over 14 years since the IAU passed its definition of what constitutes a planet, and we still get arguments (mostly rants) against that decision. For example, Where to submit, or ask to ...
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How much is astrophysics, cosmology, and theoretical astrophysics on topic?
There have been some concerns raised about cosmology and theoretical astrophysics, as well as astrophysics in general.
The concern is that this community does not support astrophysics questions, ...
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Why have recent cosmology/astrophysics questions been closed as off-topic?
Given there have recently been several questions put on hold as "off-topic" when they're clearly about cosmology/astrophysics (which is defined as on topic in the Help Centre), I thought it might be ...
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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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How do we determine what geoscience questions are in scope?
We have basically three classes of geoscience questions here:
Specific Geoscience Questions
Day and night temperature on an earthlike planet with longer rotational period (Note: Says "earth-like&...
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What are the intended boundaries of this question and answers community?
Is the intended group to be serviced by this Q&A community the professional and semi-professional amateur astronomers on specific technical questions. Or is it intended to include astronomy ...
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Should we add non-physical and/or astrology questions to the off-topic list?
In the last couple of days we had some weird question: (this and this) and a question about astrology.
My gut feeling is that as the number of people using ...
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Where do we draw the line concerning planetary science questions?
Exoplanet questions and other planetary science questions seem to be valid here, on Space Exploration, and on Physics. Where do we draw the line on what is valid where?
exoplanet
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Balance between professional and enthusiast questions
Something that just occurred to me and probably needs to be discussed - the balance needed between professional and enthusiast questions. There hasn't really been any problems here thus far, but this ...
user8
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This month's focus tag: dust
Welcome to our new series of monthly focus tags! This month's focus tag is dust.
Featured Question: What is the difference between gas and dust in astronomy?
This question is great to start off with ...
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External resource questions on Astronomy
This question has been flagged as possibly being off topic with the reason "Request for an external resource - normally considered off topic on other sites."
In the case of this specific question, I ...
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Are Questions related to Cosmology and ancient history of astronomy allowed in Astronomy SE?
I am newcommer on this site , and would like to know whether we can ask questions relating to cosmology on this site?. As I am a enthusiast in both subjects. But these are not my professions. It is ...
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A modest proposal to increase question quality
Highly related: What can we do about the deteriorating quality of questions?
This related question was asked over five years ago, and the situation has not improved. My perception is the opposite: A ...
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Topic of the Week Archive
This is the archive of all Topics of the Week whose end date was more than 30 days ago.
Return to the main Topic of the Week thread
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What can we do about the deteriorating quality of questions?
I was an active member during the beta launch of this site, checking the site regularly for questions I could answer and writing exhaustive answers.
Since the past 2 months or so, increasing number ...
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Are we graduating sometime soon?
Just a question about how we are doing - statistically, on Area 51, it doesn't look too bad.
I understand that many members are busy people (in real life), I know I am (5 jobs, 12 research projects ...
user15217
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Let's get critical: Apr 2014 Site Self-Evaluation
We all love Astronomy Stack Exchange, but there is a whole world of people out there who need answers to their questions and don't even know that this site exists. When they arrive from Google, what ...
CommunityBot
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An "Escalate to an Astronomer (in related field)" button?
In a comment under this question I expressed "I wish there was an Escalate to an Astronomer in a Related Field button, even if only for moderators."
Is there any ...
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high-energy-astrophysics tag usage guideline, could this be improved?
There is a proposed edit to provide users with the following guideline when choosing the high-energy-astrophysics tag. This is the message that would pop up when someone started typing "high-ener....
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Threshold for site graduation?
We've been in beta for almost 8 years. A look at Astronomy's vitals on Area 51 shows this:
Our beloved Astronomy SE can't graduate until these issues have been resolved:
We only have 5.3 questions ...
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Are there any IAU members on the astronomy stack exchange?
Are there any members of the International Astronomical Union that are active on the Astronomy Stack Exchange?
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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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Returning to moderation
I've been giving a lot of thought to the question of resignation over the weekend, and one thing that kept going through my head was Jon Ericson's blog post. Despite what he had to say about ...
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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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What's with the amount of spam here?
Over at least the last half year I noticed spam popping up here, that I do not see on the other 15-20 SE sites that I visit (with the same frequency).
What makes Astronomy.se different? More spam, ...
user1569
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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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Regarding moderating the new Code of Conduct
To hopefully alleviate concerns regarding the new Code of Conduct, I want to explain how I intend to moderate regarding pronoun use.
When speaking generically, posts should use gender neutral ...
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Off-site Astronomy community promotion ads
Should we make some to help get some more traffic here from other stacks? Does anyone have design ideas?
For clarity, I am asking if we should make an ad for Astronomy.SE to put on other stacks. ...
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What are online options for anyone without an astronomy background who wants to contribute to the study of space?
With the advent of the internet, crowdsourcing and communities, many ways to help astronomers worldwide to obtain and analyse data have been proposed; from the comfort of your own home or office, you ...
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Is it ever acceptable for answers to cut and paste answers from other sites?
I have noticed that a large (increasing?) fraction of Astronomy SE answers appear to be relying very heavily on simply cutting and pasting material from other sites.
Where this is done without ...
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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 use fahrenheit or celsius? Does it matter?
There are two major measurement units: Fahrenheit and Celsius. Us crazy American enthusiasts often use the Fahrenheit system, while the rest of the world uses primarily the Celsius (metric) system.
...
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Everyone ask ONE expert question today!
We're having some... Trouble. Namely, we have been held back from graduating to a public beta for one more week.
Why? Many of our questions are very basic. How can we fix this? Ask more meaty ...
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Can we 🐻 to have emoji in posts?
The well-received and hot network question If a massive object like Jupiter flew past the Earth how close would it need to come to pull people off of the surface? includes the phrase
I understand ...
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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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Should tags reflect questions exclusively or the entire question-answer post
This question has been discussed on other stackexchange sites as well but I feel this is a good time to ask it and get a basic understanding of where we are at. So here we go. When asking questions ...
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Reference material
This community wiki is a one-stop shop for astronomy-related textual resources. Feel free to make recommendations of resources that you find particularly useful in the study of astronomy.
Original ...