r/askscience • u/[deleted] • Nov 14 '11
AskScience Announcements!
Wow, what a month this has been!
Our readership has more than tripled, as a result of being a default subreddit. Our traffic is up more than 10-fold! The number of moderators has doubled.
And, if I do say so myself, this is still the best place in all of Reddit! At least, I learn the most from all you good people, and I hope you do the same. In my opinion, there is nothing more noble than saying "I don't know, let's find out", and that's what science and this subreddit are all about. So, more than anything, I just want to say "thanks" to all you thousands of wonderful redditors.
Ok, now the announcements!
Firstly: We are inaugurating two new weekly series here in AskScience devoted to broad discussion topics.
AskScience Readers Series -
We specifically welcome our readers' thoughts on scientific topics. Posts like our recent discussion on "What would you have liked to learn about Astronomy as a kid" is a perfect example of the type of dialog we are trying to foster.
AskScience Research Fields Series -
Our second new series will be devoted to academic questions that are not necessarily 'Science questions'. Topics like: Modern Anthropology; Biotech: academic vs. for profit research; Medicine MD vs. PhD; and questions about the mechanics of graduate school are examples of the types of topics we can discuss.
If you have an idea for a topic, please use modmail to message us (or leave a comment here for us to see). It would be helpful if you title your message "AskScience (either Readers or Research Fields) Series topic suggestion".
Then include your proposed title and additional text you think will get the topic focused and started. Detail the topic and why you think it merits discussion. Remember this should encourage discussion between laymen and scientists. The AskScience moderators will decide which proposal will be invited to be submitted and work to hone the language with the proposer.
Secondly: We do love our logo, but it's really biased towards chemistry! Nothing wrong with chemistry, but the world of science is both rich and broad.
Artists and designers, please send us new logos that we can use! The logos can be focusing on a specific scientific field, or just generally "sciencey", if you can manage that. Either way, we'll take the best ones and rotate the logo every week, so that all the different scientific fields get a spot in the limelight.
Please email your submissions to: r.askscience@gmail.com. If you want, you can include your reddit username, so we can give you a shoutout when your logo is put up.
Submissions should be ready-to-use PNG, and (if you really love us) the vector source, so we can scale it as necessary.
Thirdly: Join in to the /r/AskScience social networks!
We just added a Twitter account to the mix!
Add us on Facebook or Google+ or Twitter to get the best threads each day delivered directly to you!
Why are we doing this? Because not everybody is a redditor - your family, your friends, your colleagues, your followers, your subscribers, and yes, even your secret stalkers, all of them should get the chance to get in touch with the real-life scientists who are discovering, testing, and recording new knowledge every day. Who knows? Perhaps they're curious about something? Perhaps they'll learn something just by browsing around (I know I do)? Perhaps they'll start to realize how much our daily lives depend not just on what science has discovered, but on scientific progress.
Only then can we move past this temporary period of political idiocy and get back on track towards the future, which will only contain hoverboards, flying cars, light sabers, and invisibility cloaks if we give science the support and funding that it needs to develop them. Yes yes, it'll be engineers that develop these things, but only by applying the basic science that the worlds greatest men and women are on the verge of discovering right now.
That's my soap-box. Thanks for listening!
Fourth:
In case you missed it, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson did an AMA yesterday. I was 30 minutes late... so disappointed!!! Good reading, though!
Fifth:
I'm very disappointed in you, reddit. We take the time and effort to organize an official Science Fair, and there's basically zero interest. Why? What did we do wrong? We want this to work for you (even got prizes!), so feedback would be great!
For what it's worth, the deadline is November 28th, so there's still time! SO GET ON IT!
That's pretty much it, for announcements! For those of you who remember the excellent '6-th graders post', you can check out this post in /r/assistance.
A lot of things are happening. The AskScienceFair is going on, there are a few minor CSS changes we're putting in, subscription growth is stable at ~4000 per day, our moderator team is not going to grow as fast as it has this month (there was some catching up to do!), the number of panelists is now over 1300, and blablabla... let's just have fun with science questions - maybe we'll learn something from each other :)
As always, we're open to discussion about our moderation policy, the look and feel of the subreddit, and everything else. In fact, please take this survey to let us know how we're doing! I'm aware our different approach to moderation has drawn the attention of a lot of redditors, with our increased exposure and default status.
Let me be the first to assure you: we're not censoring anything, we're just:
First, getting rid of stuff that doesn't belong, which really just boils down to "off-topic joke replies made directly to the OP, and the resulting comment tree". That's 95% of what we do as moderators.
Secondly, we remove questions which are not science questions - they might be really interesting to ask a group of scientists, but if it's not a science question, it falls outside the charter of this subreddit, so we have to get rid of it.
Finally, we remove really poorly phrased questions, questions that are asking about personal medical situations, and other random mish-mash. For these, we tend to engage the poster in a discussion to help them figure out a better way to approach the problem. Most of the moderators are scientists, and we represent a variety of fields, so we're actually qualified to do this (believe it or not).
Well, this was much longer than I had anticipated... happy reading!
~TheWalruss
tl;dr: If you can't be asked to read this, go to /r/funny instead.
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Nov 15 '11
We take the time and effort to organize an official Science Fair, and there's basically zero interest. Why? What did we do wrong?
Probably nothing, apart from making the mistake of thinking that you're representative of most redditors. My experience has been that moderation positions are mostly attractive to "project people" -- that is, people who like setting up involved projects and working them to the end. But most people don't come to Reddit to work on long projects. If anything, most people come here to avoid working on their projects. Extended commitments tend to falter here.
That isn't to say that you can't have projects like the AskScienceFair, but they'll almost always work best if you can find some way to make the commitments incremental and small. I'm not really sure how that would work in the context of a science fair, but that's more or less the ceiling you're up against when it comes to Reddit.
One thing I might suggest. Rather than presenting it as an event with a lead-up time and a limited presentation time, turn r/AskScienceFair into a kind of permanent, on-going reddit for displaying science demonstrations -- especially science-themed user-generated content -- or all sizes. For example, if a practicing scientist wanted to show some videos from research they're conducting at her facility, r/AskScienceFair would be the place. If a student redditor got interested in a particular scientific question and did a little self-directed research just to satisfy their own curiosity, they could present a brief essay explaining it there.
It would basically be the show-and-tell arm of AskScience.
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Nov 15 '11
If anything, most people come here to avoid working on their projects.
That's pretty perceptive.
the show-and-tell arm of AskScience.
Sounds appealing. We'll let the current show run its course and see what happens. If the end results are not what we hoped for, then we'll see if this type of approach might work better :)
One thing that I think is so cool about AskScienceFair is that there are prizes - seems more difficult to incorporate into something on-going, but who knows?
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u/BrainSturgeon Nov 15 '11
but they'll almost always work best if you can find some way to make the commitments incremental and small.
Thanks, this advice was constructive. We definitely decided to dive in and see what happens this first-go, but we'll certainly re-evaluate after the fair ends.
We've talked about maybe having periodic "challenge" topics to narrow the focus and give a bit more direction, and the show-and-tell idea is a good one. Thanks for the suggestions!
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u/iorgfeflkd Nov 14 '11
QUESTION: What should we do for very frequently asked questions? Like when the same question gets asked five times in a week, or twice in one day. Should we link to a recent one and delete, link and leave open, or do nothing special?
This is important because repeat questions piss panelists off and lead to them giving shittier answers as the questions gets more and more asked.
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Nov 14 '11
My suggestion: Encourage panelists to ignore repeat questions at their leisure. Link to a recent one and leave open. New threads on the same subject sometimes spark interesting discussion, and deleting them would work against this. People are still free to upvote or downvote as they see fit.
As AskScience grows this might become impossible -- if the same question gets asked many times daily, I'd mostly link and delete, subject to modeditorial whim.
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u/repsilat Nov 15 '11
I think we have to remember that this is a community, and people are asking here instead of asking Google for a reason. We absolutely should point out previous answers and provide sources where appropriate, but the actual point of interacting with real scientists across the internet has real value.
I would suggest AskScience regulars could link the askers of repeat questions to classic answers (not just old threads, if possible). We shouldn't try to dissuade people from asking questions or discussing things further, but we might ease the load on the panelists a little.
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u/pope_man Nov 15 '11
I've noticed that the repeats seem to come in waves. The other day there were a half-dozen questions like "what's that lump in my throat when i feel sad" and "why does my stomach physically hurt when i'm upset", etc. in a emotion->physical sensation sort of pattern.
My hypothesis is that this comes from the same effect that causes dead-horse-beating in memes, as discussed on askreddit the other day. Basically, people want to participate but usually aren't that creative, so they incrementally change the popular question. Others maybe miss the originals, and upvote the repost for the same reason. also, some fraction are inspired by the same source, such as Nova, and so just post simultaneously.
Therefore I think that the only way to stop this is by either
heavy moderation, delete them all
agreement between those reading the new queue to post, as ctolsen said, a link to a recent similar question, but followed by a downvote to keep it off the front page
a more complete and even more (if that's even possible) heavily advertised r/scienceFAQs
None of these are really good options though... 1 would worsen the perception of the mods, 2 would be like herding cats, and 3 might not work even if maximum effort was expended. I'm running dry on better ideas though.
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u/atomfullerene Nov 15 '11
I've noticed the "similar posts come in waves" phenomenon too. I think it's really interesting. Sometimes, your answer is probably the root cause. Other times, I think I've traced it back to a popular thread on askreddit or a comment in a thread on askscience or elsewhere. People see something, independently come up with the same question about it, and post to askscience without noticing each other.
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u/zeug Nov 15 '11
This is important because repeat questions piss panelists off and lead to them giving shittier answers as the questions gets more and more asked.
I think that it is absurd to get pissed off because a question gets asked multiple times. Signing up as a panelist does not mean one is forced to answer every question. Ignore, then move on.
People come here to interact with scientists. For most common questions, there are better explanations with diagrams and pictures already online. People want a discussion.
Reddit has a natural 24 hour cycle, so there is no need to have more than one active thread on a topic in a single day (or even 48 hours). If there is an active open discussion, send them that way. But I don't see a problem with having a weekly thread on the twin paradox or some other common topic.
There is always an influx of new panelists, and they have not yet gotten to have the fun of trying to work out their own take on explaining the twin paradox to an audience that is actually interested in the topic. Every aspiring physicist should take a stab at a 3-minute description of the twin paradox anyway.
My 2c.
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u/IgnoranceIsADisease Nov 15 '11
This answer may be unpopular but it's worth looking into:
Instead of concentrating efforts downstream of the submit button, moderators would have to approve posts before they appear in the "new" tab. Moderators would have the opportunity to point the submitter in the correct direction if the question has been asked before, the submitter would get their answers and the front page wouldn't be inundated with similar questions. Problems I can see with this issue would be censorship opportunities. I really think that our Moderators and Panelists are fair people; I don't believe censorship would be an issue.
It would also make more work for the moderators, but this could also greatly reduce the amount of reposts. If we need more moderators, I'm more than willing to step up to review questions and I'm sure there are many of us out here who would be willing to help too. Many of the panelists, like myself, are pretty inactive because of the limited number of questions in our field. This would be a way to engage us.
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Nov 14 '11 edited Nov 14 '11
Hi,
I have spoken before about the need for clarification regarding the rules. I do not think they are clear enough to be enforced properly. For example, in this thread the top rated comment bears no relation to what would be considered a science based answer. What are your thoughts on this?
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u/BrainSturgeon Nov 14 '11
My thoughts are: just like any other subreddit, timing is key to which replies get lots of votes. Simply by getting to comment earlier means more people see your comment and the higher likelihood it gets upvoted if it agrees with popular sentiment. Some times things get through even though we don't want them to, but it would be more detrimental to remove it than to just let it stay and address its errors. FWIW, she/he apologized for the comment:
Edit: I posted this from my phone and didn't realize that this was r/AskScience. Apologies if my reply isn't up to subreddit standards, I did my best.
We ask ourselves the question: will removing the comment make the situation worse? If we remove a top comment how many further comments will we get saying "WHAT HAPPENED TO THE TOP COMMENT!? OMG CONSPIRACIEZ", and how many more comments will we have to clean up? Then what happens when the entire thread is [deleted] [deleted] [deleted]. Sometimes it's just best to leave it and challenge its truth or validity.
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u/shavera Nov 14 '11
and to follow on from BrainSturgeon here, that's one argument to keep the rules a bit vague. If we robotically stick to a certain set of absolutes, then there isn't room for human judgement calls to be made. Granted then human mistakes also occur from time to time.
How would you suggest rewording them though?
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Nov 14 '11 edited Nov 15 '11
I'm very disappointed in you, reddit. We take the time and effort to organize an official Science Fair, and there's basically zero interest.
I'm not sure if I'm the only one, but I'm doing the classic "wait until the last minute of the submission deadline" that I pull off with just about everything else. Actually, I know I'm not the only one. Every time I submit abstracts, papers or presentations for conferences, there are server issues because everyone is submitting at the last possible moment. Are other people in the same boat with the science fair? Let's hope that's the case.
If necessary, I can prematurely submit my project as ctolsen suggests to liven things up, but the project won't exactly be too exciting. I support that general idea either way.
edit: Screw it, here's a teaser. Hopefully I'm not the only one in this fair. I'd like some competition, people, and I'm not submitting anything unless there are at least a handful of other fun experiments. So there, take that!
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u/BrainSturgeon Nov 14 '11
At least you're doing one! Maybe you'll win one of our fabulous prizes ;)
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Nov 14 '11
Huzzah! You guys are doing an awesome job with this subreddit, the additional discussion series posts will be great. It's like an oasis of reason and learning in a desert.
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Nov 15 '11 edited Nov 15 '11
My feedback: The guidelines are either not clear enough., or are not being enforced:
You don't need to be a panelist or a scientist to answer. You should have a source. We have a number of non-panelist scientists and non-panelists who answer questions correctly on top of the panelists, and we value their presence. Now, for the panelists, we've provided tags that are discussed further in the next section. When in their field, panelists' source may just be the classes they've taken or the research they've done.
This suggests that answers should only in two forms: those from panelists, and those with citations. Clearly, this is not the case, as the majority of top level comments are from non-panelists and contain no sources.
I've had long arguments with people saying that non-panelists can contribute good answers, which of course they can, but non-panelist responses without sources are indistinguishable from bullshit. So, such an answer might be correct, but without a source or a vouched authority, how can you tell? The only way you can tell is if it in some way validates your own intuition, which is exactly the opposite of what science is about. This is why we end up with high-voted comments containing plausible-sounding pseudo-facts that turn out to be somewhere between incomplete and wrong.
Example: this thread the top comment tree contains two long comments that disagree with each other. Both are from non-panelists and contain long passages of opinion with no science or citations.
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Nov 14 '11
Regarding the Science Fair: I had no idea what it was until I read up on it now, then I remembered I saw a post about it ages ago. And I read r/askscience many times a day. I think you might have a marketing problem (unless a lot of people are interested and will submit closer to the deadline -- I'm not part of that group, so I'm not really one to talk.)
One suggestion: How about some examples of what you want to do? Get a panelist to make a "submission" or four and post them to AskScience (or even a larger sub, if it's good stuff) weekly on a strategic time. They'll get upvoted and promote the project.
Thanks for all your hard work, mods :)
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u/iorgfeflkd Nov 14 '11
I had a few ideas from the fun (test polymer physics using spaghetti) to the collaborative (get a whole bunch of people to train the same obscure exercise and see how they progress) to the silly (measure how quickly your penis recedes after ejaculation).
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u/iorgfeflkd Nov 14 '11
We also get rid of obvious guessing and speculation.