no info on closed questions?

[Chris Seidel]

In the previous incarnation, when questions were closed, the identity
of the closer was shown, and a reason was given for closing the
question. Now I see questions get closed with no explanation and
without any indication of who closed the question. Is this the norm
now?

-Chris

[Istvan Albert]

Hi Chris,

You are right in that the author of the last moderator action is not shown. But
we can review moderator actions on the moderator log list:

http://www.biostars.org/modlog/list/

In the vast majority of cases people explain in the comments the
reasons for closing questions.

Finally we can now reclassify posts to become forum posts (edit post
and change its type) rather than outright closures - I've been
revisiting and reclassifying/opening old posts that were closed due to
not being a real question but are not otherwise inappropriate.

best,

Istvan

[Chris Miller]

Even if it's not enforced in the software, I'd like to see it become a
community norm that the closer leaves a note explaining why the
question was axed. We can't expect people to learn from their mistakes
if we aren't giving them constructive feedback.

-Chris

[Istvan Albert]

On Sun, Apr 15, 2012 at 11:18 PM, Chris Miller <chrisa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Even if it's not enforced in the software, I'd like to see it become a
> community norm that the closer leaves a note explaining why the
> question was axed. We can't expect people to learn from their mistakes
> if we aren't giving them constructive feedback.

I agree, good idea.

--
Istvan Albert
Associate Professor, Bioinformatics
Pennsylvania State University
http://www.personal.psu.edu/iua1/

[madelaine]

It would also be good to have the ability to "migrate" posts to stackoverflow or something when they're fine questions, but not bioinformatics oriented. Is that possible with the current setup? I know you can do that between some of the other stack exchange sites...

Madelaine

On Monday, April 16, 2012 8:11:04 AM UTC-5, Istvan Albert wrote:

[Istvan Albert]

On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 3:40 PM, madelaine <made...@gmail.com> wrote:

> It would also be good to have the ability to "migrate" posts to
> stackoverflow or something when they're fine questions, but not
> bioinformatics oriented. Is that possible with the current setup?

Stackoverflow is run by a company so it would have to be something
that they want to do. We cannot access their software/database etc.

best,

Istvan

[Chris Seidel]

Posts continue to be closed without attribution. I find that to be
really creepy behavior - mysterious action taken by unknown moderators
behind the scenes is a demoralizing action that discourages people
from contributing and edifies no one. Today there was a rather
uninspired question regarding: MSc Bioinformatics Project Ideas. It
was suggested that it be re-classified as a discussion topic. Instead,
it was closed. Subsequently it was deleted altogether. Anyone with a
surplus of ideas was thus disenfranchised from the opportunity to put
them out into the community, depriving us all of food for thought, and
the original poster was probably frustrated into silence rather
educated in how to better ask a question or raise a topic.

People should stand behind their actions, and when those actions
involve others (i.e. closing people's posts), they should act for the
betterment of those they are "moderating".

-Chris

[Istvan Albert]

On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 2:09 AM, Chris Seidel <cwse...@gmail.com> wrote:


> Posts continue to be closed without attribution. I find that to be really creepy behavior

> uninspired question regarding: MSc Bioinformatics Project Ideas. It
> was suggested that it be re-classified as a discussion topic. Instead,
> it was closed. Subsequently it was deleted altogether.

There is a moderator log at:

http://www.biostars.org/modlog/list/

I will make this more easily accessible by providing a link to it in
closed/deleted posts.

Also something to note is that the author of a post may also close and
delete their own post (they can't reopen). This is what happened above
- in the end the author of the post deleted it.

That being said the author/moderators may also reclassify a post. When
there is doubt just reclassify ... the requirements for forum posts
are only that they are on the right topic.

By the way this is a good time to ask, do we need the concept of
'closed post' to begin with? What is really a closed post anyway, this
was brought over from the original site but now that I think about it
I am not sure what it really supposed to accomplish.

Bad content needs to be removed, but closing does nothing but
preventing someone else to contributing and is sort of a statement
that nobody could possibly say something useful here.

best,

Istvan

[Damian Kao]

How many questions get asked on average in a day and what percent of
them get closed? I don't think BioStar really gets enough volume of
question in a day to warrant a post removal system. There are already
plenty of post categories on the site, but perhaps make a new
"purgatory" section and move all badly worded or off topic posts to
it. Posters will have to edit their posts for clarity to be moved out
of purgatory.

I guess the question is will removing post closing by mods encourage
more off topic posts/badly worded questions?

--

________________________________
Damian Kao
website: blog.nextgenetics.net

[Istvan Albert]

On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 5:36 AM, Damian Kao <damia...@gmail.com> wrote:

> plenty of post categories on the site, but perhaps make a new
> "purgatory" section and move all badly worded or off topic posts to
> it. Posters will have to edit their posts for clarity to be moved out

I like the purgatory idea. Basically we could make another post
category for it (not Purgatory though ;-). This will avoid the need of
having to close questions.

If someone has a post in the 'purgatory' section they will get a
'nagging' message that pops up on every page asking them to either fix
the post or remove it. Posts in the purgatory do not show up in the
Questions section but they do show up in the Unanswered tab. Post in
the purgatory get deleted after a week or so.

[Istvan Albert]

On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 9:03 AM, Istvan Albert <iu...@psu.edu> wrote:

> I like the purgatory idea. Basically we could make another post
> category for it (not Purgatory though ;-). This will avoid the need of
> having to close questions.

Ok, this has now been implemented and pushed out to the main server.

Biostar now has a new category called FixMe. Posts that are on the
right topic but need substantial changes may be edited by moderators
and given the FixMe for category.

FixMe posts will not show up among the questions, but will show up in
the Recent/Unanswered tab.

The author of the post will be notified when they have posts like
this. Once the post is fixed the author or a moderator may change the
category back to the original one.

best,

Istvan