If somebody comes to the Board looking to see if it’s a good place to come to discuss new scientific research, they will be told by @Chronos that the forum to discuss it is the same forum that has thread titles like this:
It’s not like I had to look far for these, the are all recent. Tell me again that the rule about informative thread titles is enforced objectively for all posters in MPSIMS. Or even it it were, that the forum for personal blogs is an appropriate place to put science or breaking news stories.
The first is literally about feeling a weird sensation in the op’s toes.
The second asks about who you love.
The third is a question about bananas.
How are any of those uninformative? And how does allowing a thread about whether split bananas are safe to eat discourage anyone from posting about science questions?
If you want to have a deadly serious discussion about something scientific, where every claim is cited, you should probably start it in FQ. If you want to have a more light-hearted discussion about some weird science fact you just read about, MPSIMS seems like a good choice.
And you deduced that’s what it was about from the title, without opening the thread, right? I made the more reasonable guess from knowing the poster that it was another personal blog post and never opened it.
The first and second are pretty much what i expected from the titles, yes. The second is pretty much exactly what the title says it is. The first could have been about various things, but was, in fact, exactly what was advertised.
The third is a silly title, and doesn’t say exactly what it’s about. But it is, in fact, a silly thread about bananas. So i find it hard to imagine anyone clicked that thread and felt misled by the title.
I’d like to hear more opinions on that, not because I have a strong one/want to argue, but a consensus that “IMHO is the best place to post interesting science papers” would be helpful.
“…thinking about sharing those to generate discussion” is not a Factual Question, unless I happen to include a factual question. But that’s not what I was intended to describe with that phrase.
The primary point remains. The Board can certainly include frivolous content, and if part of the Board is not going to enforce the rule about informative thread titles selectively that’s up to you. All I’m suggesting is that the substantive content that and the more serious conversations that are the primary attraction of this Board not be relegated to sharing the same forum.
We should all skip over content that we’re not interested in, of course. But by failing to enforce informative thread titles and by telling us that content like science and breaking news belong in the same forum as frivolous content, you’re making it unreasonably difficult for people to do that.
@puzzlegal@Chronos to keep on subject, the OP has asked a good question.
I feel the non-breaking news OPs that aren’t expecting to be purely factual replies are a good fit for IMHO which also relieve the side complaint from @Riemann, how do you to feel about that?
The QZ forum concept worked fine, that could become the Science forum.
I think we could stand to have a dedicated Breaking News forum, since special rules already apply to breaking news stories. I don’t see how that would increase the burden on the mods, since they are already moderating that as part of MPSIMS.
That would solve the problem with the confusing mix of content in MPSIMS, people can fly their freak flag there to their hearts’ content.
If the total number of forums cannot increase, I’d favor just adding Breaking News and retiring QZ. Science stories would then fit fine within either Breaking News (for brand new published research) or FQ or IMHO, but wouldn’t need to be mixed into MPSIMS.
All the threads in the Breaking News forum could automatically be subject to the special rules we already have for breaking news threads, including science stories. Science stories with opinion to IMHO.
But what is the reason for not increasing the number of forums by one? It wouldn’t increase the moderating burden if it’s simply to segregate the subset of breaking news stories out of MPSIMS.
Well, except Cafe Society, which breaks all those rules, and may also be our most popular forum. Breaking news, factual questions, opinionated shouts…if they’re about the arts, there they go. So we have at least one big exception.
And new posters who come here are obviously more likely to think “this is a good place to come and talk about science” if there is a forum called Science, as opposed to a forum called What-The-Fuck-Is-This with clickbait threads that open to personal blogs.
I admit I’m warming to this idea. It’s actually quite hard to get rid of a forum. But rebranding QZ as “science, etc.” would be much easier. Finding old threads to move there would be challenging, but it wouldn’t be that hard to post new threads there.
If we were to add a Science forum, best to add it clean. Then move QZ under it as a subforum. We have examples of that in the Moderator Forums and how most message boards operate.
Despite the awkwardness of using tags in mobile, I’d prefer keeping the “covid” tag to creating a subforum. I don’t like the way subforums work in discourse. They kinda take as much “space” as a new forum in a lot of menus and stuff.