I think it would be fine either way. Stories before a certain date would be exclusively QZ anyway, so for existing posters who know the history it wouldn’t be hard to find QZ stuff. (And neither solution would make any difference for ease of finding older general science stories, which are in other forums.)
I’d be worried about constant arguments about what belongs in a ‘science’ forum. You’ll get people posting pseudo-science, or people posting a ‘scientific’ study with a political angle, or people arguing that a political poll isn’t science but politics, etc. Science infuses a lot of things that already belong to other categories.
Does a scientific study on changing viewing habits belong in science, or Cafe Society? Does a study on how crime affects voting belong in science or P&E?
A ‘science’ forum should also probably have rules around cites, what constitutes a proper scientific cite and what doesn’t, etc. That would pretty much close it off to non-scientists or interested people who aren’t versed in this stuff.
I like the idea of using tags to highlight more science-related posts, but I think it’s fine the way it is.
This isn’t that hard and the Moderators can handle it.
A political poll is not a science topic. I can see the argument for it, but I would move it out. Pseudo Science will be moved out also.
Almost all of what you described is not what I would allow in Science and would dump out to an appropriate forum.
You’re ignoring all the talk already in this thread including from two moderators on how the OP would be able to define the type of thread it will be. It can be all hard facts and hard cites, it can be informed opinion or it could be MPSIMsy.
I am drawn to science threads and I think the distinction between different types of threads that @What_Exit summarized works pretty well.
We had some kind of “factual” tag for the QZ forum which worked well to distinguish the sort of thread that needed cites (this vaccine looks effective) from the sort of thread that doesn’t (what was your reaction to the vaccine?)
It wasn’t terribly hard to moderate that, except for the weird misinformation posters.
I’m not a fan. The concept of science permeates the entire board. Having a single forum for it implies that the other forums should not have scientific content.
I also remember that the criteria had always been that you only create a new forum when the current ones are being overwhelmed. And that we explicitly didn’t want to create a bunch of subject-matter forums. The second you make a science forum, that begs for a history forum, a math forum, etc.
I don’t have a problem with MPSIMS as is. It is mostly for more lighthearted conversation. Sure, breaking news could in theory use a different forum, but there aren’t enough threads for them to have their own.
If you could come up with a “Serious but not fact based” forum, maybe that could make sense. Breaking News would go there, as could some types of science discussion. It could use a name like “Serious business”–do remember that the forum titles are supposed to be humorous.
Obviously if someone wants to talk about their fascination with astrology that’s more IMHO or MPSIMS. But if someone wants to talk about whether something is science or pseudoscience, that certainly has a home in a science forum.
Not really getting this objection. I would not be good at finding or understanding the relevance of cites for geology or quantum mechanics, but I don’t see how that “closes off” the forum to me, I would hope to learn something.
I was thinking more about people posting useless woo-woo sites to back up their ‘science’, or citing marginal journals with poor track records, that sort of thing. To me, when you explicitly say this is in a ‘science’ forum, the expectation is that pseudo-science would be restricted. I’m guessing there would be some fighting going on over whether a given subject is ‘science’ or not.
I also agree with BigT. On a board trying to fight ignorance, science should imbue any fact-based discussions, and having a unique ‘science’ forum might send the wrong message.
I’m really not sure how you think having a Science forum sends the message that the rest of the Board thinks arguments and opinions backed by cited facts and evidence are not respected elsewhere on a Board dedicated to fighting ignorance.
Putting threads about breaking scientific stories into a forum shared with frivolous content, on the other hand…
I still have no idea what point you are making. What about this, exactly? What do you want to be happening with this kind of content other than allowing people to either post it in a freewheeling MPSIMS thread if they just want to post their stream of consciousness free of analysis or criticism, or allowing them to post it in a Science forum if they want it to be addressed for its scientific merit?
I don’t have much of a dog in this fight, and don’t ‘want’ anything, If there’s a science forum or not isn’t a big deal to me. I’d defer to the mods who have to do the work.
But if there is a forum dedicated to science topics, I would hope that the threads would be about real science topics, and not discussions of crystal healing or Bigfoot or how aliens are stealing people’s luggage. So I would assume some moderation around whether a topic is legitimate science, and cites do not go to the Journal of Alien Parapsychology. But maybe I’m being too literal with this and am not understanding what people want.
And so many science topics are about scientific investigations into other things that we already have categories for, so there will be some confusion as where to put things. But that already exists, so maybe it’s no big deal.
You know what? I’m just going to state this plainly and forthrightly. Your demeaning of one particular poster who shares charming stories about her rural home life is getting tiring – I infer this from the fact that ALL your examples here were from that same poster. It was thrashed to death in the Pit. You appear to be implying – and I welcome correction if I’m misreading this – that if you post serious science topics in the same forum as her anecdotes, your posts will somehow become deprecated by the very existence of her posts in the same forum.
MPSIMS has a long history in which it’s clear that “mundane” is just a euphemism. That forum is the home for many different kinds of threads, including threads about breaking news, many of which describe terribly tragic events. Others of which are frivolous. They exist side by side.
IMHO, I’m fine with the different forums that we have that are essentially organized by style and intent. QZ is the only exception that is focused on content, and if we’d had tagging back in the day, we probably wouldn’t even have that.
I thought I was pretty clear about that, yes. If someone comes to this Board wondering if it’s a good place to talk about science, it’s not a good look to discover that MPSIMS is the place you’re supposed to post a thread about a newly published scientific paper (or a terrorist attack). Not that it’s only her personal blog threads, they are just a prominent example. That forum has pretty much explicitly been the forum for more frivolous content, plus (inexplicably) breaking news.
The standard response is “scroll past content you are not interested in”, and I am 100% on board with this philosophy. Why, then, are you so opposed to arranging the Board in a logical manner that allows people to focus more easily on that content that interests them? That would surely reduce the likelihood of flame wars among people who have different ideas on what attracts them to this Board and how to interpret the “fighting ignorance” thing that it is primarily supposed to be about.
wait a minute…
Fwiw, i have never been on a chat site that doesn’t include frivolous and personal content. I’ve posted on boards devoted to passing actuarial exams, to photography, to square dancing… They all have frivolous content. Friends say the same about their chat sites devoted to knitting and math and web site development.
Most boards are organized by content, not by posting style. And i suppose that makes it easier to avoid the frivolous personal stuff if that’s your preference. (But not the silly frivolous square dance call discussions, which tend to be intermingled with the serious square dance call discussions, because people are like that. Although that got so overwhelming that we created an area just for frivolous square dance call discussions, which succeeded in isolating maybe 60% of that content… But still, people like goofing around.)
Anyway, i think it’s a weird take that the existence of frivolous content will drive away posters. I think, in many cases, it’s what keeps posters on chat sites.
I don’t think we really have as much science content as we could given the number of scientists here. Who knows if it would work, but I think a Science forum could act like Cafe Society and encourage more content in an area where we have a lot of expert posters.
And it’s a straw man to suggest that I’m arguing there should be no frivolous content. I’m hardly the first to point out how strange it is that breaking news stories go in MPSIMS.
Because,
(a) the board has historically been organized by style, not content. Whether’s that’s right or wrong may be up for debate, but it’s very difficult to organize a general-purpose message board and this organization has worked well for a long time, and because
(b) I already have a hard enough time finding threads because I’m not sure what forum they’re in. More forums/fora makes that problem worse, and because
(c) “science” is not a well-defined topic and would undoubtedly lead to all sorts of peripherally related threads that would make the problem in (b) even worse. IMHO.
In what world is a breaking news thread about a terrorist attack or a piece of scientific research in the same style as most of the rest of MPSIMS?
Perhaps your time would be better spent creating some, rather than your continued Cyber-Bullying of “that Poster”.
Who knows? Maybe you’ll get 1/10 of the replies than a thread about a malingering Possum.
Your first two points are arguments for tags rather than a new forum. That effectively gives us two dimensions, one for style (the forum) and another for content (the tag).