Questions tagged [best-practices]
The best-practices tag has no usage guidance.
2
votes
1answer
40 views
Dealing with edited questions/answers
While it's not something usual, I've noticed that sometimes people edit my question or answer with a more complex notation or incorrect information/formulas. While I don't think this is done with ...
7
votes
3answers
155 views
Should I not edit my old questions on a spree?
I recently visited a couple of old questions that I had posted and there were a lot of edits (mainly grammatical but not all) that I wanted to make. I edited a couple of them and went back to the ...
3
votes
1answer
105 views
Should I prefer the most up-voted answer or the accepted answer?
I came across this question, where the accepted answer had a score of $-7$, but there was also an answer with a score of $31$. As a student who has absolutely no idea about quantum mechanics, or the"...
6
votes
2answers
198 views
Should One Downvote a Question While Voting to Close It?
The title pretty much conveys what I want to ask but I would elaborate a bit. If a question is appropriate to be closed due to either of the listed reasons for a question to be closed, should one also ...
-9
votes
3answers
112 views
A “Requires Expertise” Notice?
The Problem
I was going to write a question here asking what the appropriate response is to incorrect upvoted answers, but I realized that I'm far from the first person to ask this, e.g.
How should ...
12
votes
1answer
465 views
Straight $\mathrm{d}$ or italic $d$ for differentials?
I have had comments on my questions and answers questioning my use of
$$ \int \mathrm{d}r \qquad \text{or} \qquad \int dr.$$
I have always thought that it should not be italiced as it is an operator....
-2
votes
2answers
124 views
Explicit references matter!
I know that this forum should not replace a good bibliographic research, but... It is quite useful to know which book or paper or tutorial or any other external source of information that people have ...
28
votes
4answers
685 views
Let's not have posts look like revision histories
Inspired by this meta post on RPG.SE: I think we should keep in mind that posts with lots of "Edit:" and "Update:" sections are a bit hard to read from beginning to end, and we should strive to avoid ...
4
votes
1answer
71 views
Can I use one of my previous answers to answer another separate, but related question?
A little while ago I answered this question: What is the sun's spectral series?. For whatever reason (I'm not exactly sure), I went well outside what was expected in answering it; I provided a ...
2
votes
2answers
407 views
What can I do if I note that answers are abused to troll, flame, and/or advertise personal nonsense theories?
Just as a most recent example (I could give many more posted by other users too), this "answer" does not answer the question, brings up confused rhetoric intended to troll about fundamental physics ...
2
votes
1answer
48 views
User “talk pages”
Sorry if everyone else knows about this stuff, but I can't find any information about it anywhere.
I see occasional comments about one user putting something on another user's "talk page". I have ...
19
votes
2answers
372 views
Answering old questions
Should I answer old questions (over a year), even if they have been already answered? I think that this practice is correct, but since in many forums it is discouraged I'm not sure.
4
votes
1answer
46 views
How do I flag questions to move them to Chem.SE?
This question was asked recently. @dmckee and I both noted that it might work on chem.SE as well as here. I then stared reading through the physical-chemistry tag, found a few questions, including ...
6
votes
2answers
163 views
Should I post a question if I know the answer? Should I answer my own questions?
Recently I had some questions and was going to post them here. While trying to find the best formulation for them I've found the answers.
Posting questions with immediate answers is welcome e.g. on ...
8
votes
3answers
362 views
old questions with incorrect answers
What is the best way to handle a case where a question was asked a long time ago and received several incorrect answers but no correct ones? To be more concrete, this was the situation with this ...
5
votes
2answers
284 views
How to organize a List of Free Resources in the conxtext of PSE
This very useful question (community wiki) list-of-freely-available-physics-books is
collecting a list of freely available resources that we find out there.
How to make it more organized, without ...
2
votes
0answers
62 views
Protocol for asking closely related, but different questions? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Can I ask several related questions in a single thread?
What do you do if you want to ask a second, related but different question?
(The original question can be your own ...
11
votes
9answers
892 views
Discouraging the use of personal attacks and epithets such as “crackpot”
While some have noticed an apparent increase in the "noise-to-signal" ratio on this site, what concerns me is the rise in the "incivility-to-civility" ratio.
Let us be clear about one thing - the ...
4
votes
2answers
143 views
Too many comments on answers?
E.g. Mechanics around a rail tank wagon
It seems to me that when most answers have 30+ comments, it becomes very hard to follow what is going on or have a constructive discussion.
On my answer I ...
