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This is my view as a long-time user, not as a moderator. It's only my perspective and doesn't represent the views of the other mods. BLUF: We need to grow organically, systematically, and create the environment in which that happens. We need to find the diamonds in the rough. I think the challenge in these conversations we've had over the years is that we ...

Implement a helpful tag warning for homework-and-exercises I suggest a tag warning for hw/exercises that's written with an eye to the user who has a question we want: lead that user to write a good hw/exercise question. Who knows how much impact tag-warnings actually have. (They show up at the wrong time, after all.) But the tag warning for hw/exercises ...

Reviewing really comes from experience, and that's partly why it is limited to users who have reached enough reputation. I don't think there are any hard and fast rules written down anywhere on what to look for because the expectation is that users performing the reviews have established themselves in the community and know what is expected, or not ...

Please use the "Contact" link in the footer of the page and choose "I need to merge user profiles" as the reason and explain your case. SE will handle the merge manually.

One thing we can do is be liberal with downvotes, in order to keep inappropriate questions off the front page, where they deter casual visitors with high standards from sticking around. I'm always a bit surprised and a bit disappointed when I find a two-hour-old question that already has three close votes, but still has zero downvotes. With very few ...

If you're logged out, you'll see a banner like this one in the place where the "answer question" box usually is: Most of our questions don't have this banner and they can be answered by anyone. However, some of our questions attract low-quality answers from visitors who don't yet understand how our site works or what kinds of answers are valuable ...

Yes, closing does seem to discourage a lot of askers, especially those who don't understand how Stack Exchange sites work, but it's supposed to encourage them to improve the question, when possible. We close questions that are off-topic, for obvious reasons. We close duplicates because they've already been answered. The point of early closure is not to ...

The structure of Stack Exchange site privileges is partly gamification to get you hooked, but it is also about controlling both malicious and negligent attacks on the system. Comments are not subject to downvotes and are designed to be transient so there is no penalty to a user when a comment is deleted. Which means that they represent a low risk channel ...

We probably need a revamped tutorial on how to ask an on-topic homework question. The current title of the homework policy, "How do I ask homework questions on Physics Stack Exchange?", is not a coincidence: in its original form (say, v11), and as adapted from the original thread on the mathematics site, it was intended as a tutorial to help ...

I’m gonna put it out there that the direction of the mother company is to broadly increase the user base, not the number of professionals. You can draw whatever conclusion you want from this, but for my part I will claim that there is bound to be some friction between a goal to increase/not lose professionals and the broader increase in user base. I will ...

You can't be "liberal with downvotes" when you only have one per post, and AFAIK serial downvoting is some sort of SE crime in any case. The thing that annoys me most on SE (not just this site) are a few members (I'm not going to name them) who regularly post answers that are somewhere between poor and wrong. If I had nothing better to do, I could post a ...

As I remember there was a post way back in the mists of time... Should we rename the homework policy? That got consensus but still has not been implemented. Perhaps we should finally implement this, as it will probably help users understand what exactly the policy is.

Summary - (Maybe) snappy video FAQs but no rule changes There's a difference between being welcoming and being a doormat. Let’s shift from “don’t be an asshole” to “be welcoming.” Abuse is already a breach of the rules, it's for users to flag outright abuse if they see it. It requires no more. We also need to avoid enforcing an artificial code of ...

We could provide problem solving advice on Meta The current situation tells posters what they need to accomplish, but not how to get there. And that is a non-trivial skill, which beginners need help learning. Written advice is not necessarily the best way (it is, perhaps, one of the worst ways) to deliver such help, but it is what we can do without new ...

I am here suggesting an attitude/behavior change (let's call it an improvement) rather than a change in rule or given information. A specific behavior change or change of attitude towards new users with poorly described homework questions could simply be to comment: I understand your task - but why can't you solve it? What is your doubt? Meaning, ...

Asked and answered on Mother Meta. The gist of it is that the original meaning of no registration was that other, similar Q&A sites required you to register just to see the answers; this is not the case here. You should be able to answer questions without registering. Note that this is more explicitly stated in the FAQ (specifically the Why should I ...

No. While bounties technically allow transferral of reputation from one account to another, they are not meant to be used as gifts, and any bounty that is found to be used that way will be refunded. The user will have to earn the necessary reputation points on their own. It's not that hard - 20 points are just 2 upvotes.

When a question attracts a lot of poor answers, it can be marked as protected. This is done automatically in some cases and manually in others. When a question is marked as protected, you need at least 10 reputation in order to answer it. So if you ask any question or provide any other answer that gets at least one upvote you will be able to answer protected ...

I think you're somehow thinking closing questions means they are "undesirable". This is not true of this one: it just needs to be clarified. I did not participate in the VTC but reading it I have to admit that I would have voted to close this question because it lacks clarity. The onus is then on the OP to edit the question and clarify why a ...

I think that new askers are more likely to get their questions answered, and new answerers are more likely to have their answers actually help people, if they post questions and answers rather than comments. Here are some reasons why. Instead of commenting they are tempted to post "answers" which are nothing more than comments. These have to be ...

This is just one factor among many, but I believe that one of the main things that would need to change to attract and retain professional physicists is the somewhat narrow definition of "physics" that the site has developed over the years. Let me explain: I don't know if it's just because of the company I keep, but virtually every professional physicist I'...

I debated whether or not to post this; I'm not a long-time user and have little standing in this community, and the question may be inactive anyway. But while I saw bit and pieces (especially from knzhou), I didn't really see the following perspective stated very clearly, so I thought I'd give it a shot. My apologies if this is redundant or doesn't add ...

Pro or not, people who are into physics are into physics for the physics, not for energy spent on and arguments about question curation or refinement. Look for ways that Physics SE is a little bit more like waking down the hall, grabbing a piece of chalk and posing a question, and a little bit less like, well, arguments about question curation or ...

If the concern is that homework like questions clog up the site, would an “easy” solution* be to make these posts optionally invisible? One check box removes the content from your feed and search results - yet people who want to help (or need help) can find each other on this site. We already have he ability to have favorite tags. This just extends that ...