Timeline for Why is the Cognitive Sciences Stack Exchange community so small? What we can do about it?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
14 events
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| Mar 16, 2017 at 15:50 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://meta.cogsci.stackexchange.com/ with https://cogsci.meta.stackexchange.com/
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| Mar 30, 2013 at 22:24 | comment | added | Christian Hummeluhr | @ArtemKaznatcheev Right now, that is largely a hypothetical problem. You can not cull what is not there in the first place. When there is a healthy influx of questions, we can worry about what kind of questions they are, but first things first. It's much easier to handle one problem at a time instead of trying to do everything at once. First we get the questions, then we cull them. | |
| Mar 30, 2013 at 1:50 | comment | added | Artem Kaznatcheev | I have largely given up on my agenda of encouraging this site to be research level. Partially because I don't think it is possible, and partially because I felt that my quest was driven by self-interest: I simply didn't want to read non-research level questions and variants on common misconceptions. | |
| Mar 30, 2013 at 1:48 | comment | added | Artem Kaznatcheev | @ChristianHummeluhr my thoughts on this come from my experience with the only research-level SE: cstheory. As far as I can tell, that website made it because of very aggressive culling of non-research questions, but also because they had an in-flow of experienced users from the research level MathOverflow. I wasn't around in the early days of MO, to know what they did right. Ofcourse, it might be possible to build a research-friendly site in other ways. | |
| Mar 29, 2013 at 13:59 | comment | added | Christian Hummeluhr | @ArtemKaznatcheev I get the feeling that the site has been fighting this fight for a while, so I apologize if I'm stepping on toes here, but I don't understand why the consensus is that "if only we had more research questions, researchers would come here." If your colleagues are anything like mine, the concern about question ratio was likely a matter of obviousness. They would have rejected the site for some other reason even if it consisted of nothing but research questions, unless you led them by the nose to something you knew they would find obviously relevant or they found it on their own. | |
| Mar 29, 2013 at 13:09 | comment | added | Artem Kaznatcheev | @ChristianHummeluhr except it actually is an impediment. Every time I show this website to my colleagues, they go to the front page, see the mass of non-research and often non-scientific content, and leave without taking the (considerable amount of) time to find the few research level questions on this site. But I lost the battle for encouraging research questions on this site long ago, and I doubt there is ever a chance of attracting significant numbers of researchers for this site, anymore :(. | |
| Mar 29, 2013 at 11:59 | comment | added | Christian Hummeluhr | There is no reason to avoid popular science-level questions, and in fact I think we should actively encourage them as much as we do research questions. If we focus on the desired end-result of vibrant research question activity right away, we will never actually get there. Popular-level questions are an opportunity to attract valuable undergrad members (even a blind hen sometimes finds a grain of corn) and get the research out of the lab, not an impediment to attracting professionals. | |
| Nov 13, 2012 at 23:15 | comment | added | Jeff | Promoting research-level questions is great, but the proportion of them on this site is too small. Reading the front page Qs often does not give the impression that we are a research-level site, but not allowing those questions would significantly impact our stats (visits, Qs, etc)... I don't really know what the answer is. | |
| Nov 13, 2012 at 23:13 | comment | added | Jeff | @Artem I don't have a problem with the name, but I suspect that reflects different academic backgrounds more than anything else? (i.e. cognitive neuroscientists often don't like to be called psychologists, even if that's what they are) | |
| Nov 13, 2012 at 22:30 | comment | added | Artem Kaznatcheev | @Jeff I think it is worse than just chicken-and-egg problem. I tried for a bit to feed the site with close-to-research level questions and promote it to my colleagues, but after a few months of trying I made no progress. So I think we need more than just an enthusiastic initial few researchers. Something needs to change in policy, or elsewhere. My longstanding suspect has been the site-name, but I doubt it is that simple anymore. :( | |
| Nov 13, 2012 at 17:17 | comment | added | Jeff | Agreed. There's too much popsci on here to attract most cognitive scientists. It's a chicken and egg problem, and we don't have a chicken. I do think lack of awareness plays a big part too though | |
| Oct 16, 2012 at 4:30 | comment | added | Jeromy Anglim Mod | I agree largely with this analysis (i.e., psych communities are under-engaged with the internet / open access, etc.; a more inclusive name would help). However, my conclusion is that this highlights the need for a site like cogsci.se. I think that building awareness outside of mainstream StackExchange community will take time. I think we already have a unique site that is generating useful content, and I hope that over time it will get even better. So I hope my optimism will be proven right :-) | |
| Oct 15, 2012 at 10:30 | comment | added | Chuck Sherrington | Thanks for expressing this. | |
| Oct 15, 2012 at 0:30 | history | answered | Artem Kaznatcheev | CC BY-SA 3.0 |