17
votes
Accepted
How to use the Engineering Stack Exchange site as a classroom activity?
I'm happy to see this question on our Meta site and I like the idea of incorporating the site into classroom activities. I'm not an educator but I would like to give a bit of a reaction from the ...
- 3,211
12
votes
Is it appropriate to answer the question we think the poster is asking in low quality posts?
On larger, older sites in the network, I've seen some users scolding other users for answering questions that, apparently, ought not be answered. There's a strong movement on Stack Overflow in ...
- 3,211
10
votes
Accepted
Do you want me as a non-mechanical engineer to ask questions about mechanical drawing symbols?
Your proposed questions are appropriate to ask on the main site.
Please provide an image of the symbol in question along with some amount of context about what you're working on.
- 11.4k
10
votes
Copyrighted codes/standards and fair use
In general, I think it is totally acceptable to quote small excerpts from copyrighted codes/standards when they are relevant to an answer. Across the literature in the industry, I often see articles ...
9
votes
Are too many questions tagged with "mechanical-engineering"?
Has the tag become so broad as to be (relatively) worthless?
Personally, I think it's more an issue of ignorance on the asker's part that many of the Questions here get flagged with the mechanical-...
- 3,587
9
votes
How to use the Engineering Stack Exchange site as a classroom activity?
I am going to answer in a version of @Air's answer. I will agree with the statement of "Don't force students to ask questions". It could be an interesting exercise to have a student find a question ...
hazzeyMod
- 10.7k
9
votes
Why did my question get so many down votes
Policy stuff
The downvote tooltip (shown when you hover your cursor over the voting button) describes its intended use:
This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful
...
- 3,211
8
votes
Is my question on safety practices for WWTP plant visits salvageble?
I have two general issues with the question. Only one really relates to the site. The other one is more of an "industry" concern.
Site Issues
The problem with asking about general site ...
hazzeyMod
- 10.7k
8
votes
Naive questions
Our goal is to be welcoming to basic questions. I think if you scan through the top-scored questions we've received so far, you'll see several questions that address concepts professionals would be ...
- 3,211
8
votes
Accepted
How do we handle questions about conspiracies that contain engineering topics?
In theory, if the technical question in the problem statement can stand on its own merits as a useful bit of Q&A, I think it's reasonable to address any problems with the non-technical portions of ...
- 3,211
8
votes
What's SE Engineering stance on chatGPT answers?
I think ChatGPT posts and posters should be dealt with quite harshly since they have the potential to seriously degrade the usefulness of an SE site.
On ServerFault we don't get a lot of meta ...
7
votes
More upvotes required to offset questions without accepted answers?
I agree with your conclusion that votes should be cast liberally and the platform actively encourages voting with a number of badges.* I personally make an effort to vote on as many questions as ...
- 3,211
7
votes
Accepted
Why are questions regarding discussions or product sourcing not allowed on engineering stackexchange?
I find it impossible for myself to ask an engineering question. Any question that I can frame to meet the rules, I could more quickly answer with 5 minutes of internet research.
Yep - I find myself ...
- 3,211
7
votes
So many on-hold questions
No.
Bad questions are a problem for the site. They are not a good thing. We do not want bad questions. We do not want to cut some slack for bad questions.
Keeping bad questions open, as you suggest, ...
- 3,751
7
votes
2018 Community Moderator Election
This seems like as good a place as any to state publicly that I will not be nominating in this election. Since this site launched I've taken on more responsibility at work, my family has grown, and I ...
6
votes
Answering questions with comments
First, I want to note that I agree with almost everything in Glen's answer. But I think there's merit in focusing on a different aspect of your question.
You should, in general, refrain from ...
- 2,829
6
votes
Comment vs Answer - When do you consider which one to use?
The first version of your answer, and the one Glen reviewed, began:
I cannot comment so please let me put this here.
In that light, and given that this is not the first time you've tried to ...
- 3,211
6
votes
Does engineering want to handle entropy questions?
I don't think it's useful to consider "entropy questions" categorically at this time, since we only have the one question, which may not even be in scope. We certainly don't need to create an entropy ...
- 3,211
6
votes
Accepted
A question about professionalism and neurotypical
I find this question to be important, but not on-topic for this site. Also, you'd probably get more qualified advice at another SE, namely The Workplace.SE or Interpersonal Skills.SE.
Hope they can ...
WasabiMod
- 13.1k
6
votes
What's SE Engineering stance on chatGPT answers?
I am in favor of banning the use of any language model (e.g. ChatGPT) that produces answers to questions here.
On Engineering.SE, we sometimes deal with very specific and detailed situations. In ...
hazzeyMod
- 10.7k
5
votes
Proposal: Add a custom close reason for homework questions that don't show effort
No.
I have a lot of thoughts on this issue and I've been trying to figure out the best way to arrange and present them. Really, there are too many things for one answer, so I'm going to try for a more ...
- 3,211
5
votes
When is urban planning on-topic on engineering?
From the questions that you listed, all of the traffic planning topics would certainly be acceptable here.
There is a separation of Urban Planning and Engineering though. As an example, at the ...
hazzeyMod
- 10.7k
5
votes
Is it appropriate to answer the question we think the poster is asking in low quality posts?
I largely agree with Air, but I'm not going to be quite as positive about it. You definitely need to consider the real chance that you are wasting your time. That part is up to you. It's not my ...
- 11.4k
5
votes
Is it appropriate to answer the question we think the poster is asking in low quality posts?
To offer another approach to the situation:
I try to assist askers with questions I believe are salvageable by encouraging the asker to improve their question through their response to pointed, ...
- 4,041
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible