25
votes
Enable syntax highlighting for code
I support this.
(Vote here if you support this, too.)
As a computational chemist I am clearly biased, but currently cannot find any good reason to not have code highlighting. I have seen enough ...
- 43.2k
21
votes
Accepted
Change “for scientists, academics, teachers and students”
"... for scientists, academics, teachers, and students in the field of chemistry."*
"scientists of chemistry" and "academics of chemistry" are awkward compositions, so I think that simply "... for ...
- 17k
17
votes
Accepted
Reasoning or commenting before downvoting
This is literally the most asked question on the meta history of SE. Almost every per site meta gets it and the mother meta – meta.SE – well.
Just as I said in my comment:
Votes are ...
- 10.4k
16
votes
Reasoning or commenting before downvoting
No. I don't think this should be required for the reason of revenge downvoting.
I do think people should be more aware of what content should be downvoted. Yesterday I saw a chemistry homework ...
- 6,434
13
votes
Accepted
Can we allow comments on the question change the status of a question to active?
Please no, that is a bad idea.
I have multiple reasons why I do not like the idea at all.
First and foremost, I don't like comments very much. I regard comments as obsolete by default, especially when ...
- 43.2k
12
votes
Accepted
Video player integration in answers
I am against it.
While the implementation is already present as it is used on other sites, it will add considerable load time to the page itself. We are already loading one of the heaviest ...
- 43.2k
12
votes
Prevention of unnecessary edits of old posts.
TL;DR: Google may understand the difference between sulfur and sulphur, but gives better rankings to pages (and entire sites) with better spelling, grammar, and mechanics. Also, it's easier to read a ...
- 6,434
10
votes
Accepted
Design request - Can I please have the visited questions in a different color?
This should be a (hopefully) simple style sheet change. Meta is already doing it, and other sites are also. The effect is generally subtle and I approve of subtle:
$\color{magenta}{\text{I fully ...
- 42k
10
votes
Should we create a community blog?
SE isn't starting any new blogs at the moment:
We've learned a lot by creating these per-site blogs for any site
which asked for them. However, we at Stack Exchange have not been
doing enough ...
- 6,053
10
votes
Accepted
Enable syntax highlighting for code
This is enabled, but not by default - lots of existing posts use code formatting for things that don't benefit from syntax highlighting, and I don't see any pervasive language tags that would be ...
- 101
10
votes
Accepted
Prevention of unnecessary edits of old posts.
The best way to combat this is to reject the edits. If you see an edit that was accepted and is as poor as the one above, please flag it for a moderator to take a look at. We have a means to take ...
- 2,937
10
votes
Newcomers are more valuable than you think, please welcome them
"We need more members"
Personally, I'm not sure this is necessarily true.
What we need is good quality questions and good quality answers to accompany them.
StackExchange generally has quite a ...
- 16.9k
10
votes
Change “for scientists, academics, teachers and students”
The current description implicitly excludes laymen from our target audience. Surely our site welcomes anyone with a good chemistry question or a good chemistry answer. SE Earth Science does not ...
- 4,663
10
votes
Is habitual down voting considered okay?
Voting is subjective.
Up: This question shows research effort, it is useful and clear
Down: This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful
Everybody using this site has ...
- 43.2k
10
votes
Is habitual down voting considered okay?
There are two layers to this problem. The first layer is based on individual actions: is it OK for any single person to continually downvote posts?
The answer is that habitual downvoting is not ...
- 68.7k
10
votes
Accepted
Feature request, self-flagging own comments
I don't really see the necessity for this, to be honest. You can already flag the post for moderator attention, which accomplishes the same effect. If you additionally want to make the "flag text&...
- 68.7k
9
votes
Should we create a community blog?
I'm all in favor of starting a community blog. It's in the spirit of "we're graduating and we're a major site" and will allow discussion of cool chemistry news that doesn't fit into the Q&A format....
- 27.3k
9
votes
Accepted
Reviewing the questions by a reputed user before posting
The biggest problems with this, in my opinion:
What you're proposing is sheer charity. People are occasionally awesome, but I can't imagine a person that is always in a good mood and always ...
- 10.4k
9
votes
Accepted
Proposal for a bot to welcome new users
What you are describing is essentially what the "First Post" review queue is there for. It's not a bot that reviews the posts, but users who have been part of the community for some time (500 ...
- 43.2k
9
votes
Accepted
Should the [homework] tag probably be removed from the suggestions when posting a new question?
It's not a bug.
I don't know how the system determines what suggestions to show there, but it is completely different for me (logged in/out, different devices). It almost seems to be random.
[......
- 43.2k
8
votes
Accepted
Pin chat to the sidebar on main site?
This is not something that the moderators can do on a per-site basis. So, I am not really sure if there is much we can say about this matter.
Scrolling through meta.SE the closest related question I ...
- 68.7k
8
votes
Accepted
Can we please burninate the organic tag?
The tag was on the question "Photoisomerization of Azobenzene", see the edit history here.
I am responsible for making this tag an orphan, meaning as soon as I saw it, I substituted it to the proper ...
- 43.2k
8
votes
Why are there no migrations paths to Physics.SE, Math.SE, etc.?
Migration should only happen when the site on the receiving end actually wants the question; that is, the question should be good enough so the only thing wrong with it would be where it's asked. ...
- 10.4k
8
votes
altered page layout ChemSE
There's been a lot of discussion about this network-wide. The summary of it is that SE is changing the layout of every site, for reasons which I don't fully understand yet. It has generated a lot of ...
- 68.7k
8
votes
Feature request for a new tag for confusing high school textbook paragraphs
I think erratum already fulfills this purpose. From the tag info:
For questions that deal with possible errors in a specific statement of a specified book, article, website, etc. These questions ...
andseliskMod
- 36.6k
8
votes
Feature request, self-flagging own comments
If you want to draw the attentions of the moderators, do not flag comments, flag the post and include whatever the comment says there.
There is in principle only one action for flags on comments: ...
- 43.2k
8
votes
Accepted
Discussion on research paper
Since I did claim it was on-topic, I guess I'll try and write a bit. Most of my answer will probably be off-topic for Meta, but maybe I have accumulated enough goodwill here to avoid being suspended ...
- 68.7k
8
votes
Accepted
Feature request on asking a user for the reason on downvoting a question
Down-voting is part of the quality-control mechanism. If it weren't anonymous, folks would be less likely to vote, and less likely to vote based on the quality of the post.
The way the rules stand, ...
KarstenMod
- 34.6k
7
votes
Accepted
Plagiarism: To what extent? We should be able to flag for this
(Transferred from the comments)
Everything that is copied verbatim should be blockquoted and linked to, at an absolute minimum. Please flag anything in violation of this using the "Other:" reason and ...
- 2,937
7
votes
Should we create a community blog?
I think there should be a community blog. I don't think I would be able to write for it, but I would definitely read it, comment, and share it around.
Our site has a lot of interesting questions that ...
- 6,434
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible