Questions tagged [discussion]
The question you're asking is designed to solicit opinions or best-practices on a particular topic, with the goal of reaching community consensus.
136
questions
3
votes
0
answers
26
views
Middle Sidebar Advertising
As you all know, advertising is an important source of revenue for Stack Overflow and it helps us support all the sites across the Stack Exchange Network and the resources that go into maintaining and ...
- 1
1
vote
0
answers
10
views
2022: a year in moderation
As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.
As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange ...
- 101
2
votes
1
answer
15
views
Are questions about teaching internal programming courses in a corporate environment ontopic?
I have recently started to teach SQL programming with a focus on the tech-support activities course where I work (an IT Company). While I have good technical knowledge and hands-on experience, I lack ...
1
vote
1
answer
29
views
How to point "learners" to this site?
I'm an established member of Web Applications and Stack Overflow, participating on google- apps-script and related tags like ...
- 124
2
votes
0
answers
20
views
Tag maintenance required
I just went through the list of tags and found some possibilities for improvement.
We have both "high-school" and "secondary-education". Perhaps they should be merged.
We have &...
- 36k
5
votes
1
answer
194
views
Rogue moving to chat?
My answer https://cseducators.stackexchange.com/a/7349/6346 did not have a long discussion iirc, but someone moved it to chat. Except that it seems to go to a totally inappropriate chat. The same has ...
- 1,453
4
votes
0
answers
16
views
2021: a year in moderation
As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.
As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange ...
- 101
1
vote
0
answers
39
views
Related questions
Is it just me that is tempted to add a Question like: why isn't there one database to use instead of different database systems? I mean, this question got such a great, thought-provoking response!
...
- 937
2
votes
0
answers
92
views
2020: a year in moderation
As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the past 12 months.
As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network ...
- 101
3
votes
1
answer
72
views
Modifying the help center to better reflect our purpose
So, in our most recent meta question, we tried to determine whether or not this question is topical to the site.
Gypsy Spellweaver pointed out:
Without a change to the Help Center text it's off topic....
Ben I.Mod
- 32.9k
3
votes
4
answers
89
views
Is a question about the nature of education topical?
This question is unlike anything we've seen before:
Difference between a Bachelor's degree and a Master's degree in CS
Is it topical?
Traditionally, we've focused on HOW to teach, with occasional ...
Ben I.Mod
- 32.9k
5
votes
2
answers
245
views
Users shouldn't be told they're asking the wrong question
One of the things people hate about Stack Overflow is that when they ask a question of the form "How do I do X in Y?", they get answers of the form "You shouldn't do X" or "...
- 7,640
2
votes
0
answers
74
views
Considering what can be taught
In a previous Meta post I made, someone replied that I seem to be pessimistic about teaching anything to anyone. This is true, but until I read something recently, I could not explain why. Since this ...
- 937
2
votes
1
answer
57
views
Synonymize [lesson-planning] into [lesson-ideas]
lesson-planning has only three questions, and the much wider used lesson-ideas is for questions about
planning lessons for a specific purpose, such as teaching some coding paradigm or skill. ...
- 169
1
vote
0
answers
46
views
Teaching analogy question
As of this writing, three people have flagged this question for closure. However, I believe that it is a straightforward teaching-analogy question, well in line with past examples. Here are just a ...
Ben I.Mod
- 32.9k
3
votes
1
answer
49
views
When are "how do I learn X" type questions on topic here?
I recently encountered the following question on Stack Overflow:
I'm studying and I want to learn how to code in Java, but while my mates are doing arrays, I still continue with the basics - stuff ...
4
votes
0
answers
44
views
2019: a year in moderation
It's New Year's Day in Stack Exchange land...
A distinguishing characteristic of these sites is how they are moderated:
We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, ...
- 101
4
votes
0
answers
104
views
Interest in a big collection of CS1/CS2/CSx programming problems?
Having taught an introduction to programming course CCPS 109 Computer Science I using Python 3 for three semesters, after sixteen years of teaching that same course using Java, I have completed a ...
- 301
1
vote
3
answers
69
views
What should we be doing about off topic questions?
In the last few months we've been receiving quite a few off topic questions, which clearly cannot be salvaged with editing. They typically are closed in a timely manner, but they still sit on the ...
- 4,795
6
votes
2
answers
100
views
Topic Challenges III: Return of the Topic
Well, it's been a while.
To our new(-er) users, welcome to Topic Challenges. To our old(-er) users, welcome back.
In the spirit of improving the site, its questions and the amount of fun and ...
- 6,287
2
votes
1
answer
58
views
Editing Offensive / Spam Posts
A rather inappropriate - both by content and value of the contribution - answer was posted on this question this morning. What is the consensus (if there is one) on editing the answer? Would it be ...
- 499
2
votes
3
answers
70
views
SITE::Scope.resolution->choice(Student.access->block(net))
A new question has again raised the issue of the scope on our site.
In this case it's about some possible form of internet blocking affecting the student access to resources. Other questions which we ...
- 5,435
2
votes
1
answer
48
views
Is it appropriate to edit out this odd bit of self promotion answering edited into a question?
I recently came across this question. Despite the author of the question needing help automating their grading, they are also apparently an author of an automatic grading platform themselves. The ...
- 163
4
votes
0
answers
49
views
2018: a year in moderation
It's New Year's Day in Stack Exchange land...
A distinguishing characteristic of these sites is how they are moderated:
We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in ...
- 101
0
votes
1
answer
49
views
Why was this question re-migrated after Academia refused it?
This question was migrated to Academia, which closed it and rejected the migration. Then, a moderator migrated it a second time.
Why migrate it repeatedly? Why not just close it after getting ...
- 449
1
vote
0
answers
77
views
How to expound something to someone
I've been teaching programming for a while with poor success. I reduced the 3 Normal Forms of relational database structure to 4 short, clear sentences using ordinary words. But for someone to really "...
- 937
0
votes
2
answers
53
views
Should welcome comments be removed?
On the site, we generally have been trying to add "Welcome" comments to posts by new users to attempt to get them to stick around on the site and contribute more. On the other hand, officially, ...
- 4,795
2
votes
3
answers
198
views
The Two Doctrines Truth
I often see a distinction made between teaching school-age people 'Computing' and teaching Computer Science in college or beyond. The attitude about general education teaching seems to be that we can ...
- 937
1
vote
2
answers
66
views
Equivalence Relation
Many of the questions revolve around imparting correct understanding. Often, even with seemingly good instruction, wrong understanding still occurs. There are particular concepts in CS that cause this ...
- 937
2
votes
1
answer
48
views
Is question about common mistakes on-topic?
I'm not a CS teacher, but I answer lots of questions from novices on StackOverflow, so I often feel like one. And of course we see lots of repeats of the same beginner mistakes (e.g. initializing a ...
- 341
2
votes
3
answers
63
views
Requisites, pre- and post
Someone kicked the anthill with the question about touch-typing, which raised the issue of prerequisites, which brings up the concept of a curriculum, which invokes the area of what in the world are ...
- 937
1
vote
1
answer
76
views
The Curse of the Deadly Serious
I find in my long experience with many SE sites that there is a pervasive attitude of taking everything very literally and seriously. For example, when I write a question or answer on CSE, I certainly ...
- 937
1
vote
3
answers
92
views
What should we do with "*-choice" questions?
Some of our questions can be categorized as some kind of *-choice question. The most common seems to be language-choice, but one could see the same type of questions asking about any standard teaching ...
- 4,795
2
votes
2
answers
48
views
Sitely less technical? Site scope question
The misspelled word in the title is intentional.
Is the site's scope still aligned with what was in mind, say, 4-5 months ago?
I see more and more questions that are more pedagogy than CS. While the ...
- 6,287
4
votes
1
answer
44
views
Merge the two tags: tests and exam
We have two tags: tests and exam. They both have wiki and the discussions there are semantically similar (exam is more complete). These should likely be merged.
I suggest (and Gypsy Spellweaver ...
- 36k
4
votes
0
answers
50
views
Tag Assessments should be Tag Assessment
I recommend changing the name of the "assessments" tag to "assessment".
I think "assessment" (describes an action) has a very different interpretation than "assessments" (a plural noun describing a ...
- 36k
1
vote
1
answer
46
views
Why do we have the best-practice tag?
The tag best-practice has about 56 questions tagged as such, but I can't see what additional information or categorization this tag provides for any of them.
I'd say that any question about "best ...
- 415
2
votes
2
answers
33
views
What should we do with low quality answers?
Many of the questions on our site are answerable with a sentence or two. Even the most complex questions on our site could be answered in only a couple sentences. Those answers are not very likely to ...
- 4,795
5
votes
4
answers
112
views
What should we do about answers in the comments?
"Answer in comments": A comment which is a very short attempt to answer the question or solve the problem.
Answers in comments are a very common phenomenon on this site. Some questions have one while ...
- 4,795
10
votes
2
answers
88
views
Frame-Challenging Questions on CSEducators
I recently posted a frame-challenging answer to a question, and received an astute comment that I had not actually answered OP's question.
"Nay, say I!" I cried out unto the heavens. "...
Ben I.Mod
- 32.9k
6
votes
0
answers
108
views
Smelly and Pingable people
We have a bot that helps you ping people in the classroom.
The command !!/help will provide the following:
...
- 36k
-1
votes
2
answers
54
views
Other managed languages beside C# for cross-platform development (on topic?)
Is this on topic?
Since virtual machines and hardware have become so smarter and faster lately, that some managed languages have been able to run code almost as fast as equivalent C++ code, I decided ...
- 101
1
vote
1
answer
23
views
Optimistic Suggestion: topic challenge + site promotion +?
Looking at the visits/day of our site, it can be better.
170 v/d...
So, maybe this is a good time to look more closely at promoting our site.
I'm not sure how the twitter account is going, and I ...
- 6,287
2
votes
3
answers
90
views
Dealing with the inherent subjectivity of CS Education
This recent question made me (once again) think about how we should reconcile Stack Exchange norms and our (inherently subjective) content. We also need to remember that our goal is to help the asker ...
- 4,795
3
votes
6
answers
164
views
Creating Community Ads (2018 Edition)
Well, almost a year since our conception and 'tis the season for community ads again! On all graduated sites, there are Community Promotion Ads which provide an opportunity for relevant, useful sites ...
- 4,795
2
votes
2
answers
79
views
Subjective list question?
The latest HNQ is, in my eyes, subjective:
So, how would you explain the concept of a variable to a 9 year old
(the actual question in the post, emphasis mine)
This is quite subjective. I see the ...
- 6,287
5
votes
2
answers
96
views
Implementing education-level based tagging
This is a continuation of the discussion on this question. At the time of this writing, this answer was highest voted, and so the implementation of it will be discussed here.
For reference, here is ...
- 4,795
3
votes
0
answers
32
views
Guidance for Site Maintainers
Note that this post will require updates over a day or so to get right. This note will disappear when done.
Concept: Some questions require editing to assure usefulness for future visitors
Regular ...
- 36k
6
votes
3
answers
108
views
Meta-tagging based on age/grade/course/ability
Notice: Now that we've chosen a proposal, we are discussing implementation as a part of this meta question. Please have any further discussions there.
Way back in the early days of our site (well, a ...
- 4,795
3
votes
0
answers
62
views
Experiment: More aggressive review queue indicator
Over on Meta Stack Exchange, I announced an experiment that would:
Turn on the review queue indicator whenever there's a task available in any queue.
All queues with at least one task will be marked ...
