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engineering.meta.stackexchange.com

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28

2015-01-21T10:31:19.343

Do we need a disclaimer?

|feature-request|

<p>I haven't seen a disclaimer on a stack exchange site before; but a lot of the answers given on this site could constitute "professional advice", although I doubt anyone would intend them as such.</p> <p>Would it be a good idea to add a catch-all disclaimer to the footer of the site to clarify this position?</p> <p>Something like:</p> <blockquote> <p>Disclaimer : The information on this website does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of any associated companies. Neither should any suggestions or advice contained on this website be relied upon in place of professional advice. You are responsible for checking the accuracy of relevant facts and opinions given on this website before entering into any commitment based upon them.</p> </blockquote>

<h3>Another Site</h3> <p>In general, I agree that we shouldn't need a disclaimer. That lasted until I saw that <a href="https://law.stackexchange.com/">Law.SE</a> has a disclaimer.</p> <p>The disclaimer there is:</p> <blockquote> <p>Law Stack Exchange is for <a href="https://law.stackexchange.com/help/disclaimer">educational purposes</a> only and is not a substitute for individualized advice from a qualified legal practitioner. Communications on Law Stack Exchange are not privileged communications and do not create an attorney-client relationship.</p> </blockquote> <p>Except for the last bit about attorney-client stuff, Engineers face similar issues with giving free advice. Engineering is equally as regulated of a profession. And engineering doesn't come with built-in legal council to defend against frivolous lawsuits!</p> <p>The general disclaimer linked from that blurb is equally good:</p> <blockquote> <p>The information, advice, links and/or any other materials (“Content”) made available through Law Stack Exchange (the “Site”) are for informational purposes only and are not a substitute for professional legal advice or consultation. You should contact a qualified licensed attorney to obtain advice with respect to any important legal issue or problem. Do not disregard or delay in obtaining professional advice based on any Content from the Site. Content may not be complete, correct, or up to date, and some Content may be obtained or provided without proper citation or review. Content made available through the Site does not represent endorsements or recommendations by Stack Exchange or other users. Use of and access to the Site or any Content on the Site, or any of the e-mail, website, social media or other like links contained within the Site, do not create an attorney-client relationship between those posing or responding to inquiries, or any other users, even if licensed individuals in the corresponding fields are involved in such use. Further, these are not privileged communication or attorney work product, and no right to privacy exists. Any opinions expressed are the opinions of the individual author and may not reflect the opinions of Stack Exchange, or other users. All users of the Site relinquish any or all claims against Stack Exchange, the party providing the Content, and any other users that may arise from reliance on any information obtained from the Site. Reliance on any information appearing on the Site is solely at your own risk.</p> </blockquote> <h3>What We Should Do</h3> <p>We should take Law.SE's disclaimer completely and change the specific bits from talking about law and attorneys to engineering and Engineers. If it was created by a bunch of lawyers, it has to be better than your average bunch of engineers can put together.</p>

316

2015-06-26T20:25:07.833

What should we name our chat room?

|discussion|status-completed|chat|

<p>Exactly five months ago (to the day), <a href="https://engineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73/change-name-of-chat-room">Change name of chat room?</a> was asked. The consensus was that it was too early, and so the whole thing stopped. Now that the site's much older, the time seems riper.</p> <p>What should we name <a href="http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/20403">our chat room</a>? Another thing that was implicit was that "Engineering" is a bit boring; let's make it something more interesting.</p>

<h1>Loose Screws</h1> <p>or, for those who prefer <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/learnit/learnitv287.shtml" rel="nofollow">the public house approach</a> (a la "The Prancing Pony"):</p> <h1>The Loose Screw</h1>

408

2015-12-14T00:53:12.763

Why are questions regarding discussions or product sourcing not allowed on engineering stackexchange?

|discussion|

<p>I have answered many questions here on engineering stack exchange, but 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. The things that I dont know about engineering and can not find on the internet require discussion or industry specific (sourcing) knowledge that other people have. </p> <p>If you prohibit all questions that could infer discussion, all you end up with is a bunch of people that know nothing about engineering either asking for homework help or miss worded questions that require discussion/sourcing anyway.</p> <p>I realize this is a policy of stackexchange in general, but I think it applies to computer programming a bit easier because there is less real world discussion to be had (sourcing and to some extent discussion can be reduced). Engineering, even academically, without substance or reflection on best practices is not very helpful.</p> <p>I don't understand why legitimate questions like <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6497/are-there-any-materials-that-can-not-be-drilled-or-sawed/">this one</a> that is "sourcing" for sake of an example/clarity is put on hold. And questions like <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6038/what-optics-and-display-are-used-in-microsoft-hololens">this one</a> that is directly asking for a product source is fine.</p> <p>I think the desire to build a good community and a solid question content base is getting lost in the necessity to follow old rules.</p>

<blockquote> <p>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.</p> </blockquote> <p>Yep - I find myself in that position on Stack Overflow a lot of the time.</p> <p>The primary goal of any SE site is to improve upon the existing aggregated Internet resource for questions in a certain problem domain. There <em>are</em> gaps in what engineering problems are easily solved via Google. There <em>are</em> questions that have only subpar answers on other sites, or decent but incomplete answers, where we can create something better.</p> <p>It can be hard to ask a good question on SE when you:</p> <ul> <li>Are a pretty skilled and dedicated researcher; you tend to either find what you need just as quickly on your own, or else never get to the point of feeling like you're "done" researching.</li> <li>Have access to a lot of expertise in the form of coworkers, instructors, mentors, etc. Why take the time to do a write-up and wait for volunteers to post answers that you don't know if you can even trust, when Bob has 45 years in the industry and his cube is two aisles down?</li> <li>Work on projects that are well-documented, that have an established procedure, that have training materials, that are running smoothly. When you have to do something you haven't done before and your attempts fail outright, but <em>someone</em> has probably done it before, Stack Exchange wants to close the gap between you and that someone. If you don't have that sort of problem - let's be honest, that's a good thing.</li> </ul> <p>That's not even a remotely exhaustive list. I'm trying to illustrate the particular niche that this site wants to fit into and that it's designed around, by examples of situations that don't necessarily call for the particular solution we're offering. We're not a Swiss Army knife, we don't do it all.</p> <blockquote> <p>If you prohibit all questions that could infer discussion, all you end up with is a bunch of people that know nothing about engineering either asking for homework help or miss worded questions that require discussion/sourcing anyway.</p> </blockquote> <p>We don't prohibit questions based on whether answers <em>could infer</em> discussion. There is actually <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/148315/254929">a post notice that moderators can place on answers that don't go into enough detail</a>, which says that good answers <em>explain</em> and provide <em>context</em>. That kind of answer often leads to some amount of discussion in comments, which is fine. Sometimes the comment constitutes a valuable addition; sometimes it adds to the site indirectly, by prompting a user to improve their answer.</p> <p>What we do not want is content that is <em>dominated by conversation</em>. We need to be able to go through after the fact and separate the wheat from the chaff. When I say "we," I don't just mean moderators deleting comments—I also mean regular users voting and flagging.</p> <p>There are lots of sites on the internet where you can wade through pages and pages of threaded conversation to get a rich, nuanced view of a complex problem. Though if we're being honest, 90% of the time what you're actually getting is a rich, nuanced view of how to have petty arguments, go off on tangents, not support arguments with evidence and get people to read something for twenty minutes that ends up not solving their problem at all.</p> <p>Needless to say, we don't aspire to that.</p> <blockquote> <p>I don't understand why legitimate questions like <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6497/are-there-any-materials-that-can-not-be-drilled-or-sawed/">this one</a> that is "sourcing" for sake of an example/clarity is put on hold. And questions like <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6038/what-optics-and-display-are-used-in-microsoft-hololens">this one</a> that is directly asking for a product source is fine.</p> </blockquote> <p>In the case of individual questions that you think should or should not be allowed, this is a community-moderated site; even if a mod interprets a question as off-limits based on an existing policy, you can disagree and you can cast a vote to reopen the question. If that goes nowhere, you can dedicate a Meta conversation to the specific question; yes, that is allowed, once you've exhausted other avenues.</p> <p>As it happens, both of those questions are now open. Personally, I think both are <em>poor</em> questions and I've voted accordingly. But the community decided the first one needed improvement, and then decided that the improvements it got were good enough. The more of us take part in those decisions, the better.</p>

499

2017-01-01T15:36:36.563

Should $\LaTeX$ be disabled in question titles due to ${\huge weird formatting?}$ $${\frac{\frac{\text{this is}}{a~very~ugly}}{\huge title}}$$

|discussion|feature-request|bug|formatting|

<p>I definitely prefer $\LaTeX$ in the body of a question. It's sharp, easy to read and adds a lot of quality.</p> <p>However, in the title I find it highly disturbing. It also destroys the nice look on the 'Questions' page, if people put weird commands (or huge equations) into the title and it gets formatted. </p> <p>Thus, is it worth disabling it?</p> <p>I've added the Tag bug, because it might be unintended behavior. Although one could argue this simply is a feature...</p>

<p>Generally, there is nothing to stop users from inserting distracting elements in their posts, either title or body. (It can be emoji in a title or a cat meme in post body, etc.) </p> <p>With the rare exception of trolls, users do it because they don't realize it's distracting. So, help them by editing the post and explaining (for example, in the edit summary) that this sort of things should not be used. </p> <p>Stack Exchange does have the ability to block certain titles by a regex match. For example, on Mathematics site <code>$$</code> is blocked in titles, which is meant to disallow <a href="https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/q/16946">displayed formulas in titles</a>. This was done because there was enough such occurrences <em>in practice</em>, not because of "someone could" concerns. (Mathematics gets over 100 times as many questions as Engineering, and the proportion of formula-heavy posts is also higher.) </p> <p>On Chemistry, LaTeX/MathJax formatting is strongly discouraged in titles, but there is no software-enforced ban; users edit it out. I think this is the best course of action: <em>when you see a badly formatted post, edit it</em>. </p>

506

2017-01-27T20:44:15.667

Graduate Degree Question

|discussion|

<p>I'm currently about halfway through an engineering Master's degree program. Pretty soon I need to decide whether to choose a thesis option or just take more electives. I'd like to ask this question to this site, but I'm not sure if it's appropriate. The education tag is as follows:</p> <blockquote> <p>Use this tag for questions about engineering education, including but not limited to curriculum, accreditation programs, mentoring programs and educational internships. Do not request individual academic guidance.</p> </blockquote> <p>While the question could certain qualify as individual academic guidance, if I ask it to draw more general answers, would it be appropriate? Should I include details about my education to get detailed responses or leave it very generic to ensure generic answers?</p>

<blockquote> <p>While the question could certain qualify as individual academic guidance, if I ask it to draw more general answers, would it be appropriate?</p> </blockquote> <p>Likely not. Academic guidance is inherently specific to a particular student at a particular institution; <a href="https://engineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/261/are-academic-guidance-questions-on-topic">that's one of the main reasons we don't provide it here.</a> You can't generalize such a question without making it much less useful to real individuals, and that's a bad sign for a site that focuses on solving real, practical problems <em>shared among</em> many individual readers.</p> <blockquote> <p>Should I include details about my education to get detailed responses or leave it very generic to ensure generic answers?</p> </blockquote> <p>I can't reasonably advise you on how to write questions that are off-topic for this site. What I can do is point you to <a href="https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic">another site on the network where your question might be better received</a>. If you'd like to attract the attention of our user base to your question, feel free to drop a link in <a href="http://chat.stackexchange.com/?tab=site&amp;host=engineering.stackexchange.com">chat</a>.</p>

544

2018-04-08T16:55:39.073

Why do I have more reputation then I earned?

|discussion|

<p>I just got off a years suspension and all my posts have down votes. I don't understand why my reputation does not reflect that? I know I get 100 rep from being a member but not the rest of it. I'm not complaining but still interested to know if down votes count when your suspended?</p>

<p>Every SE account profile has a reputation tab that shows the accumulation of rep for that account. The tab for <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/users/4139/muze?tab=reputation&amp;sort=time&amp;page=1">your account</a> on the main site will provide the history of your rep accumulation. </p> <p>There are a number of votes (both up and down) during the latter part of 2017, so it appears that rep continues to accumulate during a suspension.</p>

549

2018-05-06T04:13:29.327

Is this a good place to ask if my own mechanical inventions are stupid?

|discussion|

<p>I have a book of inventions mostly mechanical. Since I'll never be in a position to patent and produce them maybe I can see if they are a good design here?</p>

<blockquote> <p>... maybe I can see if they are a good design here?</p> </blockquote> <p>This type of design question would (should) be closed as "Too Broad." StackExchange isn't set up to handle bigger questions like the ones you're proposing. If it would take more than 3 - 5 paragraphs to provide a reasonable answer to the question, then it's not a good fit for the site.</p> <p>Even if you scoped your questions to say "only give a high level answer," then we still have the same problem but in a different way. The question will then receive non-answers of "it's brilliant" or "definitely not the greatest" in reply. The challenge here is that you don't find out <em>why</em> the design was reviewed as such.</p> <blockquote> <p>Since I'll never be in a position to patent and produce them ...</p> </blockquote> <p>This actually gets to the heart of your problem. You need to attempt to build these designs and then refine based upon what you find. Dyson famously went through thousands of prototypes before settling on his final commercial design. </p> <p>Don't worry about fake internet points and the opinions of strangers on the internet regarding your designs. Go build them. See if they have a hope of working. And if your designs are too big to fabricate, then learn how to scale them down and prototype.</p> <p>That said, the tl;dr is "no, that sort of question is off-topic for the site."</p>

584

2018-10-13T18:18:31.840

Is my account broken?

|discussion|support|bug|moderators|beta|

<p>I just got off a question ban. I asked a question got up votes but I've been banned again. What did I do wrong??? There must be some mistake or glitch. Please don't make me wait another 6 months to ask another question!</p> <p><a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/24136/which-is-the-best-extendable-pole">Which is the best extendable pole?</a></p>

<p>Question bans are controlled by the algorithms of StackExchange. Individual site moderators have <strong><em>zero</em></strong> control regarding question bans. Likewise, site mods are given very few details about what triggers a Q-ban or what sets the duration of the ban.</p> <p>Looking at your question history, including the deleted questions, should give you a rough approximation of how the system views the quality of your contributions. It's not an overall positive impression.</p> <p>And while this is pure speculation, I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the system would trigger a fresh ban based upon the content of a new question as it was being written. If Wasabi says that you weren't banned, then it was likely temporarily lifted. But as of the writing of this answer, you are currently Q-banned. I don't know what happened between now and when Wasabi looked at your account.</p> <p>Looking at your most recent question, you have four edits for relatively trivial changes. You <em>really</em> need to work on refining your questions before you click on submit. Constant refining makes it look like you're trying to artificially bump your question, and the SE algorithms will punish that sort of behavior.</p> <p>All of this boils down to your needing to acknowledge that you have had many poor submissions to this site; research your questions to understand why they were a poor fit; and then be patient for the rate limiting algorithms to lift the ban.</p>

588

2018-11-13T21:25:42.193

Is this the right site to ask about passive acoustic design in a building?

|support|scope|

<p>I'm considering design ideas for a meeting place that would function (if somewhat less well) even without any electricity. (It would also likely be built with less sophisticated materials to maximize availability.) Crucial to this idea is that its construction would need to (mostly) passively serve two quite different acoustic profiles: one to maximize resonance to encourage unified group participation, and one to minimize echoes to allow one or a few speakers to be clearly heard.</p> <p>Is this the right site to ask about a specific design idea that could enable this?</p>

<p>This topic is perfectly acceptable. There have already been a couple of similar questions, so please search for those. The existing answers may also help.</p>

599

2019-05-25T04:52:33.297

Had 130 rep removed and all I get is "User was removed"

|discussion|feature-request|

<p>So, all you get told is "User was removed", why not at least tell us which question(s) were affected so we know.</p> <p>Bad enough we did not deserve to loose the rep... but at least telling us which questions could make us feel better.</p>

<p>This is the way that the system works. </p> <p>For a more in-depth discussion, see this post on meta.stackexchange.com <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/126470/282289">What does &quot;user was removed&quot; mean and why did my reputation change because of it?</a> </p>

603

2019-08-14T06:33:09.460

Forcing a selected answer for those absent users

|discussion|

<p>So, the "community" pushes questions to the top that are ancient which do not have a selected answer.</p> <p>Could moderators select an accepted answer to remove these questions from the top - if people need the information they should be searching anyway so it won't mean we loose the information. </p> <p>As an example (one of many you can find), see this question, has one answer and the author of the question is very absent...</p> <p><a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/q/17966/10902">mechanics of materials Mohr</a></p>

<p>First, I agree that this is annoying. I have resigned myself to viewing this as a way to get newer users to view older questions.</p> <p>Second, mods don't have this power. Selecting an answer is solely up to the original user.</p> <p>This has been asked a few times in a few different ways on Meta.Stackexchange:</p> <ul> <li><a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/8692/282289">Force Accepted Answers on Questions by Inactive Users</a></li> <li><a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/10672/282289">Encourage users to select &#39;Accepted Answer&#39; for old Questions</a></li> <li><a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8600/community-vote-for-accepted-answer-rep-5000-only/8617#8617">Community vote for &quot;Accepted Answer&quot; (Rep. &gt;= 5000 only)</a></li> </ul> <p>The general response from the Stackexchange employees is that this is not an issue that they want to address.</p> <p>Also, I think that the "community" user stops bringing up old questions once there are highly voted answers.</p>

614

2020-01-29T11:55:58.397

Is a question on the engineering of a respirator mask on-topic here?

|discussion|support|on-topic|

<p>Since the changes in the teacher's lounge I'm unable to ping any mods that haven't been active there. So that's why I am spamming your meta :) Here we go:</p> <p>There is this <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/89917/how-exactly-do-respirators-seal-out-pathogens">question</a> that has been rejected over at Bio (too engineering-like for us Biologists) and over at Medical Sciences because of kind of obscure reasons imho (see <a href="https://medicalsciences.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1129/how-exactly-do-respirators-seal-out-pathogens">meta</a>). Anyway, I asked around on the teacher's lounge and they referred me to your site.</p> <p>Is the linked question on topic here? I kind of like the question and it appears to be well researched.</p>

<p>Looks like it could work here. Send it over.</p>

616

2020-04-07T22:29:04.900

Science stack exchanges helping other science stack exchanges!

|discussion|

<p>The Physics Meta promotes support for all Science sites on Stack Exchange, in <a href="https://physics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/915/consider-supporting-proposals-of-other-se-science-sites">this</a> post. The same meta post is now on several other science SE Meta sites.</p> <p>The Engineering SE is one of the sites that has benefited from this (and is currently still benefiting from this, if you look at the &quot;Sites in Beta&quot; section of that Meta post).</p> <p>Let's give back to the younger science communities, now that we here at Engineering have graduated out of the Commitment stage, and let's help some of the other sites in Beta, as they are doing for us.</p> <p>Below is the post from the Physics Meta (now on several others too).</p>

<p>Science proposals need your help! Consider committing to these, to make them successful &amp; scientific:</p> <p>See also the long list of <a href="https://area51.stackexchange.com/categories/7/science?tab=progress">science</a> and <a href="https://area51.stackexchange.com/categories/8/technology?tab=progress">technology</a> proposals on Area 51.</p> <hr /> <h1>Committers needed</h1> <p><a href="https://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/125068/synthetic-biology?referrer=ZjFlMTM2NWNkN2U0ZjFiMDUyZDIxYzJhMzZkYmIzYjhjMzJmNTIwYmUyMzEzMTE1MWE4ZTlhZTE0YzJjN2FiNRATnXrCkyDNwaFmmO_06_ohZ7NwxnP5gpEXcgUzxc8-0"><img src="https://area51.stackexchange.com/ads/proposal/125068.png" width="300" height="250" alt="Stack Exchange Q&A site proposal: Synthetic Biology" /></a></p> <hr /> <h1>Site definition needed</h1> <hr /> <h1>Sites in beta</h1> <p><a href="http://area51.stackexchange.com/categories/7/science?tab=beta">Science</a> and <a href="http://area51.stackexchange.com/categories/8/technology?tab=beta">technology</a> sites currently in beta include:</p> <p><a href="https://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/122958/materials-modeling?referrer=M2UxZTQwZTkwYzZlMTlmNzkwNmFiNWJiY2NjN2MzYWMxYjRjZDYyYTBmMDczMmY0ZDQ5Y2Y4NTk5NTI5MTE0MP1yF5vq6CYpA5droatHF1JKh4_Kp0zvdwLyY7_HJQOC0"><img src="https://area51.stackexchange.com/ads/proposal/122958.png" width="300" height="250" alt="Stack Exchange Q&A site proposal: Materials Modeling" /></a> <a href="https://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/121892/operations-research?referrer=ODBkMmE3MDg4ZmMyYTJlYzg4MTZiODEyMjM5YjQ5Nzg4OTQ0ZDFjMDVlMGU5MGY2MzI5ZDdjODI0NTBmMzE5Y_W2PKxYABPRG8lBLmxS99vOCoUsHXn8AiZ8NoUGybKf0"><img src="https://area51.stackexchange.com/ads/proposal/121892.png" width="300" height="250" alt="Stack Exchange Q&A site proposal: Operations Research" /></a> <a href="https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/qpQZm.png" width="300" alt="Astronomy"></a> <a href="https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/FlxKZ.png" width="300" alt="Earth Science"></a> <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/ei2RL.png" width="300" alt="Engineering"></a> <a href="https://matheducators.stackexchange.com/"><img src="https://area51.stackexchange.com/ads/proposal/64216.png" alt="Mathematics Educators" /></a> <a href="https://opendata.stackexchange.com/"><img src="https://area51.stackexchange.com/ads/proposal/51674.png" alt="Open Data" /></a> <a href="https://materials.stackexchange.com/"><img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/HPQC-LABS/Modeling_Matters/master/Logo/Anoop/BackgroundAndForegroundCombined.png" width="300" /></a></p> <hr /> <p>This is community wiki -- feel free to add other proposals worth mentioning.</p>

623

2020-08-18T12:59:09.263

Is it ok to ask for a refernece for stress-strain curve data?

|discussion|

<p>So I need to find data from a tensile test of a steel (any steel), I need a curve with &quot;a lot of points&quot;, not just the usually important ones. Is it ok to ask for that in the main site?</p>

<p>I wouldn't ask for this. At its base level, it is a <a href="https://engineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/10/33">resource hunting question</a>. These questions are not a good fit here because they typically grow stale as they get older.</p> <p>With the being said, this information should exist somewhere. I know for a fact it is in my old Mechanics of Materials class notebook from years ago.</p> <p>If there is a more broad question that you are trying to solve, <strong>that</strong> question may be a good fit for the site instead of asking for the data to solve it.</p>

628

2021-01-14T22:34:02.333

User vandalizing their own post with 'delted question deleted question.. deleted question'

|support|

<p>I'm from physics stackexchange. There's this user who's been going around self vandalizing his own posts and other posts. I would flag each, but it's gonna take a while with the quantity of posts he has effected right now, hope the moderators can have a look <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/users/28922/deleted-account">(see here)</a></p>

<p>We are aware, thank you.</p> <p>The user has been temporarily suspended and the relevant question has been locked in the hopes the situation will soon blow over.</p> <p>Once again, thank you for the heads up.</p>

632

2021-02-07T15:48:12.683

Can something be done about this User?

|discussion|

<p>This user is repeatedly rude and abusive.</p> <p>They posted rude comments (the same ones yesterday that were removed, and now they are reposted.</p> <p>See <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/q/40209/10902">most difficult subject in physics/mechanical enginering - want to know</a></p> <p>This user also posted on Electrical Engineering and that post was removed.</p>

<p>The user in question was suspended after their original outburst. If they come back and still cause problems, they will be delt with appropriately.</p> <p>As long as these things are flagged, they will be taken care of. Thank you to everyone who flags posts and votes!</p>

643

2022-05-24T07:17:11.370

Engineering not working on Mobile app

|discussion|

<p>So all I get is &quot;Request failed. Tap to retry.&quot;</p> <p>Quit the app and gone back in but same thing, however it works for the other 7 sites I use regularly... Works on the laptop though.</p> <p>Any ideas?</p> <p>If I have the sort as &quot;newest&quot; then it fails with &quot;Request failed. Tap to retry.&quot;</p> <p>BUT if I select &quot;Active&quot; as the sort, it works...</p>

<p>Just so the question has an answer to get it out of the queue:</p> <p>All is now working fine, so all good.</p>

596

2019-04-02T17:33:47.900

Does anything happen to serial downvoters?

|discussion|down-votes|

<p>Just had 4 separate questions downvoted in quick succession - what happens to those who do it?</p> <p>And how can we find out who is responsible? Or at least get confirmation that something happens?</p>

<p>There is a really good write up over at Meta Stack Exchange on <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/126829/what-is-serial-voting-and-how-does-it-affect-me">serial voting</a>. </p> <p>In your particular case the votes should be reversed within 24 hours. </p>

593

2019-01-03T14:18:30.420

Pavement Engineering on Topic?

|discussion|

<p>Are questions regarding pavement engineering allowed on this exchange? The Q&amp;A topics include specific pavement design software and pavement design principles in engineering.</p> <p>I read through this on the <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic">meta</a>:</p> <blockquote> <h3>Questions on Engineering Stack Exchange are usually well-received when they:</h3> <ul> <li>Identify a specific engineering problem</li> <li>Require expert engineering knowledge to solve</li> <li>Include any relevant drawings, images or references that may be necessary to understand the problem</li> <li>Excite or challenge experienced professionals in the field</li> </ul> </blockquote> <p>The Q&amp;A we have had thus far meets these criteria. I can provide some example Q&amp;A if necessary.</p>

<p>Design principles, yes. Always. </p> <p>"I'm looking for software", not so much. </p> <p>Specific issues with specialized software, maybe - similar questions with other types of software have had limited success. Tutorial type questions fare very poorly, and are typically closed as too broad. </p>

582

2018-10-12T05:31:23.283

Can I use Engineering Meta SE for a Sandbox?

|discussion|acceptable-questions|question-quality|moderators|

<p>I have problems writing a good question here and don't want to risk getting banned for another 6 months or more. Is there a way that I can Sandbox here like in Worldbulding.SE? </p> <p><a href="https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6168/sandbox-for-proposed-questions">https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6168/sandbox-for-proposed-questions</a></p>

<p>No, please don't. Meta is meant to address issues related to the site. It is not a sandbox. </p> <p>Chat <em>might</em> be an alternative to use as a sandbox, but it's not very active and the formatting doesn't really work well there.</p> <p>One thing that may help you though, is to dissuade yourself of the notion that other SE sites are like WorldBuilding. WB is the exception to SE sites with radically different expectations regarding quality. If you look at a question and say "this would be a good question on WB" then it's likely a very poor fit for Engineering.</p>

580

2018-09-21T16:24:52.923

food-processing tag?

|discussion|tags|

<p><a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/q/23493/104">I was looking at this Q&amp;A</a>, and it got me wondering if there may be value in creating an explicit food/beverage tag. Many of the people here, or new audiences, may be focused on a specific area like that, and have more engagement with a 'higher-intent' tag.</p>

<p><a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/food-beverage" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;food-beverage&#39;" rel="tag">food-beverage</a> is a perfectly adequate tag. However, it's only valuable on questions which are specifically about that industry. In such cases, it informs others about the content of the question and the knowledge which may be required to answer it, since different industries may have different approaches to similar problems.</p> <p>I would not recommend it, however, for the question you've linked to. Though the OP there mentions modelling beer, the question actually has nothing which is specific to beer or the food and beverage industry. It's just about modelling gas in a still/stirred solution. So, in my opinion, the more general tags currently on the question are sufficient.</p> <p>Should someone wish to create that tag, they are more than welcome to. Tag creation does not require moderator intervention, merely a user with <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/create-tags">150+ rep</a> (or <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/280222/increase-reputation-requirements-for-creating-a-new-tag">more in graduated sites</a>) to ask a question and add the tag they want.</p>

572

2018-09-04T02:02:09.517

My questions marked a favorite but still down votes? Is this unusual behavior?

|discussion|bug|moderators|down-votes|bookmarks|

<p>More of my questions have been marked as favorite but are still down voted to the point of a question ban. Can a handful of people out of thousands down vote a user into a question ban? </p> <p><a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/users/4139/muze">https://engineering.stackexchange.com/users/4139/muze</a></p>

<p>"Favorite" is a bad name. It's just a bookmark. Marking a question "favorite" really only means that person wants to be able to get back to it easily in the future. It does not necessarily mean they like it or that it is one of their favorite questions, as the name unfortunately implies.</p> <p>Votes are the mechanism for passing judgement on a question. Marking a question for easy future reference has nothing to do with that.</p>

570

2018-09-03T20:26:04.920

Can the ban on questions be shortened by a moderator?

|discussion|feature-request|bug|moderators|asking-questions|

<p>6 months or more to asks another question is extreme just for asking bad questions which I thought were good. Once the asker is up to a point of bad questions regardless the length of time that passes the next poorly received question equals another 6 month ban??? I am sure I am not the only user who feels this way and I ask for not just me but for every future novice engineer enthusiast who may get stuck in this rut. </p>

<p>Question bans are controlled by the SE systems / algorithms. Moderators do not have the ability to override the length of those bans.</p> <p>SE typically follows a progressively increasing length of bans or suspensions. You may find the following <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86997/what-can-i-do-when-getting-we-are-no-longer-accepting-questions-answers-from-th">Meta StackExchange</a> post of relevance as it goes into a bit more detail about question bans.</p>

554

2018-06-05T13:22:59.473

How do I ask to have my question moved

|support|

<p>This is my question: <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/21945/oldest-example-of-intentional-pid-control">Oldest example of (intentional) PID control</a></p> <p>It was suggested that it should go to HSM (History of Science and Math). I'm open to that. I have all of 111 points here, so I have zero powers.</p> <p>How do I properly ask someone with power, an admin or such, to move it?</p>

<p>Regular users don't have the ability to vote to migrate, so a moderator needed to handle the migration.</p> <p>I cleaned up some of the comments and migrated over to HSM. In the future, you can also just flag your question for moderator attention.</p>

546

2018-04-13T09:31:49.063

When the answer is wrong is it an answer at all?

|discussion|support|

<p>I have a question I asked and later after researching different schematic that that only answer is wrong. I added mine the correct one and received down votes while the incorrect answer gets up vote. Even with proof people tend to follow the wrong answer. On other SE sites when your answer is just wrong it get deleted. What do I need to do to fix this question?</p> <p><a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/21284/can-a-helium-balloon-be-anchored-by-using-magnet-entrapment">Can a helium balloon be anchored by using magnet entrapment?</a></p>

<blockquote> <p>I have a question I asked and later after researching different schematic that that only answer is wrong.</p> </blockquote> <p>You have a question that you <em>self-answered</em> and now you're trying to get a competing answer deleted. This is not the way to demonstrate that you are returning to the site in good faith.</p> <blockquote> <p>I added mine the correct one and received down votes while the incorrect answer gets up vote.</p> </blockquote> <p>Putting aside for a moment the question of whether either answer is correct or incorrect, you have no control over the way other users vote. You have the privilege of being able to vote any question or answer up or down as you see fit, <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/126829/254929">short of outright abuse</a>, and so does everyone else on the site <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/vote-down">with at least 125 reputation</a>.</p> <p>Sometimes people don't vote as you would like them to. There is nothing you can do about it but try to convince them of your position.</p> <blockquote> <p>Even with proof people tend to follow the wrong answer.</p> </blockquote> <p>People upvote the most useful answer. When questions do not concern practical problems that many readers are actively trying to solve, a few things happen.</p> <ol> <li>The question doesn't get many views. The accuracy of our voting system relies on scale; the answer score and ranking that is displayed on this site is a direct measure of <em>consensus</em>, and while consensus can be wrong, the consensus of a large group of experts is usually right.</li> <li>Readers are not directly verifying the correctness of the answers. If there's a practical problem to solve then you can directly verify if an answer is right or wrong because when you follow the advice in the answer, you observe that your problem is or is not solved. That's why our model works for specific, practical problems that people actually face, and why it doesn't work for <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask">other types of question that we specifically disallow</a>.</li> <li>Questions become much more open to interpretation about what the actual problem is, and answers may start to compete more on the basis of which one actually interpreted the question correctly, and less on the basis of which one is accurate or correct.</li> </ol> <p>All of these are relevant to your question, particularly #3. The top answer interprets your question as asking specifically about the un-powered, permanent magnet toy you describe in the problem statement. This is reasonable because it's <em>what you have explicitly asked about</em>. Your (currently deleted) answer interprets your own question more broadly than it is written, and talks about a powered toy with an electromagnet.</p> <p>Both answers may contain correct information but Jonathan's answers the question that you actually asked, while yours answers a broader question that you had in mind <em>but did not make evident in your problem statement</em>.</p> <blockquote> <p>On other SE sites when your answer is just wrong it get deleted.</p> </blockquote> <p>From a policy standpoint, this is patently false and <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5221/how-does-deleting-work-what-can-cause-a-post-to-be-deleted-and-what-does-that/5222#5222">directly contradicted by the site-wide FAQ</a>, which explicitly states that wrong answers "should be downvoted, <strong>not deleted.</strong>"</p> <blockquote> <p>What do I need to do to fix this question?</p> </blockquote> <p>Honestly? Ask it on a discussion forum instead of on Stack Exchange. There's nothing inherently wrong with your exploring this idea, and I don't even think your question is bad, but clearly it's not giving you the result that you want (and modifying it to ask the broader question would take it out of scope). We have worked with you extensively on this issue and you show no interest in using Stack Exchange to find and cultivate solutions to shared practical problems. Maybe it's the network's fault for enticing you with gamification but I am pretty sure that in the long run everyone will be happier, yourself included, if you choose another platform on which to explore your inventive ideas.</p>

540

2018-02-06T00:32:08.287

What's Going on With the Buoyancy Question?

|discussion|specific-question|

<p>I'm looking at the question <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/19159/would-an-object-at-the-bottom-of-the-sea-still-experience-buoyancy">Would an object at the bottom of the sea still experience buoyancy?</a> and the answers/voting/general response is boggling my mind.</p> <p>The question is asking about what would happen to the buoyancy force of a submerged object if it had <em>no</em> fluid beneath it, and therefore no hydrostatic pressure.</p> <p>The first problem is that this is quite a <em>hypothetical</em> situation; and not much of an engineering question. I voted to close for that reason; but it doesn't seem to be gaining much traction.</p> <p>The second problem is the answers and voting patterns. All the answers with positive score reach the same conclusion; but none of them justify that solution in an appropriate way. Buoyancy is not just due to a difference in density. It's due to the net hydrostatic pressure acting on the object because of that density. </p> <p>There seem to be several questions in the <a href="https://physics.stackexchange.com/">Physics</a> Stack Exchange that ask about this same question. <a href="https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/59866/how-does-the-buoyant-force-on-a-cube-at-the-bottom-of-a-tank-of-water-manifest-i">1</a> <a href="https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/365887/does-an-object-need-fluid-under-it-to-float/366415#366415">2</a> <a href="https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/373239/does-buoyant-force-vanish">3</a> They all reach the exact opposite conclusion, i.e. if the objects face is experiencing no hydrostatic force, the object will not have a buoyant force upwards.</p> <p>The third alarming thing was an approved edit to the question itself, which struck out the OPs own comment, because "<em>Buoyancy and hydrostatic pressure are two separate effects</em>". I've yet to see a <strong>single</strong> reference that says anything <em>other than</em> buoyancy is caused by the pressure the fluid exerts on the object, AKA hydrostatic pressure. (so I'm trying to revert the edit)</p> <p>I know this seems ranty; but I feel like I need some calm heads to take a look at this question (because clearly I'm now too invested). To me the community consensus as of now seems to reject science or the premise of the question.</p>

<p>Leaving aside the question of "what's going on" and how folks are interacting with each other and with each other's answers... "the theoretical edge case of a perfect cylinder or cube with perfectly flat and polished surfaces on a perfectly flat polished bottom" is off topic. I've cast the 4th vote to place the question on hold.</p> <p>I want to caution folks to resist the urge to "help" OP turn this off-topic question into an on-topic question to be re-opened. <strong>The line between theoretical and applied is sometimes indistinct but spherical cows are not one of these grey areas</strong>. We have a strong policy on Stack Exchange of not editing questions in ways that invalidate answers that were based on reasonable interpretations of the original question. It's my position that this Q&amp;A, as interesting as it may be, should be put to rest.</p> <p>If, by some chance, OP has a practical problem underlying this question, OP is welcome to draft a real problem statement and submit it separately, so that it can be considered on its own merits.</p> <p>Now, to comment on the issue of whether good science is being respected here. The question, despite having been very successful at engaging a number of site regulars, only has a couple hundred views in total. <strong>With regard to votes on Stack Exchange, <em>caveat lector</em>—let the reader beware!</strong> For the best answers to "bubble" to the top requires the input of many voters over time. Questions that are difficult or controversial, under-specified, or which don't attract a lot of attention from a broader audience, can float around in interim states for quite a while before becoming a solid, useful resource. Interacting with other comment and answer authors, and then bringing it up on Meta after a week of that, are all reasonable ways to support that process.</p>

538

2018-01-23T19:31:03.950

Can I ask a question about the role of engineers in pace-maker design here?

|discussion|scope|acceptable-questions|stackexchange|

<p>I want to ask the following question but I am not sure whether or not it would qualify as a valid question:</p> <blockquote> <p>What role do system engineers play in the design and implementation of a pace-maker? It would be greatly appreciated if you back up your answers with actual references and/or experiences.</p> </blockquote> <p>I reviewed the rules for <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic">Engineering Stack Exchange</a> and it seemed that this type of questions can be treated as "subjective" questions.</p> <p>I felt according to the <a href="https://stackoverflow.blog/2010/09/29/good-subjective-bad-subjective/">guidelines</a> of "good" subjective questions that this question could qualify as a "decent" subjective question. </p> <p>This question would naturally require the answerer to present "long and not short answers". It asks for "sharing experiences over opinions". I have insisted that their "opinions should be backed with facts and references".</p> <p>I THINK the tone of this question is "constructive, fair, and impartial". </p> <p>I do believe this question is MORE THAN "mindless social fun". It is helpful for people who want to learn the design flow for industry-level applications. It will inform the questioner and the readers about the roles of various/specific fields in the design of such applications. This will hopefully inform them about the practicality and relevance of certain/specific career paths in the industry. </p> <p>Could I ask this question on Engineering Stack Exchange? </p>

<p>That question is what we call <i>too broad</i>. One could also argue that it has a element of <i>opinion based</i>. Therefore, do not ask it on the main site.</p> <p>The exact divisions of responsibility between different types of engineers on a particular project is far from standard, and depends heavily on the specific people that are available. Even good answers to this question would devolve into splitting hairs between what is systems engineering versus component engineering versus architecture versus ...</p> <p>Don't do it.</p>

536

2018-01-20T00:25:34.267

A question about professionalism and neurotypical

|discussion|on-topic|

<p>Update: I would otherwise delete this but it has been answered by others. </p> <hr> <p>I want to know if the following is on-topic for the non-meta area of engineering. </p> <p>I know it is wordy, and I will try and whittle it down and clean it up. Is the fundamental content allowable and appropriate?</p> <p>Personally I would consider this about the engineering profession, and thus as professionalism is on topic.</p> <p><strong>Question:</strong><br> In 2010 I was diagnosed with Aspergers. There is a lot of baggage around that term, and people have looked down on me for it. I have had people who I respect say "you will never understand that -social- thing". I can understand lots of things. It is scary to admit that in a public and recorded forum like this. Some people look at me like I am made of poop because I am different than them in terms of neuro-diversity.</p> <p>I wish that I could ask it anonymously, so my coworkers who haven't had the opportunity to look down on me for my label aren't given a chance here. This is why the label is a bit obtuse. I strongly suspect company HR departments sometimes review keywords of online postings of their staff because when I tried asking on Yahoo answers about how to handle what looked like inappropriate behavior of a 2nd level manager of mine toward an intern, the man was called in to HR and interviewed the next day, and the time-correlation was surprisingly high. </p> <p>I am an engineer with a Bachelor (Cum Laude 2007) and Master of Science (2012) in Mechanical Engineering, who has been working professionally for a decade. Before my degree I worked in an engineer-support (engineers assistant) or engineering-lite (drafting) capacity since about 1998, so I have been "in that office of the company" for around 20 years.</p> <p>My annual review has several parts, including "development goals" at the end. These are more fuzzy/qualitative and two keyword areas of weakness of mine are social. After the hour-long one-on-one on the other 3 pages of engineering the S.M.A.R.T. metrics and deliverable timing for the rest of this year, we ended up on that 4-line table with those words. I let him explain them, and tried to explain back. I asked for examples, possibly of fictional characters that would give me hooks into what they were asking. </p> <p>The absolute best understanding that I have at this point is that two of them directly engage parts of my "'burgers" driven behavior. They aren't articulating it as explicitly about that, but they can't find a clear alternative. For what it's worth, those two are "communicates effectively" - to a non-technical audience, and my problem: "instills trust". </p> <p>I have asked "is this like marketing or sales: trying to be able to convince someone to buy something they wouldn't have otherwise have wanted"? No. "Is this communicating technical ideas to a non-technical audience"? No, that was "communicates effectively", and though they are related, they are distinct. I kept asking, and the best that I get is "for people who tend to natively distrust all things math and statistics, be able to communicate technical justifications outside of those terms", which is a contradiction of terms: it is technical because of the math. To clarify it, I asked about "quality" which has stats, and was told not those kids of statistics, which they trust. I asked and asked for examples, and they can only say that instills trust isn't "communicates effectively" but they are tied together, and speak to the same underlying "weakness". I asked "is there any chance this is the east-coast culture vs. west-coast culture, because Silicon Valley has a bit of hippy which is counter cultural to "suit-wearing" east coast, and part of that might be that it damages credibility" and was told it wasn't a cultural difference, or about credibility in that sense.</p> <p>I might be misinterpreting it, but I have invested a fair bit of time trying to get to the bottom of understanding it. </p> <p>This is my best understanding. I think they are saying "when you have an 'episode', which often comes out under stress or when I am tired, and you can't control verbal cadence and tones, eye-contact, posture, or such, then find a way to act like you can". </p> <p>How am I to respond, as a working and degreed engineer, to this?</p>

<p>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 <a href="https://workplace.stackexchange.com/">The Workplace.SE</a> or <a href="https://interpersonal.stackexchange.com/">Interpersonal Skills.SE</a>.</p> <p>Hope they can answer your question adequately.</p>

527

2017-10-17T11:06:42.627

Anonymous user suggesting edits to questions

|discussion|

<p>A few times now I noticed that an anonymous user has suggested an edit to a question like <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/12943">this one</a>.</p> <p>I am suspicious of anyone suggesting an edit anonymously. </p> <p>How can a user anonymously suggest an edit and should they be taken seriously or should they be declined?</p>

<p>Anonymous edits are intentionally allowed by the system. The vast majority of visits to StackExchange are through anonymous sessions - meaning that the user either doesn't have an account or hasn't signed in.</p> <p>The challenge, as you have hinted at, is that there is no easy way for regular users to link the anonymous edit with the OP's post. Because of that, anonymous edits need to be scrutinized carefully to make sure they're not adversely affecting the original question that was asked.</p> <p>As a reviewer, there ought to be a threshold of improvement that an edit must provide before approving. Anonymous edits merely push that threshold up higher. </p> <p>To answer your question - yes, anonymous edits should be taken seriously but there is a higher burden of proof with them. No, don't automatically decline them, but my experience has been that the vast majority of anonymous edits are rejected.</p> <p>In this particular case, the OP is an unregistered account and likely used a different computer or forgot the password they used to create the account with. So there's a decent probability that the anonymous edit was from the OP or someone in the same lab. And yes, I did rely upon the mod tools to come to that conclusion. However, in reviewing the edit, I didn't see how it clarified the original question or made it better so I rejected it as "no improvement."</p>

525

2017-10-07T07:34:30.433

Are tags supposed to reflect question only?

|discussion|tagging|retagging|

<p>Are tags supposed to reflect questions only, or should they reflect both question and answers? Should one update the tags if the thread comes with an answer that brings in new solutions asker didn't know to ask but answers indicate so?</p> <p>I have always worked on the assumption that tags reflect both the answers and questions. More on questions than answers, but still even answers benefit from searching (after all people searching probably look for answers). It is just that i have never actually put any thought into how I really should have been operating.</p>

<p>Tags are primarily for the question. That said, there's little harm in editing the question to clarify things and add in tags that the answers address.</p> <p>At the root of your question, you have to think of how the tags are selected in the first place. It's the author of the question saying "I think these tags are relevant to what I'm trying to ask." And the author has to tag the question before it can even be asked.</p> <p>Updating the tags based upon the answers puts effort on the community to edit &amp; re-tag the question. Nothing wrong with that, but it generally doesn't happen.</p> <p>In the cases where good answers deviate from the original track of the question, it's a good idea to edit the question and draw in those alternative answers. That would be a perfect time to add tags based upon the answers. This would likely be the case in a XY question (asker asks X, problem is Y) where the 'correct' answers solve Y and not X.</p>

516

2017-07-14T14:35:50.693

Need to provide "spectral analysis" to support my question about engine exhaust appearing blue sometimes?

|discussion|

<p>I think it is well accepted that sometimes engines produce smoke that looks blue, and I think mechanics who work on engines will confirm this. I included a personal snapshot of smoke that appeared blue to me, and a link to a video. Following a comment, I've even added several links to explanations about what may be happening in an engine to cause "blue smoke", and how to fix the problem.</p> <p>As I've said in <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/16297/#comment29264_16297">this comment</a> "I have a strong hunch that there are some engineers who work with internal combustion engines make measurements on what is in the exhaust, and may have some insight here."</p> <p>In this particular case, it seems to me that occasional blue smoke from engines sufficiently common knowledge that the question can at least stand without closing. </p> <p>There are questions here that mention <em>engine knock</em> or <em>backfireing</em>, yet no acoustic spectral analyses were needed to pre-prove that these happen, before the question was allowed to stand.</p> <p>Any suggestions how this question could have been asked differently so that it would not have met such resistance? Actually, is there really anything wrong with this question at all, other than the first people to read it <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/294701/303080">didn't know the answer</a>?</p> <blockquote> <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/pY5Jq.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/pY5Jq.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p> </blockquote>

<p>First things first: I've purged the comments and <a href="https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/q/46199/10533">migrated your question to our site for mechanics and DIY enthusiast owners of cars, trucks, and motorcycles</a> (where it may or may not survive—as you have already noticed).</p> <p>I'm sorry your question has gotten the response that it has; this is not entirely your fault. <a href="https://engineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/25/368">Experienced users should know that scopes are not exclusive on Stack Exchange;</a> there are many questions that could be on topic on multiple sites and it is the author's prerogative to choose which audience they want to address.</p> <p>The folks who are arguing with you about whether the smoke is blue are getting hung up on technicalities. It's a thing that engineers are known to do (often for good reason) but it's completely unproductive here. "Blue smoke" is a well-known phenomenon and a response along the lines of "the smoke is not actually blue" <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/263661/254929">belongs in an answer, not in a comment or close-vote</a>.</p> <p>There are, however, some things you could have done better. <a href="https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/q/71397/29426">Your original question on Chemistry SE</a> was well-received with a net +2 score, despite not attracting much attention. You probably should <strong>not</strong> have cross-posted to another SE site before making an effort to better promote your original question. <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/238736/is-the-bounty-system-effective/238906#238906">You could have offered a bounty on the question</a>, for example. If you wanted to attract attention specifically from engineers, you could have <a href="https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/20403/the-skunk-works">posted a link to your Chemistry SE question in our chat room</a>.</p> <p>I chose to migrate this question on the off chance that it would be better received on Mechanics SE, where there are already many questions about "blue smoke"—but honestly, I think it works best where you first asked it, and if it's closed there I don't have any plans to reopen it here. I did make a few notable edits beforehand:</p> <ol> <li><a href="https://engineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/10/368">Don't ask us to find you a study.</a> We are a problem-solving site and the basic task of researching a topic is not an engineering problem. What you are really asking for is an explanation of a phenomenon; but it is perfectly acceptable to indicate that you <em>prefer</em> answers include published references. (This is good policy everywhere on SE, though not always enforced by close-votes.)</li> <li>You should always establish your premise at the start of the problem statement—not later on as a combative note "for the doubters." Your problem statement is not the place to have an argument. Simply state what is common knowledge; answers can address if and when the common understanding is inaccurate.</li> </ol> <p>You shouldn't have been put on the defensive in the first place; that was uncivil. But in the future you would do well to disengage sooner, or avoid engaging at all, in the comments on your question. Provide what information is useful, clarify if you must—ideally in the problem statement—but avoid chatty, back-and-forth conversation.</p>

486

2016-10-23T01:46:19.467

Can questions asking for the distinction between two engineering phenomenon be on-topic?

|discussion|

<p>I'm new here, so I thought I would double check. I've just asked the question <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/q/11963/6264">How to explain why the statement “Cavitation is boiling,” in an answer is not really correct</a>. Obviously the question does not have a numerical answer, my problem is how to understand and eventually explain why cavitation and boiling are not the same thing in the context of engineering.</p> <p>I've made an attempt to understand the difference in <a href="https://space.stackexchange.com/a/18573/12102">this answer</a> but I have asked here because I have a hunch there are people here who understand these phenomenon better than I do.</p> <p>Can my question here be considered on-topic as written?</p>

<p>Sure, it's on topic. Trying to enforce a rigid distinction between theoretical and applied science is a can of worms that I don't think we want to open. Sometimes we explain things that could also be explained on Physics SE but the perspective tends to be a bit different; that's a normal part of the overlap between sites.</p> <p>That doesn't mean people should start randomly selecting pairs of concepts and asking us to explain how they differ, but if it's non-trivial to distinguish between two concepts, <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/search?q=difference+between">we have an established history of trying to explain them</a>.</p> <p>If you're worried about one close vote, I think your concern might be a bit premature.</p>

480

2016-09-13T16:52:02.187

How do we handle questions about conspiracies that contain engineering topics?

|discussion|on-topic|close-reasons|

<p>I took a quick look around and I couldn't find previous discussion, so I thought I would bring this up.</p> <p>I was inspired by <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/q/11485/6695">this question</a>, which asks about whether jet fuel can melt steel beams (yes, it's that kind of question). While that particular question didn't seem to be asked in good faith, there are many people out there who could benefit from some engineering insight into common conspiracies like this.</p> <p>That question got a lot of downvotes, probably because the asker didn't really put much effort into it beyond giving some statistic on fuel temperatures, and became combative when an answer was given. However, the downvotes may have also been a sign of displeasure from the community; after all the particular "fuel temperature" problem is often discussed and much-maligned.</p> <p><strong>My question is</strong>: assuming the questions and answers are properly moderated (avoiding spam, speculation, and insults) how should the community handle these questions?</p> <p>Should we try to give a solid engineering answer and move on? Should they be marked as off-topic (maybe <a href="https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/">Skeptics SE</a> is a better place for them)? Or should we treat them as spam and close them?</p> <p>I'm looking for some solid discussion about a problem that will likely not go away, we might as well think about how to deal with it now.</p>

<p>In theory, if the technical question in the problem statement can stand on its own merits as a useful bit of Q&amp;A, I think it's reasonable to address any problems with the non-technical portions of the problem statement via edits.</p> <p>In practice, however, this can be a challenge. Particularly when the author of the question opposes constructive edits and/or technically accurate answers in favor of pushing a non-technical agenda. In which case it's reasonable for us not to invest an unlimited amount of time and effort into massaging either the content or the user's experience of the site.</p> <p>In the case at hand, the author asked "Is the 911 story plausible?" and wrote not so much an engineering problem statement as a bunch of leading questions. Nonetheless, the author received a high-quality answer from a technical expert and responded by arguing with that expert in comments, eventually resorting to insults. In <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll" rel="nofollow">cases such as these</a> we stop worrying about the question and just smack the user and all their content right off the face of the site.</p> <p>In a hypothetical alternative case where the author was either genuinely interested in the underlying technical question or not actively opposing constructive edits and answers, our best approach might be to minimize or eliminate the sociopolitical context and focus strictly on the technical aspect of the question. If a question is inspired by 9/11 conspiracy theories, one brief introductory sentence mentioning that inspiration is probably as much sociopolitical context as would ever be useful.</p>

467

2016-08-04T21:45:26.827

Increasing Answer Feedback

|discussion|answers|

<p>I've noticed several questions with only one answer and no feedback (requester not accepting the answer and no upvotes) which seems to still leave the question unresolved since users have no idea if this is accurate or not.</p> <p>I'm new to SE and I understand this is a beta, but is this just because of site attendance? Or is the breadth of EngrSE too large to reliably have multiple knowledgable people for answering? Is there ways when I answer or see other peoples answers to help get answers verified/accepted?</p>

<p>This isn't uncommon on SE. Some users ask a question without registering an account and don't care to participate in the site after they've asked their question. Some questions are so straightforward that users don't really care to add more answers after the first but also don't find the Q&amp;A valuable enough to bother voting on.</p> <p>Ultimately it often comes down to views. The more people visit a page, the more votes and comments will be left on its content. Some content is, to be blunt, neither useful nor interesting to the vast majority of people besides the person asking the question.</p> <p>So if you see a question like this with only a couple dozen views, you can be pretty confident that the lack of participation stems from a lack of interest more than anything else. If you want to help draw attention to a question, you can <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/63684/254929">share a link to the question</a>, either internally (i.e., in one of our <a href="http://chat.stackexchange.com/">chat rooms</a>) or on any other site/platform of your choosing.</p> <p>If you want to encourage a specific user who has <em>already</em> interacted with the Q&amp;A to follow up, you can comment on one of their questions or answers or <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/43019/254929">ping them in a comment</a> on any post they've edited or commented on themselves.</p>

465

2016-07-09T18:14:35.810

Do you want me as a non-mechanical engineer to ask questions about mechanical drawing symbols?

|discussion|scope|

<p>As an electronics hobbyist and student, I often find myself in a situation where I have to interpret mechanical drawings, such as those describing the physical properties of connectors and encapsulations.</p> <p>Occasionally there are symbols that I do not recognize, and since it is difficult to use Google (<em>"wavy line in a circle in a box with two numbers on top"</em>), it would be nice to have a place to ask trivial questions, usually one of these two:</p> <ol> <li>What does this symbol mean? How is it significant?</li> <li>I can not find or derive the distance between these two features - why is it not stated?</li> </ol> <p>So, can I ask them here? I would seem like a perfect fit, <em>except</em> that it is hard to make such a question interesting or useful for others. "Here's a picture, what does this mean?" is not easy to search for, leading to the questions perhaps being inherently of a low quality.</p>

<p>Your proposed questions are appropriate to ask on the main site.</p> <p>Please provide an image of the symbol in question along with some amount of context about what you're working on.</p>

453

2016-06-06T15:51:30.020

How to use the Engineering Stack Exchange site as a classroom activity?

|discussion|site-promotion|

<p>I am a professor of Chemical Engineering, teaching topics ranging from mass and energy balance, to thermodynamics, to transport phenomena. I have been thinking of ways in which to incorporate contributions to the EngineeringSE site in my courses. I was wondering if anyone actively using the site has used it in the teaching process? A few specific questions:</p> <ol> <li>How exactly is the site used? Are the students asked to submit questions or only answers?</li> <li>How are the student's contributions to the site evaluated? Do you use actual reputation scores to accomplish this? Or do you use an independent measure? My guess is this would be very informal and a low part of the overall grade.</li> <li>If anyone has attempted this, did you find it valuable? What about your students?</li> </ol>

<p>I am going to answer in a version of <a href="https://engineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/455/33">@Air's answer</a>. 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 that hasn't been answered (the older the better) and do enough research and put together enough information to provide an upvoted or accepted answer.</p> <p>The reasoning behind this is that some old questions are left unanswered because they require a lot of research or are very specific. That is the perfect area for a student to write an answer after more than a casual google search. </p>

452

2016-06-04T22:00:50.483

Can I ask about the feasibility of a notable or historical engineering concept that was never implemented?

|support|scope|

<p>I realize it might be a bit opinion based, hypothetical, etc., but may it get through, or would it be likely to be closed?</p> <p>Here's what I'm wondering. I'm really, really curious:</p> <p><a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/279948/321647">Where can I ask about whether Atlantropa was actually feasible?</a></p> <p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantropa" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Atlantropa</a> was a gigantic engineering and colonisation idea from the 1920's. It involved building humongous hydroelectric dams and lowering the water level of the Mediterranean by something like 200 meters.</p> <p>I want to ask whether that plan would have been possible, remotely feasible or just crazy.</p>

<p>It sounds like you want to ask a question that is fairly open-ended. We discourage that because we want to stay closer to a site full of "problems with direct solutions ranked from most to least useful" and farther from a site full of "conversations where a group of people discuss and guess and speculate about something but there's no clear solution."</p> <p><a href="https://engineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/48/368">We do accept questions about engineering history</a> and to me that <em>potentially</em> includes historical designs and proposals. It's just so much harder to find a concrete problem to solve if the project was just an idea that was never actually constructed, built, attempted, etc. In this case, the idea being closely associated with some radical socio-political movement also introduces some risk of attracting off-topic discussion and argument.</p> <p>It would be within reason to ask a question that focuses on a specific technological challenge that a project like Alantropa would have faced, and to mention Alantropa as part of the background of the question. But <strong>the focus on technology and/or design has to be there and the challenge has to be somehow comparable in scale to actual projects.</strong></p> <p>I can illustrate "comparable in scale to actual projects" for you by analogy:</p> <ul> <li>it <strong>might</strong> be reasonable to ask a question about how to demolish a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megastructure" rel="nofollow noreferrer">megastructure</a> using explosives, because <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdome#Demolition" rel="nofollow noreferrer">people have blown up fairly large structures before</a> and some of the engineering challenges would be the same;</li> <li>but it would certainly <strong>not</strong> be reasonable to ask how to blow up the moon, even though <a href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2412624,00.asp" rel="nofollow noreferrer">there are articles that claim the US once considered the idea</a>.</li> </ul> <p>So from how you describe your question, <a href="https://engineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/452/would-this-be-an-acceptable-question-here#comment934_452">I agree with Glen</a>; <strong>it would probably be closed as too broad</strong>. The scale is too far beyond what's realistic. Even if you limited yourself to asking and the proposed dam across the Strait of Gibraltar, rather than the entirety of Alantropa, we'd be talking about a dam an order of magnitude larger (guesstimate-by-volume) than the largest dams ever constructed, on a site that seems very unlike any existing dam site, so that might still be too broad (or borderline; I am no dam engineer).</p>

432

2016-03-11T07:15:33.153

Ability to Review Closed Questions

|feature-request|

<p>I just reviewed a First Posted question that looked like one that might have been recently posted and closed.</p> <p>I tried going back through the currently listed questions, for the past 6 weeks, but I couldn't find anything.</p> <p>Is there an easy way to view closed questions to see if a newly posted question is a rehash of a previously closed question?</p>

<p>I'm reasonably certain that <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/q/7874/16">this question</a> is the one you're referring to that you saw in the review queue.</p> <p>And it appears that <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/q/3326/16">this older question</a> is a fairly close duplicate of the one you saw. However, the older question is several months older and likely wouldn't have been the one you were thinking of.</p> <p>Using a combination of terms and even searching through deleted questions,¹ I wasn't able to find any other suitable matches.</p> <p>But with that said, let's address your question: </p> <blockquote> <p>Is there an easy way to view closed questions to see if a newly posted question is a rehash of a previously closed question?</p> </blockquote> <p>The short answer is yes, there are some easy ways. And the <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/help/searching">search help</a> gives you some tips on conditionals that you can apply to the search terms.</p> <p>In this case, I would have used "is:question closed:yes" in order to narrow the search and then sorted that view by newest posts.</p> <p>An example of what I might have searched on <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=roller%20is%3aquestion%20closed%3ayes">can be found here</a>.</p> <p>¹ _{<em>Apparently that diamond thingy after my name can come in handy...</em>}</p>

430

2016-03-01T05:06:38.683

Are CAD software usage related questions on topic here?

|discussion|

<p>Say, I want to know how to convert 3D Polylines into 2D polylines in <a href="https://www.3ds.com/products-services/draftsight-cad-software/" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><em>draftsight</em></a>, or the questions that are covered in <a href="http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/93545/computer-aided-design-cad">area 51 proposal here</a>. </p> <p>My questions have to do with how to use CAD system to achieve something that I want, which is geared more towards drafting, rather than engineering ( calculation) side. </p> <p>I've read the response to <a href="https://engineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/412/3353">this question</a>, and <a href="https://engineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/103/3353">this question</a>, and I am still unable to tell what is the official stance of this site.</p> <p>Mind to enlighten? </p>

<p>TL;DR - Yes, CAD questions are on-topic for the site.</p> <hr> <p>Your question <a href="https://engineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/103/are-questions-about-engineering-software-on-topic-what-questions">has been pretty well addressed before</a>, and <a href="https://engineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/105/16">Trevor's answer</a> along with <a href="https://engineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/104/16">my answer</a> provide more detail as to the community's expectations regarding CAD based questions. They are certainly on-topic for the site.</p> <p>Within one of <a href="https://engineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/430/are-cad-software-usage-related-questions-on-topic-here#comment904_430">your comments</a>, you expressed concern that the answers weren't valid as one of the subject questions in that meta post has since been deleted.</p> <p>For the sake of your question and others who don't have privileges to see deleted posts, here's a screenshot of what was asked:<br> <a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/0LtCt.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/0LtCt.png" alt="Screenshot of list question"></a></p> <p>List and off-site resource request questions like that one aren't a good fit for the StackExchange Q&amp;A format and <a href="https://engineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/10/368">our policy is to close them as off-topic</a>. The general concerns are that the information grows stale and questions like that are honeypots for spamvertisements that don't provide value to the site.</p> <p>So don't worry about the particular example that happens to have been deleted. Read and follow the guidance presented in Trevor's and my answers.</p>

428

2016-02-23T16:43:48.160

Include MathJax/LaTeX help link, like on Mathematics.SE

|feature-request|support|status-completed|formatting|hyperlinks|

<p>The MathJax help link (see below) presently links to <a href="http://www.math.harvard.edu/texman/" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><em>An introduction to using $\TeX$ in the Harvard Mathematics Department</em></a>.</p> <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/FyO3g.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/FyO3g.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p> <p>Whilst this gives thorough treatment, it takes quite a bit of clicking to find the relevant maths stuff.</p> <p><a href="http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/5020/mathjax-basic-tutorial-and-quick-reference">The quick reference provided at Mathematics.SE</a>, however, is a more condensed, and therefore accessible, version of what anyone using MathJax at Engineering.SE might need. Their sidebar on the "Ask Question" page points to this more accessible version rather than to the Harvard manual.</p> <p>I'd suggest that the MathJax help link on our site be changed to point to the Mathematics.SE version as well.</p> <p>Or perhaps that it is copied/adapted to a similar page on Engineering meta and the link changed accordingly.</p>

<p>That link now points to <a href="https://engineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/307/how-can-i-use-mathjax-latex-to-typeset-equations-on-this-site">How can I use MathJax/Latex to typeset equations on this site?</a></p>

401

2015-11-26T15:25:31.560

Close reason: belongs on another SE site, only Engineering Meta available?

|bug|vote-to-close|close-reasons|

<p>I believe <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6306/does-elevator-passengers-wait-time-depend-on-floor">this question</a> belongs on Maths.SE. I therefore voted to close, and selected "this belongs on another SE site", and clicked Next. My only option then was to select that it belonged on Meta.Engineering.SE. Which it doesn't. So I had to go back and select a different close reason.</p> <p>Is this just a rep thing that I can't state which SE site it belongs on? Or is there something else going on here?</p>

<p>Nope, not just a rep thing.</p> <p>Currently, the Engineering site is in beta. As such, we don't have any defined migration paths set up.</p> <p>Once we graduate, the community needs to decide which site(s) we ought to have defined migration paths set up for. Off-hand, I'd think that Electrical (Electronics?) Engineering, Mathematics, and Physics would be candidates for us to consider.</p> <p>But until we graduate, you ought to flag the question and patiently wait for your kind hearted janitorial staff to handle the flag. And don't worry about the question already having been closed. The site mods can re-open and then close with a migrate easily enough.</p> <p>Normally, we're handling flags within 2 - 3 hours on average. I suspect that because today is Thanksgiving in the US and all the mods are US based that we're a bit behind on keeping up with our janitorial duties. Sorry about that. </p>

388

2015-11-16T09:45:04.827

On-topicness of material recommendations

|discussion|scope|specific-question|

<p>Possibly related:</p> <p><a href="https://engineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/10/1070">The Engineering.SE position on recommendation/finding stuff questions</a></p> <p><a href="https://engineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/314/1070">How to write material design questions</a></p> <p>I have a specific piece of equipment in need of a casing. This casing needs to fit a couple of requirements, so I'm looking for the best material to use and related advice.</p> <p>Can this possibly be an on-topic question? It would most probably fall under <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/mechanical-engineering" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;mechanical-engineering&#39;" rel="tag">mechanical-engineering</a> but it could very well be too broad or simply phrased wrong.</p> <p>I could phrase it like a review-request ("I think material X in shape Y is a good idea, is something better available?").</p> <p>I could phrase it as a specific problem ("What material complies with the following requirements?").</p> <p>And there are probably a lot more possibilities. How should I respect the site's scope in this case?</p>

<p>This sounds like a typical material selection question, and I believe this type of question is fine, as long as you aren't asking for a recommendation of a particular manufacturer or product. Personally I would love to see more of this type of question as this is related to what I do.</p> <p>Additionally, material selection falls under materials engineering, which falls under engineering. You should not, in my opinion, use the "mechanical engineering" tag for "materials engineering" specific questions, such as a material selection question, <em>unless</em> the question centers on selection of a material for a mechanical purpose. It is of course possible to use material selection principles for aesthetic, thermal, chemical, electrical, nuclear, and multi-domain applications as well.</p> <p>In order to correctly select an optimal material, one must consider every aspect of the design, including shape, use case, loading, and environment. A material selection solution typically follows a rigorous quantitative process and can be quite involved for non-trivial applications. Even knowing what materials are available and what specific qualitative properties and idiosyncracies they have that may be beneficial or deleterious is not something that is developed except through experience and exposure to a wide array of materials or specialized material database software. It is also important to consider the effect of manufacturability and processing on costs. With all that in mind, it is important for a material selection question to include a lot of relevant information to get a high-quality answer.</p>

380

2015-11-06T11:08:24.683

Tag clarification: building-physics

|discussion|tags|

<p>I just saw the tag "building-physics" on <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/6015/how-do-tire-balancing-beads-work">a question about tire-balancing beads</a>. Which seemed strange to me, as car tires have nothing to do with buildings.</p> <p>On checking the tag wiki... there's nothing. Which isn't helpful. To me, "building-physics" sounds synonymous with "structural-engineering".</p> <p>On checking <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/building-physics">the questions with the tag</a> it doesn't appear that it's being used as a synonym for "structural-engineering", but then I can't see any common theme running through those questions at all!</p> <p>My primary suggestion is therefore to burninate the tag. Should someone be able to tell me what the tag actually means, and write that into the tag-wiki, then I think the tag would justify retention.</p>

<p><strong>Building Physics</strong> is the classification we use in academia and in private-sector engineering. Bauphysik is a pretty good equivalent in German. Here's a <a href="http://www-embp.eng.cam.ac.uk/" rel="nofollow">Cambridge University page on Building Physics</a>, the <a href="http://www.arup.com/Services/Building_Physics.aspx" rel="nofollow">Arup Page</a>, and a <a href="http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/people/?school=iede&amp;upi=MDAVI86" rel="nofollow">UCL Professor of Building Physics</a>.</p> <p>It covers thermal conduction, convection, &amp; radiation; heating and cooling; ventilation; transmission and management of water vapour &amp; pollutants in buildings.</p> <p>The tag is in use here on engineering, on Sustainability and on Physics</p>

369

2015-10-17T09:28:32.547

Why has this question had so many more views than average?

|discussion|

<p><a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/5784/how-thick-is-it-reasonable-for-the-walls-of-a-steel-gas-pipeline-to-be">This question</a> has had over 1600 views in 2 days. Which is orders of magnitude more than the average views for questions on the Engineering StackExchange site. From a quick scroll through recent questions it looks like the average views per question is less than 100. </p> <p>Any ideas on why this may be?</p>

<p>It is due to the 'Hot Network Questions' effect. StackExchange uses an algorithm to search all the sites for questions which are 'hot'. I don't know the details of how they decide, but I've noticed that questions which receive multiple answers very shortly after posting often make it to the list. </p> <p>Once a question is considered 'hot', it shows up in the list which is on the lower right-hand side of every SE site. This shows the question to an audience which is many orders of magnitude larger than the one that frequents this site. If the question is truly interesting to a broad audience, then the effect gets amplified, and the question can stay on the list for many days. </p> <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/mjZ8t.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/mjZ8t.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>

358

2015-10-01T17:04:22.783

What is yet needed to leave the beta status?

|discussion|beta|

<p>Checking periodically the <a href="http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/60453/engineering">Area51 page of the site</a>, I am very happy that most stat are at least in "okay" status. Although the question/day stat is still seems to oscillate around the required minimum (5), it seems it doesn't endanger the site's future (btw, there are betas with much smaller q/d and there was an Embedded Systems SE with bigger stat, despite that it was killed in private beta. Or there is the Magento SE with its around 40 q/d still in beta).</p> <p>Somewhere I've read, that the SE allows a site to leave the beta, if its visit (or q/d) stat starts to get an exponencial grow. There is no objective measurements, the CMs want to see a curve starting an exponencial growing phase. But, unfortunately I can't find this post any more.</p> <p>The q/d stat of the site clearly doesn't grow, it is in constant, or in a slowly growing linear phase, it is clearly visible. The other stats seem much better.</p> <p>Anybody knows or thinks more? 5k+ users have access to the site stats, are there positive / negative tendencies?</p>

<p>Our current criteria for when a site is ready to graduate is explained <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/257614/graduation-site-closure-and-a-clearer-outlook-on-the-health-of-se-sites">in this Meta post</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p><strong>When a site starts to consistently receive 10 questions/day, we’ll consider it for graduation.</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>As you point out yourself, Engineering is still oscillating around 5 questions/day — however, note that our new criteria also point out that that does not mean the site's future is endangered. Our current take on that is that:</p> <blockquote> <p><strong>If a public beta site does not produce consistently helpful content, and lacks the caretakers needed for flags and spam to get handled and our Be Nice policy to be upheld, it will be closed.</strong></p> </blockquote> <hr> <p>As a side note, <a href="https://magento.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/633/its-election-and-graduation-eve">Magento is no longer in Beta</a> (you'll notice it does not have the "Beta" label any more), as a part of the new <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/263905/design-independent-graduation-is-on-for-early-september">Design-Independent Graduation</a> — it's only missing regular reputation levels and a site design.</p>

347

2015-08-12T23:30:50.457

Would this reworking of my rejected migrated question be acceptable for the Main.SE?

|discussion|

<p><a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3811/what-are-the-specs-of-the-components-i-would-need-to-make-a-1050-kph-non-rocket">Rejected Migrated Question Here</a></p> <p><a href="https://physics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6969/would-this-question-be-allowed-to-migrate-to-physics-main/6970#6970">Reworking here:</a></p>

<p><strong><em>Short answer</em></strong> - no.</p> <hr> <p><strong><em>Long answer</em></strong> - I don't think there's a way to salvage your super bike question so that it would be constructive for the Engineering site.</p> <p><strong>Why?</strong></p> <p>There's two main parts as to why your question isn't a good fit for the site. The first is that your question lives within fantasy and not within the real world.</p> <p>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorcycle_land-speed_record" rel="nofollow">current world record holder</a> for that category came in at ~605 kph. Technology gains over the last 25 years brought about a measly 85 kph in improvements, and you're looking to best the current record by ~450 kph. </p> <p>The parts required to "spec out" your bike would rely heavily upon <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unobtainium" rel="nofollow">unobtanium</a>. That's a really bad sign regarding the quality of answers your question would likely attract. Said another way, the parts you need simply don't exist and aren't within the grasp of a reasonable R&amp;D budget.</p> <p>If it could have already been done or even reasonably closely been done, it would have. There's a lot of bragging rights for the manufacturers who are involved in breaking those records.</p> <p>The second major issue with your question is that it's simply too big. There's a lot of components that have to specified in order to construct a motorcycle. Specifying the minimum capabilities of what each of those components would have to reasonably support in order to reach 1050 kph would simply require too long of an answer. </p> <p>As a rule of thumb, if a question needs more than 3 or 4 paragraphs to properly answer, then the question is too broad for the StackExchange format. </p> <hr> <p>All that said, I don't think you have a <em>bad</em> question, just a question that doesn't fit the StackExchange Q&amp;A format. Big, hypothetical, provoke discussion type questions don't work well with StackExchange. The questions that work are focused on specific problems or challenges that can be given meaningful and specific answers.</p>

329

2015-07-02T23:29:21.823

Clean up solar tags

|discussion|status-completed|tags|

<p>I noticed a recent question (<a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/q/3453/368">How can I connect mismatched solar panels in parallel?</a>) with three tags relating to solar power/photovoltaics. Each of these is an existing tag:</p> <ul> <li><a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/solar-panel" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;solar-panel&#39;" rel="tag">solar-panel</a> has 6 questions</li> <li><a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/solar" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;solar&#39;" rel="tag">solar</a> has 4 questions</li> <li><a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/photovoltaic-cells" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;photovoltaic-cells&#39;" rel="tag">photovoltaic-cells</a> has 5 questions (4 of which are shared with <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/solar-panel" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;solar-panel&#39;" rel="tag">solar-panel</a>)</li> </ul> <p>There don't appear to be any other such tags (e.g., "solar-power" or the like) currently in use. Only a few questions come up in a search of the site for "solar" that are not already tagged with at least one of the above, and for the most part they only mention solar power incidentally.</p> <p>What should we do with these tags? I don't see much benefit from using all three (or any two) on the same question.</p>

<p>There are at least three different kinds of solar, and the kinds of engineering questions, and the pool of experts, would differ considerably between them:</p> <ol> <li><p><a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/photovoltaics" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;photovoltaics&#39;" rel="tag">photovoltaics</a> - covers modules, cells, films that convert light directly into electricity using semi-conductors. both <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/photovoltaic-cell" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;photovoltaic-cell&#39;" rel="tag">photovoltaic-cell</a> and <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/solar-panel" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;solar-panel&#39;" rel="tag">solar-panel</a> are subsets of this, and should be synonyms of it. Yes, I know some people refer to solar thermal panels as solar panels, but in almost all cases, when someone mentions solar panels, they mean PV.</p></li> <li><p><a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/solar-thermal" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;solar-thermal&#39;" rel="tag">solar-thermal</a> converts the light into heat, for use as low- or medium-grade heat.</p></li> <li><p><a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/concentrating-solar" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;concentrating-solar&#39;" rel="tag">concentrating-solar</a> concentrates light, using mirrors, onto a point or a tube, and the heat drives a turbine to generate electricity; or the high-grade heat could be used as such (I haven't heard of this being done yet, but I wouldn't rule it out as an application that's done within the next few years). As far as I know, we don't have any questions about concentrating-solar yet, so there's no reason to create that tag yet.</p></li> </ol> <p><a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/solar" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;solar&#39;" rel="tag">solar</a> is so unspecific as to be next-to-useless as a tag.</p>

314

2015-06-24T23:00:05.947

How to write material design questions

|discussion|

<p>I'm new to asking meta questions, but this seems like something that was important, and I really couldn't find anything else on it. Let me know if this is the wrong kind of question, etc...</p> <p>Recently, a question came up on <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3259/substitutes-materials-choice-needed-for-machined-aluminum-parts/3260#3260">material selection</a>. Since I happen to design composites, I took some initiative and answered with what I knew. Still, it was even pointed out that the question could be posed better - what is the part doing, what temperature is it reaching. Some other posts are <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/126/how-to-reduce-engineering-bill-of-material-cost-for-electronics-products">here</a>, <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1789/which-material-is-most-efficient-for-the-skin-of-a-solar-balloon">here</a>, and <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2908/looking-for-best-material-for-a-cryogenic-ball-mill-cup-and-balls">here</a>, many of which the question has been asked, are these <a href="https://engineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/188/naive-design-questions-ndqs-how-do-i-design">Naive Design Questions?</a></p> <p>We've all taken part of material selection. In composites, as my professor said, you aren't even the material selector, you're a material designer. I feel like it is different than a naive design question - it's the first step from transforming from a mathematical model to a design. So, like the naive design questions, I think a sample material selection question would help - such as:</p> <ol> <li>What will the device be exposed to? Loads, corrosive chemicals, etc.</li> <li>What temperature will your device operate at?</li> <li>What will your device do? Will it be abrading away at a spray nozzle or heating away in a heat exchanger?</li> <li>Where will your device be located?</li> </ol> <p>On the other hand, all of these questions, while absolutely necessary for final design, may be to much for preliminary material selection - such as my original post which just explained a list of the kinds of environments various plastics can withstand.</p> <p>So, the big Meta question I'm asking is ... what should a good material selection question have? Does this sound like a good start? More importantly, what should it not have? </p>

<blockquote> <p>are these Naive Design Questions?</p> </blockquote> <p>Before my esteemed fellow moderator <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/users/368/air">Air</a> chimes in, let me start out with stating that "Naive Design Question" isn't a formal reason for closing a question. At best, it's a subcategory of "Too Broad". After some contemplation on the term, I wouldn't mind seeing the term "Naive Design Question" disappearing from our regular lexicon.</p> <hr> <p>With that said, let's dive into some of your other questions / concerns.</p> <blockquote> <p>Since I happen to design composites, I took some initiative and answered with what I knew. Still, it was even pointed out that the question could be posed better ... </p> </blockquote> <p>To be honest, I don't see anything wrong with your answer. The question could have been scoped a bit better, and that scoping likely would have made it easier to provide a higher quality answer. But there's certainly nothing wrong with the answer you provided and the OP presumably agreed which is why they selected your answer as answering their question.</p> <p>It is still a low view / low vote question and answer. I suspect that may be due more to the domain of the question (i.e. niche) as opposed to anything else.</p> <p>You also cited several examples of other questions that are apparently generating some concern about topicality.</p> <blockquote> <p><a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/126/how-to-reduce-engineering-bill-of-material-cost-for-electronics-products">How to reduce Engineering Bill of Material Cost for electronics products?</a></p> </blockquote> <p>Was your first example. This question is more about bill of material than about material selection. HDE's comment of "Doesn't this come out to 'How do I reduce the cost of a project?'?" is pretty spot-on with addressing the challenges of this question. Frankly, it's <em>big</em>. </p> <p>It's a good question in the sense that it's something engineers need to think about. But the size of the question makes it a challenged fit for the StackExchange Q&amp;A format. It currently has six answers, and a few of those are "In addition to the above..." type answers which are hallmarks of big questions.</p> <p>In any case, I think this is a poor example from the perspective of your question because it's not really about materials selection.</p> <blockquote> <p><a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1789/which-material-is-most-efficient-for-the-skin-of-a-solar-balloon">Which material is most efficient for the skin of a solar balloon?</a></p> </blockquote> <p>Was your next example. It's definitely within the domain of materials selection, but it certainly could afford some additional scoping. </p> <p>Many / most SE denizens won't answer a question where it looks like the question is really just a fishing expedition. There's minimal to no prior research; the OP didn't provide any potential solutions; and some of the requirements read as "I want to have it all!" </p> <p>Going back to the checklist you provided, the OP didn't really address any of the questions you suggested. </p> <p>I might go so far as to suggest that this example should be closed as "Too Broad" or "Unclear what you're asking" in order to encourage the OP to provide enough detail to sufficiently scope the question.</p> <blockquote> <p><a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2908/looking-for-best-material-for-a-cryogenic-ball-mill-cup-and-balls">Looking for best material for a cryogenic ball mill cup and balls</a></p> </blockquote> <p>Was your last example. To me, this reads as a good question in search of an expert who can answer it. The OP addresses what they're trying to do; what they have already tried; and possible solutions that they've considered. It seems like the only part missing for this question is a knowledgeable enough expert to answer the question.</p> <hr> <p>To wrap things up:</p> <blockquote> <p>So, the big Meta question I'm asking is ... what should a good material selection question have? Does this sound like a good start? More importantly, what should it not have?</p> </blockquote> <p>I think that what you propose is a good start. </p> <p>As alluded to in the last example, I also like to see a clear statement of what the person is trying to do. I understand that not everything can be revealed due to corporate confidentiality and whatnot. But the more information the community has about what's being attempted, then the better the community can provide an answer or guidance.</p> <p>Likewise, knowing what the OP has already done or considered is critical information. Why bother suggesting material <code>ABC</code> when the OP has already tried that and it doesn't meet their requirements? If they don't tell us about what they've done then we end up wasting our time and theirs. And that's also why knowing what else they've considered is crucial. It helps exclude answers the OP doesn't care to hear about and also provides the opportunity for the community to correct mistaken presumptions about potential solutions.</p>

309

2015-06-08T14:43:50.980

Would a “How to make magnets” question be allowed on this site?

|discussion|asking-questions|

<p>I want to make some homemade magnets (the stronger the better), but am not sure whether these types of questions are really welcomed on this site. Any other site's suggested if I should not post it here?</p> <p>The question would be something like this:</p> <p>If I want to make some strong homemade magnets to use in science experiments, what process would I follow and what materials would I need to use? Bearing in mind of course that only materials readily to the layman can be used, so not any rare earth metals etc.</p>

<p>I think a question like this would be on topic for our site. That doesn't guarantee you'll get a good response, though. I strongly advise showing us that you've gone as far as you can go on your own before getting stuck (no pun intended) and asking for our help.</p> <p>Searching for "how to make magnets" is going to get you a lot of bad results about decorating magnets that you buy from the store. Instead, try search terms like "magnetize" or "build a magnet" and spend time looking at more than just the top results. I'll tell you right now, there are so many decent resources available with those search terms, that I would expect anyone asking for our time to already have some specific details, and maybe even to have tried making some magnets already (it's not terribly difficult).</p> <p>Essentially, you should approach this like it's your job, and asking a question on Stack Exchange is like asking your coworkers for help while they're working on their own stuff. If you're really stuck, that's a great time to ask, but if you ask them to help you on every little thing, they'll start to get annoyed. You can always hop into <a href="http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/20403/engineering">our chat room</a> to ask little questions, including things that are too broad, subjective, off-topic, etc. on the main site.</p>

299

2015-05-23T19:34:27.233

The number of new questions is low and falls, I suggest a lighter hand with the close/delete votes

|discussion|vote-to-close|votes|

<p>This is how the <a href="http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/60453/engineering">actual status of the proposal</a> on Area51 looks:</p> <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/yYbQb.png" alt=""></p> <p>It is significantly better than it looked some weeks ago (there was time when 3 out of the 5 criteria were in "Needs Work" status). This is clearly an improvement.</p> <p>But the "Questions per Day" criteria of the site is clearly bad, and what makes this worse, earlier it was even over 5.</p> <p>In my experience, this type of suggestion is often highly unpopular on other meta sites. I am sorry for that.</p> <p>Concurrently I experience a growing ratio of successful close votes. The probable reason behind that is the growing need to improve the site quality. But please consider: behind these Area51 criteria is a lot of experience of the SE community managers in starting/building up these communities, and this experience is based on statistics which we can't see. And they are doing this as part of their job.</p> <p>If your moderating/reviewing ideas may have the side-effect of narrowing the scope of the site, my suggestion would be to postpone this at least to when the site leaves its current "public beta" status. I think now a central community should be built up, and it seems that in the current status, we need new members.</p> <p>My suggestion is to target only the border cases, of course which is unsalvageable crap, and should go. But in the border cases, I suggest to do every alternative before a vote to close. Don't forget: closing somebody's question is a highly unpleasant experience, and in the case of the newbies there is a significant chance that this newbie will be lost. And with it, the site loses not only his actual question, but all of the content he could have created later.</p> <p>At the end of this road we could even find <a href="https://beer.stackexchange.com">Beer SE</a> with its 0.1 question/day ratio. Don't do this. Instead of this,</p> <ul> <li>Try to edit the question to a salvageable form (I think a highly changed question is still much better than a closed one).</li> <li>Try to advise the newbie, instead of a silent close vote.</li> </ul>

<blockquote> <p>Try to advise the newbie, instead of a silent close vote.</p> </blockquote> <p>Leaving comments for new users is great; it's a big part of what the <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/review/first-posts">first posts review queue</a> is supposed to encourage.</p> <p>That said, the notice that's left on a closed (or "on hold") question is anything but silent. It's big and loud and designed to advise the newbie and the veteran alike. Sometimes it's better to let the notice speak for itself. According to the community team, <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/167510/254929">closing questions is less likely to alienate new users than ignoring them entirely</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>A couple years ago now, we did some analysis of new user retention on Stack Overflow. Some forms of feedback tended to result in folks coming back more than others, but the single biggest way to keep someone away was to just ignore them. Don't vote - up or down. Don't comment. Don't answer. Don't close. Just... ignore. While you're busy walking on eggshells in fear of offending someone, they're seeing a blank page, an empty inbox, and they're walking away.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/216683/254929">Here's some more recent data </a> on the topic, including a graph (taken from <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/216700/254929">this answer</a> and cropped for the sake of space) that shows the difference in how likely new users in the sample were to ask a second question based on what happened to their first question:</p> <blockquote> <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/TtjmQ.png" alt=""></p> </blockquote> <p>So yes, please don't miss opportunities to leave <em>constructive</em> comments, but know that down- and close-voting also have an overall positive impact on user retention.</p> <blockquote> <p>Try to edit the question to a salvageable form (I think a highly changed question is still much better than a closed one).</p> </blockquote> <p>Aggressive edits are always a judgment call, and more of an art than a science in my opinion. Remember to follow the <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/help/editing">help center editing guidelines</a> and the MSE FAQ articles on <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/21788/how-does-editing-work">privileged edits</a> and <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76251/how-do-suggested-edits-work">suggested edits</a>.</p> <p>Through the private beta and for a little while after, we were pretty loose with our edits and would try to work miracles on questions that had any potential. That was appropriate at the time because:</p> <ul> <li>nearly all of our users had been involved in the Area51 process and were very familiar with how, when and why questions get edited on Stack Exchange;</li> <li>the site was very new and "finding itself" in many ways;</li> <li>few questions initially were tied to immediate, practical real-world problems. </li> </ul> <p>We don't have those excuses any more. Now, questions are more often concerned with immediate, practical real-world problems and the author's intent in presenting those problems must be respected. We have a corpus of hundreds of good questions with over a thousand answers, most of them positive-scoring.</p> <p>Try to forget the stats page and concentrate on what we are building, and why: a resource, to expose solutions in our problem domain and make them less obscure. The point is not to build a community. <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/118383/254929">It's about the content, not the user.</a> Stack Exchange so strongly <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/65261/254929">differentiates Q&amp;A from social networking</a> that <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/886/254929">feature requests associated with the latter are declined without comment</a> (and <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/102476/254929">staff "sort of hate" them</a>).</p>

293

2015-05-05T09:27:47.083

Do my work for me type questions

|discussion|on-topic|

<p>I have seen a few questions that sound more or less like a full design problem description. In essence the poster is asking somebody to do the work for him. </p> <p>Now the question is when does the question move over form being interesting/filtering your options? When do we wander into the land of actually needing to consider instead billing the user (when do we say ask a consultant)? For example asking for options that exist is one thing*. Asking us to choose from said options is really the job of the engineer. As is enumerating the options.</p> <p>So how far are you willing to take it. I'm all for asking. Just wondering why I would answer a question that I get asked every 2 months and get paid 1000 euros for my effort**? Are there any guidelines?</p> <p>The problem as I see it is that there are less parts in mechanical engineering than code. Everything is just more coupled. So the questions are much closer to the whole problem than specific programming questions.</p> <p>* Asking for an authoritative list of everything that exists is a bit too much asked too.<br> ** In fact I do think engineering disciplines would benefit from more openness.</p>

<p>Whether or not these kinds of questions are on-topic or a good fit for the site is discussed on our <a href="https://engineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/188/naive-design-questions-ndqs-how-do-i-design">Naive Design Questions</a> meta thread, and our <a href="https://engineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/121/what-should-our-position-be-on-homework-type-questions">homework problems</a> thread. I think the community has staked out fairly explicit and reasonable positions on these; namely that we need to meet certain levels of specificity and detail. So partially, your question shouldn't matter much. If someone comes to us asking a question that would require weeks or months of work and would normally be fit for a consultant, that should be closed as too broad. </p> <p>Beyond that, the choice is really a personal one. I wouldn't spend more than a couple hours on a question, and for me to spend that much, it has to be something that truly piques my interest; something that makes me say "Yeah, that's a good question. Why is that/How would you do that?" At that point, I'm answering as much for myself as I am for the person asking the question. </p> <p>However, I'm not going to stop somebody from putting what I might consider a crazy amount of work into an answer, so long as the question is appropriate for the site. </p> <p>Perhaps my favorite example of this is the <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1903/what-happens-when-you-put-the-wrong-type-of-fuel-in-an-internal-combustion-engin/1940#1940">diesel fuel in a gas engine</a> question. As you can see, I answered the question with a couple paragraphs giving the highlights of what might happen, and some links that go into more detail. My esteemed fellow moderator Air writes a small dissertation that goes much more in depth, and I assume it took him much longer to write. There are probably a few different reasons behind this, but whatever the case, there's no reason for us to tell him he spent too much time on the question. I'd even argue that it's beneficial to have multiple types of answers to certain questions, because some people will be looking for more background, others might just want a quick and direct answer. </p>

270

2015-04-19T23:58:10.787

Engineering Challenge Questions? Feature suggestion

|feature-request|

<p>I'm currently staying in a rural area in a small cabin as part of an internship, I got up this morning and it was so cold my milk had become a thick slurry, yuck. However to me this is just simply a design challenge, I love finding minor problems around the home and trying to find unique or interesting solutions to them, and I know I'm not alone as many of my peers at university enjoy this as well.</p> <p>The thought came to me then, why don't we try something similar on Engineering.Stackexchange? I know that these sites exist on the premise of Question and Answer but I don't think this deviates far from that premise. Additionally, the <a href="https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/">Code Golf stack exchange</a> performs on a similar premise already and it's performing quite well.</p> <p>So to summarise:</p> <blockquote> <p>Should we allow questions that pose engineering challenges rather than asking specific questions about the field of engineering, provided they supply enough detail?</p> </blockquote>

<p><a href="https://engineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/271/368">I agree with Glen</a> that this would have to be a separate site. Beyond which, I don't think PPCG is a good analogy, for reasons I'll elaborate on below. An Engineering puzzles and challenges site would have to operate by its own rules and get through its own growing pains in order to succeed. I like the idea that our community could have a relationship with such a site because I <em>do</em> like puzzles and so do many of our users.</p> <h2>Why doesn't Code Golf work as a proof-of-concept?</h2> <p>Code golfing became a &quot;thing&quot; on Stack Overflow (SO) way back in 2009, prior to <a href="http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/04/changes-to-stack-exchange/">the launch of Stack Exchange 2.0</a>, and <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/20912/254929">some users considered it disruptive</a> even then. The trend was <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/67780/254929">moved to Programmers SE</a> for a while before it got its own site, but not without <a href="https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/284187/2359271">leaving behind some maintenance work</a>.</p> <p>The fact that there's an active beta site for Programming Puzzles &amp; Code Golf (PPCG) has a lot to do with the overlap between SO and PPCG—in terms of domain, user base and technology. We are not an established resource in the engineering world; we've been around for less than three months. SO had been around for years already when the <a href="http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/4570?phase=beta">PPCG beta phase</a> began.</p> <p>The challenges on PPCG are also <a href="https://codegolf.meta.stackexchange.com/q/305">judged by objective criteria</a> that are simple to assess using the same technology required to compete and access the site. Engineering puzzles—the interesting ones, at least—could be much, <em>much</em> more difficult to judge because prototyping and testing are much more involved in our typical problem domains than in the programming world.</p> <h2>Thinking about opportunities for expansion</h2> <p><a href="https://engineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/188/368">We identified the challenge of accepting Naive Design Questions (NDQ) two months ago today.</a> The fact that users keep bringing us NDQ is strong evidence that there's a desire to engage in some kind of collaborative design process, and we are seen as a potential outlet. That is exactly the sort of evidence that justifies <a href="http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/05/the-stack-overflow-trilogy/">turning a site into a network</a>, <a href="http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/introducing-programmers-stackexchange-com/">launching a spin-off site</a> or <a href="http://sopython.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">developing a parallel, off-site resource</a> to expand what the site can do.</p> <p>Those sorts of expansions have been on my mind since the NDQ discussion. <strong>From the very beginning, some of our users have wanted a different resource out of Engineering SE</strong>, one I'd argue we can't effectively provide on this platform. There are practical differences between programming Q&amp;A and engineering Q&amp;A, such as how much easier it is to evaluate and mark-up source code on this platform than, say, construction blueprints and mechanical schematics. Working through these differences and finding our way to a mature, established Engineering SE should be the primary focus of this beta.</p> <p>At the same time, I would <em>love</em> for us to have an ongoing conversation about to what extent this platform enables us to collectively solve our engineering problems at work, at school and at home, and to what extent it <em>limits</em> us in doing the same. Problems based on naive designs or fun puzzles are still problems, after all. As much as our Goal with a capital G right now should be on working within those limitations, figuring out how to grow beyond those limitations <em>could</em> be a reasonable <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Hairy_Audacious_Goal" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Big Hairy Audacious Goal</a>.</p> <h2>What does this mean for Engineering Challenge Questions?</h2> <p>I think we could revisit this feature request in the future, when Engineering SE itself is more mature. I'd recommend holding off on an Area 51 proposal until there's strong evidence that users want this—personally, I'd want to see that we're regularly having to turn away quality content that could work for the proposal. (Of course, it's not up to me—anyone can start a proposal if they like.)</p> <p>What we <em>could</em> talk about doing <em>right now</em> is something that <a href="http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/20217774#20217774">has already been suggested in the chat room</a>—namely, <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/240634/254929">weekly topic challenges</a>. While this doesn't involve engineering puzzles, it <em>does</em> challenge you to ask and answer at your best, and if done correctly can give a site a nice boost. If that sounds appealing, we can open another Meta question in which to start gathering ideas for challenge topics.</p>

266

2015-04-14T21:01:10.470

Is this question on the Navier-Stokes equations on topic?

|discussion|specific-question|on-topic|

<p>Two days ago, the question <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2423/what-is-the-physical-interpretation-of-the-second-term-in-the-viscous-stress-ten">What is the physical interpretation of the second term in the viscous stress tensor in the Navier-Stokes equations?</a> was asked. In essence, it asks about the "physical interpretation" of the term $\nabla \cdot \mu (\nabla\vec{u})^T$ in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navier%E2%80%93Stokes_equations" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Navier-Stokes equations</a>, which are very important in fluid dynamics.</p> <p>It's a good question - one of my favorites of the last few weeks - but I'd like to discuss whether or not it's on-topic. The only reason I ask is because the immediate application to engineering is not necessarily obvious - for example, it could be used for a numerical simulation of some natural process, which, it could be argued, is falls in the realm of the natural sciences, not engineering. There are other equations which fall even more into the grey area.</p> <p>I write "could be argued". I think it could go either way - and we should keep in mind that it doesn't matter if it falls on-topic on some other Stack Exchange site. So long as it's on-topic on Engineering.SE, it should be warmly welcomed.</p> <p>So is this question (and others like it) on-topic, or not?</p>

<p>I would like to add that although application of the Navier-Stokes equation may not be obvious, it is an equation with a lot of applications in engineering. It is a statement of the scientific principle that momentum should be conserved. In particular the NS equation shows how this conservation principle applies to a Newtonian fluid undergoing flow. The principle of momentum conservation is one of the cornerstone of many engineering calculations and of equations that engineers use every day. Examples include sizing of pumps, design of pipe runs, and calculation of forces due to an impinging fluid jet (to take the classic textbook examples). Granted most engineers will apply the principle behind NS without even noticing that they are using it.</p>

252

2015-03-03T13:23:28.327

When should the moderators rely on the community to close questions?

|discussion|moderation|vote-to-close|closed-questions|

<p>The philosophy of StackExchange is one of meritocratic governance; users who contribute more have more abilities to govern the content and structure of the site. So far most of our question closures (including 'on hold') have happened because our pro-tempore moderators have stepped in and used their moderator superpowers to close the question. This is important early in the beta phase because there aren't enough users with enough reputation to effectively curate the site. </p> <p>As our userbase grows, however, it is important that the moderators step back and allow the users to curate the site and only intervene in extreme cases. The moderators are of course included in the group of users, they just have to avoid exercising their special moderator superpowers. </p> <p>The question is: How many high-rep users do we need to govern the site effectively without moderator intervention? As of right now we have 18 users with the required 500 reputation level to cast close votes. </p>

<p>This comment on <a href="https://engineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/253/56">hazzey's answer</a> got too long, so here it is on its own. </p> <p>TL;DR: Moderators should intervene less and less over time, but we shouldn't plan for it; it will happen on its own as the community grows.</p> <p>Yes: the goal of any Stack Exchange site is to be self-governing enough that moderators are exception handlers, picking up the cases that fall through the cracks. Sites are designed to be moderated by the community, but we instate moderators to make <em>sure</em> things stay tidy, especially on a very young site where relatively few members of the community have moderation-related privileges.</p> <p>What we <em>don't</em> do is appoint moderators and then ask them to stop closing questions once the community reaches a certain size or level of activity. This sort of thing happens organically over time: </p> <ul> <li>Currently, when a bad question is asked, here's what happens: a few users vote to close it; others without close voting privileges flag it. A moderator sees those flags in the review queue and closes the question with their hammer vote.</li> <li>In the future, when a bad question is asked, a few users might vote to close it; others without privileges might flag it; and by the time a moderator gets to it in the queue, the bad question has already been closed by 5 user votes. No actual mod intervention required.</li> </ul> <p>That's not something we have to plan for. That's something that's going to start happening someday, and it will be a signal to the moderators (and the SE staff) that the community is more self-moderating and self-sustaining than it was when it was very young (our little site, all grown up! *sniff*). </p> <p>At that point, moderators will still use their hammer close and delete powers - if, for example, they happen to be the first person to come across a spam answer, or if a question has 4 close votes already, or if something really egregious happens (which is an exception for them to handle). But most curation and moderation will be done by the community - and that's the way it should be.</p>

249

2015-03-02T21:51:59.853

Can we merge the "automobiles" and "automotive-engineering" tags?

|discussion|tags|

<p>I just noticed that we have both <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/automotive-engineering" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;automotive-engineering&#39;" rel="tag">automotive-engineering</a> and <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/automobiles" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;automobiles&#39;" rel="tag">automobiles</a> tags. Given that the questions that use each¹ seem similar, I propose that we merge them. I suggest that we make <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/automobiles" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;automobiles&#39;" rel="tag">automobiles</a> a synonym of <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/automotive-engineering" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;automotive-engineering&#39;" rel="tag">automotive-engineering</a> and not the other way around in order to keep with the <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/fieldofengineering-engineering" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;fieldofengineering-engineering&#39;" rel="tag">fieldofengineering-engineering</a> tag theme.</p> <p>By the way, is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_engineering" rel="nofollow noreferrer">automotive engineering</a> the same thing as automobile engineering, or is one a subfield of the other² (in which case it might be good to change the tag name)?</p> <hr> <p>¹ <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1929/how-does-a-diesel-internal-combustion-engine-start-even-though-there-are-no-spar">One question</a> uses both tags. <br> ² Or, perhaps, something's screwy on Wikipedia.</p>

<p>I don't know that they are synonyms. Most automobile questions probably are a subset of automotive engineering, but I don't think that's necessarily explicit, because I'm not sure I consider the wiring system for your radio and speakers to be automotive engineering, I'd classify it more as electrical, but it's definitely related to automobiles, because they do have a semi-standard setup.</p> <p>I was going to cite Wikipedia here, but the more I dig, the more I think your second footnote is correct, their arrangement and definitions of automobiles, automobile engineering, automotive engineering, and car is inconsistent and screwy. To me, an automobile is a car, truck, or SUV. It's a small-ish vehicle that people use for personal primary transportation. Something you buy off a lot or in a showroom. When you say "automobile engineering," I think of the design and manufacture of these vehicles. When you say "automotive engineering," that means something much broader to me. </p> <p>Some of the people I work with belong to SAE, and we have lots of SAE references around (which I'll admit does not make us an automotive company), but we generally don't deal much with passenger cars. Our primary focus is on agricultural machinery, and we have sister companies that deal with construction and mining equipment as well. We also do business with low-volume specialty vehicles; things that are certainly related to cars, but wouldn't fit your typical definition. These are all parts of automotive engineering, the principles are very similar, it's the application and the requirements that set them apart. But when someone says "automobile," I don't picture a Deere tractor. I'm more likely to picture a Camry. </p> <p>So my feeling is that the tags might commonly overlap, but that they definitely don't cover the exact same ground. I think <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/automobiles" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;automobiles&#39;" rel="tag">automobiles</a> is a subset of <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/automotive-engineering" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;automotive-engineering&#39;" rel="tag">automotive-engineering</a>, but that it has some distinct uses and can still be useful separately. Especially because I could easily see a large number of questions over time about peoples' personal automobiles, e.g. features and technology present on them, since it's something so many people interact with so frequently.</p>

212

2015-02-14T16:51:54.473

What will be the difference between the aerospace engineering and aircraft design tags?

|discussion|tags|

<p>The <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/aircraft-design" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;aircraft-design&#39;" rel="tag">aircraft-design</a> and <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/aerospace-engineering" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;aerospace-engineering&#39;" rel="tag">aerospace-engineering</a> tags have seen a decent amount of use so far. I created <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/aerospace-engineering" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;aerospace-engineering&#39;" rel="tag">aerospace-engineering</a>¹ as a more general term that could be applied to rockets and spacecraft (and, or course, spaceplanes).</p> <p>At the moment, though, they're being used rather interchangeably, as <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/664/how-is-fuel-mixed-with-air-in-a-jet-engine">this question</a> seems to show.</p> <p>How should we differentiate between the two?</p> <p>For what it's worth, here are the tag wiki excerpts:</p> <p><a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/tags/aircraft-design/info">aircraft-design</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>For questions about how certain features of an aircraft affect its performance and function, such as engine type or wing configuration</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/tags/aerospace-engineering/info">aerospace-engineering</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>Aerospace engineering is the primary branch of engineering concerned with the research, design, development, construction, and testing of aircraft and spacecraft.</p> </blockquote> <p>Here's a paragraph from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerospace_engineering" rel="nofollow noreferrer">the Wikipedia page on aerospace engineering</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>Aeronautical engineering was the original term for the field. As flight technology advanced to include craft operating in outer space, the broader term "aerospace engineering" has largely replaced it in common usage. Aerospace engineering, particularly the astronautics branch, is often referred to colloquially as "rocket science", such as in popular culture.</p> </blockquote> <hr> <p>¹_{I love being able to say, "I created aerospace engineering"!}</p>

<p>Aircraft design is a subset of aerospace engineering. Calling it a "primary pursuit" is incorrect. Equally important are spacecraft design, launch vehicle design, and so on. Not all of aerospace engineering is aircraft design. Both tags should remain, and should not be synonymized.</p>

196

2015-02-13T04:53:26.543

Aluminium or Aluminum?

|discussion|tags|

<p>I noticed today that both the tags "Aluminium" and "Aluminum" are used on this site. It is somewhat debatable in my mind if a material even needs a tag, but regardless of that, which format should this site adopt?</p>

<p>Another (admittedly very weak, but still a reality) reason to stick with US English: we Americans tend to be keenly oblivious of the existence of the rest of the world, and I would say it's a rare American indeed who is even aware of the "aluminum/aluminium" dichotomy. </p> <p>On the other hand I think most non-Americans are aware that Americans say it differently than everyone else (am I wrong?). Therefore, going with "aluminum" as the default (and "aluminium" as a synonym) will result in the least amount of confusion (and a lot of dead puppies). </p>

192

2015-02-12T19:14:32.457

Should hackspaces have their own tags?

|discussion|tags|hackspaces|

<p>As a follow-up to <a href="https://engineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/191/95">this question</a>:</p> <p>Should we allow hackspaces to have their own tags?</p> <p>I think this is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure about how well it would fit into the SE format, or if it would be accepted/appreciated by the wider community.</p> <p>Some Pros:</p> <ul> <li>People can follow their local hackspace and easily see questions from people in their own local community, get involved helping out with projects, etc.</li> <li>It can help existing communities cooperate with the wider global community while retaining some identity and thus extending their community spirit outwards</li> <li>It encourages a great open/sharing mindset within the Engineering.SE community</li> </ul> <p>Some Cons:</p> <ul> <li>Other organisations such as large engineering corporations may want/expect their own tags, or users may assume this is ok and create them</li> <li>Such tags wouldn't be about any specific engineering subject so may confuse some users</li> <li>It may be difficult to name them clearly and consistently because hackspaces tend to create their own identity rather than following a consistent naming convention</li> </ul> <p>I would love to hear people's thoughts on this.</p>

<h1>No.</h1> <p>Organizations do not get tags. They are <a href="http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/">meta-tags</a> and should be burned with prejudice:</p> <blockquote> <h3>From this point on, meta-tagging is explicitly discouraged.</h3> <p>How can you tell you’re using a meta-tag? It’s easier than you might think.</p> <ol> <li><strong>If the tag can’t work as the <em>only</em> tag on a question, it’s probably a meta-tag.</strong> Every tag you use should be able to work, more or less, as the <em>only</em> tag on a question. Meta-tags, like [beginner], [subjective], and [best-practices], are useless by themselves — they tell you nothing at all about the content of the question.</li> </ol> </blockquote> <p>Above quote from <a href="http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/">The Death of Meta Tags</a> on the <a href="http://blog.stackoverflow.com/">StackOverflow Blog</a>.</p>

178

2015-02-10T23:57:07.210

When should I use math markup?

|discussion|formatting|faq-proposed|editing|

<p>Prompted by <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/revisions/570/2">this suggested revision</a>.</p> <p>Here is the body of the question as it appears in my browser (Chrome 40.0.2214.111 m):</p> <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/fp5TX.png" alt="image of formatted question"></p> <p>Marking up this paragraph with MathJax simply to introduce superscripts and a degree symbol is unnecessary; here is the same paragraph, formatted without MathJax (and correcting the location of the degree symbols):</p> <blockquote> <p>I have a 2 mm sheet of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-density_polyethylene" rel="nofollow noreferrer">HDPE</a> at 280−320 °F. I want to pierce the skin of this sheet with a 2 mm-high pin with a surface area of 3.33 mm². The pin is also made of HDPE and has cooled completely. With the Young's modulus of HDPE being 0.8 GPa, how much force do I need to apply to have the cooled HDPE pin reach the molten layer of the HDPE sheet at 280−320 °F?</p> </blockquote> <p>I personally find the MathJax version considerably more difficult to read. The changing font impairs my ability to quickly scan and parse the paragraph.</p> <p>Let's make life easier for editors and reviewers by putting together some guidelines:</p> <ul> <li><strong>When is it appropriate to use MathJax markup in a question or answer?</strong></li> <li><strong>What style conventions are encouraged when using MathJax on Engineering.SE?</strong></li> </ul>

<p>It would seem that the general rules should be:</p> <ol> <li>MathJax is only to be used for formulas. </li> <li>MathJax should be used kept on its own line.</li> </ol> <p>Those two rules could be broken in situations where it makes sense, but that should be the exception. </p>

176

2015-02-10T22:30:08.113

Should comments like "this belongs on EE.SE" be deleted?

|discussion|comments|flagging|

<p><a href="https://engineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/25/368">Robert has made clear</a> that, at least at this point in time, we should aim to accept questions from all engineering disciplines and not restrict our scope based on the existence of other engineering sites—EE.SE being the main example.</p> <p><a href="https://engineering.meta.stackexchange.com/a/159/368">Russell McMahon points out</a> in the same discussion that we may be doing harm to our community in its early stages by not dealing with this overlap in a consistent and efficient way.</p> <p>I agree with both of these positions but it's far from ideal to hold scoping discussions on the comment thread of a question. So when I see a comment like, "this belongs on EE.SE," I would rather not engage with them. I think these comments are not constructive but I don't want to start flagging them without a policy in place.</p> <p><strong>Are comments directing users to ask their question on EE.SE constructive?</strong></p> <p>If not, then our policy should be to flag and delete them.</p>

<p>@ChrisMueller suggested that I comment here.</p> <p><a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2924/how-much-current-is-this-phone-drawing?noredirect=1#comment5074_2924">This current post</a> which I answered, clearly [tm] belongs on SE EE. It is absolutely on topic for SE EE and would have been answered well and promptly by others if it had been where it belonged.<br> If <strong>you</strong> don't see that it is clearly an SE EE question then that as of right disqualifies your opinion :-). </p> <p>I provided a 'good' answer that proved to be incorrect as the OP had left out a vital 'clue' I then posted a second answer that was clearly the correct one - and kept it separate as both answers were educational for quite different reasons. </p> <p>As a result of the above:.</p> <ul> <li><p>The good but incorrect answer received no votes, up or down. It seems to be of no interest to anyone here OR not many people were able ot assess its worth. </p></li> <li><p>The correct answer received a few up votes - it was simple and obviously correct in retrospect.</p></li> <li><p>Most importantly, the suggestion that this orphan and essentially unaddressed question should have been gently diverted to where it belonged was met not with action but with discussions about the desire to ignore such an obviously correct course. </p></li> </ul> <p>It seems we have learned about nothing from eg <a href="https://engineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6/our-scope-and-overlaps-with-sister-sites/159#159">this discussion</a> and that garnering questions that clearly belong elsewhere from where-ever they may be found takes precedence. </p> <p>The suggestion / policy that comments re where such questions belong should first be ignored and then deleted does not seem to best serve the interests of the forum or the OP. </p>

170

2015-02-10T14:13:04.257

Should our beta icon be changed from Eg to Eng, or an icon?

|discussion|feature-request|status-completed|

<p>I have noticed that Cognitive Sciences SE and probably others use three letters in their blue (beta) icon. Engineering uses two (Eg). It's non-intuitive, and I feel e.g. "Eng" would fit the name better and be more discoverable / guessable. A gear would be even better, like the plane icon at Aviation SE.</p>

<p>I have put in the request to our dev team to make the change from Eg to Eng. I'll keep you updated as to when this will get taken care of!</p>

135

2015-02-05T16:04:55.277

Should questions on schematics be allowed?

|discussion|scope|

<p>I am aware that most StackExchange websites consider questions regarding recommendations or where to find additional information as <em>out of scope</em>, since they generally atract too specific anwers or where only links are provided (<a href="https://engineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10/what-should-be-our-position-on-recommendation-finding-stuff-questions">more info</a>).</p> <p>However, I do believe that questions related schematics <strong>are</strong> related to engineering and may be useful for future readers. If specific and detailed drawings/schematics are requested, don't they deserve a place on this website ? <em>e.g.</em> a question I recently asked and was put on hold as <em>off-topic</em> (<a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/183/detailed-dimensions-of-an-aircraft-engine-compressor-blade">link to question</a>).</p> <p>As suggested in the comments, here are some example questions that I think would benefit the website:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Asking for feedback</strong> on a specific design or schematic. The user provides the details and related issues in order to benefit from the experience of the community and improve his/her design. See this <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/37681/schematic-critique">post</a> from Electrical Engineering.</li> <li><strong>Asking for explanations</strong> related to a drawing. Sometimes available schematics, either from books or articles, are somewhat unclear or there is missing information (specially for beginner users) and asking for clarification based on researchers experience can be extremely helpful. See this <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/26883/how-do-i-read-this-drawing">post</a> again from EE.</li> <li><strong>Asking for OpenSource schematics</strong>, as the question I posed. Sharing information that is in the public domain but that is hard to come by could be a very nice way to increase the website visibility. I'm not saying that SE should become a library of some sort, but rather focus on very specific areas where there is a lack of available information.</li> </ul>

<p>I also vote for questions on schematics to be allowed. This is just another way to communicate, and a very efficient way to compare ideas. Schematics are part of engineering.</p> <p>Responding to @TrevorArchibald comments: The reason StackOverflow often only includes codes snippet has probably more to do with the nature of the problems that are discussed on that forum. Complete code is open sourced for lots of software:</p> <ul> <li>Linux can be found here <a href="https://www.kernel.org/" rel="nofollow">https://www.kernel.org/</a></li> <li>The US Department of Defence recently open sourced a network scanner on github: <a href="https://github.com/USArmyResearchLab/Dshell" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/USArmyResearchLab/Dshell</a></li> <li>more on request :)</li> </ul> <p>This site should help us getting better at engineering and if schematics can contribute to this or help us express and understand ideas, as they do at work on a daily basis, why not make use of them.</p>

127

2015-02-05T01:57:47.657

Do we need a "homework" tag?

|discussion|tags|

<p>The consensus of <a href="https://engineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/121/what-should-our-position-be-on-homework-type-questions">this</a> post is that homework questions should be allowed, so long as they satisfy certain criteria. That begs another question: Do we want a <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/homework" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;homework&#39;" rel="tag">homework</a> tag?</p> <p>The tag would have the advantage of definitively defining a question as a homework-type question. It could also encourage "please-give-me-the-answer" questions, but I actually don't think that that will be a problem in the field of engineering.</p> <p>As a side note, we could also use the tag name <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/homework-and-exercises" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;homework-and-exercises&#39;" rel="tag">homework-and-exercises</a>, as was decided upon <a href="https://physics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4977/should-we-rename-the-homework-tag-as-problem-solving-or-such/6144#6144">on Physics</a>.</p>

<p>What I saw in the process of going through the other communities positions that people linked in the homework questions thread was that they tend to shy away from using tags like <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/homework" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;homework&#39;" rel="tag">homework</a> because they're a meta tag. </p> <p><a href="http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/">This post</a> on SO gives a good description on why meta tags are a bad idea. To summarize, they describe the question itself rather than the content.</p> <p>Imagine sorting through Engineering.SE by tags. If you look at the questions tagged with <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/civil-engineering" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;civil-engineering&#39;" rel="tag">civil-engineering</a>, you can reasonably assume that the questions will cover subjects like roads, bridges, buildings, and various infrastructure elements. If you look at questions tagged with <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/homework" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;homework&#39;" rel="tag">homework</a>, it can cover all kinds of subjects. It will provide no useful information about the question itself, except the context in which it's being asked. It won't help anyone with similar issues trying to find it, and it won't do anything to attract more qualified people to answer it. </p> <p>Ultimately, the fact that it's a homework question is irrelevant, if it's asked properly. The consensus that seems to be developing in the other thread is that we should copy other SE sites' policies which basically say "ask about a specific part of your homework problem, don't ask us to solve the whole thing for you." That helps out the student, the people answering, and the people who will find the question weeks, months, years down the road. At that point, who cares if it's homework? We care what subject matter it is, and that it's a good question. The only issue that arises with homework questions is that I think they're far more susceptible to being done poorly. </p>

119

2015-02-03T04:57:58.957

No notifications?

|support|notifications|

<p>On other SE sites, I receive a notification if someone comments on a Q/A I asked, answered, or commented on, or votes up a comment I made. </p> <p>However, on the Eng Beta, I have only been receiving notifications for upvotes to Q/As, or for answers to a question I asked. </p> <p>Is there a bug? Is this a feature that needs to be turned on? Am I doing something wrong? </p> <p>Also: I also received a few upvotes to a Q on meta.engineering, but did not receive any notification of this, either. </p> <p>To be clear: all of this activity appears in the dropdown menu. But there is no notification of "unread" activity like I get on, for example, Stackoverflow. </p>

<p>OK. So. </p> <p><a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/43020/165581">Here's the lowdown on how comment notifications work</a>. </p> <p>This passage is relevant to the mystery we encountered in <a href="https://engineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/119/no-notifications?noredirect=1#comment231_119">our comment thread above</a>: </p> <blockquote> <p>Note if a user comments on their own post and there is only one person who has previously commented, then that person is also notified if @name is not included.</p> </blockquote> <p>Read up on that MSE post -- this is how it should be working on all Q&amp;A sites, Engineering included. Let me know if you're noticing any behavior that's not listed in there.</p> <p>From your post:</p> <blockquote> <p>On other SE sites, I receive a notification if someone comments on a Q/A I asked, answered, or commented on, or votes up a comment I made.</p> </blockquote> <p>You shouldn't be receiving notifications for comment upvotes. We don't send those on any site.</p> <blockquote> <p>Also: I also received a few upvotes to a Q on meta.engineering, but did not receive any notification of this, either.</p> </blockquote> <p>Voting on per-site metas doesn't change your reputation, since your meta rep mirrors your main site rep. This means meta votes don't trigger green rep notifications like votes do on main sites.</p>

115

2015-02-03T02:49:21.723

Delayed awarding of beta badges?

|support|

<p>So we went public a few hours ago and I noticed that most of the other people who I remember interacting with in private beta have their shiny new beta badges but I don't see one on my profile. I've got 13 votes, 5 answers (minimum score of 2), and I've visited the site on 12 days (including the last 8). Am I missing something here? Is it possible that there's some sort of delay?</p>

<p>I did a little digging for you and confirmed that you did meet the requirements for days visited and posts with score > 0. However, your votes are not visible even to site moderators, so I can't confirm that you met the voting requirement.</p> <p>I see on your profile that of your 13 votes, 7 were cast in the month of February. Of those 7 votes in February, at least 4 would have to have been cast prior to 2015-02-02 18:32:59 to qualify you for the Beta badge. What I'd like for you to do is look through <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/users/131/?tab=votes">your own voting history</a> and check the timestamps to see how many of your votes were actually cast prior to that date and time.</p> <p>Remember that the time zones must agree. In most cases on Stack Exchange, hovering your mouse cursor over a time or date in your browser window will display the full UTC time stamp as hover text. If you <a href="http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/60453/engineering">hover over the "N days ago" text on Area 51</a> you can see the UTC time stamp for the end of private beta. The letter "Z" at the end of the time stamp indicates it is given in UTC time (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universal_Time#Time_zones" rel="nofollow noreferrer">the "Z" stands for "Zulu time"</a>).</p> <p>If you can confirm that you met the voting requirement, then this may be due to a bug.</p>

55

2015-01-23T17:58:38.400

How can we determine why our tag edits are being rejected?

|support|

<p>I'm on my second try entering content for a tag excerpt on this site. Who is rejecting these, and how can I find out why? My first try must have been really bad for someone to decide that having something is worse than having nothing! I've never had a tag edit rejected on any other site.</p>

<p>Have a look here: <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/123">https://engineering.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/123</a></p> <p>Robert Cartaino rejected the edit and stated:</p> <blockquote> <p>Simply defining what a [tag] is rarely helps those using it unless the tag's name itself is ambiguous. Excerpts should describe why and when a tag should be used. </p> </blockquote> <p>Which is pretty standard grounds for rejecting a tag edit within SE. There's some Meta.SE guidance to that effect.</p> <p>And I found that by going to your <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/users/77/feetwet?tab=activity&amp;sort=suggestions">suggestions activity page</a></p> <hr> <p>Looking at your other suggested edits, I would venture a guess that they'll be rejected too. Excerpts should provide guidance on <em>when</em> to use a particular tag as well as explaining what the tag represents.</p>

50

2015-01-23T00:50:36.417

What's the best way to do formatting for units?

|feature-request|formatting|

<p>I'm new to LaTeX, but I had a look at the docs and <code>\sfrac</code> looks like it would be nice for units, like $\frac{m}{s}$ (would look better with <code>\sfrac</code> instead of <code>\frac</code>). However it doesn't appear to be supported, and it might not be consistent with plain old $mm$ and other non-fraction-like units.</p> <p>Can <code>\sfrac</code> be supported?</p> <p>Is there a way to make it do nice-looking units that are easily distinguished from the other text, and should we encourage a standard way to format units (and make edits to fix, etc.)?</p> <p>...after some further research I found <a href="https://ddcampayo.wordpress.com/2009/05/12/get-your-units-right-with-latex/" rel="nofollow">this post</a> which discusses a package for SI Units - but I tested and it doesn't seem to be supported... is it easy to add this? We should definitely use SI units wherever possible.</p>

<p>While not directly answering your question, this is one of the best summaries I've seen on how to use MathJax within SE-land. </p> <p><a href="https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5020/mathjax-basic-tutorial-and-quick-reference">MathJax basic tutorial and quick reference</a><br> _{Hat tip to the folk over at Math.SE for putting it together. And yes, there's really too much information there to copy over to here.}</p> <hr> <p>If there are particular MathJax packages that we want enabled <strong>and</strong> that other SE sites are already using, all we need to do is ping Robert Cartaino to put the request in. They use a set of flags to control package support per site. Completely new packages take more time as the developers have to import the packages and test them out before unleashing upon the unsuspecting citizens of SE.</p> <hr> <p>Regarding SI vs. Imperial units - "meh." We don't need to worry about that at this point. From my experience, most engineering work (including lessons at US and UK universities) is already done in SI units, so questions will naturally use those. That said, there are certain industries (I'm looking at you <code>Energy &amp; Utility Sector</code>) where the use of non-SI units is so deeply ingrained that it's laughably expensive to try and convert the industry.</p> <p>I would rather worry about drawing in high quality questions than worry about what units are used within the question.</p>

43

2015-01-22T16:45:14.347

Why can't I edit someone's question?

|support|

<p>I wanted to edit <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/q/89/77">Additional jacking force to overcome stiction/dry friction</a> to add the new "friction" tag, but the edit button is grayed out. Is this a bug, or is it a characteristic of the private beta, and if the latter could someone explain how editing is supposed to work at this stage?</p>

<p>You couldn't edit that question because there was already another edit pending approval and you have not gained enough reputation to perform edits without review.</p> <p>As list of the things you can do against the reputation required to do more can be found here:</p> <p><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges">https://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges</a></p> <p>n.b. as it's my question, I will add the friction tag.</p>

36

2015-01-22T00:34:32.327

Let's write tag wikis (sort of)!

|discussion|tags|

<p>We have accumulated quite a lot of tags throughout the first days or so, which is really good! They seem to be helping guide questions and categorize them better.</p> <p>Let's start writing descriptions! You have to have 2000 rep to edit tag wikis without any further approval, which clearly nobody has reached - although if certain users keep on track, they could reach it within a week or two. In the meantime, the community mods are the only ones who can approve these edits.</p> <p>So let's come up with some good tag wikis! But here's where the "sort of" comes in. I've found that questions sometimes shape the tags and the tag wikis themselves. The tags can - in some cases - evolve over time, and there may be meta discussions about them. So let's not be <em>too</em> narrow in the descriptions, but at the same time, let's make sure that the tag wikis accurately and thoroughly describe the tag.</p> <p>For anyone who needs the incentive, you get +2 reputation for suggesting an edit . . . but you shouldn't need that incentive, because the long-term reward is helping the site grow and get better!</p> <hr> <p>If anyone thinks we shouldn't do any tag wiki edits yet, then please speak up, because I could absolutely be wrong.</p>

<p>As we begin to write tag wikis, let's review some of the most common missteps folks encounter in creating these excerpts&hellip; to help assure your efforts are productive. </p> <p>In our [tag] system, we have <a href="http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/03/redesigned-tags-page/">"tag wikis" and we have "tag wiki excerpts."</a> A <strong>Tag Wiki</strong> is a free form wiki page that allows the community to create collaborative resource about the subject. It may also contain a list of resources of interest to folks in that subject space. A <strong>Tag Wiki Excerpt</strong> is a short summary that pops up when users are picking tags for their question. It describes <em>when</em> a tag should be used.</p> <p><em>Most Common Problems:</em></p> <h2><strong>Excerpts describe <em>usage</em>, not definitions</strong></h2> <p><em>See <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/help/tag-excerpts">What should a tag wiki excerpt contain?</a></em></p> <p>Tag Wiki Excerpts are <strong><em>not</em></strong> typically simple dictionary definitions of what a word means. Wiki Excerpts should contain <em>usage guidance</em> for <em>when</em> the tag should be used. For example, here's were a recent example went wrong:</p> <blockquote> <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/lSiYF.png" alt="enter image description here"><br> ^{<strong><em>REJECTED</em></strong> — This is a definition of 'liquid'. Does not describe how or when the tag should be used.}</p> </blockquote> <p>This wiki excerpt was later fixed:</p> <blockquote> <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/fPrBP.png" alt="enter image description here"><br> ^{<strong><em>AWESOME!</em></strong>}</p> </blockquote> <p><em>Exceptions to the rule:</em></p> <p>Sometimes the subject of a tag is so obscure, it really needs the entire space of the tag wiki just to describe what it is. Also, if a tag is an acronym, sometimes it is useful just to clarify what that acronym stands for. (e.g. <strong>IEEE</strong> &mdash; For questions related to The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a professional organization for technical professionals.)</p> <h2><strong>Copied Content</strong></h2> <p>Tag wikis can become a valuable resource to this community. But too often, folks hear <em>wiki,</em> and they simply copy the content of Wikipedia over to this site. While perfectly legal, that is not what tag wikis are for. Tag wikis are designed to create an original and valuable resource for this community specifically. Here is a recent example (rejected):</p> <blockquote> <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/TWa19.png" alt="enter image description here"></p> <p>^{<strong><em>REJECTED</em></strong> &mdash; This edit copies a significant amount of content from an external source. Generic descriptions such as encyclopedia articles and ad copy do not provide useful guidance; try creating something useful to this community specifically, and be sure to attribute the original author. See: How to reference material written by others.}</p> </blockquote>

4

2015-01-20T20:37:37.147

Why doesn't Engineering support MathJax syntax?

|feature-request|status-completed|formatting|

<p>There are a number of communities in the Stack Exchange network that use <a href="http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/5020/mathjax-basic-tutorial-and-quick-reference">MathJax</a> to allow for rendering of mathematical expressions. Some that come to mind are Math and Physics.</p> <p>In my opinion, Engineering would greatly benefit from allowing such syntax in questions and answers in this community as well.</p> <p>Was this a deliberate decision not to support MathJax? Or is it simply that additional work is required to enable it? If the latter, what action can we take to help that get accomplished?</p>

<p>MathJax is off by default. However, I suspect this site will have plenty of uses for mathematical notation, so:</p> <p>$$off \rightarrow on$$</p>

1

2015-01-20T18:56:21.397

Anybody can create tags on newly created beta sites?

|discussion|

<p>Just created this question in our wonderful beta.</p> <p>What really surprised me - I created some initial tags, and they was created without any trouble. Although I have only a simple user with minimal reputation.</p> <p>Does it work always so?</p>

<p>Yes. Private beta sites have much more lax restrictions on new users, well, because we're all new users here. This is done so we can self-moderate early on.</p> <p>Once we reach public beta the standards get more strict, and even more so after full launch.</p> <p>You can check any site's privileges by viewing the <a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/help/privileges">/privileges</a> page.</p>