Hi all,

I have a suggestion for the Q&A stickies which I think could improve the experience of many BAUTians.

I think the "Q & BA Questions thread" sticky and "What's your question?" sticky should both be replaced with a new sticky, "How to ask a question in Q&A", and I'd like to initiate discussion of a draft of the proposed replacement.

One important issue which I think BAUT posters should bear in mind arises from three points which I think too many newbies (and even some "old hands") tend to forget:

• The BAUT community consists of individuals with a very wide range of ages, educational backgrounds, and physics/astronomy knowledge, ranging from high school students thirsty for a taste of what's happening at the frontiers, retired persons with an unsatisfied intellectual hunger but little background in mathematical physics, through undergraduate and graduate physics students and Ph.D. astronomers, physicists and mathematicians. Obviously, in IRL conversation, individuals in these groups would address individuals in the same or other groups very differently.
• Even within the above groups, there is tremendous variation between individual psychologies. In particular, the feelings of some are very easily hurt. And everyone who has taught at the college level knows that there is wide variation in maturity among college students. The same is of course true for abilities and determination.
• Very few BAUTians know each other IRL (correct?), so even long-time posters trying to frame a response to a newbie question have to make guesses based upon very little evidence for which group the newbie might fall into, or what kind of response he/she might be seeking.

Accordingly, it seems to me, it is vitally important that posters be encouraged to clarify, when starting a thread in Q&A, the nature of their background and interest, e.g.

• Are they a high school student or an undergraduate non-physics/astro major student? Are they asking for a school project? Out of curiosity? If the latter, how much effort are they willing to expend: in particular, are they sufficiently interested to download an expository undergraduate level paper from the arXiv? To check out a book from their college library?
• Are they an amateur astronomer with much knowledge of backyard telescopes and of the night sky, but little formal physics background?
• Are they an adult who didn't attend college or was not a math/astro/physics major, but who has an interest in astro/physics? Here too clarification of how much followup effort they are willing to invest would be very helpful.
• Are they (hope springs eternal!) an ambitious undergraduate or graduate physics/astro major seeking a summary of the State of the Art, with citations to textbooks, research papers, and arXiv?
• At the opposite extreme, do they simply want to "shoot the breeze" about funky sounding science with others who have only a casual interest? Fair enough, but I think such posters can avoid misunderstandings by stating that they belong to what we might call the "beernut crowd".

Possible objections include:

• Newbies may be struggling so hard simply to express the content of their question that they may be unable to describe the nature of their background and interest in their own words.
• Many newbies are inexperienced writers who are struggle with grammar and spelling, much less with the clear expression of complex ideas.

I grant the validity of these objections. A possible solution would be to offer boilerplate text or even codewords a newbie might include in the first sentence of his/her post.

I also often wish that BAUTians who lack advanced knowledge of physics/astro topics and/or mathematical background for same, would try harder to take into account that those of us who possess such knowledge are very often faced with some difficult choices in framing responses to inquiries. To be blunt, I think some BAUTians need reminding not to throw a fit should a response from a more expert poster widely misses the mark-- particularly if they failed to even attempt to clarify the nature of their background and interest in their initial inquiry.

I also would like to see a request that posters who have asked for one kind of response not become upset if a BAUTian like me makes comments of the form "For posters with an undergraduate math/physics background..." After all, there is good reason to think that lurkers outnumber posters, and it is quite possible that even if the OP is not an undergraduate physics major, some other readers might be, and they should benefit from remarks addressed to them.

I think it would also be helpful to suggest that posters whose feelings are easily hurt by the presence of sophisticated discussion should consider placing BAUTians whose posts often sail over their head in their Ignore list (rather than posting something like "get lost!").

Another issue which I would like to see specifically addressed in the proposed sticky: the best way, bar none, to learn a technical subject S, is to try to explain topics in S to others who know just a bit less than you do. For this reason, I think, Q&A could be invaluable for undergraduate and graduate students, and I certainly do not want to discourage intermediate level students from trying their hand at answering questions. Possibly, those with the most advanced knowledge could even be asked to wait a few days before responding to a typical newbie question (often, the poster is struggling to explain his question, due to inexperience in writing, understandable confusion about the terminology or technical issues related to the topic of his question), and only stepping in if no-one else has replied or if some attempted answer contains a serious goof.

And another: I have noticed that one difference in fundamental psychology which (in my experience at BAUT and other public discussion forums) often causes friction is that

• Trained mathematicians and scientists tend to be pretty hard-nosed about what is and is not possible on the basis of the best available math/sci knowledge, and they appreciate principles such as the Laws of Thermodynamics which serve as efficient "nonsense filters"; this groups also tends to have a very different understanding of "crazy speculations" in the research literature than many laypersons,
• Some nonscientists seem to live in a scifi dreamworld and become extremely upset if someone tries to explain the current mainstream assessment of whether or not "energy from the vacuum", "antigravity drives", "warp bubbles", or other such notions are realizable, and may even mistake sound scientific judgement (in the context of the best currently available evidence) for pessimism or obscurantism.

These sharply differing expectations can cause problems.

And along similar lines: all teachers but few students appreciate the fact that there is enormous individual variation in how different students think and learn, e.g. about mathematical topics. I am visual-minded; others are not. I like to see simple but nontrivial examples, and long ago read an address by the distinguished mathematician Sir Michael Atiyah to the London Mathematical Society in which he stressed the importance of offering such examples in expository mathematical writing. But in my experience, students often respond that they feel overwhelmed by seeing even a few examples.

It seems to me that the current BAUT stickies contain only slender hints concerning these issues. The closest items I could find are as follows: from
http://www.bautforum.com/about-baut/...ing-board.html
and from
http://www.bautforum.com/questions-a...-question.html
I would like to see a sticky for Q&A which explains these points and goes on to make some specific suggestions for how to ask a question in Q&A.

I helped revise the Physics Forums Global Guidelines, which might be worth a look
http://physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=5374
but I also have specific suggestions in mind.

Why do I feel so strongly that these issues are causing problems in BAUT?

I am still something of a n00b at BAUT and am not yet acqainted with the backgrounds and needs of most longtime participants.

My responses to Q&A often include comments at the graduate level, and a number of BAUTians have offered some positive feedback, to the effect that they would like to see more of this, and are happy to have here a poster who has advanced knowledge of some notoriously subtle and technical subjects (e.g. gtr). But some posters have been much less appreciative of my efforts.

(To be continued...)

__________________
Chris Hillman

Read these PF posts. Avoid Wikipedia--- except for these versions. Read this and this suggested sticky. When asked for advice, I always say: never take advice!