A new Q&A sticky?

[Chris Hillman]

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

This website is read by a lot of kids, including young school kids who want to learn about astronomy, space, and space exploration.

and from
http://www.bautforum.com/questions-a...-question.html

Originally Posted by Fraser

If you've got a question about space and astronomy, go ahead and ask it
[here in Q&A].
People here in the forum will try to get back to you with an answer. And as a special bonus, I'll use my vast range of contacts to try and get official space scientists, astronomers and experts to give you answers right from the source if I can.

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]

I think it might be helpful for anyone who doesn't yet see the point of what I've said so far to look at two examples of what I think were preventable misunderstandings which led to hurt feelings (and even a one-week ban for an ad hom). Since my goal here is to illustrate the kind of problem which can result from misjudging the educational background and psychology of an inquirer in Q&A, I have suppressed some names; anyone who wishes to study the quoted interactions in their original context can see the original threads.

In a recent thread
http://www.bautforum.com/questions-a...-universe.html
one poster asked, in part:

You start with a 4-dimensional semi-Reimannian manifold, in particular a Lorentzian manifold. That manifold is topologically withouth boundary, and may be either an open manifold or a closed manifold -- don't know which. If the Gaussian curvature is positive it is open. If the Guasian curvature is zero it is still open. It the Gaussian curvature is negative it could be either closed or open.

where clearly he is thinking of the FRW models (in older books these are classified into open, flat, or closed, but this terminology is potentially misleading and seems to be disappearing from more recent books). He also wrote

So far as I am aware the only [curvature singularities]
contemplated [in GTR]
are associated wth black holes.

Both I and KenG, attempting to employ the so-called Discovery method, tried to encourage him to realize that he was forgetting that the FRW dust models possess an initial curvature singularity, generally identified with "the Big Bang".

Unfortunately, the inquirer reacted badly. As I explained in my post #72 in the thread, there are many more issues involved in the relation (in gtr) between geometry and topology--- which turned out to be the point which was really troubling our correspondent--- than most students could possibly guess. I saw three choices:

• try to guess which of many relevant issues was most important to try to explain to the inquirer, who is a stranger to me,
• try to outline all the potentially relevant issues; this would be not only too time consuming for me but might overwhelm most readers (in other threads I've contributed to, such an effort on my part has resulted in a charge of "grandstanding"),
• try to toss out hints to induce the inquirer to do more work in trying to recognize and overcome mental blocks; done well, the "Discovery method" can result in a student overcoming misconceptions without the teacher struggling to elucidate precisely what is confusing the student; unfortunately, the "Discovery method" is notoriously difficult and in that thread I failed miserably (but my intentions were good).

As I said in my post #72, I have recently encountered bad reactions from some posters to all three options. I believe this could often be prevented if such posters were aware of some of the issues to be discussed in the proposed new Q&A sticky.

In another recent thread
http://www.bautforum.com/questions-a...ell-drive.html
a second inquirer asked, in part:

I was reading that article on non-propellant travel methods and I had a thought... how well would something like a gravity well drive work... What I mean by GWD (gravity well drive, easier to type) is that a ship would produce some sort of gravitational anomaly just in front of itself at a distance that remains constant so that the gravity of this thing would pull the ship forward and as it does since the ship is creating the anomaly it too would move forward. couldn't something like this work?

I responded, in part:

This sounds very much like a popular description of the celebrated Alcubierre warp drive spacetime and related constructions, which naively would yield effectively superluminal transport of a warp bubble, with the inhabitants of the "bubble" feeling no accelerations and thus perfectly comfortable, in the manner of Star Trek (hence the name). See
http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0009013
Note that the eprint version dates from 2000 but is substantially identical to the printed paper, which was published in 1994. This paper lead to a large literature on warp drives. Unfortunately, very bad popularizations at cranky organs like New Scientist has lead many amateur fans of Star Trek to believe that these are "solutions of the EFE". The short story is that are not, although the reasons why require tedious explanations. They are however Lorentzian manifolds and their physically implausible properties (when they are interpreted as spacetime models) have pedagogical value for getting some intuition about what kinds of "weird" Lorentzian manifolds are (mostly likely) ruled out by gtr and other viable theories.

The inquirer responded:

chris, I don't mean to sound rude but I know very much that this will. Please stop with the overly physics geek speak when explaining things. I appreciate your answer, but I understand very little of it... and it does very little to give at least an understandable answer to the common person. I have to imagine...as with a lot of the questions that have come up... not everyone knows all this stuff nor most of what your talking about and it defeats the point of you answering... I don't mean to sound rude I just don't like reading lines of stuff that mean very little to most people without a physics degree.

In other words, the second inquirer became infuriated when I overestimated the level of sophistication of response he wanted, while the first inquirer became infuriated when (as he seemed to feel) I underestimated his ability (FTIW, I myself felt in retrospect that in inviting him to overcome a mental block by throwing out a few hints, KenG and I were hardly denigrating his intellectual ability!). I hope it is clear why I feel that my proposals above could ameliorate such problems. No doubt this kind of thing would still occur even if a new Q&A sticky is put up, but then we could at least respond to bad reactions on the part of a n00b by pointing at the sticky.

I am a bit unnerved by the strong reaction of several posters who practically said that they don't want to see any hard math or physics in BAUT, period. As I said, I have received some positive feedback, but I am beginning to wonder whether only a tiny minority here appreciates posts which draw upon advanced knowledge of math/physics.

I've been looking for an opportunity to raise another point: I have been amazed and disturbed by angry responses from several posters when I cited a book. Some literally seemed to be regard the friendly suggestion that they might like to read a particular book as an outright insult. (When I cite a book, I almost always give an indication of tis level of sophistication, incidently--- another suggesion worthy of inclusion the proposed new sticky.) I've seen that attitude before but recently I seem to observe it much more frequently, and I am sorely troubled. I hope that it is not true that there is no-one among the younger generation who still reads books!

[01101001]

Originally Posted by Chris Hillman

I think the "Q & BA Questions thread" sticky [...]

Totally not adressing the topic, but the Q&BA topic itself is locked, and its mentioned triggered a memory, and it's probably not worthy of its own topic: The BA said on his Sunday video chat that the Q&BA feature is pretty much dead. I thus expect that topic to soon become unsticky'd and allowed to fade away.

(I'm sure he could, and will, explain it better, but I believe I heard BA say in chat that it took a lot of effort to do an episode, and he's finding the more informal video chat much more effective at adressing questions from the curious. On occasion, during his video chat, he will do an impromptu version for the recorded archives, without the laborious planning, for answers that are archive-worthy. And, besides, he's also doing well-produced (by not-him) videos for Hulu.com (Bad Astronomy premiers on Hulu!) and other sources, so it's a little like the Q&BA feature but perhaps without the same investment of effort.)

Thanks. We now return you to your regular topic of a new, improved sticky for Q&A.

[Chris Hillman]

Hmm... that raises another issue: add to my list of differences between BAUTians that not everyone here has enabled A/V features. I for example have never heard/seen any of the Plait/Cain videos/audios. I know BAUT only as a text-based forum.

More generally, not everyone uses a Microsoft operating system, and not everyone who uses linux is particularly rabid either way concerning Microsoft, Yahoo, or Google.

And another thought: since BAUT and similar public forums are not academic forums, when I cite a paper I try to limit myself to arXiv eprints (which are available for download, for free, to anyone with an Internet connection) or to "open access" journals. But I sometimes see posters who happen to be university students with free access through their university library to the on-line version of print journals link to websites which those outside the academic community will generally be unable to access. So add a reminder not to do that to the proposed Q&A guidelines.

[parejkoj]

I find it best to link to the NASA ADS record, so that people can go to the published record if they can, or the arxiv record if they can't. Also makes it easier to chase down references.

[Chris Hillman]

You might have a point there. I guess it's a tradeoff between transparency and pausing to explain that in a page of AD****s, you can click on "X" to obtain the arXiv eprint (if any). Even citing the arXiv is (IMO) often not done well: I claim the abstract page should be cited, since those of us with postscript printers like to download the PS file, which in my experience is much faster and certainly prints as it should (with the odd exception--- two pages in the Turyshev review don't print on my printer, apparently becase it cannot handle the sophisticated layout on those two pages).

One thing I was planning to suggest is that the sticky should suggest some on-line resources posters might want to check first, such as the UseNet Physics FAQ or Ned Wright's Cosmology FAQ.

Possibly the sticky could end with a section suggesting places to look for further reading. There one could offer a very brief tutorial (hopefully one sentence each) on using arXiv, ADS, Google Scholar searches.

Another possible topic would be tips for impoverished students whose university library lacks some book. I know of university libraries whose catalog is accessible to all (but hesitate to link for fear of overwhelming their servers with national requests) and can be used to verify bibliographic information. In my experience, public libraries may be willing to obtain a scholarly book on interlibrary loan which you can then photocopy. In brief, many students give up way too early when it comes to trying to obtain a good textbook.

[parejkoj]

What I meant was a link like this, directly to the ADS reference, which has more descriptive links than the results query page. If one is to link to arXiv instead, definitely link to the abstract page, since one can get the paper in the preferred format, and trace citebase links, etc.

And your own admission to not being aware of either Bad Astronomy nor Universe Today brings up another point: people don't follow links (those two sites are linked from the banner at the top of the page). Even if you include a FAQ with links to more information, I'm not sure how many people would read them.

[Chris Hillman]

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I have followed the links to Phil's site and Fraser's site. (They are both fine resources--- but I guess everyone here already knows that!) However, I do not have things like Javascript or flash or chat or audio enabled, so I have not seen any of the podcasts, for example.

[hhEb09'1]

Originally Posted by Chris Hillman

I have been amazed and disturbed by angry responses from several posters when I cited a book.

Originally Posted by Chris Hillman

And another thought: since BAUT and similar public forums are not academic forums, when I cite a paper I try to limit myself to arXiv eprints (which are available for download, for free, to anyone with an Internet connection) or to "open access" journals.

Originally Posted by Chris Hillman

Another possible topic would be tips for impoverished students whose university library lacks some book.

Thanks for writing this up. If we encounter any impoverished (one way or the other ) students, 10010110 can send them to this thread. That should keep them busy for awhile

[Chris Hillman]

<pout>
But I wanted a sticky!
</pout>