I've seen a few complaints over the past few weeks about there being a lot of psuedoscience, and there has been a fair amount of reports.
I figured it would be a good idea to update the rules on the sidebar to clearly lay out what is and isn't allowed.
I think a tagging system might help to keep down on the spam and elevate real scientific sources. These are just a draft and more rules could be added in the future if they are needed.
Current draft (work in progress, add suggestions in comments):
A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.
Submission Rules:
- All posts must be flagged with an appropriate tag and must be scientific in nature. All posts not following these guidelines will be removed.
- All posts must be peer reviewed and published in a reputable journal, unless flagged as news or discussion. No pseudoscience.
- No self-promotion, blogspam, videos, or memes. See list of unapproved sources below.
Comment Rules:
- Civility to other users, be kind.
- See rule #1.
- Please stay on the original topic in the post. New topics should be referred to a new post/discussion thread.
- See rule #1 again. Personal attacks, trolling, or aggression to other users will result in a ban.
- Report incivility, trolling, or otherwise bad actors. We are human so we only see what is reported.
Flag Options
- [Peer reviewed]
- [News]
- [Discussion]
List of potential predatory journals & publishers (do not post from these sources)
List of unapproved sources:
- Psypost
- Sciencealert
- (any other popsci site that uses titles generally regarded as clickbait)
Original draft:
A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.
Submission Rules:
- All posts must be flagged with an appropriate tag and must be scientific in nature. All posts not following these guidelines will be removed.
- All posts must be peer reviewed and published in a reputable journal, unless flagged as news or discussion. No pseudoscience.
- No self-promotion, blogspam, videos, or memes.
Comment Rules:
- Civility to other users, be kind.
- See rule #1.
- Please stay on the original topic in the post. New topics should be referred to a new post/discussion thread.
- See rule #1 again. Personal attacks, trolling, or aggression to other users will result in a ban.
- Report incivility, trolling, or otherwise bad actors. We are human so we only see what is reported.
Flag Options
- [Peer reviewed]
- [News]
- [Discussion]
List of potential predatory journals & publishers (do not post from these sources)
I'm not on 24/7 but I'll try to update these when I get a chance.
One suggestion I'd like to see as a differentiator from the Science subreddit... The subreddit really seemed humorless to a degree where it felt like the mods were joyless scholars with giant sticks in a really uncomfortable place (What? Like the back of a Volkswagen?)
I get the need for standards on post quality, I just hope there isn't a heavy hand on comment quality.
I completely agree.
I liked askhistorians, as I felt like the moderation added to the quality a lot, but /r/science never seemed to achieve that level of quality. Though when they did start with the heavy moderation/clear rules with tags (I think flair was a later addition) it was a marked improvement off what it was before.
I'm open to suggestions, and I'll just leave the draft rules up for awhile to get feedback.
I hope there is a heavy hand on moderation. It's extremely tiring when I see an astronomy article about Uranus with 15 comments, and they're all very juvenile jokes.
Yeah, I like a light-hearted approach to life but that one particular "joke" should be shot on sight. I'm convinced it plays an actual role in why we haven't seen much serious discussion of sending a probe there.