text:
Request to use image
I recently retired from teaching Middle School and High School Science for 37 years in Texas. I am now writing a book series called "The Science Sleuths." Book #5 is called "Adventures in Astronomy." MAY I PLEASE USE YOUR DIAGRAM located at this post with your permission.  I will give you full credit for the image.
Randal Lee Gritzner

Google image search shows this in many places - perhaps one is the original. https://www.google.com/search?tbs=sbi:AMhZZituFKKoug5fGtzN6WuLScsFpOY2UiKwLX6M3x_1acgStxnZ9PJkLWJ75UO2bKQ0M6EuZ59ijxCo3_1VFjMecrpglO8HnnA3f1MS4aMh17D_1N0lrPT-NFm_1oSQcQ1i9yQg6i7c6sxdeFYVPBKGWKOmPz9YaoMdUyo3QA7XNHCsGH4UcN5twS89vF2Mc4w7r5DRjXecq11HRQtpTTsfgewh7SPFD7hSOhrvO9yO976MHkn1LJ2wI4TUtiYpeXd7h7W5GO6kOlvBflY6GbVuudsaIgej4i0cmVC4wbtm9YDk1HUnLEGBM8A0avzRm2JVtP7CTjXgoaEwV7OICN9EwuxX3niiIdQduA

There are other images on wikimedia, which are free to use under their license. https://www.google.com/search?q=johannes+kepler+2nd+law+site%3Acommons.wikimedia.org+&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwjRheqSk-zsAhVWh54KHUbFCekQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=johannes+kepler+2nd+law+site%3Acommons.wikimedia.org+&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQDDoECAAQHlDx_gZY35sHYJi9B2gAcAB4AIABYIgBsAGSAQEymAEAoAEBqgELZ3dzLXdpei1pbWfAAQE&sclient=img&ei=-VOkX5GlIdaO-gTGiqfIDg&bih=683&biw=1219

All the things here are free to use.

@peterh-ReinstateMonica They are supposed to be, but some people post copyright images.

@KeithMcClary Then it is problematic de jure, because the SE content is still free (maybe cc-ba-sa or so). De facto it is free.

@KeithMcClary peterh is correct. All images here are free to use. If one has been posted without permission of the copyright holder, it is the responsibility of the copyright holder to make a takedown request of anyone who uses it. It is not our responsibility as SE users to enforce unknown potential copyright restrictions on people referencing our site. We can enforce against the user who posted the image originally by requesting the source and/or flagging the answer.

Randal, while my answer and comments here are still correct, you may want to take note in my comments below my answer that I have discovered the potential creator of the image has not been credited. If you need to create your content immediately, you may want to attribute them and us just to be safe. If you have time to wait and check back in a couple weeks, I should have the attribution situation resolved.

That's not a very good image, Randal. It's quite low resolution, and it's not geometrically correct (eg, the focus is too close to the centre). Wouldn't you prefer something of higher resolution, and which is mathematically accurate? Is this for a printed book, or an online book?

All user-submitted content on Stack Exchange is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY-SA license.* You are free to use any of it as long as you follow the license terms and attribute it appropriately as described here: https://creativecommons.org/use-remix/
Keep in mind that the content behind any external links that you follow away from this site is not covered by the license, so you have to respect whatever copyright/license restrictions are in place there.

* To the extent that it legally can be. If content has been shared without the copyright holder's permission, then the license is not legally valid.

Unfortunately, userLTK didn't give any attribution for the image in question. Hopefully  they can add that info to their answer...

@PM2Ring That would be nice, but it is not technically required if they had the right to share the image without attribution. For example, if they were the image creator or if the image creator waived their rights to attribution. If you know the image creator, you are free to edit attribution in yourself or flag the answer for copyright violation (if you suspect license has not been given).

Good point, but it is nice to be explicit about sources of images to avoid situations like this. ,) I did a Google image search, but it didn't find another copy of that image, only the one in userLTK's answer.

@PM2Ring Never mind, I found evidence of prior use: https://web.archive.org/web/20160616121651/https://www.school-for-champions.com/astronomy/keplers_laws.htm

@PM2Ring The site is still live and still using the image, so I'll reach out to the owner and see if they claim this image as their own.

Nice detective work!

@PM2Ring The site lists email reply times of up to a week or longer, so I'll give a couple weeks and if I don't hear back from them I'm going to assume it's theirs and follow their attribution and use guidelines.

@PM2Ring Feel free to ping me if I forget to get back to this in a couple weeks.

@PM2Ring My google image search (first comment under Question) found dozens.

@KeithMcClary You have to filter by time to exclude sites that used it after it was hosted here, but as you can see above there is one site that used this image prior.

@KeithMcClary Interesting! Maybe Google (or my Samsung phone browser) is overzealous with its filtering... Or I don't know how to use Google Image search correctly. :)

Even if content has been shared (on SE) with the copyright holder's permission, that probably does not constitute a CC-BY-SA license (for third parties to use it). Questions about this could go here: https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/cc-by-sa

@KeithMcClary If the copyright holder gave full knowing consent to share the content under the CC-BY-SA license, then it's usable by anyone who conforms with the terms of that license. OTOH, I Am Not A Lawyer, but I have read through a few versions of the CC-BY-SA license terms, and reviewed them again when the drama arose due to Stack Exchange changing the license version (and a decade or two ago I even managed to work my way through the Berne Convention :) )

Here's another option. ;)
I wrote a small Python program to solve Kepler's equation and create mathematically accurate orbit diagrams. My code produces its output in the SVG vector graphics format, so there's no pixelization when you zoom in, or print it. Unfortunately, this site doesn't support SVG files (although they can be inserted into posts on Stack Overflow), so here's a medium resolution PNG preview.

The actual SVG file is fairly small, and you can see the SVG code & the image it produces, courtesy of SageMathCell, by clicking this link. (The SVG data is actually encoded into the URL). Or you can view the image & its source on GitHub. You can also click the PNG version to see the SVG on GitHub.
Any modern Web browser can display SVG files, just put that code into a plain text file and save it with a .svg or .xml extension, .htm & .html will probably work too. (And it's very easy to embed SVG into a HTML file).
This image & the SVG code is freely shareable & reusable under the conditions of the CC-BY-SA license linked at the foot of this page. That is, you can use it if you give me proper attribution, and where practical, link to this post.

Why not edit this image into the answer to the linked question on [main] main?

@gerrit I was hoping to get some feedback first. ;) But I'll do it now, and if there are objections it can always be rolled back.

+1 I really like this, wow! I once got worried about embedding SVGs running from arbitrary locations. Sagemath looks anything but arbitrary, in fact it looks really cool!

@uhoh Thanks! Sagemath is pretty impressive. And it's fun to be able to write & run Python on my phone. (I'm not a fan of ipython, but I guess it's tolerable). I've also been doing a bit of HTML + JavaScript with it, but SageMathCell won't create a permalink if the HTML has a script in it (including javascript: URIs), and I guess that'd apply to SVGs with JavaScript too.

(cont)  I was a bit hesitant about directly linking that PNG to the SVG on my GitHub. I guess I could change the link so it goes to the SVG source listing, so people can verify that it's safe before they run it. OTOH, that's only helpful for the people who can read SVG code, and it could be a little disorienting for people who expect to see a higher resolution / higher quality version when they click on an image.


text:
Update link in question about Saturn/Earth?
This interesting question links to a video or image of earth with saturn-like rings. However, the website hosting the video/image appears to have changed and the link no longer works.
I had a quick look on wayback machine for 2014/2015 versions of video/image but couldn't quite find it. My search was not exhaustive (I didn't check every date) and the media player looked like it wanted to play (since it displayed a thumbnail that looked promising) but didn't play for some reason. If anyone can get it to play, or can track down the same video (or image) from another site, the link in the question could then be updated.

the link appears to have been changed to this https://www.wimp.com/if-earth-had-rings/ however, its still dead

@Topcode thanks to you I found it: https://cdn2.wimp.com/videos/6013fabbcade146919d1371325e81cef_earth.flv.hq.mp4?_=1 (I clicked on the link in the error message when it wouldn't play in the media player)

@Topcode when I clicked the same link again I got a 403 error. But the first time I saw this: https://imgur.com/a/lrmSTUe (the video definitely played, with audio)

@Topcode wait, now the video plays via the link you provided (no error nor error message). I have no clue what's going on.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

sort: votes


text:
Where did the "Is this object Mars" question go?
That was an interesting question. Was it deleted? If so, why? The browser record links to Page not found. If it was moved to another SE, there should be a redirection or something.

Do you mean this one: https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/39399/is-the-object-in-this-photo-mars?

@Mick No, today another similar question was post (but the planet or whatever it was looked much larger and distinguishible, like the Moon) but it's no longer there.

Maybe the OP deleted it? This sometimes happens when a quaerant gets a quick answer to a question. It's as annoying as heck if you spent time and effort providing the answer. Your question is likely to be moved to Meta, BTW.

@Mick Unfortunately I can't remember the OP's name. If they weren't a one-time-visitor, I hope they see this question and lift the veil.

@Mick I know but I can't write on meta, for I'm unregistered.

The easiest way to stop people doing this is to up-vote an answer. Then the OP is not allowed to delete the question (iirc).

@Mick The last (and only) time I've seen it there wasn't any answer as yet, just a proposition in the comments with a link (either Venus (but I doubt that) or dirt on the lens).

Test. Seems I can write here.

@Giovanni it's back! :-)

Here's the link to the question, which was deleted by the author (you need 2,000 reputation points to view deleted posts). A user suggested in the comments that this question would be helpful, and the author responded that it did address their question, and chose to delete their post because they felt it didn't need to be kept around. There weren't any serious issues in general, and nobody had written an answer - really just a couple of comments discussing the duplicate.

Thank you. * sad * I had a far-fetched hope that it was a rogue planet entering our system or something. It didn't look like a donut, but was without a hole. It looked like if it was another planet/moon in the night sky.

@Giovanni It definitely looked like a lens artifact, just a different kind.

@called2voyage Or like another moon. I remember that the author somewhat doubted it's a lens artifact when I've seen their question. Even if (s)he agreed, I think there was no need for deletion. In cases like the one above it usually isn't deleted but marked as duplicate and the original question remains like this.

@Giovanni We didn't delete it. The author did.

@called2voyage It's a pity. They could have left it for the public to let them know something like this reportedly is a lens artifact only. Otherwise, a similar question might repeat.

@Giovanni ya the donut question was the wrong one to propose as duplicate. See my answers 1, 2 it was probably a lens reflection or lens flare.

@uhoh Thanks. So it obviously was a lens reflection of the Sun.

update: It's been undeleted and answered

I'm OP, so I'll shed some light on this.
The reason I deleted the question was a combination of:

I'm a bit of a privacy freak and the question itself contains my exact location at an exact timestamp.
The way @B--rian responded in the comments left me with the impression that it's completely obvious to anyone in this space that it was a lens artefact. As in there are thousands of photos just like this one (or close).

So from my PoV it didn't make sense to make a minor privacy compromise in order to leave a "doh" question documented, unlikely to serve anyone.
I specifically asked @B--rian to post his comment as an answer so I could reward him for the effort, but he explicitly elected not to. So that wasn't part of the consideration either.

As pointed out by @uhoh, I'm now completely convinced that it was a lens flare as the effect exactly matches the one found in the first photo here.

Given that there is some interest in the question, I'm reopening it.

Thanks! I've added an answer there as well. You've hot-linked to the image in google; might one way to remove "exact location at an exact timestamp" be to import the image, perhaps reduced in size or with a watermark added, into Stack Exchange's imgur? Or is the copyright thing unappealing? There may be other ways around this problem, I wonder if you could raise it in the main meta (I think it's a really good question and I'd like to know the answer!) if it hasn't been asked and answered already.

But how does it reveal your exact place? Is there embedded metadata with GPS? If so I can't find it. Or is it only that the location is potentially recognizable?

@uhoh the place is arguably recognizable, but I was referring to the link I provided to the online planetarium. I embedded the location and time there intentionally.

@ndnenkov Sorry for giving you the impression that the question is not of general interest - given the discussion here and the nice answer, this is indeed a frequent question which deserves an answer - even if it might be somewhat duplicate to an existing question.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
What to do when engaged in a never ending discussion
I am fairly new to SE, so I came here to ask for advice from more experienced users.
Sometimes the author of a question comments my answer to ask for clarification or because they don't agree on some point I made. I usually edit the answer in order to address their query. In one occasion though, the discussion with the asker went on in the comments and eventually I migrated it to the chat and has been going on for some days.
At this point I have the feeling that the problem will never be resolved in this manner, I feel we don't have many points of contact, probably due to a very different background, but we seem to hardly agree on anything.
The discussion is stalled and I have the temptation to just disengage, but I feel bad for not being able to help the asker.
Have you ever been in a similar situation? What behavior do you suggest?
As a side note, this situation happened in physics.SE, but I am asking here because I feel that this community is more welcoming than physics and I am having a good time here, you are great people. The question is relevant here too, because the same situation might happen here in the future.

Physics SE can be a real quagmire, it's a bad model for how an SE community should work. It's certainly much better than it used to be but there is still a lord of the flies contingent that will drag you into chat rooms and... But I digress. This is a great question! I think that both the community and the moderation team here (and in Space SE) are excellent and I don't think we are in imminent danger of visiting that remote island, but having a good question and answer post about this to refer to later is at least a small bit of insurance.

In my opinion, Physics SE is too big, the question rate is too fast and too diverse, and that certainly is not even close to happening here.

@uhoh when I said "same situation might happen here in the future", I only meant that it is possible that I get engaged in a similar discussion here anytime, maybe with a new contributor that is trying to understand some cosmological concept. Although I tend to  agree on what you said about physics SE, I wasn't trying to criticize them in the post

There is no rule that we all have to agree on answers.  I've respectfully disagreed with many of the highest rep users on the Astro SE, with no resolution and no negative consequences.  If you aren't making constructive progress, sometimes the best course of action is to disengage!

@ConnorGarcia Couldn't have said it better myself. That'd make a good answer.

@ConnorGarcia Thank you for your precious feedback

@called2voyage good suggestion, done!

One time, I saw a comment thread in physics.SE with 30 comments all engaging in a heated discussion. Here, engaging discussions gets resolved within 7-8 comments if not more with users posting their thoughts as answer [cc @uhoh].

Obligitory XKCD on why you should disengage  https://xkcd.com/386/ "Someone is wrong on the internet"

There is no rule that we all have to agree on answers. A great thing about SE is that the community can vote answers up or down, and the OP can choose the answer they think is the best.
It is wonderful if you can clearly, definitively, answer a question. But if the asker doesn't understand your answer even after attempts to clarify, that is also perfectly fine. If you aren't making constructive progress, sometimes the best course of action is to disengage! There is no badge for getting the last word in a comment or chat thread.  Also, disengaging at the right time in some cases can prevent a lot of hurt feelings and regretful posts.
I've respectfully disagreed with many of the highest rep users here on the Astro SE, with no resolution and no negative consequences and no acrimony. That is perfectly ok!

+1 Very well said. Why waste a Sunday afternoon arguing/convincing (with) OP/other users when you can just say "please edit your question to highlight or specify your doubt"/"if you are disagreeing with me, please post your own answer".

The discussion is stalled and I have the temptation to just disengage, but I feel bad for not being able to help the asker.

I would recommend posting an "agree to disagree" comment when this happens and then disengaging.
The temptation (and I've done it myself) is to get involved in trying to prove your point for a variety of rationales.  It really boils down (in most cases) in wanting the last word.  So the trick (which as I said, I don't always do myself) is to let it go.  Agree to disagree and ignore anything else unless it's downright abusive, in which case flag it for the moderators and forget it.
It's a public website and you're going to butt up against people who won't give in and always want the last word.  I've had a few cases (on Physics SE) where people keep posting comments addressed to me long multiple times after I have clearly stated I am leaving the discussion.  Some people just like arguing I think.
Regarding comparisons with Physics SE :
Physics SE has a very strict "homework" and "check my work" rule and can often seem unwelcoming for that reason.  Astronomy SE does not have a similar rule.
Questions on Physics SE tend to demand much more rigor in terms of terminology and defining the question that is often needed on Astronomy SE.
Physics SE has a larger user base and hence comments sections can quickly become flooded with comments.  The idea that this would not happen so much on Astronomy SE misses the point that we've a smaller number of active users to start with.
So I don't think comparisons with Physics SE are valid.  It's apples and oranges IMO.


text:
I can't find this question. Was it deleted?
Yesterday I remember I answered a question about the formation of the planets in the solar system by the user Kerry Frost. There was some debate in the comments on whether the question should have been closed. After a few hours I couldn't find the question anymore.
Today I saw in another post that the OP is asking for their previous question to be undeleted.
Has the question on planet formation really been deleted? And if so, why?
I am not arguing against the closing of the question. This is something that is decided through votes by the community or by the moderators. I am asking about the reasons of the deletion, because this is not something that I have seen happening often to questions that are not spam/rude/abusive.
In their new question the OP has shown an attitude that I don't like, and has proven to be reticent or completely unable to accept answers that don't agree with their point of view. This was not evident in their previous question, but would this be a valid reason for deleting it in the first place?

Here is the question: https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/49883/have-the-planets-actually-originated-from-the-sun-as-globules-of-molten-matter .  You should be able to see every question Kerry Frost has posted by going through their profile.
I noticed a "spam" flag on this post due to the promotion of the OP's website.  I didn't close this post, but I think the closure was justified.
We get a number of posts on this site concerning theories far outside of mainstream astronomy. Many times they are disingenuous, using the site to promote their theories rather than truly asking a question to learn something. While I think we should usually give posters the benefit of the doubt, I think the referenced post clearly falls into this category.
There are already plenty of outstanding posts on this site concerning planet formation, such as Why do planets and satellites in the Solar system look so wildly different if they came from more or less the same matter? .

That's weird, I looked at this user's profile, but I couldn't see the deleted question. Maybe I don't have enough reputation. Thank you for the explanation!

@Prallax yes I think you need 10K rep to be able to see deleted posts

I was the one who cast the final close vote and deleted the question. I let the OP know in a comment that this sort of "prove my personal theory wrong" type question, used to draw attention to the user's website, is not allowed here. I pointed them to this meta guidance: https://astronomy.meta.stackexchange.com/a/436/6.

Nice resource, useful reference for the future, thank you


text:
Should we close an unclear question with acceped answer?
I know, if a question is unclear, we should close it right-away, because otherwise people might interpret it in different ways and give inconsistent answers. But sometimes, before we can close it, the question gets and answer and the answer gets accepted.
This means that someone was able to understand the question and correctly address the problem of the OP, therefore the question was probably not so unclear as I had thought. Maybe it was just unclear to me.
Moreover, now that I can read the accepted answer, I understand what the OP wanted to ask, and the question is suddenly clear to me too (and presumably to everyone else that would like to answer it)
Closing the question would prevent additional answers to be posted, but it is unlikely that additional answers will come, because there is an accepted answer. In case they indeed come, they will be addressing the correct point, because the question has been clarified by the accepted answer.
So, should we close the question?
Some examples that made me think about this: What is z in this program or Life span of massive stars (the latter has been edited and clarified after being closed. I am referring to the question before the edit)

I would say generally no. Instead, someone should take the time to edit the question to make it more clear, now that the accepted answer makes it apparent what was being asked.
There are exceptions though. Every once in a while we get an asker who is uninformed enough about the topic at hand that they will accept an answer that doesn't even accurately address their question. In cases like that, it might still be appropriate to close the question as unclear.

I agree. I have a hunch that closing reduces the visibility of good answers which is undesirable, though I can't support it (yet). Thus Have there been analyses to see if views of well-received answers are reduced by closure as duplicate which try to control for other factors?


text:
Do we need to downvote posts of New Contributors?
I can see nowadays, more than two downvotes on posts of newbies to the site (SE) or instant closure of question. I don't feel one will wantedly ask Low quality posts, either they might lack knowledge about that particular topic or Stack Exchange, confusing with other sites like quora. So, Like @uhoh commented in one of a question, I feel it is a  unwelcoming trait, instead we can as ask them to improve their post and then reopen it if the question was closed. What is your opinion ?

+1 different but related: Too many downvote on questions recently?

This is asked on the main Meta from time to time.  e.g. https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/3515/236563 , https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/258582/236563 to name but two

@Chenmunka each of the nearly 200 different SE sites each associated community is different, answers in the main meta site are way too generalized to apply to a low question rate, specialized yet universally interesting and unique site like Astronomy SE. We can be a lot nicer and more helpful and welcoming to new users by holding back on the down and close votes in cases where they only need a little help and guidance to build their question asking skills.

I agree.  However, each site can take into account how the other sites do things.  To try to establish a best practice.

@Chenmunka but each site can also try to do better, no? I don't think that folks that hang out in and opine on the main meta are the best ones to provide guidance how Astronomy SE can best be welcoming to budding astronomers and folks simply curious about what's up there. I think that if we try, we can do better than what a quick meta answer post can imagine.

@Chenmunka and don't forget to add the @ when responding to a comment. Here's a meta post that's suitable for all sites: How do comment @replies work?

As I mentioned in the question, No one will wantedly ask low quality posts (except questions that lacks effort). At the same time, its not whether the whole of SE is like this or that or not, why cant Astronomy SE be a good model ? New contributors do need some encouragement to keep them intact with site as well as knowledge. Not everyone can know everything, some still may not have enough knowledge about SE incl me

Do we need to downvote posts of New Contributors?

No, we really don't!
This is a low question rate site, so we don't need to be in triage mode.
The problem with quick down votes on new users' first questions is that they get discouraged and give up, whereas if we are encouraging and helpful and work to improve the question, they may continue to be engaged on the site.
I shouldn't have to remind folks, but getting new users to be engaged on the site and helping them ask good questions is a good thing!
Also, those down voters will frequently forget to go check back to see if there's been an improvement that would trigger them to change their vote. You can always down vote at a later date. With only a half-dozen questions per day, it is not hard to see yesterday's questions here.

+1. Absolutely. And yes, If any edit has been made, it is clearly visible in Top Questions.

It depends on whether the question can be improved or not.
A question that is just vague or hard to understand, I might leave a comment - I wouldn't usually downvote.
A question that shows no effort, tries to solicit answers for the apparent purpose of assistance with homework or assessment, propagates personal or "fringe" theories or has ulterior motives - I downvote.

" "fringe" theories or has ulterior motives - I downvote." definitely


text:
How old is our Astronomy SE?
How old is our Astronomy SE ?. Unlike other sites, why there is poor patronage despite having great reception in Astronomy ? And what is the qualification to "graduate" ?

How old is our Astronomy SE ?

From the site list:

At the end of the entry it indicates that the site is seven years and eleven months old.

Unlike other sites, why there is poor patronage despite having great reception in Astronomy ?

There are lots of ways to measure patronage. Astronomy actually has similar viewership to SE sites of comparable age. We also have similar post per day stats to sites of comparable age, though our trend line is a little more volatile. We also have a similar number of users to sites of comparable age.
Where Astronomy has struggled historically is building a sense of community and effective use of meta. Meta use has been up recently, which is also promising in terms of a community forming. Our chat room is still fairly unused. A thriving chat room is not necessary for a healthy site, however.

And what is the qualification to "graduate" ?

We've gone over this recently. In a nutshell, the whole concept of graduation is more or less obsolete. If you want to know when we'll lose the "beta" label or get our own unique site design, the answer is we don't and can't know--possibly never! But that is not a bad thing, SE has said that established sites like Astronomy will stick around even if they remain in beta. We don't have to worry about getting axed.
For more info, see the latest discussion on graduation.


text:
New to Stack exchange. What is Meta and Beta in Astronomy SE?
it's been 10 days joining stack exchange ! I observed that there are two Astronomy SE, Meta and Beta ? So what is the difference between them ?

The meta site is for asking questions or commenting on Astronomy SE's policies and procedures - actually, just like the question you have asked, congratulations!
The "beta" site is the main site where you actually ask questions about astronomy and astrophysics - check that your question is "on-topic" here.
Just have a look at the first 10 active questions on each and you will get the idea.
NB: Upvotes and downvotes have different meanings on the main (beta) and meta sites. A downvote/upvote on the meta may just mean someone disagrees/agrees with your opinion; whereas you shouldn't ask questions that may be matters of opinion on the main site.

We'll normally call the two sites "the main site" and "meta", or "Astronomy SE" and "Astronomy Meta" or similar.
"Beta" is an adjective, used to describe any Stack Exchange site that hasn't "graduated" yet.
What graduating means, and its importance has changed over the years from how it was originally imagined.
There are many small differences between graduated and un-graduated sites, but to most users there are few noticeable differences beyond the reputation (points) threshold values for various privileges are different between the two kinds of SE sites.
Note there are almost 200 SE sites
Note also that there isn't really a main Stack Exchange site to post questions, but there is the "main meta" site https://meta.stackexchange.com  for questions that apply to the whole Stack Exchange network.
By far the most important page in the main meta is the FAQ page.
You can read about the reputation threshold differences between beta and graduated sites in the answer to the FAQ

What are the reputation requirements for privileges on sites, and how do they differ per site?

Curiously though there are no FAQ that contain the word "graduation" or "beta". Hmm...

Your original question (differentiating 'beta' and 'meta') has been aptly answered by @ProfRob and @uhoh. But there is also another angle of your question: what is the difference between 'beta' and 'main SE site' and when does 'beta' become an official SE site?
Let's imagine you are developing and launching a mobile app. Your initial updates will be 'beta' as the updates may come as incomplete/unstable or have limited access. Once the development is good enough and more and more people are using this app, you release the main update. Similar goes for SE sites. When a SE site is proposed in Area 51, it subsequently goes to 'beta' period where it has somewhat limited privileges and access. It has beta reputation threshold privileges, doesn't have customized design, doesn't have community adds, doesn't have migration path etc.
You must be thinking: "this site has healthy participation, healthy number of question and answers, so what is preventing it from becoming a main site?" Actually, all those metrics doesn't matter. Our goal is to keep the site healthy and stable. Eventually, the Stack Exchange staffs will deem the site to be ready for graduation (and no, moderators don't have the power the graduate the site on their own).
There were few discussion that happened before. You can go through them to have a better idea:

Status of Astronomy Stack Exchange Site
What is the present expertise of astronomy beta
When can a "beta" site become an official one?
Threshold for site graduation?


text:
Spam shouldn't take this long to be deleted
This clearly spam post is at a score of -8 and has been flagged as spam. And yet it has sit there for 12 hours. If nothing else, the 8 downvotes can all flag as spam and it will be deleted. Spam is usually deleted within 15 minutes. Why did this slip through? How can we avoid this happening? Also, if you see this, please so ahead and flag the post as spam.

My guess is that it was just really bad timing (or, well, good timing from the spammer's perspective). It was posted on a what is a Saturday evening or nighttime for people in the Americas and Europe, which comprise the largest segments of our most active users and the mod team, so there were far fewer people online (and that was in turn compounded by the fact that it's Memorial Day weekend in the United States). It happens. Like you said, this was a bit of an outlier, so I'm not concerned going forward. As always, thank you and the other folks who raised flags.


text:
DaveTheWave isn’t a new contributor; Can we do something about repeated account recreation?
I thought I must be going insane, but no, it’s not just me. Other people have noticed too that DaveTheWave keeps making new accounts. They will then post low-quality content. One they get a reputation for this and their new-contributor nice thing wears off then they create a new account and start all over again.

The user has responded about this, but I'd like to say for the future that if you have serious concerns about a user's behavior, please let the moderators know (rather than posting on meta). Since there's no way to flag a user themself, raise a custom flag on one of their posts with a brief explanation of your concern.

About the response…this isn’t the second time…it’s the fifth or so@HDE226868

Additionally, I wanted to bring up the larger issue as well

Still something that should be done via flags, unless this is an issue affecting a number of different people.

I feel like I’ve seen this before on SPace.SE @HDE226868

This sort of thing happens on all SE sites all the time.  The powers that be are aware of it.

The user has deleted their account on September right after posting a question and today, that person created a new profile and asked a question. I looked out in other SE sites if we see this profile and what do you know, this user is banned in Phy.SE. Curiously, the profile is 17 days old and there is no posts, yet the account is banned. Food for thought?

@NilayGhosh indeed, interesting.

@NilayGhosh physics SE profile now deleted. Curious if theyll make another one. If so that most definitely is suspension evasion.

I am getting very suspicious vibes from that person, now that they deleted that physics SE account.

As far as

They will then post low-quality content.

I don't think that's an accurate or at least complete characterization - I think it's a little more complicated. Several of the questions in question are well received and several generate really interesting and well up-voted answers!
Despite the one-liner format for many of the user's questions which lack any evidence of prior research, a lot of these deceptively simple or naive-sounding questions turn out to be really good questions.
And some don't.
And "some do and some don't" can apply to a lot of (relatively) new users.
A lot going on "under the hood"
I feel that there is a lot going on "under the hood" in these questions, but because they only show the bottom line and don't include any clues how they got to this point, some folks can't see what it is that makes these questions so interesting.
As pointed out under the question, the user has responded

... I don't play games...

My take is that's simply true.
My personal view is that for some of us, it takes a little longer to get used to how Stack Exchange works, or what Stack Exchange even is.
While some insist that the answers to those questions are obvious, I can assure you it took me years to develop my own understanding of Stack Exchange, and to finally express it as the three lemmas.
I'm a "little different" and a lot of people fall into that category.
So if we feel there's an issue, we first comment and explain our concern, then if necessary we flag. But anomalous and different asking behavior does not warrant demonification.
Don't Panic!

That would be correct but the behavior is repetitive. I see that person has deleted their account three times this year. In every posts, there has been some comments about the deletion. Today, that person created a new profile and asked a question. Some more details in the OP comment section...

@NilayGhosh I would agree with you here. At the time this was written, I think this was fair, but at this point this year has had something like 2 years, 10 accounts, and still low-quality questions, one-liners, with no evidence of prior research. I know that Wikipedia has something called Vanishing (similar to account deletions here, except Vanishing actually hides much less), with the condition that you are not allowed to recreate an account afterwards. I'm not proposing that for SE but this is outlandish. If nothing else, comments about this on every one of their posts is disruptive.

"...and still low-quality questions, one-liners, with no evidence of prior research." Can you show links to three recent examples and how you know it's still the same DaveTheWave user? Thanks!

@uhoh They delete their account and sometimes also their posts so I can't find it, but the same account with the same profile pic with the same question type makes it reasonably clear.


text:
For multi-part questions, are both partial and complete answers encouraged?
If a question has multiple parts A, B, and C, then how to the pros and cons balance out for partial answers vs. complete answers?
Obviously an excellent answer that covers A, B, and C is most likely to be upvoted and accepted.
But it seems that the answers per question ratio is one of the indicators of a good site. The ratio increases if someone answers B, and someone else answers C.
What would the ideal outcome be, if a question already has separate answers for A, B, and C? It's not clear to me if someone should come in and make massive edits to one answer in an attempt to bring in answers to the other parts, or post a new answer with copied material addressing all the points. Without one of these actions, how could the questioner accept any of the incomplete answers?
I did some searching around but did not find this topic addressed. But feel free to point me to a good link if it is available somewhere.

If the question is not reasonably scoped, then the author should be given the opportunity to neck it down to a single question.  Otherwise, it should either be closed or improved by our user community (hopefully with the consent of the author).

However, there are certainly excellent single questions for which partial (incomplete) answers can be given.  For example, ProfRob asked: What are Kepler's laws (as he wrote them)? Three laws are attributed to Kepler, but the accepted answer only addresses the first.  There is room for additional answers addressing the other laws!  If they are posted, there is no responsibility on additional posters or even the community or moderators to copy or merge answers.  Instead, we rely on the effectiveness of the community and the stack exchange process to upvote and downvote appropriately (on average) to sort the best content to the top.
There are many well received partial and supplemental answers here on Astronomy SE.  In my opinion, partial answers are just fine, and may even be better than some complete answers, especially if they address the spirit of the question!  It is up to the community to vote, and up to the asker to accept (or not).  If answers all had to be complete, I think we might loose a number of valuable partial answers!

Thanks for explaining! I wonder if there will be any other responses against partial answers.

I thought it was 22 parts

@giardia when a Stack Exchange community settles down to the work of generating answers rather than closing questions, it focuses more on the spirit of, rather than the letter of the law. Sometimes it takes multiple contributions and/or viewpoints to adequately address a question, and in mature, collegiate stack Exchange communities this is often seen to be just fine. Many of the original "rules and traditions of Stack Exchange" are really decade-old historical holdovers from Stack Overflow which was focused primarily on finding solutions to programming problems.

@giardia In sites that are more academic in nature, partial answers have become quite acceptable as an alternative to question fragmentation, at least that's how I see it.

@uhoh After an unsatisfying experience on another science SE, I completely see what you mean about Astro SE being a "mature, collegiate stack Exchange community." I have been learning a lot on this site, and seeing a lot of positive interactions between the users.

@giardia Yes, this is really a wonderful site! To me, going from site to site feels a little bit like country to country in the real world; each has its own culture, traditions, peculiarities and aspirations.


text:
Sourcing papers vs explaining in own words
Is referencing papers like my answer in the below question link (I usually do for complicated questions) good? I saw @Connor_Garcia in this question explained it in their own words while I did so with blockquoting and sourcing papers. Plus @Connor explained a lot more unlike I did.

It's best to do things more in your own words. Using lots of quotes is fine, but quotes generally shouldn't make up the bulk of your answer.
(I sometimes make an exception to this rule when the source I'm quoting is public domain or copyleft and a large verbatim section would be more helpful than trying to rewrite everything, but best practice is to try to express the general idea in your own words and use quotes to support.)
For what it's worth, "sourcing papers" just means citing them as a source in your answer because you used them for reference. What Connor did is also sourcing. There's nothing wrong with sourcing. Generally, that's what makes for the best answers, unless you're an expert on the topic, but it's better to source the way Connor did where the meat of the answer is in your own words.

Ah thanks a lot! I'll keep this in mind to use my own words next time.

nicely phrased, I agree.

There are times when I have been sure I understood something.  Then when I attempt to answer a question, I realize I don't have a really thorough understanding.  Luckily, this realization usually happens before I post. Writing an answer in my own words often forces me to clarify my thoughts.
It is rare that a single paper expressly answers the question as posed.  An exception to this, perhaps, are questions that ask for an example or counter-example, like Are there any stars that orbit perpendicular to the Milky Way's galactic plane? For this kind of question, the right block quote might answer the question.  However, I think it is still better to write the answer in our own words.
Also, Astronomy SE welcomes everyone from beginner enthusiasts up to professional astronomers.  The professional papers often aren't written for consumption outside of the expert astronomer community, so a paraphrase in more plain English allows more access from our community.

Sorry! I'm a "beginner enthusiast" and I find using papers nice, thanks anyways!

You are quite welcome!  I am also an enthusiast rather than a professional!

Connor I have listened to your advise and I have started to use my own words in my answers! It indeed does help understand the topic and ensure clarity! :)

I would like to add my two cents here. My answers heavily rely on references and I tend to use quotes often (and sometimes emphasize a sentence or two). But, if the reference is too complex to my understanding or the explanation/calculation is too complex/long, I simply link the paper and ask the OP/readers to have a look if they are really curious. Sometimes, I would paraphrase, only when I understood what the author of the paper really meant. Also, I am quite selective in choosing a question to answer. I will answer only when I understood what the question really wants and know what to write given I found the proper references. Otherwise, it will be an info-dumping which won't look good.
Please have a look at my answers and you will notice a pattern.

P.S. I am drafting an answer to one of your question. I am busy so it is taking some time.

@DialFrost Your question. Unfortunately, it is taking much longer than I anticipated :(

Im in no hurry to see your answer, take your time! :3


text:
Is this site appropriate for identifying ufos?
I am just asking this question before I post some questions regarding my analysis on a "ufo case on mars" which I think is just I misidentified moon. Because I needed critique of my analysis which involves some photo analysis and math. If this site is not appropriate for such discussion is there an alternative site I can refer to?

This site is not a discussion site. It exists to provide answers to well-defined questions that concern astronomy and astrophysics from both an observational and theoretical perspective.
Questions about UFOs could be on topic, but questions like "what is this thing I saw in the sky?" are generally not viewed favourably and usually closed as duplicates of other questions in the same vein (see Canonical question for “What is this light in the sky?”). Neither are questions like "I have a theory about this picture, am I right?"  which invite discussion - and this is not a discussion site. If you have ideas that you want to test (and they are about astronomy or astronomical observations) then by all means ask about those ideas.

Well, my question that I want to ask on the Astronomy site boils down to: "Is this "UFO" moving at the same speed as Phobos in the Martian sky". What about I show you the Curiosity picture sequence that shows the "UFO" and then my image analysis to check if the object is moving at the same speed as Phobos in the sky. Could you determine if my analysis would appropriate for this site?

@spaceamoeba1010 that sounds like a reasonable question.

And before I start posting on the main Astronomy SE, should I make my questions all in one post, or make it in several posts?

@spaceamoeba1010 try and keep it to one question at a time.


text:
How can I post a user name for my account
Currently I am listed as "user23299429", because I had difficulty when signing in. I would like to be listed as "Still curious at 82". Please let me know if, and how, this can be done.

Welcome to the site! Your username can be changed in a couple quick steps by going to your profile page and editing it. You can choose whether you'd like to apply the change to just one Stack Exchange community or all of them. Note that you can only change your username once every 30 days, though.


text:
Will I punish somebody by selecting a better answer?
If I select an answer as the best one, and tomorrow somebody writes a better answer and I select that instead, does the first guy get his points subtracted?
I often don't select the best answer because of that.

You accept answer based on merit. What answer you feel has answered your question completely should be considered accepted. See: https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/help/accepted-answer

I'm assuming you're talking about accepted answers here, which are the answers that helped you the most, not neccessarily the best. And yeah, they do lose the 15 points.
But, also 15 points isn't that much, nor is it that important. Punishment is a strong term. I'd call it "relocating a gift".


text:
Would somebody please remove the period in the name of the "Astronomy." stack exchange?
It's probably trivial, but it gets on my nerves every time I see it. No other SE has a period after its name.
Shoot me; I'm a perfectionist.

Where are you seeing a period in the site's name?

oh hell! in my hi-contrast font, the underline at the end looks like a period. sorry.

I'm not seeing any period:

oh hell! in my hi-contrast font, the underline at the end looks like a period. sorry.

oh hell! in my hi-contrast font, the underline at the end looks like a period. sorry. canceling question.


text:
The computer caught someone mass downvoting all my posts
In two incidents, today and yesterday, someone methodically went down all my answers, and downloaded all of them 12 times. the computer detected both incidents and reversed the downvotes.
It seems to always happen in pairs of votes, so I suspect he might be a sock puppet also.

Can I find out who is doing this?

Can you?

Was he warned?

Can you warn him please?

Can he do it again with just a few downvotes and get away with it?

Why do I have to put up with this harassment here?

Have you read https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/126829/what-is-serial-voting-and-how-does-it-affect-me  and  https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/28756/what-can-i-do-if-im-the-victim-of-serial-downvoting

Can I find out who is doing this?

No

Can you? Was he warned? Can you warn him please?

These questions are above my pay grade.  Mods may wish to answer.

Can he do it again with just a few downvotes and get away with it?

Up and downvotes are a core part of the way the site works.  There's nothing wrong with downvoting answers that are wrong, not useful or low quality. There is something wrong with downvoting an answer ad hominem. The system tries to correct such cases

Why do I have to put up with this harassment here?

Today you will be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil. But if for your part, you have perceived the nature of good and its nobility, the nature of evil and its meanness, and also the nature of the culprits themselves, (fellow creatures similarly endowed with reason and a share of the divine); none of those things can injure you, for nobody can implicate you in what is degrading.  (Adapted from Marcus Aurelius)

Being downvoted, and sometimes downvoted unjustly, is the price we pay for not being Yahoo Answers.
Be ruthless! Read you answers again.  If they are good then they are good and up/downvotes are meaningless. If they are bad then improve or delete them.
But really, I pray that the worst thing that happens to me today is serial downvoting, for that would be a good day.

== >nobody can implicate you in what is degrading.  == Hah! Thats how I pay the rent!


text:
Can you undo this community Wiki Answer by me?
Sorry, I posted this answer, Can you please revert this via Moderator Assistance?
Thanks in advanced!

Yes -- I've gone and done it. In the future, feel free to just flag the post, though; it makes documenting our actions a little easier.


text:
Should there be increase in reputation for upvotes of a comment?
Should there be increase in reputation for upvotes of a comment?. The reason I am saying this is because, even if you can't answer the question fully, you atleast provide enough details for the answer to be clearly found. Plus it happened to me once, someone copied my exact same comment as mine and just added references and gained 100 reputation. Is there any workaround?

Well, I suppose you could have added the references as well to make a useful answer in the first place? (said somewhat tongue in cheek as someone who has been chided gently by mods for answering in comments rather than in the answer box below)

That would be a question for meta.se. I don't recommend going there with it, though. Such change won't pass. If you wanna get more rep. then answer.

@Mithoron As well, it would be a dupliate of many many questions there

No, comments should not grant reputation. Comments are temporary post notices and ideally all useful information should eventually be incorporated into a post. As well, many comments aren’t really “worth” anything, for example a “thanks” comment or a “+1”. If you are writing an answer in a comment, then that’s you doing something wrong, why not post it as an answer? If you can find enough details to answer the question, then use those details and answer the question.

There's no reputation gained or lost for votes on comments.  There is, however, a badge.  This is to encourage helpful participation by new members.
It is assumed we don't need to be "bribed" to make good comments.  The goal is for people to ask for clarification in comments in order to post a proper answer  The site is designed around the idea of making good answers.
An answer gets you ten points for every upvote.  That's the incentive to make an answer.
The logic of the site is, therefore, that the person who goes to the trouble of writing an answer (or even converting a comment to an answer) is the one who deserves the reputation point reward.
Answering in comments is very strongly discouraged, because then questions, from the system's point of view, are never answered.  We don't want unanswered questions.
Also:

someone copied my exact same comment as mine and just added references and gained 100 reputation

The lesson here is that, if you went to the trouble of writing an answer with references (not always required, but nice to have sometimes), you would deserve the points.
You did not do that.
However:
In general, people should first encourage the commenter to post an answer.  If they don't or decline to, maybe after 24 hours, it's fair to write an answer based on their comment.

if you can't answer the question fully

Then, unless someone else answers fully, a partial answer (which is not an opinion or a best guess !) is better than no answer.  But again, note that if someone then extends your answer in an answer of their own, they'll likely get more votes than you.
Doing the work to make a solid answer is what tends to get the most reputation.

Is there any workaround?

No.  The intent of the site designers is that this is the way they want the site to work.  In fairness, most long-term users do eventually get this.

What is the score threshold for no longer getting points for comment of votes? Is it a secret? it shouldn't be.

@Miss_Understands I don't think it's a secret, but it's my recollection that when I joined SE and was first able to comment, I got a point per comment.  I noticed this stopped and I vaguely recall reading this was the way the system operated somewhere, but cannot find the reference.  I think the problem with a lot of the site's mechanics is that, while somebody knows, it's not all written down in one place.  Sites like these can develop a huge number of (code) rules trying to cover all possible cases, and typically they're not well documented outside the site's code, if even there.

Slight correction: There are no rep points for comments -- which kinda makes sense, given that they're intended to be ephemeral. The proposal's been bandied about through the years, but the pros outweigh the cons.

@HDE226868 I've see that post, and a couple like it, but it does not tally with my recollection.  In any case, feel free to edit the post if you wish.

@StephenG   Edited as per my wish.


text:
Found a Tag Bug
There is a Black Bo tag which means nothing and doesn't have a wiki on it either. Shouldn't it be removed?

A questioner must have added that tag as a typo. Note that there isn't any restriction to stick to existing tags. The fix is just to edit the question to not use that tag (as I just did). A tag that is completely unused is automatically deleted after a while.


text:
What happened to my profile on this site?
This might be fixed later on, but I just joined this site and my profile is all askew. I did not get the bonus when joining and my profile is all weird.
Here is my MSE profile. I'm sure you can see the obvious issues.
(I know this isn't meta but I cannot post there so I gave this the gravity tag as this question seems like it might be something of high gravity, lol)

Extension by @peterh: for the case if this problem is already fixed, here is how this question looked in the time of the post:

@peterh thanks. I figured that since I technically should have the bonus it wouldn't be a big problem. :) If it helps anyone stack exchange gave me a page saying "we have an error" or something of that nature.

We need still 4 votes to the actual migration. Until that, I extend now your question with a screenshot (for the case if your profile would be fixed, I suspect there is an SE problem).

@peterh do you mean I should add a screenshot?

I did, you only have to accept the edit.

@peterh thanks for the fix, but I chose to leave my original portion unaltered.

Just an unrelated hint: The abbreviation MSE normally stands for Meta Stack Exchange, so I got a bit confused at first. Mathematics Stack Exchange is commonly abbreviated Math.SE.

And speaking of MSE, this bug seems relevant: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/279526/why-is-my-profile-messed-up-on-a-single-site-and-how-can-i-revert-it

@chirlu that thread reminds of the time on a forum where you could see who voted a post up or down (cause it was a truly irrelevant fun feature) and people started joking there was a ghost on the forum cause deleted (aka perma-banned) users would appear as a space that took them to the homepage. I guess now I got stuck with access to the ghost account, eh? Well, I guess I'll just wait for this to be fixed.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
What to do when an edit forms an totally different question which is a good question at all anyway?
Yesterday I asked this question: What's the distinction between "planetary formation mechanisms" and "gravitational collapse"?
And it got edited when I had not that much time to check the content.
Now when I checked it, I noticed that the edit made my question ask for something completly different as I was interested in, forming a diferent question.
While "both" questions received upvotes and I'm also pretty much interested in answers about the past edit question, I'm not sure how to preceed.
Should I let the OP as it is now and just repost my original question again?
Or should I rollback and ask the past edit question seperately?
While tending to option 2, just while writing the post received a past edit related answer (as far I can tell), Making it even harder to decide what to do.

It is still early. Since you are the OP and the question was edited in a way that changed the question you were asking, you should roll it back. If someone wants to ask the question it was changed to, they can do so separately. When edits occur by low rep users, this is one of the things that reviewers check for--to make sure that edits don't alter the actual question beyond the author's intent. Unfortunately, there are sometimes cases where high rep user edits that don't get reviewed may cause this, and it can get overlooked. Thanks for catching it early on!

Also, you may want to notify Rob Jeffries that you rolled back edits, assuming his answer doesn't answer your original question.

This is a pretty odd thing, that never ever should happen. I'm still receiving Answers on the old title while I allready yesterday rolled it back. And since I'm a none-professionell in this topic, its even pretty hard for me to distingush if the answer is just in the wrong place, or I'm not understanding theirs. How can I handle this?

@Zaibis Actually, the new answer on your question looks pretty good to me.

Then thx for you input. But you see: it is doing alot of confusion especially if one isn't pro in the topic. :)

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
Shouldn't we fuse "planet" and "planets" tags?
I recently noticed that we have both planet and planets tags. I may be wrong, but aren't both of them used in the same ways? Shouldn't we fuse them or label them as synonyms?
I think this is an important tag as "planets" is the seventh more popular tag on this site (and it would be fourth is we fuse them).

Yes, and the singular form should have precedence, compare with other popular tags such as "star" or "black-hole"

Merge complete, this answer can be accepted


text:
Shouldn't we Provide Explanations for "Unscientific" Questions?
I encountered this question on the main site that was deemed "unscientific" with no explanation, and then closed.
I believe that this site is for answering questions, not avoiding them. Shouldn't we be clearing up misconceptions for people, and not running away from them?

I completely agree.


text:
Are all questions asking for simple explanations really off-topic? Or should we rethink the site's "purpose" statement?
A comment on the question How moon is visible during sun is still shining, simple explanation please! says in part:

I appreciate your attempt to meet the OP's request for a simple explanation, but you seem to have overlooked our Help Page description: "The purpose of this site is to provide expert level answers"

I don't see any way around it; this strict interpretation seems to suggest that a question asking for simple explanation should be closed as off-topic.
To me that seems over the top.

I don't think we should turn away users who need answers written below "exptert level"
Until today, I've never seen any suggestion that answers written at a more accessible level to the general public were so undesireable that even when explicitly requested, we take measures to direct traffic away from them.

So I'd like to ask the following:
Question: Are all questions asking for simple explanations really off-topic?
Shall we start closing them quickly? If so, should we also start marking all non-expert level answers for deletion because they defy the "purpose of the site"? In that case, what would be the impact on the site's growth?
Would a collection of good answers that include some answers written at a basic level be somehow less valuable?

The beginning of https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic

What topics can I ask about here?
Astronomy Stack Exchange is a Question and Answer site about astronomy and astronomy related topics; the study of objects and matter outside the Earth's atmosphere and of their physical and chemical properties
The purpose of this site is to provide expert level answers to questions on:

Setting up, using and maintaining your astronomy related equipment
Astronomical observations, for all celestial objects across the entire spectral range.
Astrophysics and Cosmology
Planetary Science and Celestial mechanics
Data returned by space missions such as probes, rovers and satellites
What type of equipment will allow you to see a certain entity
History of Astronomy

TL;DR: My assessment is that a request for a simple explanation does not conflict with the site's purpose of providing "expert-level answers", so such a request does not make the question off-topic.
I posted the comment on the linked question regarding on-topic usage, so let me try a response.

Question: Are all questions asking for simple explanations really off-topic?

I think this is an important question for Meta, so thanks for asking it. It's important because it draws our attention to the core purpose of our own site, as well as the broader intention of the Stack Exchange network, the way SE operates, and how we should approach community moderation on this site.
Questions versus answers
I think there are two distinct issues involved here: the site's purpose in providing answers, and our filters as community moderators for what are acceptable questions (for which being on-topic is only one of many criteria for closure).
Stack Exchange quite deliberately emphasises the difference between questions and answers. For example, a user only gets half the points for an upvoted question as an upvoted answer; the system makes closing someone's question much easier than deleting someone's answer; and there's a penalty for downvoting answers, whereas there's no penalty for downvoting questions. Why is there this difference? The best answer is given in this blog by SE's co-founder: Optimizing For Pearls, Not Sand.
I've noticed that, at least on the five Stack Exchange sites I'm active on, a surprising number of users are unaware of Jeff Atwood's explanation regarding Stack Exchange's different approach to questions versus answers, and I've seen that this sometimes leads to confusion and errors in community moderation. For example, I've previously posted on Astronomy Meta that some users tend to be too quick to flag/vote an on-topic question for closure, when they should have either improved the question by editing it, or simply downvoted it as not useful.
What does expert-level mean?
I interpret "expert-level" to mean that the content is correct, accurate, and contains nothing that experts in that field would regard as plain wrong. If, instead, we took the Help Page's dictum for "expert-level answers" literally, it would raise the bar to the equivalent of [Physics.se]. This would exclude active contributors like me from answering any questions here, as I have no formal degree or professional experience in astronomy or related fields that would qualify me as an "expert". Yet I've contributed 24 answers here, with an average of 3 votes per answer and no answer with a negative score, which suggests that my contributions have been both useful and welcomed. I get no sense that this site really wants to bar users like me from answering questions.
Is "simple explanation" compatible with "expert-level?
I genuinely think this falls in the "interpretation and flexibility" category – in other words, it will depend very much on the nature of the thing being asked about, the degree to which a "simple explanation" can be given from an expert perspective, and the degree to which the asker is insisting on constraining potential answers in a way that doesn't benefit the site overall.
An example might help. If I ask "how is the stress-energy tensor derived?" but I add that I want the answer explained in simple high-school terms, I would regard this as on-topic but potentially hard to answer. Yet if someone could provide an answer using high-school physics, analogy to other systems or concepts, and lots of handwaving (i.e. giving an expert response made understandable), I would argue that the answer has achieved our site's purpose.
The question linked to in this Meta post asked for an answer "in simple words without using astronomy terminologies". @uhoh provided a good answer that met these requirements, and I see no conflict with the site purpose, as the author used their expert knowledge to craft an answer that was correct, accurate and useful.
However, it turns out that a similar question had already been asked, and the community of users voted that the other question provided an adequate answer.
There are three answers that were posted before the duplicate question was closed, and all three have multiple upvotes indicating users found them useful. Since duplicate questions are retained on the site, the three answers now provide an additional resource and benefit for future visitors. In my view, they are helping to achieve the site's purpose.
Of course, if the question had been closed as a duplicate before those three contributors had been able to post an answer, and someone believed the answers to the older question weren't adequate, a simple solution would be for that person to post their "simple explanation" answer at the older question, perhaps with a preface that it provides a more direct and less technical response that the other answers are lacking. This, too, would (in my view) support our site's purpose and add to the value of our Astronomy library.

Are all questions asking for simple explanations really off-topic?

Of course not. This site has generally been quite welcoming to questions asking for simple explanations.

Shall we start closing them quickly?

No.

If so, should we also start marking all non-expert level answers for deletion because they defy the "purpose of the site"?

Absolutely not. For several reasons. 1) it defies the idea of being welcoming, 2) some people need time to improve, 3) a mix of different level answers is healthy because it provides future readers with some variety and many may find basic level answers the most helpful.

In that case, what would be the impact on the site's growth?

It would be bad.

Rather than writing tomes about how to interpret the sentence:

The purpose of this site is to provide expert level answers to questions on:

...why not modify it slightly to accommodate the reality that a Stack Exchange site has more than a purely singular purpose.
How about some of these modifiers which embrace how the site operates in reality and what it is we are trying to do here?

The main (or primary) purpose of this site is to provide...
...is to provide helpful, authoritative and community-reviewed answers to questions on:
The purpose of this site is to provide a positive environment where a community of experts and non-experts can work together to build a repository of...


text:
Does Astronomy (the field, and the stackexchange site) speak to the "existence of a purpose" for a celestial body?
Historically, science and especially Astronomy have had several serious bouts of interference and worse from hierarchies of both power and of ideologies. Luckily we have scholars of the history of science as well as public spokespersons and communicators. One of the most recent and vocal is Neil deGrasse Tyson who doesn't let us forget about it or become complacent about those that would impose their personal views onto the scientific community and science education.
While the use of the word "God" in scientific discourse (e.g. Einstein's "God doesn't throw dice") has gone out of fashion, I sometimes think cosmologist take it a little past neutral and towards playful antagonism of religion. I'm looking for the footage I saw a while ago of a notable, contemporary cosmologist who visited the Vatican to discuss cosmology, who kept going out of his way to point out how arbitrary religion was. It's OK, he was being interviewed and his opinion was relevant to the interview.
(If someone can help me find/remember that documentary, that would be great!)
To get to the point - this answer is bothering me because it seems to state an opinion as if it is an astronomical fact. I'll quote it here as it appears at the moment:

The root of your misunderstanding is that you think that the sun (sic) has a purpose. It does not. It is a ball of plasma that emits energy.

(note: the Sun should be capitalized)
The link was added after I left a comment asking for a citation of any measurement, determination or theoretical prediction of whether the Sun does or does not have a purpose. The link explains what the Sun is, but does not address what it is for, so I think it's mostly a cynical non sequitur. My understanding is that Astronomy does not have a definition of purpose, much less any measurements or predictions, and that that is actually both an opinion, and not actually Astronomy at all.
Looking in the discussion of what is on-topic in Astronomy SE, I found these lines:

How should I give an on-topic answer?
Good answers should explain why their objective information is accurate either by properly sourcing their answer or by giving enough details that the results could be derived by someone else. This is science after all! (my bold).
We don't have strict formatting guidelines for citations, but a couple of links to sources doesn't hurt--and keep in mind that not all sources are equal (academic papers are generally better than Wikipedia). Where answers are derived from physical documents, mentioning the title of the source is good, but a formatted citation (using your preferred style) is better.
If you are answering a question with a more subjective bent, or if you want to tack on your opinion to an already objective answer, it is fine to simply state that it is your opinion. At least this explains to everyone else where your information comes from.

So my question is: Does Astronomy (the field, and the stackexchange site) speak to the "existence of a purpose" for a celestial body? Or is a patent statement about purpose not actually science but instead an opinion, and in fact an opinion about a term that isn't even defined within Astronomy?
Leaving this answer as-is, without any notation that it is an opinion I think sends the wrong message - that Astronomers "know" that astronomical bodies do not have purpose. Using authority in one area to create the air of authority in a different area happens all the time - it didn't end in the 16th century. But when people do it "in the name of science" it reflects badly on those who take science seriously.
Opinions should be labeled as such. That's not only my opinion, it's the law! :)

If you are answering a question with a more subjective bent, or if you want to tack on your opinion to an already objective answer, it is fine to simply state that it is your opinion. At least this explains to everyone else where your information comes from.

I'd like to note two things. First, a post notice has been added there. Second, the topic of our site is Astronomy and not Philosophy (teleology, or the study of things by their purpose, is philosophy). That said, it is impossible to prevent brushing up against philosophy now and then, and I think when it does come up in situations like this a little more explanation is warranted aside from a mere statement (thus the post notice).

James has now revised his post.

Frankly, IMO attempting to define purpose for naturally occurring phenomena violates causality. Purpose is a form of abstraction created by intelligent beings who can act with forethought to create something to benefit them in the future. Nature doesn't act with forethought - it is the result of natural processes, equilibrium, and entropy. Our existence is owed to the Sun, but the presence of a star was not mandated such that we can exist unless you can dictate that an intelligent being mandated so - which is a very different discussion that is out of scope for a scientific community.


text:
Are questions that require calculations off-topic?
I've asked a question about the recent solar eclipse (March 8-9, 2016) that requires some basic eclipse geometry calculations. Someone who does this will understand how to deal with the plane - I've added a simple map of the flight path. The two articles cited in the top line of the question mention that the large number of astronomers on that flight was no coincidence!
Simply put, an eclipse that's total in one place can be annular in another place farther from the moon.
But the comments seem to be coming from people who think I don't know what I'm talking about. Is this question too hard, or is the calculation considered "original work" and therefore somehow off-topic?

"original work" is one of those Wikipedia things. No such rule applies on Stack Exchange/Stack Overflow.


text:
An "Escalate to an Astronomer (in related field)" button?
In a comment under this question I expressed "I wish there was an Escalate to an Astronomer in a Related Field button, even if only for moderators."
Is there any way I can try to improve the chance of someone knowledgeable in that field seeing that question and offering an answer or even a comment? An actual button would be quite an unusual feature request, I'm of course speaking figuratively.
I could edit the question once in a while to float it to the top of the recent activity stack, but besides that, anything else?
Related:

What can we do about the deteriorating quality of questions? (Up-vote quality questions & answers - always.)
Balance between professional and enthusiast questions
Let's ask more meaty questions!

The way that Stack Exchange handles this is by with tags. You define the tags that appropriately match your question and hope that a knowledgeable person on, say meteorites, is watching the meteorites tag. It sounds like you want a personal button that will send your question directly to the relevant astronomer's inbox, which isn't really the point of this website.
Unfortunately, you have to contend with the astronomy stack exchange being a smaller group with not nearly as many eyes watching the questions as more popular sites like stack overflow. A relevant expert might not always be available to answer your question. You can't really get around that one.

It's been several years since I first asked this, and things seem to be going quite well actually! I was quite the SE noob then, I'm less of one now.


text:
I can't find this site's "homework policy" or find out how "suspected homework question askers" should be treated
Similar to what I described in another meta post I've just seen a first time user become a "suspect" and discussed in the third person like they'd broken some rule, rather than have someone helpfully explain to them what the concern is.
The question in question: Need help with a simple Blackhole question
I'd like to know what might be the best and most welcoming way to deal with questions that might be related to homework, or just as easily might not be.
Should we apply "guilty until proven innocent" and vote to close right away, then let the first-time new user come back to find out that some users believe their motive was in question, then have to slog through a re-open voting process just to say "no, it wasn't"?

Space SE seems to do quite nicely without a homework policy, or even any "suspicion of homework" accusations: Does this site have anything like a homework policy?

@JanDoggen it might be better to just post an answer.

@uhoh I agree with Jan Doggen. Edit your personal interpretation of certain users' actions out of the question. In fact, the whole thing about "ASAP" needs to go. It weakens your question, which is otherwise quite good.

@uhoh I just realized this question is probably a duplicate: https://astronomy.meta.stackexchange.com/q/87/6

@called2voyage I'm asking about the quick-closing of a new user's first question based on suspicion; that plus the "new" welcoming concept makes this a bit different than that. I've substantially truncated the question to just one aspect now.

@uhoh True, but since we already have a policy that we don't close homework questions simply for being homework questions. It makes it kind of a moot point, don't you think?

@uhoh I mean, in the title you ask if we have a homework policy, and the question I link addresses that.

@called2voyage okay so if I had known how to find this sites particular homework policy, that would have been handy to have been able to point to. People can find just about any kind of recommended policy somewhere in some SE site in the past: https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/28755/need-help-with-a-simple-blackhole-question#comment51248_28755

@called2voyage I see some related answers, and I believe you that you see a policy, but I don't see an actual policy there that I can say "this is the community's view" our "our policy". I would really like something a little clearer that can reasonably said to reflect a community viewpoint.

@uhoh That is a weakness of meta in general, but the presence of Undo's answer with net positive score (relatively high for this site) and the absence of alternative viewpoints, suggests a policy.

@called2voyage okay and now there is your comment which makes two data points ;-)

There is NO prohibition against homework questions here at Astronomy. StephenG's comment that he was voting to close for suspicion of homework was ill-advised and had no basis in site policy.
JanDoggen then made reference to "some guidelines across the network" but this is a red herring. Most experienced users will be aware that each SE site is at liberty to define its own rules for what's on-topic. For example, homework questions are explicitly permitted on Physics.SE, and that meta post provides guidelines for how they should be asked (and links directly from their on-topic page.
Another example is English Language & Usage, which gets more questions in 12 hrs than Astronomy gets in a week. They too have no official site ban on homework questions, and their meta post How to deal with homework questions provides a very balanced and informative perspective based on two principles:

It is okay to ask about homework, and
An answer that doesn't help the student learn is not in their own
best interest.

In fact, that EL&U meta post is mostly based on a similar post on SO Meta. So Jan, it looks like there are popular, high-traffic SE sites that cautiously accept homework questions.
I think this specific issue touches on a broader problem here on Astronomy. I've previously posted here because of some users' excessive eagerness to close questions as "off-topic" when they're nothing of the sort - they're merely poorly researched, overly basic or just plain low-quality. But as uhoh rightly points out, some are low-quality simply through a combination of inexperience on our site and the lack of a post-grad; a bit of tolerance (and assistance) might be a good thing.
I'm probably a bit quick on downvotes here, and perhaps I too need to be a bit more tolerant. But a downvote, while disheartening to the receiver, is I think far less affronting than having their question closed, especially when the question is on-topic but is being closed as purportedly "off-topic". I think it's worthwhile reminding ourselves (and especially reminding those of us who tend to forget) that SE's philosophy is to encourage answers rather than eliminating the questions.
Let me quote from SO Blog's Respect the community – your own, and others’:

[closing] should be your last resort. Close questions with an eye
  toward improvement and re-opening, not driving users away.

The downside to downvotes over close votes is that close votes can be reverted by other users, but downvotes cannot. Users often forget to check back on posts they downvoted to see if they have improved. That said, this is a minor problem with this otherwise excellent answer!

I will strongly support the idea of tolerance towards questions. I've seen mediocre questions that spawned outstanding answers. So instead of closing mediocre questions, let's help the authors improve them.

@Donald.McLean Perhaps some users need to recognise that voting privileges come with more responsibility, e.g. adding a comment on what's wrong with the post and how it can be fixed, not just hitting the flag link. This question was flagged as "unclear" yesterday but no comment was left. Poorly researched question but not really unclear at all. We have a few users who are simply intolerant of "simple" questions and use close votes to get rid of them rather than the comment box to improve them.

To take this one step further, perhaps we (me included) need to be more assertive in using our editing privileges, and directly edit a question where we can guess what the OP is after so that it's easier to answer (and less likely to get flagged). As the site grows, we will eventually be able to flag some of this as duplicates instead: OP gets directed to where their answer lies, and we keep the site well-managed.


text:
What gives with all these comments about "too many images" in some of my posts?
This comment:

...the rest (the "fluff" actually makes it harder to read your post. This is definitely one of those times when adding pictures really detracts from the answer.

in regards to this answer with +22 votes where the images are at the very bottom of the post, after all of the text.

These three comments:

The pictures are cute but I fail to see how they enhance this answer.
@uhoh - sometimes pictures help, but as I have also mentioned a couple of times, sometimes they are not just unhelpful but actually negatively affect the post. This is one of those cases. Glorfindel's post answers the question, yours is full of pictures that don't answer the question and make it hard to read. Most of your posts would be perfect without the pictures, so please rethink the need to always have them...
When I see a post with unnecessary pictures my initial reaction is that the author is just fishing for upvotes.

in regards to this answer with +10 votes where the images are interspersed, but they are not particularly large.

I'm baffled by several things

How is it self-evident that some images make a post hard to read. This is the internet, we have text and images embedded all the time, browsers on computers and mobile devices are fine-tuned for text+image content. I simply can not see how in 2019 this can be a real, actual, bona-fide problem.
When a post is well-received, there probably wasn't a problem reading it and/or the images were appreciated. Why not just move on to posts that are not well received, and see what can be done to improve them? We can't recreate other people's posts or writing style to conform to our own tastes. Stack Exchange communities evolve. As far as I know there are no rules that say Astronomy SE answers must be spartan.

I spend most of my time in SE between Space SE and Astronomy SE. If I compare the two, I see a lot more armchair criticism on other people's posts and skill levels here than I do there. In Space SE I see what is possible in terms of a healthy, positive community that generally tries to honor each other's styles and attitudes. Here I see much more energy (by some users) put in to pointing out little stuff and irrelevant things that they would have done differently.
So I'd like to ask:
Question: What gives with all these comments about "too many images" in some of my posts?

What's wrong with me choosing to show a meteorite that landed on Mars looks like up close?
What's wrong with me being amazed by astronomical images and sharing them with others?
What's wrong with me sharing a little awe in the cosmos here in Astronomy SE?
Why not simply keep things positive? If a post is well-received, be glad for the people who enjoyed it, be glad for the site and HNQ traffic, be glad to be alive, and move on to the next post.

I'm not asking why some of you wouldn't, I'm asking why it seems to be so important to go out of your way to tell others to stop doing so.

FYI - I purged the second series of comments, but that shouldn't impact your question here since you included the text of the comments.

This is a minor comment, but I don't think that votes due to questions reaching the Hot Network Questions list should necessarily be used to indicate quality. The HNQ optimizes for lots of things, but quality is not one of them. Getting lots of votes on an HNQ answer doesn't necessarily mean you wrote a good answer; if thousands of people read something, chances are good that even 1% will like it even if it does have a flaw (like too many images).

@uhoh By listing (in bold) the vote counts on the posts you cite, you implicitly make that claim, by arguing that it justifies your use of images. If you're not trying to claim that, I don't understand why you draw such attention to them.

@HDE226868 Oh! I hadn't thought of connection between votes count and view count/hotness, but of course they are. I completely missed that; "votes due to questions reaching the Hot Network Questions". I'm deleting the previous comments, will delete this one tomorrow. Thanks for the clarification!


text:
Is there an automatic upvote for all questions with the tag "9th planet"? Or possibly a bug?
I just posted my first 9th planet question, and immediately (less than one second) got an upvote. I refreshed the page and it still said 1 view. I refreshed ten seconds later and still saw only 1 view.
Is there an automatic upvote for this? Or could it be a bug? If it's not automatic and the views are correct, then it would have to be a bug.

This is probably just an example of the knee-jerk voting that seems to be common on this and other SE sites. People don't actually read what you've written before making their minds up. I have seen some of my answers get upvotes literally within seconds of me posting them; they can't possibly have been read. Possibly it is more excusable when we're talking about a (short, simple) question. But your question was neither short nor simple.

Views are heavily cached, so it's not unusual to see a question stuck at 1 view for several minutes even after it's recieved a few votes. The vote your question received is from a fellow user and not in any way automatic. (But this is the most interesting conspiracy theory I've heard today. ;-)

Did you verify that by looking at some log and saw an actual username? I'm only asking because that upvote came extremely quickly (less than 1 second) and my question on the 9th planet had a lot to do with statistics, so yes I suppose I am suspicious of a conspiracy theory :)

@DrZ214: Yes, I know exactly which user voted. (And no, I'm not telling. ;-) I'm guessing someone read the question title and upvoted within 10 seconds. Presumably they finished reading the question and didn't change their mind during the 5 minute grace period.


text:
Rolling back question edits that have changed the question
Twice in the last 24 hours I have rolled back edits that the OP has made to their own question, because the nature of the question was completely changed or substantial supplementary questions were added.
Does the recent news of "ten times more galaxies" imply that there is correspondingly less dark matter?
How to convert ra&dec between different epoches?
I think such edits are fine when no answers to a question have been advanced, but in both these cases, I had given a substantial answer that had received upvotes and in one case been accepted.
Please could question askers not do this, it makes existing answers look ill thought-out, incomplete or even irrelevant. If you have a different question, ask a different question.

Yes, in both of those cases inappropriate changes were made to the question. In the first, the nature of the question was changed completely. In the second, the additions were more suitable for new question(s). We do accept some level of modification to questions after they have been answered, but that is mostly for minor adjustments/clarifications to the central question. It is not intended to allow for the scope of the question to change completely, or for additional separate questions to be added. When this happens, the correct approach is to roll back the edit, as you did here.
If an edit war starts, flag the post for moderator attention.

You folks are right, I shouldn't have done it, @RobJeffries rolled it back, left a message, I left a second message saying essentially "you are right, thank you!." I meant to ask 'does this mean there is more 'normal matter', and if so. does that mean there is more total mass than previously thought, or is the total mass of the Universe the same and the difference is made up by there being a little less dark matter than previously thought?

So as I explained in that comment, I noticed that the question had started attracting low quality comments and answers. Realizing that it was probably the reference to dark matter - which I didn't care about - I wanted to help by removing it. But that's what moderators are for. It was a well-intentioned edit, but next time I'll resist the temptation to "help". If I had received a message or complaint - I would have immediately rolled it back myself.


text:
How this question is off-topic?
I mean this question:
How would Earth's climate differ if it's axis were tilted around 90 degrees like Uranus?
The closing moderator said the question is about Earth science, but in fact the question about Earth's orbital motion in Solar System, which is NOT a part of Earth's science, but a part of astronomy. Also the question is not exactly about Earth but about a hypothetical planet that has similar physical characteristics but different rotation mode.

The author isn't asking about the orbital motion; they're asking about the climate. There's nothing about the "seasons, temperature, and life on Earth" that makes it within the scope of this site. The questions may or may not fit on Earth Science; I'll have to leave that for them to discuss.

Are not calendar and study of seasons parts of astronomy?

@Anixx No, they aren't.

Calenders and seasons on planets other than Earth.


text:
What stellar content do we want to share with Twitter?
As of late yesterday, Stack Exchange has revived its official Twitter account, @StackExchange. It had been used intermittently/actually-not-at-all for several years, but now it's being resuscitated for the express purpose of promoting awesome content around the network. As a Community Manager put it, here's what they're looking for:

Awesome/interesting/fun Questions & Answers
We'll feature a few of these per week and try to make sure that they're representative of a broad collection of our sites. This includes notable meta posts, too - though I'm guessing they'll be infrequent.
Site events/contests
If a site has a regular or one-off event, we may be able to tweet about some of them. Some of y'all do events throughout the year and we'd love to share some of the community-led fun.
Users who do noteworthy work or meet celebratory rep levels
We won't Tweet about anyone without reaching out to them first... but if there's someone you think deserves (and would appreciate) a spotlight on what they've been doing, either on main and/or meta, let us know.

They're looking for great posts both young and old - I have word that a "Throwback Thursday" of sorts is in the works - and given that people here have written some phenomenal stuff over the years, we definitely have lots to choose from (as well as plenty of new stuff, too).
How will this work?
There are a couple of levels to this.

First, Astronomy users will write an answer to this question with a link to the content and a short blurb about why it should be tweeted out to 17,640 people and counting.
Periodically (probably more regularly than I expect), the mods will go through and look at submissions. If we see stuff that looks good - and I bet that there will be lots of that - we'll forward that to the Community Team via super-secret backchannels.
A Community Manager will manually select posts to be tweeted.

This shouldn't be much of an issue on Astronomy, but please do be careful with what posts you suggest. Possible tweetable content will go through two rounds of manual pruning, so objectionable posts will not make their way to the rest of the Internets, but still, this is Twitter. From time to time, it can be as dangerous as a $\sim1.39M_{\odot}$ white dwarf.
Other random notes
I think the new Twitter efforts are a way to do something I've been wanting for over four years: promote awesome, non-clickbait-y, non-Hot-Network-Questions-List material from small sites that otherwise wouldn't get attention. That can be huge for us, a (relatively) small but still quite healthy site.
Also, I think it could be a vehicle to help our blog posts gain some more visibility. We've got some really interesting content coming up in the coming months, but looking at the WordPress stats, we're not really reaching anyone. This could be a chance to change that.
Whatever happens, @StackExchange is going to be a great opportunity for us and the rest of the network. What content from Astronomy Stack Exchange do you want to see on it?

Also, I like your humor on the 1.39 M⊙ WD one. Better yet, we can safely say that a ~1.3999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999... WD will not explode because obviously we know for sure that the limit electron degeneracy pressure is overcome is at "exactly" 1.4 M⊙

I would really like this to be sort of like a place where people can post the most recent news on space(such as when 'Oumuamua came by and was discovered, I found out about it 1 month later) and the most important questions(most popular) here such as the "https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/24048/terrestrial-exoplanet-skies-ive-built-a-visual-sky-chart-is-it-accurate" that had over 15k views but was somehow reset or something. I'm thinking that many people putting input into the recent news about space should give like a steady report of how space stuff is going in the recent days.

@Max0815 I'm not sure that's wholly what we're going for here - neither space news or really popular questions. The feel I'm getting from SE is that they're trying to draw attention to content that hasn't already gotten much attention. But there are certainly going to be exceptions to that.

@Max0815 - I think that example you linked to would be something we really wouldn't want showcasing our site. To make an impact we need high quality, high value posts, ideally that make people think and want to join.