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An [ultraviolet] tag to go with our [gamma-rays], [x-ray], [visible-light], [infrared], and [radio] tags?
We have these electromagnetic tags

gamma-rays 11 questions

The gamma-rays tag has no usage guidance, can you help us create it?

x-ray 36 questions

Questions regarding the second-shortest wavelength of light.

visible-light 22  questions

Questions regarding a wavelength of light ranging from 380 to 700 nm. This is the spectrum that we can see.

infrared 43 questions

Questions about infrared astronomy, both observations (in the broadest sense) and instruments. The infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum has a longer wavelength than visible light, but shorter than sub-mm or radio waves.

radio 34 questions

Questions about the part of the electromagnetic spectrum with wave lengths longer than those of infrared radiation.

along with some electromagnetically honorable mentions:

cosmic-microwave-background 117 questions

Questions about is the electromagnetic radiation remnant from the early stage of the universe, also known as "relic radiation".

gamma-ray-bursts 32 questions

Gamma ray bursts are flashes of gamma rays, produced by extremely powerful explosions in distant galaxies. They are among the most powerful events in the universe

radio-astronomy 304 questions

Questions about observations performed in the radio frequency range of the electromagnetic spectrum.

radio-telescope 98 questions

Questions related to the instruments used to perform observations in the radio frequency range.

fast-radio-bursts 11 questions

Use for questions about fast radio burst (FRB) or blitzars. Related tags: "pulsar", "magnetar", "radio-astronomy".

But nothing in the ultra-violet.
After I asked Can we see atomic positronium lines in space? What could be learned from it and what are current challenges to doing so? and added the infrared I noticed there was no tag for ultraviolet to go with it.
So I'd like to ask:
Question: Should we have an [ultraviolet] tag to go with our [gamma-rays], [x-ray], [visible-light], [infrared] and [radio] tags?

It seems like we could benefit from a multiwavelength tag to capture observations beyond the visible spectrum of light. I propose leaving radio-astronomy, visible-light, and infrared separate since these are significant areas of interest, but the rest (gamma-rays, x-ray, and the proposed ultraviolet) should be made synonyms of multiwavelength.
I think radio should have already been made a synonym of radio-astronomy.

In all my years in Space and Astronomy I've never seen you make a call I didn't agree with or at least go with. But throwing three different fields of observational astronomy into a bin who's name doesn't even make sense seems like a bad idea to me. It seems arbitrary; why not put radio and infrared in there as well? And the name makes no sense for all the questions have no "multi" aspect.  I also don't understand why questions about gamma rays, X-rays or ultraviolet should no longer be searchable by using a tag. How are these tags causing harm? Where is the benefit from "multi"?

There was also a discussion, I think between someone else and I, years ago about [radio], though it could have been with someone else, and at that time I questioned it and the other person said there was a distinction between it and the other "radios". I'm all for getting rid of [radio].

@uhoh My rationale here has to do with the low usage of these tags. I think they're likely to gain more attention collectively. Others are of course welcome to express their disagreement. I got the "multiwavelength" suggestion from academic papers which used this as a technical way to express observations that included the beyond-visible spectrum, but I would also be ok with a [tag:beyond-visible] tag if people thought that would be more comprehensible.

Beyond is certainly better than multi. It's not something one would start typing, but if - by using synonymization - the autocomplete would still show the catch-all tag when someone started typing ult.. or xra... or gam... at least the tagging part works. But if I understand correctly, one would no longer be able to search for gamma-ray or x-ray or ultra-violet by using their tags. As for a trend for lower usage increasing energy above visible, I think it has to do with the Earth's atmosphere and instrumentation; these are relegated (mostly) to space telescopes, planes and suborbital flights.

and by the increasing difficulty in imaging with payloads of limited size and cost. This could change in the future! It's not that these bands are ultimately of any less consequence than the lower energies, it's just that (in my opinion) to date they have had lower quality (resolution, total hours of observation). Some might see all processes and observations above visible being relegated to a single tag as a slight or a bias. Even Gilligan's Island went the other way - converting "and the rest" to "the professor and Marry Anne" in the second season. :-)

Anyway, I worry that loosing specific searchability by these three tags (ultra, x-ray, gamma) permanently in this specific case should be considered carefully, especially if these fields grow in the future.

@uhoh Those are all good points, and I'd be happy to see another answer make a good case based on those. I just want to make sure we're creating something that is actually going to be maintained.


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The new and increasingly popular "close for insufficient research" close reason, are we headed in the wrong direction here? Is there a way to reduce?
Comment under Why is the moon tidally locked with the earth? with +4 votes

I’m voting to close this question because there's no evidence that OP has done any research.

Comment under Plane of Moon's orbit around earth with +3 votes

I’m voting to close this question because there is no evidence that OP has done any prior research for this question. The Wikipedia article has clearly explained the topic

In my understanding the recommended action for insufficient prior research is the down vote.

We have several standard reasons to close questions thereby blocking all community members from opportunities to write an answer and the entire internet of the future from reading them, but lack of research is not one of them.
What concerns me here is a recent uptick in close votes for lack of research and their upvoting - folks are getting the idea we must punish the question asker for insufficient research, the subsequent collateral damage to the site due to answer prevention be damned.
Recall that we are building an answer base not a question base. Blocking answers because we think the question could have been written better is antithetical to the Stack Exchange mission. We can work on question improvement in several better, and more helpful ways.
I feel this trend is wrong and it's catching on because users are seeing other users doing it apparently unchecked.
We can downvote a question and still allow good answers to it to be posted.
We can leave helpful comments explaining why we down vote.
But isn't inventing a new *and increasingly popular close reason specifically for apparently insufficient prior research contrary to how this site has operated for years?

Is there a way to reduce?

For example, is there some mechanism whereby when someone is typing words like "research" or "prior" or "first google hit" that a bubble appears indicating that it might not be a valid close reason and one might consider down voting instead?

could we start cleaning up the erroneous "close for lack of research" comments that appear under questions. My thinking here (and what I think I've demonstrated a bit) is that when especially new users see this done, and up voted, they get the false notion that they can and should also start closing like this too. We don't require users to read all the guidelines, mostly folks learn by watching others and looking for "best practices" through example.

In this case the second "close for no research" voter was so anxious to close that they didn't even bother to read the comments nor the existing "close for no research" vote in the dialogue box before writing their own.

A related discussion on the global meta from a while back: Should a clear lack of research be grounds for closing a question?

@gparyani thanks! Sometimes lost in the mix is that for low question rate sites like Astronomy SE, there is a lot more room and time to help question authors to improve their question-asking skills while still allowing answers to be posted. The high question rate sites may adopt a different style of necessity. But here with only a half-dozen questions per day there's plenty of time to help improve questions before they drift down the page.

Strong agree. It should be simple - downvote for lack of effort, VTC for posts which are otherwise off-topic.

contd.. VTC should be used sparingly for questions which aren't recoverable, not because you want to punish someone who didn't put in enough effort.

source: Stack Exchange

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Do we have enough tags to "span the space" of astronomical eclipses and transits? Is something missing or needs changing?
We have

solar-eclipse 143 questions

Questions about the complete or partial blocking of the sun by the moon.

and

lunar-eclipse 60 questions

Questions regarding an event where the Earth goes between the Sun and the Moon and casts a shadow on the Moon.

and

eclipse-non-earth-related 21 questions

The eclipse-non-earth-related tag has no usage guidance, can you help us create it?

and

planetary-transits (plural) 67 questions

For questions about transits of planets in front of the Sun, as seen from another, more distant planet; for example, the transits of Mercury and Venus which are visible from the Earth.

and now there is the question

Can you distinguish a transit from an eclipse when observing Galilean moons?

I added the eclipse-non-earth-related and since there was no applicable transit tag I've just created

transits-other-than-sun (also plural) 1 question

The transits-other-than-sun tag has no usage guidance, can you help us create it?

Have we now "spanned the space" of astronomical eclipses and transits? Is this all okay now? Something missing? Changes needed?

I think more important than making sure we have "all" the tags to cover a certain topic is making sure the tags we do have are well-defined. I think we should focus our energy on making sure these tags all have clear excerpts and that the questions using the tags are using them appropriately. If a need arises for another tag addressing this topic, then we can revisit what name might be best for it.

@called2voyage When I ask tag related questions I always include the excerpt or lack thereof in order to call attention to that. I think one's attention can be spread out over both issues, it's not either-or. I can try to write something for these but for me and the way my head works I'd rather understand the structure of the tag constellation before refining each tag's scope. It's like writing the outline before writing the chapters. Of course when writing fiction it's probably a lot more fun writing the chapters first; I'm told I'm not much fun. :-)

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


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Why do some of our most prolific question answerers (and therefore reputation beneficiaries) rarely-to-never up vote questions they answer?
@uhoh's first two lemmas tell us that Stack Exchange is a collaborative effort to generate good answers to on-topic questions, and that answers simply can not exist without someone taking the time and showing the interest to post the question first.
Further, visibility (and up voting) of those answers to future readers (see @uhoh's lemma #3) will be to some degree modulated by the voting on the question: an intrinsically stellar answer to a question with zero votes will not be observed to shine as brightly if the question remains a red dwarf.
Even further, question askers can't start offering reputation bounties on questions until they are comfortable loosing some reputation points and bounties are good! Also, without some positive feedback like upvoting they are potentially somewhat less likely to stick around.
Therefore I'd like to ask:
Question: Why do some of our most prolific question answerers (and therefore reputation beneficiaries) rarely-to-never up vote questions they answer?
Related queries on voting behavior:

Why don't question-askers accept answers?

Premise:
I'm not going to name them, but after 6+ years of observing the site I'm going to simply assert that after coming across so many questions with zero votes (+0/-0) having excellent answers by a few of our most prolific answer authors, it's clear to me that this is a real thing.

1@uhoh's lemmas (from here):

@uhoh's lemma #1: Stack Exchange is a collaborative effort to generate good answers to on-topic questions.
@uhoh's lemma #2: A Stack Exchange answers can not exist without someone taking the time and showing the effort and interest to post the question.
@uhoh's lemma #3: Stack Exchange is both a floor wax and a desert topping2.  Asking of questions is a superposition of (at least) two things; seeking solutions to our immediate problem or query and the facilitation of interesting, helpful and informative answers for the benefit of future readers.

2Shimmer, by the Not Ready For Prime Time Players

It isn't clear why you think that people answering questions should upvote those questions with 2-orders of magnitude greater frequency than those that read them. Currently it appears to require 100-200 reads per upvote on a question, so it seems to be the general readership, rather than question-answerers, that are responsible for any perceived problem with upvoting questions. There are examples of questions that I have answered, that have been looked at >100 times, and mine is the sole upvote to the question.
In the end, it is entirely up to each user how they cast their votes. That is the premise of SE. Encouraging new users is not one of the suggested reasons that a question should be upvoted. I did agree with your previous campaign to avoid knee-jerk downvoting of new user's questions, but I don't agree with any suggestion that writing a question means you should get an automatic upvote from anyone that answers it.
You explicitly linked me to this question via a comment you put beneath Why don't question-askers accept answers? (that I flagged as unfriendly/unkind). A brief scan of my (a) top-voted answers and (b) most recent answers, suggests I upvoted the majority of those questions. I obviously haven't upvoted all the questions I've answered (I've downvoted some), but the "rarely-to-never" description is way wide of the mark (in my case).

"It isn't clear why..." several clear reasons can be found in the question, presumably an answer author taking time to compose a thoughtful, high-quality and well-sourced answer will have at least some interest in some combination of future readers finding and reading it, and/or some reputation (everybody's mix will be different) and It seems just logical that an author who took that time to compose such an answer would consider that question a good question. There's three. As far as linking, I am an incredibly active related question linker. Both questions ask "Why don't people do X?"

I'm not saying others should think the way only I do, just suggesting several views that answer authors might consider if they haven't already.

@uhoh It is the question that needs to be well-researched and of high quality in order to attract a upvote. I don't upvote questions to artificially draw attention to my answers.

I understand that, it's clear. To me a question that attracts great answers is a great question, the purpose of a question is to facilitate answers, not to demonstrate the OP's prowess. The tooltip suggestions ("researched") are just suggestions, not restrictions or rules.

I am certainly not one of the most prolific answerers on the site, but I am typically in the top 10 percentish.  Also, I mostly upvote questions that I answer.  Of course, I am probably biased towards my fields of interest: orbital mechanics and collisions.
When I don't upvote a question I answer, it is usually because there is something I disagree with in the question.  This could be assumptions, or the way the question is phrased.  I also admit taking umbrage for perceived insults to the field of astronomy.  This is an example: What is the **actual** average distance of the Moon from Earth? I answered without upvoting since I don't like how the question is phrased.  There are many equally valid ways to compute an "average".
I am a prolific upvoter, but I am also of the philosophy that:
If I upvote everything,
Then my upvotes have less meaning.
I suspect that some rare upvoters have a similar philosophy, but reserve their upvotes for only what they think are the very finest questions and answers.

Excellently put!


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Shall we continue to agree that good SETI and extraterrestrial questions are on-topic? What about METI?
We currently have 19 questions tagged with seti One was recently closed and one has two close votes, and extra-terrestrial has 35 questions.
Going through these it seems that some good SETI and extraterrestrial questions have always been on-topic here.
I also think that SETI is a valid subfield of Astronomy and there have always been real astronomers participating in this field.
proximal question
Should we re-open the closed question and keep the one with two close votes open as well?
larger question
What are some effective and actionable guidelines for judging when a good SETI question is on-topic and should be kept open, and which should not be considered on-topic?
What about good METI questions? (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence)

How to communicate Fine Structure Constant to aliens? (2 close votes with "probably more suited to" close reason)
What are the prime challenges in search for extraterrestrial intelligence? (well received, great answer, closed, voting to reopen)

I think that I am quite OK with having SETI and METI questions, having already asked a question related to SETI (with 2 upvotes ).
While to some it may seem that SETI questions are usually not well-received in Astronomy SE (it did to me when I joined), if one takes a average of all the votes the seti tag has received quite average vote count of ~2.21 (yay! my question is quite average!).
Many astronomers were part of, and participated in SETI and I think SETI should be, and is, well-received in the Community. Though METI seems relatively new a concept, it is very nearly related to SETI, and all in all, it has also received some recognition in some the questions mentioned above by @uhoh. But still posting them here.

Is the pulsar map on the Pioneer/Voyager probes only meaningful for earthlings?
Who or what will the Arecibo message reach?
Is broadcasting the location of Earth to potential extraterrestial civilization regulated?
How to communicate Fine Structure Constant to aliens?
What are the prime challenges in search for extraterrestrial intelligence?

You have two questions here, and I have opposing answers to them:
I agree with you that good SETI questions should be on topic - but the definition of Good here is key.
METI on the other hand - so far I haven't seen any good (from a site perspective) METI questions here. Those two you highlight, I would firmly class in "not good questions" despite the second one having a good answer.
Which I assume is why some are pointed to worldbuilding - METI is irrelevant until SETI is successful (pretty much) and unlike the search, messaging is philosophical and hypothetical, and until aliens are found, no possibility of a definitive answer.

Is the pulsar map on the Pioneer/Voyager probes only meaningful for earthlings? and Who or what will the Arecibo message reach? and Is broadcasting the location of Earth to potential extraterrestial civilization regulated? are all well-received METI questions.  Like aliens, just because we don't see them doesn't mean they don't exist.

Of the 3 you link to, that 3rd one was not that well received, and in fact was suggested to be migrated. The 2nd one is a pure astronomy question. The 1st one - I'd agree, that is pretty good.

Votes on those three questions are +5, +6 and +5 with no down votes on any of them. All have answers, voted +4, +6 and +2.


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Cavalier insta-closing of a new user's first question without even giving them a chance to respond?
A new user, just joined today, asked their first question.
When this happens I think of "be welcoming" before I think of "what can I close today?"
After only a few hours close as duplicate votes started on Can the earth move in front of the sun in a helical model? because the word "spiral" reminded someone of "vortex".
The question asks about the VSauce YouTube video How Earth Moves where around 17:00 the spiral motion of the Earth around the Sun as they move together through the galaxy is shown:

Is the helical or spiral model shown in the video real or just a theory.
In the model described (even if it is disproved), does the earth go in front of the sun and then back, then forth and back like it is shown on the video? I see both the sun and earth racing with each overtaking the other over and over. Am I seeing an illusion?

Of course the spiral motion (part 1) is real, and not just a theory, and explaining that will answer part 1.
Part 2 is more complex and involves the apparent motion of the two, and there is dissonance between the Static Sun with Earth circling image that we usually get, and this "racing spiral" motion that is shown there.
I've added one answer so far but I think the OP deserves better.
update: This comment confirms what I think was already obvious, the 10 hour "vortex" insta-close was premature, now we need to wait for perhaps days to reopen. Was this welcoming?
Is the insistence (see several comments) that the question is about "Vortex theory" being used to insta-close the question (it's only 7 hours old!) really necessary? How does the site benefit from such a quick close without even giving the OP an opportunity to respond? Are these close votes in fact cavalier because one simply presumes the OP must be mean something that they haven't even described?

I’m concerned that your use of labels like “cavalier” and “insta-closing” undermines your attempt to ask a reasonable question. It’s not quite serious enough to flag, and perhaps you’re unaware of the insult implicit in these two labels, but it’s certainly not consistent with our site’s “be nice” policy. Could I suggest you might consider editing your post to use more a neutral tone, so that the reader can focus on the issue you’re raising rather than being distracted by the language used? :-)

@ChappoHasn'tForgottenMonica insta-closing is closing a question so fast after it's posted that the OP does not even have time to respond to a hypothetical concern; in this case that the OP must be thinking of some vortex theory that's not even mentioned in the question. It's too fast, especially in a site that gets less than six questions per day. Here cavalier means "having or showing no concern for something that is important" and what's most important is being welcoming to new users.

@ChappoHasn'tForgottenMonica So closing a brand new user's first question on their first day because they might be thinking of some vortex theory that wasn't even mentioned in the question, and not the spiral pattern which they did mention and DOES feature prominently in the video without them having any chance to respond to a question; I would like to ask if that kind of disregard is cavalier. That's the question to which I'd like an answer.

@ChappoHasn'tForgottenMonica sorry for three response comments but your question and concern are good and deserve thoughtful attention. Most metas have some "Is X rude?" questions. I think that cavalier is a lot tamer than rude. It gets to the heart of the matter; when deciding between leaving a comment asking for clarification, and voting to close a new user's first question with all the repercussions, as long as the question isn't seriously problematic shouldn't our primary concern be with helping the new user, and wouldn't the quick closing without OP's chance to respond be unconcerned?

@antispinwards I'd like to see more concern about a new user trying to ask their first question being shut down because of a misplaced duplicate theory. This action was cavalier. It was dismissive and inconsiderate of the OP to do this to them. Let's keep the focus on what's important here, being welcoming to new users. "ere cavalier means 'having or showing no concern for something that is important'" When something is rude we call it rude. When something is wrong we call it wrong. If you don't think the instaclose to the vortex question was cavalier, consider writing that as an answer?

@uhoh As long as we're calling a spade a spade, in this case I think you're trying so hard that it deters engagement.

@MikeG that may be so, and this may not be the first time that something like that has been said, but I am what I am

@antispinwards I'm sorry but I think this characterization is a dramatization and an exaggeration. Saying that the act of closing of a new user's first question based on the idea that they might be thinking of a vortex even though it wasn't mentioned, without even giving them a half-day to respond is cavalier, and so I've explained why I think that action was so and then asked for others to post as many answers as they like explaining why they do or don't think so. Your comment is inventing a fiction by calling this a "doubling down" on "insulting language" That simply didn't happen.

I don't agree with the close vote on knowledgeseeker's question.  I also don't think the duplicate marked is the same question as the original.  The accepted answer to the 'duplicate' is a great answer to that question, but doesn't answer knowledgeseeker's question at all.  I think this nuance is very important.
I would like the chance to put up an answer of my own to knowledgeseeker's closed question and I've voted to reopen.
I think the close vote was wrong, but I won't call the voters 'cavalier' since I think that goes too far to motive. If they present a good argument, I am open to changing my mind.  I also wouldn't suggest uhoh is engaged in 'pedantry' (hairsplitting, quibbling, pomposity, sophistry, punctiliousness) as I agree with uhoh's arguments, and I think that also goes to motive.
As far as 'speed of closing' I am a bit too new to have a solid opinion, and I don't really feel like I've earned a place in this community yet.  Perhaps a vote to close isn't either mean nor nice, but a nice comment and some patience are definitely nice.

When a question is off topic, a duplicate, or is of very poor quality (for example, needing clarification) the BEST thing to do is put it on hold quickly, so people do not waste effort answering a question that may need to be significantly revised, or will be closed.
Putting on hold is a very good thing.
Especially when we have new folks who don't yet know how the site works.
I agree with you that commenting to let them know why there post is on hold and what they need to do to improve it is a good thing, but please don't ever think closing quickly is a bad thing. It is an essential tool in our quality control arsenal.

The problem here is that none of those have been established. The "vortexness" of the question seems to be an unfounded hypothesis. It's a spiral. There's an astronomical difference! Answers are voluntary; there's always a risk. Blocking all users from the opportunity to answer because someone suspects a spiral is a vortex inconveniences everybody. Note the specific-question tag.

You keep coming up with this "blocking answers" stuff. Until the poster has clarity in the question, putting it onhold should be used. This helps avoid answers being posted to different interpretations. Get clarity first, then see if the question should be taken off hold. And in this instance - the description and videos seem clear: it's a dupe - the OP was just confused with terminology.

The question is clear. Until it can be shown not to be, we should just give the OP time to respond to this confusing "vortex" theory. We should't use language it's already been shown to be unclear. That's not even the close reason.

See this comment. Had we just given the OP ten hours, we wouldn't need five more users and another few days to reopen. Insta-closing is counterproductive. It is a demonstrated literal waste of time.

@uhoh Sure . . . but in those ten hours, had the post not been closed, it's quite possible that it would have garnered answers that perhaps misunderstood the question because it required edits. After all, that's why questions are closed. I agree that perhaps a comment should have been left, but that's no reason to not vote to close the question so such edits can be made without risking having poor answers in the meantime.

@HDE226868 see the part in my answer that starts with "protect potential answer writers..." We don't have a close reason for "I think there is a danger that someone will think this question asks something that isn't actually written here, so let's prevent anyone from an opportunity to  answering just in case." There's no vortex in the question.

@HDE226868 the OP has reposted the question as a new question, can you help there somehow? I left a short message that they should update their original question rather than re-ask.It's confusing to new users, that 's why we give them more time to respond and more guidance.

@uhoh The reason you cite is the unclear close reason, which is actually what I'd argue perhaps could have been used even if the question hadn't arguably been a duplicate. Also, sure, I'll take a look and see what I can do. A merge might be in order; I'll figure something out to help them get the relevant info into the first post.

@HDE226868 ya I think vtclose as duplicate based on interpretation of what they might be thinking in this case was cavalier. What's important is helping a new user enjoy their first experience, learn to use the site correctly, and get some answers.

Cavalier insta-closing of a new user's first question without even giving them a chance to respond?

I think so.
It's only been seven hours, there is certainly animated spiral motion in the video, and that's all that the question is asking about as written.
I think that closing a brand new user's first question on their first day because they might be thinking of some vortex theory that wasn't even mentioned in the question and not the spiral pattern which they did mention and DOES feature prominently in the video, without them having any chance to respond to a question is probably cavalier.
I think this because that would be "having or showing no concern for something that is important" and what's most important here is being welcoming to new users.
That above all we must protect potential answer writers from wasting their time because they can't be trusted to have enough sense to decide for themselves if they'd like to answer seems to be a false narrative, or perhaps even a bit of Stack Exchange lore or mythology.
It's certainly outdated SE thinking.
Answer writing is purely voluntary. We should not block all users from answering because we fear that someone might answer without fully understanding the question.
If we were concerned about that: we'd simply leave a comment of the type "By spiral do you mean the vortex asked about here?
Then any potential answer authors would be forewarned, and we wouldn't have to go through the close/reopen dance involving ten users and days, and likely a lost new user in the process.
Insta-closing is closing a question so fast after it's posted that the OP does not even have time to respond to a hypothetical concern; in this case that the OP must be thinking of some vortex theory that's not even mentioned in the question. This is way too fast to be productive, especially in a site that gets less than six questions per day. Here cavalier means "having or showing no concern for something that is important" and what's most important is being welcoming to new users. – uhoh 2 mins ago


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I need help rewording this unwieldily title
The current title is former title was How error bars on recent speed of gravity determination from gravitational waves and coincident gamma ray burst? Was Hubble constant in there? and it is explained in this comment

Thank you for point that out! I remember struggling this morning trying to get the title to be under 150 characters as required by SE, and it looks like after several edits it's become unparsable. If I had 240 characters the title would be more like

For the recent determination of the speed of gravity based on the timing between the detection of gravitational waves and nearly-coincident gamma ray bursts, how were the error bars determined? Was the Hubble constant used as part of this?

If you can think of a better title please feel free to edit. Otherwise I'll have a look tomorrow.

Can someone propose a title that captures enough of the key words to be specific, searchable and "attractive" in the sense that it encourages those interested in the topic to see what the answers say, but isn't overly lengthy?

How about this:

Gravitational waves and gamma ray burst: how were the error bars determined for the recent speed of gravity calculation? Was Hubble constant in there?

Have updated to something very similar to this, thanks!

Simple: Get rid of "Was the Hubble constant there?"
It's bad form to ask two questions in one question, which the current title does. Moreover, the Hubble constant is a bit irrelevant at a mere 26 Mpc (the distance used in the paper), so there's no reason to ask about it in the first place.
And no, the Hubble constant was not taken into account.

It' not two separate questions, but expanding that to "For example, was $H_0$ involved?" just makes it even longer. I will grant that giving examples within an already long title is suboptimal, but not that "there's no reason to ask in the first place" because not knowing the answer is certainly allowed when posting a question.

Asking about the error bars is a reasonable question. And it is a good question, all by itself. There's no reason to  muddy the waters with a second question, which by now you should know that you shouldn't do no matter what that second question is.  If that second question is a good one, ask it as a separate question. Moreover, I'm trying to understand (and failing to understand) why you would think the Hubble constant is applicable. It obviously is not brought into account in the underlying paper.

Anyway it was not a second question, it was part of my question to which I wanted an answer, and now people will know the answer to all of it. As an aside, when someone asks "Need help rewording..." a response along the lines of "Here's something that might be better" is generally better received than "You did something(s) wrong and you should have known better in the first place."

I see that you did take my advice and got rid of the auxiliary question in the title, so thanks for that. I have been told multiple times elsewhere that I can sometimes be a bit too blunt at times. On the other hand, I know that you know that asking multiple questions at any Stack Exchange site is considered to be bad form because I've seen you yourself criticize others for asking multiple questions in one original post.

uhoh! It was out for a few seconds but I then added it back in because I really did think it might be used and really did want to know the answer to it, and because with two excellent answers that address it I thought it was historically more accurate to leave it in. I used to work in the semiconductor industry and finding then advertising even the tiniest of inconsistencies was incredibly valuable due to razor thin margins. I was valued for that but I could never figure out why applying it to people in conversation had the opposite effect, until much later :-)

I hadn't realize that the fitting analysis of the GW automatically produces a number for the distance and thought that this event had been assigned to a distant galaxy who's distance was estimated using redshift. I'm still plowing through this paper which is hard for me to read, and may ask further questions now that I have some better feel for what's going on.

The filtering produces a rather large range of numbers for the distance, between 26 Mpc and 48 Mpc (almost a factor of two) in this case. Since the error bars get larger and larger as distance gets smaller and smaller, the authors of the paper in question intentionally used the lower bound on distance. From there, it's a matter of very simple calculations, much simpler than you apparently were thinking.

that's better than it being apparent that I wasn't thinking :-) fyi I've just asked:  Why can there be several seconds of lag between a binary neutron start merger and the emission of gamma rays from the same area?


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What do folks think about adding (time-) dispersion and time-domain tags?
For Do ASKAP and ALMA have "fast dump" interferometric modes? Can they see and perhaps report Fast Radio Bursts in real time? I've created two new tags: [tag:] and [tag:].
Before I start adding these to a few more questions how do folks feel about each of them?
Time Domain Astronomy
Time Domain Astronomy is a real thing, I think it's okay to add this tag and then to start adding it to future questions. Perhaps we should decide on a longest qualifying timescale for the tag though; seconds? minutes? months?
Months might be argued for supernovae and for the staggered appearances of lensed "echoes", but that might be too long. Periodic motion might be excluded as it's also arguably sort-of static, and single events like the plunging of a comet into Jupiter or a fireball sighting might be excluded because they are more event-like.
(Time-) Dispersion
That there was no dispersion tag surprised me since it's such an important concept and tool for measuring distances. But I wonder if it should have been time-dispersion to distinguish it from wavelength-dispersion. It's the same phenomenon physically, but observationally effect is treated in the time domain in radio astronomy and in the spatial domain for atmospheric dispersion and chromatic aberration.
What do others think?

Gratuitous FRB converted to audio:


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Is a charged-coupled-devices tag okay? If so, what would be good usage guidance for it?
I've just added the new tag charge-coupled-devices to How often are electron-multiplying CCDs used in telescope focal planes? Will Nancy Grace Roman be the first use in a space telescope? since that's the primary target of the question. I think we've had several questions before that are primarily about how CCDs work and how they are operated in astrophotography situations.
I did not add it to its companion question Why does Nancy Grace Roman = 100 × Hubble? Why is the new space telescopes wide field camera so much wider than the old one's? because while it involves what's at the focal plane, it's not specifically about the design and operation of charged-coupled devices.
We don't have a focal-plane or instrumentation tag, and instruments seems to general and more about a larger assembly than a CCD and its associated electronics.
Shall we keep this tag? If so, what would good usage guidance for it be?

The only problem with the tag as-is is that it doesn't appear when you search for "CCD" :-)
Also, would a future "CMOS" tag be appropriate, or would an all-encompassing "imaging devices" or "photon sensors" tag be better?

Thanks for your answer! I know what you mean about CCD and I had thought about using that instead, it's not too late to switch to that, charge-coupled-devices only has two questions. In FAQ we can find What are tag synonyms and merged tags? How do they work? and it seems to me that both tags must exist and be used first before any synonymization can occur, but I'm no expert.

So for now I think we should choose whichever one is most likely to be typed by someone hunting for such a tag. That's why I wouldn't suggest "imaging devices" or "photon sensor" or "CMOS" as a main tag; I thing fewer people will start typing those and looking for the auto-complete.

+3/-0 votes on the question so far and no negative comments; it seems like the tag is okay.


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Is there a useful distinction between the DIY and the telescope-making tags? Should they be somehow merged?
telescope-making has 16 questions starting from 2015
diy has 3 4 questions starting from 2014. I just added one that mentions a Raspbery Pi project.
Neither tag has any usage guidance!
A quick check shows for example:

DIY telescope to observe nebulae has neither tag
Are there home-brew photometers for amateur observing of variable stars and are they widely used? has neither tag
Which type of telescope should I make? doesn't have telescope-making

Question: What is or should be the distinction between the diy tag and telescope-making tags? Before any endeavor to adjust tagging on old questions let's first decide how these two tags are distinct and in which cases each tag applies.

Maybe one should be made a synonym of another.

telescope-making is always DIY but DIY isn't always telescope-making?


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Should the E-ELT tag get "sent to the cornfield" and replaced by extremely-large-telescope?
When tagging What two "little observatories" run by a university in Chile and "by Germans" are near the future site of the Extremely Large Observatory? I typed "extre..." and saw no appropriate tag so I created

extremely-large-telescope 1 question

The extremely-large-telescope tag has no usage guidance, can you help us create it?

Then I though to type "elt" and found

e-elt 4 questions

Questions about the upcoming European Extremely Large Telescope.

I think that the "E-" prefix has been dropped as (according to the video in the question) they are waiting for money from Brazil, but I'm not sure about that.
Question: Should the E-ELT tag get "sent to the cornfield" and replaced by extremely-large-telescope?


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How to easily find & link to that amazingly helpful "How to find the positions of the planets and stars?" question with the big Community Wiki answer?
There's a question that goes something like:

How to find the positions of the planets and stars?

but that's not it exactly. One of the very early members of Astronomy SE started a Community Wiki answer which has grown to be an extensive and extremely useful list.
But I keep forgetting how to find this question. The community member is no longer with us, so I can't search by user anymore.
Is there anything that can be done to make this more readily accessible or at least more readily findable? It's such a great resource, I think many community members could benefit from knowing some "shortcut" to it.
If I could find it I could check how many times it's been linked to already, the number could/should probably be even higher.
I thought that looking for posts that contain skyfield and stellarium would be enough, but that search is not finding it though I am pretty sure the big wiki answer mentions both.
And unfortunately SE prevents us from searching for users no longer here. https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/search?q=user%3A21
Help!

Here's what I saw today that sent me looking for it

looking for a plugin or API for Moon-phases and sky-map

It is probably easier to find if you click Ask Question and enter your search terms.  The check for duplicates works much better than the simple search function.

@Chenmunka Oh that's a great idea, thanks! Yes I have found results sometimes remarkable, it pulls up my previously posted and forgotten question as soon as I start typing a few words, it's freaked me out on occasion! It's not working this time but it's probably because the words are almost orthogonal to what I'm trying somehow.

You could add a bookmark, 20 people already did so with this question. Then you'll just have to go to the bookmark tab in your profile to find it. Of course it could get tricky if you had hundreds of bookmarks, but you can sort them by vote, and since this question is at +35, it would probably show near the top. Also, once in your bookmarks you could narrow the search down by adding inbookmarks:mine to the search query.
Edit: There is actually an advanced search option to find community wiki posts. The boolean wiki can be set to wiki:1, wiki:yes or wiki:true to return only community wiki posts.

Yes this works nicely, cuz it's 21 now :-)

I clicked the "tags" tab, looked up "resource", which auto-completed "resource-request".  Then I sorted by vote-count and the question popped to the top!  However, this is probably just a partial answer, since I don't know how to make this question more findable/accessible. In fact, I am not even sure how to look at just our community wiki info.

The boolean wiki can be used to limit the search to community posts only.


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Stop the off-hand "this sounds like a homework question" comments that offer no guidance and raise false flags?
The recent comment This sounds like a homework/test question is

unhelpful as it offer no guidance and is not actionable
bad because it raises the false flag that there can be something wrong with questions about homework simply because they are about homework.

This is the opposite of being welcoming to new users, especially on their first question.
There is prior art on this here in Astronomy meta:

Homework policy
I can't find this site's "homework policy" or find out how "suspected homework question askers" should be treated

and in Space SE meta

Does this site have anything like a homework policy?

and generally the guidelines are that we can generally never know if a question is really about a homework problem that is due or not, and so the only way to proceed is to treat all questions the same; simply ask the OP to kindly add something that addresses

"What have you tried so far?"

and/or

"What research have you done?"

and to remind them that adding this kind of information is done in general and that you are not singling them out for special treatment.
"This sounds like a homework question" can sound to the OP like "I think you are trying to cheat" and it can make other users reading the comment (remember, comments can be read by anybody!) begin to believe that there is a rule against homework, which there is not!
What topics can I ask about here? (help/on-topic) and What types of questions should I avoid asking? (help/dont-ask) have no mention of homework whatsoever.
Question: Shall we stop the off-hand "this sounds like a homework question" comments that offer no guidance and raise false flags?

In fairness the same user later commented:

Astronomy SE, like all other Stack Exchange sites, are meant for Q&A. Sometimes we let by a few homework questions. See the meta discussions: Homework policy and What is the policy here on homework?

but the second item is 13 years old and way, way before Stack Exchange has become the nearly 200 separate sites and communities it is today and so probably irrelevant.
"Sometimes we let by a few homework questions." once again is both false and raises a false flag. There is no "letting" of a few homework questions. We treat all questions equally and we absolutely do not deem to have knowledge or suspicion of the OP's situation or context unless they share it.

I agree one shouldn't be too hasty, although the example you've given seems unambiguously a homework problem to me (or something that would usually be set as a homework problem). If the OP had said, "yes this is homework" (rather than claiming it was for a "project"), what do you think the approach should be?

@ProfRob That's an interesting question! Hmm... let me attempt to answer it cogently. I haven't been in a classroom since well before Hubble launched, but a few times I've written Stack Exchange questions that have sounded so much like homework questions I've had to include disclaimers like "I haven't been in a classroom since well before Hubble launched..." Some times good questions sound like homework questions because sometimes homework questions sound like good questions! That said, we should also absolutely strive to not simply do people's homework.

@ProfRob There is no perfect way to thread this needle. There is no reliable litmus test we can apply to a question or an OP that will return a boolean answer: answers will/won't be turned in as homework or help someone cheat on a stay-at-home examination due to COVID-19 lockdown. I think we intuit the situation 90% of the time correctly and ask for "what does your book say" or "what have you been taught so far on this" or similar, and maybe once in a while we've answered too completely and someone might have gotten a few points here or there. No system is perfect.

@ProfRob So if someone offers the information that it is about homework, then what should happen is what already does happen most of the time on self-identified homework questions, ask further questions about context if necessary, then offer some advice how to approach the problem but not answer the question. But is harm done if someone less insightful posts a complete answer that the OP can use as an answer on their homework set or take-home exam? Yes. Is harm done if we go after an OP because we have suspicion of homework that turns out to be incorrect? Yes. No system is perfect.

@ProfRob As a "Prof", I can imagine that students cheating on homework is something much more in the forefront and detection of it a real day-to-day challenge that I can't fully appreciate. This is Stack Exchange though, an ASCII exchange between mostly anonymous entities. It is a different world and therefore different approaches and rules apply. We can't intuit motives call out OPs as "suspects" of committing crimes of cheating, otherwise the site will descend into chaos. I think the least-risk-of-harm path is to do our best to hold back on non-self-identified possible homework questions...

@ProfRob and provide approach advice answers, and to perhaps simply ask "Is this homework? If so it's okay but we need to know more about what you've been taught" to see if we can find out. The "it's okay" part is to encourage honesty and some folks will be honest and some won't. It's analogous to some COVID-19 vaccination sites when you were supposed to be over 60 or have a medical condition, there were some folks that didn't meet the criteria but many sites never "carded" them for age or demanded proof of qualifying medical status. No system is perfect, we just aim for the least harm.

@ProfRob and in our case here, harm is beginning the practice of a free for all where anybody can call out in a comment that the OP is suspected of trying to cheat. If that becomes common and new users pick up on it and start going after random questions, the site can descend into internet chaos. We can't get into OPs' heads, we can simply accuse them. We need to be careful, and work with OPs and do the best we can.

@ProfRob edit: "then offer some advice how to approach the problem but not answer the question." means to go ahead and use SE answer posts or comments that offer approaches but do not offer complete homework-style answers, it does not mean to avoid using SE answer posts.

@uhoh There are people who ask questions in bad faith. Some of those bad faith questions are people who already know the only answer they'll accept. Another class of bad faith questions is questions who don't know the answer; they are trying to cheat on their homework or on a take-home exam. Helping those cheaters helps nobody other than the cheaters themselves, and it hurts the people who are trying to learn.

Even worse, cheaters continue to try to cheat after they leave school. They have no problem with leaking company proprietary data, ITAR-restricted data, or even highly classified data to satisfy their narcissistic tendencies. Even without leaking, they drain the time of others. I have been bamboozled by cheaters. I've even recommended that my employers hire them. When finally caught, it has ****ed me off. I do not look kindly on cheaters.

Regarding unhelpful as it offer no guidance and is not actionable: There is a simple way to make such questions actionable, which is to make homework-like questions an explicit reason to close. This rule works quite nicely at Physics.SE, and it would work well here as well. Most of the homework-like questions are drive-by questions (the questioner never comes back after not getting an immediate answer). There is no reason to be welcoming to obvious cheaters. They can go find suckers somewhere else, and if that fails, they can go to a pay site where the cheaters can get help, at a cost.

Well, uh, this is embarrassing. As the user who put these comments onto the post, I've learned the consequences of doing so. Originally, after seeing several posts that turned out to be homework questions get closed on various Stack Exchange sites, I assumed that homework questions are discouraged.
I responded to @uhoh's comments regarding the topic in concern:

Yes, I understand the counterproductivity of my actions and will work to improve them.

It seems like this has been happening too many times to me in the past few weeks/months (see Are my comments being poorly received?). I'm going into "voluntary suspension" regarding said close-reason comments. As @uhoh mentioned in a comment, there is no need for a mea culpa. I will avoid the generic and unhelpful "This sounds like a homework question" and take a break from closing new users' questions.
Feel free to express your concerns in comments.
For other users reading this post, take note that "...we should not judge or even try to infer the OP's motives or situation and view all questions on equal footing." (quoted from one of @uhoh's comments) Instead, try "What have you tried to solve your problem?" or "What research have you done?" If the OP doesn't respond or provide the necessary actions in a reasonable timescale (perhaps a week), vote to close. The instant close vote is unhelpful and harms the new user's first impression of SE, and also clogs up the review queues. This takes precious time away from other users and especially moderators, who already have plenty of work on their plate.

Of course, that's only if you think that way! Just focus on the homework issue not yourself. You're a top user here and a major contributor! There's no reason at all for a mea culpa

@uhoh I've edited the post to include your thoughtful comments, thanks! :)
Also, I've found another instance of said issue: https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/43336/31410

Excellent detective work, wow!

@uhoh I think we should keep the comments here for other users seeing this post.

oops! I missed your comment, somehow my screen didn't update and I didn't see your comment until now. I'm fine with that; I'll flag for moderator assistance to see if they can undelete.

@uhoh No worries, I stored them in a txt file :) You can do that too as well, if you like.

I have 190  comments here in meta and 4,842 in the main site, and in Space SE I have over 18,000! I've long-since stopped trying to save or sort them; life is short :-)

@uhoh I've only left 210 on the main and 25 on the meta, a miniscule amount compared to yours ;) It still is difficult, if not impossible, to track 200 comments, like you said, life is too short to dig through a few hundred (if not thousand) comments ;)

just stick around, you're on your way!

@uhoh Hmm, this is getting a bit off topic. Why don't we continue this in The Observatory, our chat room or create a new one?

I'm all chatted out; it's morning here and time to get off my duff and pretend to be productive. Feel free to continue in either place and I'll pick it up later.

@uhoh Unfortunately, moderators may not be able to undelete comments, according to here

@fasterthanlight We can't undelete user-deleted comments, but we can undelete moderator-deleted comments.

@uhoh Permission to edit my post to include the deleted comments?

@fasterthanlight There must be a reason why moderators can't do it, so it's probably not a good idea to do something even a moderator isn't allowed to do. I think the 'this sounds like a homework question' issue is resolved.

Astronomy SE is a bit odd (in my view) in having no policy on closing homework questions. If homework-type questions get answered regularly (whether they actually are homework or not) the site will fill with homework questions and that's far more of an issue than clogging up of the review queues (e.g. only 16 in the close queue today and I think it rarely gets much bigger).
As an astrophysics professor who at present is forced to set online, uninvigilated examinations, I regard the answering of straightforward homework problems as a bad thing. The example given at the top of this question is a really clear example of someone appearing to ask (innocent until proved guilty and all that) for a simple homework problem to be done for them. The stone-cold give-away is that the OP ends with "Find the apparent magnitude of first quarter moon."; i.e. not even a question; it is an instruction, just as you would find on an exam or problem sheet.
Personally, I would like to discourage people from asking questions like this. Aside from the question of their motives, such questions are next to useless in terms of helping any other reader in the future. They are usually not very searchable and because they are so specific in terms of asking for some numerical answer to a particular problem they are rarely of interest to anyone but the person that asked.
That's not to advocate being rude (and I'm sure I have been guilty of the "this looks like your homework" comment in the past). However, sometimes it is so obviously someone's homework that the comment is apt - and I believe your example is a case like that. If it isn't homework then I don't see why a poster should be offended, especially if it is obvious that their question does look very much like it is. And if it is their homework, I don't really care if they are offended or not and if it discourages them, so much the better. Saying "this looks like homework" does not violate any site policies does it?
Maybe my future comment would be: "This looks like your homework. Such questions are rarely of any use to others unless they are made less specific and are of more general interest. Some people on this site are very much against answering such questions."

+1 I saw your comment on the question above and added a lengthy response (including oblique reference to your situation) before seeing that you've posted an answer. I think we're substantially in agreement. My concern is more that if "I suspect you of cheating" comments proliferate and inexperienced users start doing it too often the quality of the site is damaged. I very much like your solution which is to leave a longer and actionable message than "This looks like a homework question", one that offers guidance as it agrees with Point #1 right at the top of my question:

"1. unhelpful as it offer no guidance and is not actionable". So I think we pretty much agree on most of the points. I think that we may be able to establish enough consensus that we can draft an actual blurb/statement to add to our help center, or our site policy meta post, or even consider a possible custom close reason that's kindly worded and includes actionable advice. By standardizing/codifying our thoughts on homework and linking to them we can then flag any comments that sound like "I think you are cheating" as no longer needed

As an aside, I cast the final close vote there. Right now "lacks details" is our standard close reason for this kind of question. The OP didn't choose to take any further action. As to "Astronomy SE is a bit odd... in having no policy on closing homework questions." It turns out that I am the author of the 2018 meta question I can't find this site's “homework policy” or find out how “suspected homework question askers” should be treated and perhaps it needs a new answer as well?

Re "Some people on this site are very much against answering such questions." You can count me as  one of them. See my related answer. We should not be enabling cheaters.

In the early days of the internet I got suckered many times into doing people's homework for them. The "thanks for doing my homework, sucker" comment I received on the last time I did someone's homework made me very sensitive to homework-like questions.
It is odd that Astronomy.SE does not have "this is homework" as a reason to close. It does however have "Other" as a vote to close option, and the person voting to close has to fill in what "other" means. I have used that option multiple times to close homework-like questions, and others have agreed with me.
The question in question has all of the hallmarks of a homework-like question. There's no research, there's barely a question, and there's a statement that looks just like a homework question. Another dead giveaway is that this question was asked, verbatim, on other sites. Most of the posts at other sites have now vanished because those other sites have a policy against "do my homework for me" questions.
We are not helping the people who post such questions learn by doing their homework for them. All we are doing is helping them to learn that cheating works. We are hurting rather than helping the cheaters' classmates who worked hard to solve the problem. They learned something in solving the problem on their own or as a group, and that learning will transfer to later times in their lives. But those honest people are competing with cheaters who, at least in school, can solve a problem with much less effort by simply spamming the homework question across the internet.
We should not be enabling cheaters.

The boundary between cheating and legitimacy is not clearcut. By way of analogy, with sports, taking a dive is illegal in soccer (football for the rest of the world) and can result in a card being shown. On the other hand, a player needs to show the referee that the player was fouled. One way to do that is with a bit of legal embellishment. Another example, from baseball: Pitchers need an extremely good grip to deliver some pitches. Hot, humid air from ones lungs helps. So does spit, and so does "spider tack" hidden on ones cap. Hot, humid air is legal. Spit and spider tack are not.


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Best way to refer to people in posts who have been knighted?

As per tradition, King Charles tapped May on the shoulder with a sword during the investiture

Source: BBC

Per Wikipedia we can see that Brian May has several accolades; he was a graduate student in Astronomy, became a famous rock guitar player with Queen, then finished his thesis, worked with NASA for public outreach (cd. music video New Horizons) to name a few, and of course most importantly (humor) has been featured here in Astronomy Stack Exchange.

Why is there free magnesium in the ecliptic (if there is) and why would some be orbiting within the ecliptic plane but retrograde? 1
this answer to What direct or indirect observations of dust can one make by eye or with binoculars?

In the above two posts (and a few in Space Exploration SE) I've referred to May with a "(CBE)" after his name, a bit like I refer to Sir Martin Polyakov and his videos in Chemistry SE
Recently May has officially graduated to "Sir Brian", cf. BBC's March 15, 2023 Brian May knighted by King at Buckingham Palace
If I were to update my posts, what would be the best way to properly refer to him? Perhaps:

Sir Brian May
Brian May (OBE)
Dr. Sir Brian
something else

1 Brian May and coelostat for capturing zodiacal light for spectral analysis:

Source

Here's a stereo photo of Bri from his site: https://brianmay.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/cropped-bri-home-stereo-cropped-feb22-768x510.jpg

According to De Brett's, and referenced in this Academia post you would expect to use Sir Brian May (OBE).
I have made the assumption that the most relevant use cases on that De Brett's page would be either Envelope or Legal Document.

Apparently, you can also use "Sir Dr. Brian May". See https://brianmay.com/brian-news/2023/03/congratulations-arise-sir-brian-may/

Well pardon my Irish backside but I'll happily refer to him as "Dr. May" (which is handy as my GP is called that too) but not by yon Imperialist title. :-)
OK, seriously, I think on a forum dedicated to science the "Doctor" honorific is surely more appropriate than anything else, as I gather he has a PhD.
That said we've never been a site where your credentials matter as much as your demonstrated knowledge, so maybe nothing would be better.
Either that or "MOQ" (Member of Queen) which I'm also cool with.  Surely better than some title they give to the likes of politicians.

I'm fairly well aligned with your sentiment on this. +1 I refuse to honor my other family's birthday because it's a silly concept and don't let them honor mine. They argue that while it's an arcane concept, it's just something one does, if for no other reason, then for the heck of it. Perhaps a similar argument works in this case?

Stack Exchange does not require formal terms of address.  So it is correct to refer to him as "Brian May"
I would expect the same for "Professor Stephen Hawking CBE CH"  (refer to him as "Stephen Hawking"
I would expect the same of "The Right Honourable Baron Rees of Ludlow OM FRS FREng FMedSci FRAS HonFInstP"  - Refer to him as "Martin Rees".
While it is normal and professional to use an academic title  (Prof. Hawking, Dr May) instead of "Mr, Mrs, Ms" There is absolutely no reason to use postnomials (either academic, fellowships, or membership of chivralic orders)  nor "Sir".  In particular "Sir May" is absolutely incorrect.
The simple guideline should be "refer to people by name".


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Are questions about phenomenon only observed in certain YouTube channels on-topic?
The question What phenomenon causes “lunar waves”? links to YouTube videos posted by individual contributors, one laments being ignored by the scientific community.
The comment exchange is extensive and I don't think it's worth reproducing as it reads fairly standard, "this is crackpottery and not science" versus "you need to keep an open mind and not be so dismissive".
I've voted to close as have several others, but I am searching for a better way to articulate why "phenomenon" which can only be observed in certain YouTube channels are not the same as actual astronomical or atmospheric phenomenon as a way to better codify which questions are not on-topic here in Astronomy SE.
Should this question be considered on-topic here?
 Source
Think what happens when a video camera with one frame rate is pointed at a monitor with a different frame rate for example. (from this answer)

If this is about "crackpottery", then I guess this might be a similar case on Physics.SE: Is non-mainstream physics appropriate for this site?. However, that's Physics.SE, not Astronomy.SE. Feel free to decide the site's policy independent of Physics.SE's policy.

@AndrewT. Thanks for your comment. I certainly hope Astronomy SE can continue to be more welcoming and less angsty than Physics SE. In Astronomy questions of the form "I saw X last night, what was it?" are generally welcome, and the concept of "mainstream" doesn't apply to personal experience. In a way, what I'm asking here is if questions of the form "I saw X last night on YouTube, what was it?" In this case the concept of "mainstream" can be applied, but the question is about the observation and not about the science forwarded in the videos, so it's tricky. Hmm...

I'm glad this has been asked on Meta, as it's a much more appropriate place to discuss how to approach such issues - comments or chat are limited in their usefulness.
My view is that this is shouldn't be about whether a question is based on evidence presented on "certain YouTube channels", but about whether the question itself has value.
So what is "value"?
Firstly, this is a science-based SE site, so there's no value in a question that has no basis in known physics. Any question that asks for confirmation or analysis of a non-science issue should be politely but quickly closed as off-topic. This would normally include questions about astrology, aliens, sci-fi time travel, sci-fi FTL spaceships, wacky personal theories, and so on.
However, the reaction on our part shouldn't be unthinking, uncritical or emotive: our response should be calm, rational and based on the individual merits (or failings) of that particular question. For example, a question about whether an astronaut on a round trip to one of Jupiter's moons would travel forward in time might initially look like (off-topic) sci-fi time travel, whereas I would argue it's a legit question about how time dilation works. However, I would VTC a similar question about a return journey to Proxima b using warp drive.
What about video clips?
It's a mistake to judge the message by the supposed worthiness of the messenger or the nature of their vehicle. There are plenty of high-quality video "channels" on Youtube that present sound science in a chatty or non-academic style: e.g. How to Take a Picture of a Black Hole (SciShow News). It would be absurd to close a question merely because it linked to such a channel. Equally, if an amateur uploads to Youtube their own video clip of a lunar eclipse and posts a question here about some issue with what they saw, I think most of us would be happy to treat that as a legit question deserving of an answer.
Yes, but astrology?
Our Astronomy community tends to be particularly sensitive to any post that even hints at an astrological angle. No doubt it's a similar thing to my physiotherapist's outrage at any mention of chiropractic manipulation, a palaeontologist's reaction to creationism, or an a sceptic's reaction to séances. Fair enough: astrology isn't science.
However, should an astrologer be barred from asking a question about astronomy? Should a question be closed because one of the two reference video clips was uploaded to Youtube by an astrologer? This seems like an overreaction. Again, let's look at the question itself, and the value it might have.
The actual question
We have multiple videos of a visual distortion smoothly propagating like a slow wave across the image of an astronomical object (mostly the Moon, but one of Jupiter as shown in this Meta question). What could be causing it? The original question is strictly about the science: is it "different refractive indexes" or "a wave propagating through the atmosphere?" No mention of astrology.
One source is an astrologer's Youtube channel, but the 10 clips he has put together include others posted independently on Youtube. All show the same visual distortion: either a "wave front" propagating across the whole image, or a "wave" slowly traversing the limb.
Suppose these clips had been compiled by a postgrad astronomy student instead of an astrologer: would we have had such a vociferous and denigratory reaction? I suggest instead that the reaction would have been "good question!" and the answers would have concentrated on the science and observations.
Is this question on-topic? Does it have value?
So, to the core of this Meta question... Yes, it's clearly on topic: it asks about a genuine anomaly in actual astronomical observations, and requests a science-based answer. The best answer (although by no means a good one, given such unnecessary polemics as "Smoke, mirrors and snake oil. Suckers are said to be born at the rate of one per minute. I have a feeling the con artist birth rate is up there as well.") provides a scientific explanation of the likely cause.
What diminishes the value of this question on our site is not the source of the videos but the quality of the comments and answers, which have given themselves up to unscientific prejudice, denigration, moralising and overreaction. If those involved were to edit out their personal denunciations and just stick to the science, the question and remaining answers would be a valid and worthwhile addition to this site, serving as a reference point for anyone who observes or reads about or views a video of this anomaly. And for those with a special tingling in their sceptic gland, the added value is that it clearly dismisses - in scientific terms - any possibility of etheric bubbles, alien thought waves, astrological pulses or other hocus pocus.
Downvote the question if you don't think it's useful, but it should only be closed if it fails to meet our site's criteria, and I don't see a convincing case being made for such a position.

We don't know that it is "a genuine anomaly in actual astronomical observations" or if it is calculated fakery, or something in between. I think it is misleading to call it that. Filming a monitor with mis-matched frame rates is not an "actual astronomical observation" in my opinion.

@uhoh I can't rule out fakery, but it seems highly unlikely given the diversity of images, sources, and "wave" types. As I noted, would you assume "fakery" if the main collection had been posted by a PhD astronomy student? Why is there such an obstinate determination to assume image manipulation when the most obvious explanation is that it's a simple artefact of the image production process?

@uhoh Nonetheless, I appreciate you posting this Meta question, and I respect the balanced way that you asked it. You and I have both fought to save reasonable questions from closure on this site, even if we have brought different interpretations to each case.


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I think that we have no good tags for solar-system-evolution or asteroid-formation or asteroid-evolution. Should we?
The questions

What is the YORP effect exactly? Is it just the non-central component of the Yarkovsky effect?
Where have all the Vulcanoids gone?

(and there are likely other examples) that ask about a process that spins up even large 100 km asteroids near the Sun and destroys them. They are about the evolution of objects in the solar system.
They are tagged with solar-system, asteroids and planetary-formation because we don't have tags like "solar-system-evolution" or "asteroid-formation" or "asteroid-evolution".
Should we?

How to use the tags specific-tag and tagging tags here in meta? Do we need all of them?

With +4/-0 votes on my question and no comments or answers to the contrary, I've gone ahead and created the solar-system-evolution tag. I've added 14 questions so far, and about once a week I'll add another group as I did here though I won't make a blow-by-blow list this time because this one seems more straightforward.
This will join the other evolutionary question tags:

stellar-evolution 167 questions
planetary-formation 111 questions
galactic-evolution 6 questions

I've added the following usage guidance:

Questions about the long term evolution of solar systems. For other questions about solar systems use the solar-system tag, for questions about star, galaxy or planet evolution use the stellar-evolution, galactic-evolution and planetary-formation tags.

I'm not yet sure what should be done about:

star-evolution 3 questions (possible future synonym for stellar-evolution?)
asteroid-evolution 1 question (possible future synonym for planetary-evolution?)

Be careful about the creation of new tags without user demand.
We had a discussion about this a couple of years ago on Space Exploration:
How is our tagging situation? What can we do to improve it?
In the time since then, Space Exploration's tag count has continued to grow at a higher rate than comparable sites (albeit, slightly less than before), and not only that but Astronomy's tag count has started to grow at a similar rate. The other sites have remained relatively stable in their tag counts.
Why is this an issue? As described at the linked post, this creates a lot of poorly maintained tags. Space Exploration's singleton tags have dropped a bit, but they remain much higher than comparable sites. Astronomy's singleton tags have leapt up significantly in the past couple of years.
It's not out of control yet, but I'm just advising some extra caution here.

FYI, uhoh, I put this on your post because, as with Space Exploration, you are by far the most prolific tag creator over here. You have created four times the number of tags as the next most prolific active user.

You've also created the most singleton tags. (Didn't realize I didn't have a query on hand for that!)

Yes that's the problem with big numbers; multiply by a fraction and you still have a big number. There has to be a most prolific person; it's not like if I wasn't it there wouldn't be one, and if I hadn't created those tags none of them would otherwise have been created necessarily. I'm happy to step up do some tag maintenance if I can help in any way. I'm probably never going to get good at SEDE but if there are ways to point me at my (or anybody's) singletons I can look at situations and propose courses of action for example (or just delete). I'm just not sure how/where to start.

I assume that's (one of) the reason(s) you've pinged me. I'm certainly not going to be creating more tags there.

...and if you divide my tag creation numbers by my question posting numbers, is the ratio still anomalous? Several stats about me may stand out at least partly because my overall level of participation during my active period also stands out.

@uhoh There's no doubt that your activity is higher than most, but that doesn't mean everything should be based on ratios. In this case, it's the raw tag creation stats that matter most, because it has an impact on the people who maintain them. It is unfair to create a large volume of tags and expect less active people to maintain them (not saying that's what you're doing, just saying this is why awareness of tag maintenance is important).

@uhoh SEDE is the easiest place to get a list of singleton tags, but fortunately you don't have to learn how to write your own queries. Here's one I wrote you can use: https://data.stackexchange.com/astronomy/query/1621298/list-of-singleton-tags. Singletons are just an indicator though of how well tags are getting used after creation--that's something important to keep in mind. Just managing singletons alone is not sufficient tag management.

okay I'm eager to identify what actions I can take to best do to my part for tag management going forward. I can run that script and see a list of 3 and 4 digit integers, are those id's of tags? Singletons? Created by me? How do I convert those integers to the actual tags so I can investigate? I understand the cautions expressed here and am trying to identify what remedies exist; things that are actionable; in what ways I can help to work towards "sufficient tag management".

@uhoh Whoops, apparently it didn't save my last change to the query. It's updated now, and it should show the tags directly.

@uhoh What really caught my eye here was that your instinct in this instance (albeit from a year ago) was to push out a new tag that no one expressed explicit interest in. Yes, there was no opposition, and there was some positive reception expressed through a few upvotes, but it takes more than just passive receptiveness to make a successful tag. A successful tag is driven by active interest by multiple users.

It was a rational decision based on the importance of the subject, not "instinct". My interest in it should count, so I disagree with "no one", and considering that I found 14 questions right away to add it to suggested to me that it would be a useful tag. Now I see that I'd planned on coming back to finish the work and I'm not sure I've done so, though it now has 23 questions. So if those 9 were not added by me then it seems that others have also found the tag useful.

I think that if you would like to find fault with me (and I'm sure there's plenty that can and should be found!) the creation of this particular tag is at least a suboptimal example. It's a good tag! Now I'll go check out the singletons and start working on my 2022 version of my tag creation mea culpa which also seems to have a helpful query.

@uhoh This is not a fault finding exercise. It's a word of caution because of a pattern I've noticed. You're welcome to do with that what you will.

Okay a pattern requiring a caution is not the same as a fault, I can see the distinction. I'm just going off of "What really caught my eye here" as an indication that this was a good example of it. In this case, in addition to feeling that it was a good tag, my answer indicates that I'd felt the +4/-0 voting on the question plus no negative comments (users or moderators) over a period of 6 months for folks to review was at least some evidence of tacit community approval. So there may be better examples of the pattern you've noticed and the singletons are likely the right place to look.

If I understand correctly, your linked SEDE is a list of all singletons, not just mine. If so, the query in this answer seems to be one way to identify tags that I am likely to have created (though it's not certain) so I can use that search and just look for the tags that have not gained wide acceptance, in order to put some hard data behind the pattern you've mentioned. I wholeheartedly embrace a pattern-finding exercise as long as the patterns are demonstrable. (probably needs to be modified somewhat)

I've just asned Can we see positronium in space? What could be learned from it and what are current challenges to doing so? I noticed that there's no ultraviolet tag even though the rest of the EM spectrum's (arbitrary) classifications seem to have tags. Normally after checking on that I'd just add a new ultraviolet tag fill in the obvious hole, but this mention of my "pattern" that needed a "warning" has been troubling me daily since you mentioned it. I don't think I've ever created a bad or un-useful tag nor violated any written guidelines?

Anyway I've just added the question to meta: An ultraviolet tag to go with our gamma-rays, x-ray, visible-light, infrared, and radio tags?


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Should questions about specific geographic features on rocky planets in our solar system be on-topic here?
Planetary science questions are generally on-topic both here and in Space Exploration SE.
The recent and rapidly answered question How can I find the depth of a portion of the Valles Marineris? includes the figure below, and the mapping and characterization of this kind of geographic data on rocky planets is done with spacecraft in orbit around the planet.
There are many well-answered questions in SpaceSE about specific geographic features on rocky planets. While not a priori off topic, I'm wondering if we should try to keep this class of questions in one site (i.e. Space SE).
This allows for linking related questions, which we can not do across different sites (currently).
This might include by extension radar mapping from Earth of the rocky planets as well, for which most of the questions are also in Space SE.

I would say the discussion of the process of exploring or mapping objects beyond the earth, with landers, orbiters, or flyby craft, would fall into Space Exploration, but the discussion of the actual geographic location would fall into Astronomy.
It is possible to discuss the Sea of Tranquility without discussing Apollo 11.

Yes, exactly this. :)

I would argue that even the sensors used by those landers, orbiters, or flyby craft are most likely on topic for this site. After all, questions about telescopes are on topic, with fifteen tags being specific to or related to telescopes.

I would say this would be on topic under our previous ruling that all planetary science that is not specifically Earth science is on topic here.

I agree that these questions are currently on-topic and tried to re-affirm that in the question. I'm asking if we should consider carving out a section and making it off-topic, so to my scope-carving question are you saying "no we shouldn't"?

@uhoh I guess I would say so. I think we should keep those on topic here. They are a big part of the broad field of Astronomy.


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Why are other questions about messages to aliens on-topic but this one isn't? Was answer-blocking premature in this case?
These seem to be accepted by the community

Who or what will the Arecibo message reach? +6, 1 answer
Is broadcasting the location of Earth to potential extraterrestial civilization regulated? +5, 1 answer
Can we conclude with reasonable certainty that there is/are no Type 3 Civilizations in our galaxy? +7, 2 answers

(there may be more, I'll do a more careful search if necessary)
Yet five people decided to quickly block anyone else from answering  Would it have been possible to send a radio signal towards ʻOumuamua? +2, 1 answer pending
One of those blocked was almost me; in mid-answer. It will be a good answer (I think); helpful to the OP and perhaps others.
I will include the distance to the asteroid from Earth from 2017 to the present, point out that a spacecraft in the Kuiper belt can certainly receive signals from us, though they are slow and it has to know the direction, time and frequency range to check.
But without four more re-open votes, nobody else will be able to post a better answer.
Must further answers be blocked here? Is this really off-topic? If so, why, while the three mentioned above are simultaneously fine?

Astronomy.SE Help gives no guidance as to whether SETI questions are on-topic or not. SETI is at least a respectable pursuit these days, although it was not always so.
The question that you are referring to seemed to be a bit "UFOish", which is why I voted to close it. Maybe there is a case for re-opening it. However, there is a big difference between conducting a systematic (and laborious) search for extra-terrestrial civilisations, where the chance of success still seems to be vanishingly small, and getting excited about some random asteroid that happens to pass through our solar system. Just because it appears to be highly elliptical in shape is not sufficient reason to assume that it must be an alien spacecraft.
Obviously, astronomers would love to get their hands on some interstellar rocks, hence the interest in possible meteor showers emanating from Oumuamua, but I wonder if the SETI crowd have pinged Oumuamua to see if they might get a reply? I very much doubt it.
I'm sorry that you had the rug pulled from under your feet. It never occurred to me that someone would attempt a serious answer. Voting to re-open.

Thank you for your thoughtful, speedy and helpful answer! It turns out the rug wasn't actually pulled, and I'm confused by this. On low question-rate sites like this my feeling is always that unless a question really needs to be closed because it is hopelessly off-topic or can't be answered because only opinions can answer it, there's no benefit to closure. It's a thoughtful, helpful community and usually things can be worked out in comments and if necessary the answer edited and improved. Insta-closure might be necessary in high question rate sites but probably not in the slower Q communities

Thanks for an important meta-question @uhoh, and especially for your comment on (@)Mick's answer. While your "insta-closure" label is a bit inflammatory, your comment is really helpful in understanding your position. I do get the point you're making. I also acknowledge your unstinting efforts at making newcomers to our site feel welcome.
I cut my SE teeth on [ELU.SE], which has very high traffic & an almost unmanageable number of genuinely bad questions - 150+ questions in the Close review queue isn't unusual. But you're quite right that the low traffic on [Astronomy.SE] doesn't warrant the same vigilance, and [note to myself ;-) ] we can therefore be more relaxed in assessing "borderline off-topic" questions.
We should remind ourselves of this site's purpose, which is set out in the opening paragraph of Astronomy [Tour] page:

Astronomy Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for astronomers and astrophysicists. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about astronomy.

The last 10 words are the key, and should guide us every time we review a question. Is the question about astronomy? If not, it should be closed. If it is about astronomy (as defined in the On Topic page in the Help Centre), has it been asked before (close as a duplicate), and if not, is the question clear enough to enable our site's community to deliver an authoritative answer? If the question is unclear, or needs further detail, or is too complex (eg too many questions & needs more focus), we can either edit it ourselves if the OP's intention is clear, or we should post a comment drawing the OP's attention to what needs editing. And we can VTC in case the OP fails to edit the question appropriately.
The grey zone is typically where there's something in the question that causes some in our community to think it's either not about astronomy, or it's pursuing an unscientific path of enquiry. There is certainly a knee-jerk reaction to anything that seems like it's about astrology (mention the word "zodiac" at your peril!) or weird hypothetical (like "would the Moon still cause tides if it was made of cheese?", or "What do you think of my theory that dark matter is caused by ...").
The question you've linked to is one of these "grey zone" questions, as it refers to the idea that ʻOumuamua might be an alien spacecraft. This is no doubt what prompted the VTCs. Nonetheless, your answer  to that question demonstrates that even if the question itself seems to veer towards being off-topic, a good answer can steer it back towards astronomy.
Referring back to my earlier quote from the Tour page: yes, this question does enable us to fulfil our site's purpose. Anyone searching our site for questions about ʻOumuamua will find a useful answer on how radio signals might be detected or received. Our library is improved as a result.
TL;DR: As a relatively young Stack Exchange site with a low volume of questions, we can afford to be a bit forgiving if a question strays into the grey zone, provided we can see the opportunity to steer it back via an authoritative answer using mainstream science.

Thank you for your thoughtful answer! I don't think that "ʻOumuamua might be an alien spacecraft." is even in a grey zone; it in fact might be, and astronomical evaluation and discussion is the only way to address that.

Thank you also for expanding on how low question rate sites can handle questions in a more thoughtful and genlter way than high-Q sites.


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Review count keeps increasing
I've was given the access moderator tools privilege (on Astronomy SE, not Meta) and I've found the review count keeps increasing.
I've cleared outstanding tasks on my list a couple of time now, but the count display (orange box, white number) keeps going up and when I click it after clearing tasks there is nothing to do (the detailed review and tools page shows zero counts).
I cannot find an explanation for this, so I'm presuming it's a bug, but maybe some of you know if it is or is not.
EDIT :
I note this has occurred elsewhere on SE but also on a Beta site.  So this seems to be a Beta site issue.  As it was referred to as being related to caching perhaps it's as simple as Beta sites not having caches updated as frequently.

See: https://space.meta.stackexchange.com/q/844/58

@called2voyage Appreciate the response, thank you.  That looks like my problem alright.

I have this problem from time to time as well.

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


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Astronomy Jokes
What are the best astronomy jokes you've ever heard? I'm looking for images; however, you can share whatever you like.

The IAU. There are more jokes about astronomers than about astronomy.

In space, no one can hear you laugh. @barrycarter That list should be sent as a SETI-message to the aliens. If they don't have a sense of humor, then we better ignore them anyway.

I moved the question to meta because it's definitely off-topic on the regular site, but still interesting enough that it should be appropriate somewhere.

You can always count on Sidney Harris.

You can also always count on Randall Munroe.

Thanks everyone for the links :) Is no earthling interested in posting an answer?

How many jokes per answer?

@DanielCann 400,000,000,000 would be a good start.

@LocalFluff I second that!!

This annoys so many chemists. :)

This is by far my favourite!

Say, that's funny as hell!

I like this one.

I dare an "answer". God's finger is a natural joke from the heavens. (Don't take it personally, it is meant to all of us)

A "positive thinking" interpretation is that it is turned away from us. As in f* all of the universe in that direction. I hope they don't mind, or don't have fingers, rather than having fingers but no minds. Nothing good will come out of this anyway.

Many with a master and even a PhD in astrophysics get a job in finance instead of in science. Because they know how to count numbers and such, which the economists are clueless about. The accountant sums the numbers a thousand and two trillions to two. Two numbers. Each one put in its own account box in the bank's Excel sheet. But considering the in/deflation and the trillions of dollars of dark deficit and the negative interest rate over spacetime, it seems as if the greedy astro students have made society a disfavour.

Three astronomers go out for dinner at a conference - an optical astronomer, an X-ray astronomer and a neutrino astrophysicist.
Incredibly, when the soup arrives, they all have a fly swimming about in it.
The optical astronomer uses his spoon to flip the fly out, splashing a lot of soup all over the table in the process.
The X-ray astronomer carefully fishes out the fly with his spoon, picks out the fly and drops the remaining soup from the spoon back into the bowl.
The neutrino astronomer does the same, but taps the fly vigorously, shouting "spit it out, spit out"!

What kind of songs do the planets like to sing?
Nep-tunes
What does an astronomer blow with gum?
Hubbles
A neutrino walks into a bar...and keeps right on going...
Yeah, these were awful but great...

Quantum mechanics = best mechanics

And this one is on my schools maths classroom

Poor Disney...

No matter how simpleminded the joke is, if it makes me literally laugh out loud, I am ethically compelled to acknowledge that.
I hereby do so acknowledge.

A galaxy walks into a tavern. The innkeeper shouts: "Hey you, get out, you're barred!".

How does the man on the moon cut his hair? Eclipse it.
Why does a moon rock taste better than an Earth rock?
It’s a little meteor
Why didn’t the Dog Star laugh at the joke? It was too Sirius
What does a star win in a competition?
A constellation prize
What’s the worst thing about throwing a party in space?
You have to planet
I'm sorry XD

Two spiral galaxies walk into a bar.
The first one goes up to the bar and asks for two drinks, one for him and one for his friend.
The barman looks suspiciously at the second spiral galaxy and says “I’m sorry but I can’t serve your friend, he’ll have to go.”
The first spiral galaxy complains, “Why can’t you serve him?”
The barman replies, “Because he’s barred.”

I might aswell add a classic joke.
Did you know entropy used to never be the same?
Here's another one.
What did Heisenberg say to Schrodinger when they were restrained from a fight?
Let me atom!
Atom, at him... I'm so good...

It took me 5 minutes to get the second joke (even though you explained it at the bottom)....LOL :)

Here’s one:
What do you call a peanut in a spacesuit?…  An astronut!
And another!
What is an astronaut’s favorite key on a keyboard?… The space bar.
And one more.. sorry, I love these!:
Why didn’t the sun go to college?… Because it already had a million degrees!

What was the star's least favorite type of music?
Heavy metal
Iron-ic
A star runs out of hydrogen in its core. When the doctor tells it to start fusing helium, the star says, "I'll try...I'll-pha get. Say it fast to understand. The doctor says "Don't forget ca-feed yourself helium!"
I'm Tauri, these jokes suck

A geek was hitting on me at the bar. I waved my hand, palm down, across the flat table and said, "What's this?"
He said "what?"
I said, "It's the Fourier transform of THIS," and gave him the finger.

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


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Can a vote to close be reversed if a user is removed?
In this question which I recently revised a user was removed of SE at least from Astronomy.SE. Can their vote to close on this question also be removed?
Can the Moon provide momentum to an object in Earth's orbit? Gravity Assisted Boost

There is a close vote by a moderator there. It seems that as soon as that happens, the voting ends and the close happens.

I would expect not. Account deletion preserves a user's (upvoted) posts and comments, because those contributions were judged by the community to have been made in good faith. Review decisions fall into the same category, only more so: review decisions have an element of timeliness that questions and answers do not. (Close and delete votes expire after a few days if no consensus is reached in the review queue.) Erasing a user's review history upon deletion would presumably mean that all their reviews would be undone, including reviews on spammy or abusive contributions that should not magically be re- opened.

If a poorly received question becomes the trigger to a suspension and then later is up voted becoming well-received could  the suspension or strike be reversed?

The various restrictions on the abilities of low-quality contributors to continue posting --- the automatic post bans and manual suspensions of various lengths --- are generally based on a pattern of low-quality contributions, rather than on any particular post.

@Muze Somewhere I've read it on the MSE. What counts: 1) count of downvoted posts 2) count of closed posts 3) count of deleted posts. | If you have a downvoted, closed and deleted question, it counts as -3. This is why it is not a good idea to own-delete posts to get out the autoban. The automatic bans are counting this history in the last X period. I suspect, something might be in the system to ease the lifting of the autoban, probably 1 or 2 upvoted posts are already enough to come back, but it is only my estimation without any proof.