text:
Let's get critical: Apr 2014 Site Self-Evaluation
We all love Astronomy Stack Exchange, but there is a whole world of people out there who need answers to their questions and don't even know that this site exists. When they arrive from Google, what will their first impression be? Let's try to look at this site through the eyes of someone who's never seen it before, and see how we stack up against the rest of the 'Net.
The Site Self-Evaluation review queue is open and populated with 10 questions that were asked and answered in the last quarter.
Run a few Google searches to see how easy they are to find and compare the answers we have with the information available on other sites.
Rating the questions is only a part of the puzzle, though. Do you see a pattern of questions that should have been closed but are not? Questions or answers that could use an edit? Anything that's going really well? Post an answer below to share your thoughts and discuss these questions and the site's health with your fellow users!

Final Results

To what extent are structure formations unexplained?

Net Score: 5 (Excellent: 5, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 0)

Do solstices and equinoxes shift over time?

Net Score: 5 (Excellent: 5, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 0)

Could black holes be creators of dark matter?

Net Score: 3 (Excellent: 3, Satisfactory: 4, Needs Improvement: 0)

What will happen to life on Earth when the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies collide?

Net Score: 2 (Excellent: 3, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 1)

Adjust axis labels in ds9

Net Score: 1 (Excellent: 2, Satisfactory: 1, Needs Improvement: 1)

Can an amateur astronomer bounce a laser off the moon?

Net Score: 1 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 6, Needs Improvement: 0)

Apogalacticon and Perigalacticon

Net Score: 1 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 5, Needs Improvement: 0)

Do solar systems have to evolve in a galaxy?

Net Score: 0 (Excellent: 2, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 2)

How would light from a blue or red star affect the way we see?

Net Score: -2 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 3)

Would it be possible to calculate the expected frequency of impact craters of all sizes on Earth

Net Score: -2 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 3)


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Let's get critical: Oct 2014 Site Self-Evaluation
We all love Astronomy Stack Exchange, but there is a whole world of people out there who need answers to their questions and don't even know that this site exists. When they arrive from Google, what will their first impression be? Let's try to look at this site through the eyes of someone who's never seen it before, and see how we stack up against the rest of the 'Net.
The Site Self-Evaluation review queue is open and populated with 10 questions that were asked and answered in the last quarter.
Run a few Google searches to see how easy they are to find and compare the answers we have with the information available on other sites.
Rating the questions is only a part of the puzzle, though. Do you see a pattern of questions that should have been closed but are not? Questions or answers that could use an edit? Anything that's going really well? Post an answer below to share your thoughts and discuss these questions and the site's health with your fellow users!

Final Results

Name of area close to Local Bubble?

Net Score: 6 (Excellent: 6, Satisfactory: 5, Needs Improvement: 0)

Why aren't there galaxy-sized balls of iron out there?

Net Score: 2 (Excellent: 3, Satisfactory: 5, Needs Improvement: 1)

Weight of a celestial body

Net Score: 1 (Excellent: 5, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 4)

How many light years away is Earth from the closest outer edge of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way?

Net Score: 1 (Excellent: 3, Satisfactory: 7, Needs Improvement: 2)

Original Hubble diagram units incorrect?

Net Score: 1 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 9, Needs Improvement: 0)

Which spiral arm of the Milky Way is Kepler-62 in?

Net Score: 1 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 7, Needs Improvement: 0)

Time after sunset until star can be seen

Net Score: -2 (Excellent: 3, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 5)

Is there a paper on galaxy mergers in clusters of galaxies?

Net Score: -2 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 5, Needs Improvement: 3)

Data for red-shifting

Net Score: -4 (Excellent: 2, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 6)

What is CMB radiation doing to the universe?

Net Score: -7 (Excellent: 0, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 7)

Net net score of -3. Ouch.

Generally, I didn't see anything that stood out as really bad.  Some of the questions show little interaction in answering questions. One question, one answer, no commentary, no discussion. (example 1, example 2) The first example is quite specific in nature, so  This wouldn't necessarily be bad, but they also tend to have only one or two points. I don't know about you, but from an outside look, finding a page with a question and a single answer with a +2 doesn't exactly scream reliable information, especially without supporting material for a discipline largely based in research and data.
While Astronomy may not have a very large volume of questions, we certainly have the resources within the community for improving the quality of the answers we already have.  For instance, this question which was included in the queue is extraordinarily detailed.  Perhaps not concise, but for users who are asking questions out of enthusiastic curiosity, a detailed answer can be very enjoyable and lends a great deal more credibility.
In general, I would say that all of the selected questions had answers that would be easy enough to understand to amateurs in the topic.
Notable, based on the users contributing to the selected questions, most users in Astronomy could be fairly easily distinguished as either 'askers' or 'answerers' with very few members who actively participate in both answering and asking questions. Additionally, at least two of the questions were asked by members whose participation seem to be limited to asking only that one question. This is not necessarily surprising considering that for many people Astronomy is a subject of curiosity rather than study.
Overall, the vast majority of questions in Astronomy.SE are answered. I think polishing existing answers or offering competing ones would improve the experience of outside visitors.

The first thread I reviewed during this site self-eval: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/18007240#18007240 Plagiarism is a serious problem and we need to root it out ASAP. Please, to all, be more careful what you upvote. Large number of questions here have been asked and answered before, so chances are pretty good that someone will simply "borrow" an answer. And we also had "borrowed questions" before, so that's also something to pay attention to. Our site's fate literally depends on this. Cheers!

I'm a new user (and a young one), so I might be able to provide an interesting perspective on how the site's doing.
Looking through the sample questions (and poking around the site in general), I noticed something that has been nagging me for a while, which is that the questions don't seem to generate a lot of answers. It is true that for yes-or-no questions (see here and here) it can be hard to give a variety of answers, and for identification questions such as this, there is really only one answer, but there are a lot of questions where multiple answers can be useful, such as this. Unfortunately, there are a lot of questions where multiple answers would be useful, but only a few are forthcoming.
The other problem is that we need more sources. It's been brought up on meta a few times, and each time it has been decided that it's important for people to cite their work - in fact, it would plagiarism to do otherwise. I've been trying recently to improve the quality of my answers by adding links and sources, and others have done the same, even using direct quotes

using this feature

but a lot of answers could be improved. The top users here generally explain themselves well enough without needing additional links to make their points clearer (and they generally do have sources), but links and sources on everyone's answers could really help the quality of posts on the site.

Re the first point, I don't see it as a problem. Astronomy is, at its core (not thinking here of cosmology and the cat in the box applications of it), an exact science and doesn't leave much room for either/or answers to well specified questions. So for those questions, one well written and thorough answer should do, and you'd only likely miss having more of them when the sole answer doesn't quite cut it. That's then a sign it lacks quality, not quantity of answers. Comparing [astronomy.se] with [worldbuilding.se] that is highly subjective / philosophical in nature is a bit unfair IMHO. ;)

I completely agree with the second point though. We'd need support from our community and its moderators though to enforce stricter qualitative norms / requirements. E.g., if you see an answer that is missing references and attributions, please flag them for moderator's attention with a custom flag and explain what you had in mind. Mods can then decide to either add a post notice (we have a few generic texts prepared to ask for citations or additional explanation), invite its author to improve it in the comments, or even delete it in case it abuses copyrights or anything like that.

@TildalWave Good point on my first point. A comparison would be pretty subjective, and I suppose there are many more cases where one answer is enough that I didn't consider.

I would agree with Tildal wave. Worldbuilding questions tend to involve creative responses that can vary a lot.  We tend to gauge answers here based on their accuracy, support, and in some cases argument. This does suggest we should edit more to refine answers where possible.
Another reason to consider this is that individually we don't always have access to the best material. Even working at a state university, I can't always reach the journals I would like to for support. Pooling our resources, we could provide much greater support in answers.

@TildalWave as already said elsewhere I disagree with being too focused on references and citetions. In it also possible for in particular well explained answers to theoretical questions (that involve LaTex) answers t be selfcontained without any need to rely on external sources, references, etc... I dont see why answers that do not provide external sources are aleays bad and should always be flagged.

@Dilaton That's not what I said, I haven't a clue what you're on about. My concerns are strictly qualitative, among which also e.g. plagiarism. Providing references (where available) and attributing sources should help avoid that, but I don't say anything about providing original contents. In fact that would be great IMO. What I said is if you see an answer that is missing references and attributions, so those that clearly use them yet fail to mention that, or those that could use some to improve on post's credibility (but the latter is a more subjective call so shouldn't be sanctioned).

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Let's get critical: Apr 2015 Site Self-Evaluation
We all love Astronomy Stack Exchange, but there is a whole world of people out there who need answers to their questions and don't even know that this site exists. When they arrive from Google, what will their first impression be? Let's try to look at this site through the eyes of someone who's never seen it before, and see how we stack up against the rest of the 'Net.
The Site Self-Evaluation review queue is open and populated with 10 questions that were asked and answered in the last quarter.
Run a few Google searches to see how easy they are to find and compare the answers we have with the information available on other sites.
Rating the questions is only a part of the puzzle, though. Do you see a pattern of questions that should have been closed but are not? Questions or answers that could use an edit? Anything that's going really well? Post an answer below to share your thoughts and discuss these questions and the site's health with your fellow users!

Final Results

How much mass does an object in space need to keep a human on its surface?

Net Score: 8 (Excellent: 8, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 0)

How can we tell that a short-period binary is tidally locked?

Net Score: 7 (Excellent: 7, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 0)

Could a close passing star be captured by the Sun's gravity?

Net Score: 4 (Excellent: 5, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 1)

How can a galaxy in-between our view and the galaxy behind it have a 'lensing effect'?

Net Score: 3 (Excellent: 5, Satisfactory: 4, Needs Improvement: 2)

Can planets inside the Earth's orbit around the Sun appear to undergo retrograde motion?

Net Score: 2 (Excellent: 3, Satisfactory: 6, Needs Improvement: 1)

Does one need to take into account finite gravity speed in N-body simulations?

Net Score: 2 (Excellent: 3, Satisfactory: 4, Needs Improvement: 1)

Does the cosmic microwave background recede at the speed of light?

Net Score: 0 (Excellent: 3, Satisfactory: 5, Needs Improvement: 3)

Would a killer asteroid shattered into thousands of pieces produce the same devastation?

Net Score: -2 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 5, Needs Improvement: 3)

Hubble HST scheduling algorithm

Net Score: -3 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 4)

What uncertainty does an error bar signify in astronomy?

Net Score: -4 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 4, Needs Improvement: 5)

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


text:
Interest in looking into adding the YouTube viewer?
Adding a feature to a site requires some investigation into community interest and to use cases. Here's a successful example. In that case the feature was MathJax and the issue was load time and server overhead or something to that effect. It took about 16 months!
I'm wondering if there is interest in adding the ability to view in-line YouTube videos to posts here in Astronomy SE? There is a certain level of parity between Space SE and Astronomy SE and I'm always surprised when embedded videos show there but don't show here. Latest example, probably not the best use case though
I'm curious if there is any interest in looking into adding the YouTube viewer here. Since it seems it can take a long time to do this, consider that we're talking about how we envision the future of the site and the field of Astronomy, and the astronomical data and content available in the future, and not only experience in the past.

@called2voyage We can turn this on but it'd really help if we had some great examples of times this would be beneficial to the answers on the site. There is always some concern with abuse and a lot of dead links since YouTube sometimes unexpectedly removes videos. This can be damaging to your content if the answer relies only on the video with no additional content, the answer becomes useless if the video dies.

@Catija We would not allow video-only or video-reliant answers. Videos would be for supplementary purposes only, as described in my answer below. We can definitely compile a list of example cases, if that would be helpful.

@Catija I started a community wiki answer of example cases below. You can see there are already quite a few.

@Catija I've added to c2v's list.

UPDATE: It has now been enabled on the site.

I'm going to hazard a guess that since this has a net score of 10 currently, which is an ample amount for Astronomy meta, the community is generally interested in this.
I could see it being useful in some cases as a visual aid for things that can be kind of hard to envision from a textual description, especially where a novice might not know what is being described in technical terms and a simpler explanation would require a lengthy detour from the main text.

If you update to mention this has been implemented (yay!) I can accept.

Examples where YouTube viewer would be helpful:

https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/35572/6
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/32069/6
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/11043/6
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/281/6
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/34531/6
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/33262/6
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/33391/6
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/1094/6

For at least half of these posts I would not have used the embedded video player because users here enjoy a clean look, but for some of them I've had to resort to screenshots or GIFs of the videos which is not ideal. In those cases an embedded viewer in a post would have been preferable. I haven't checked all of these but out of about 20 I did check I only found one that ESA had removed from their YouTube channel (the ESPRESSO spectrometer for some reason)

V838 Monocerotis "light-echo" images morphed into nice video, but why so few original images? vid: In Space, Echoes of Light | Out There | The New York Times
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/32534 vid: Missions we Lost When Apollo was Cancelled
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/35638 vid: Tracing the 2017 Solar Eclipse
How deep is the "A" Fraunhofer line in the solar spectrum? Is it from the Sun's or Earth's atmosphere? vid: NASA | Seeing Photosynthesis from Space
When will the next transit of Earth be visible from Mars? Was the last one really on May 11, 1984? vid: 'Transit Of Earth' by Arthur C. Clarke read by himself
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/29608 vid: Near-Earth Asteroid 3753 Cruithne
What exactly are infrared dark clouds and what is the significance of the orientation of their magnetic fields? vid: Why NASA's SOFIA Telescope On A Plane is "Perfectly Balanced"
How exactly will DESI simultaneously capture individual spectra from 5,000 galaxies using optical fibers? vid: A 2dF night at the Anglo-Australian Telescope
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/27643 vid: NASA Jets Chase The Total Solar Eclipse
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/33335 vid: How to capture star spectra in your backyard
What is the LSST's plan to address frequent satellite trails in data? vid: Spy Satellites (from Deep Sky Videos)
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/29658 vid: What Rock Star Brian May Discovered About Interplanetary Dust
How do radio astronomers avoid having their receivers burned out by ground-imaging radar from satellites? vid: AAS 235 Press Conference: Astronomy Confronts Satellite Constellations
PLAYS! https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/35967/7982 vid: SpaceX Starlink satellites train seen from earth - Strange lights in the sky
What can be learned from, or noted in this LIGO Orrery video? vid: LIGO Orrery
How are all the intermediate images between the "lensed" and "unlensed" endpoints of this video generated? vid: SPT0418-47: lensed view to reconstructed view
What experiment does this "Tracing the History of Starlight" video try to explain? vid: Tracing the History of Starlight with NASA's Fermi Mission
Stellar nurseries in the "Shedding New Light on the Whirlpool Galaxy" video vid: Shedding New Light on the Whirlpool Galaxy
How did they make a video of the center of the galaxy, and what is it exactly that's flashing there? vid: ESOcast 173: First Successful Test of Einstein’s General Relativity Near Supermassive Black Hole
Questions about Hubble's brand new view of an interstellar comet (video) vid: Hubble's New Image of Interstellar Object
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/32021 vid: LIGO Orrery
How long can afterglow last after a fireball? vid: Perseid Meteor Shower - Mojave Desert, California
What cluster of stars is this with a "dark donut" to one side? vid: Spy Satellites (from Deep Sky Videos)
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/34916 vid: DKIST first light high-resolution video of solar granules and DKIST First light video of solar granulation (wide angle)
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/28152/7982 vid: I made a CAMERA LENS with an ICEBERG
What is causing this strange shimmering pattern of light during a total solar eclipse? vid: Space Station Transiting 2017 ECLIPSE, My Brain Stopped Working - Smarter Every Day 175
What is the large astronomical instrument shown in this 1918 eclipse expedition photo? vid: 100% Total Solar Eclipse
Questions about amateur astrophotographer Nik Szymanek's telescope vid: Spy Satellites (from Deep Sky Videos)
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/32113 vid: NASA'S NICER Does the Space Station Twist and Unlocking Secrets of Neutron Stars with NICER
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/29949 vid: SpaceX Crew Dragon Returns from Space Station
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/33096 vid: Earth from Himawari-8 satellite
What does this "web on the surface of the Sun" image reflect? What does 789 nm show us? vid: DKIST first light high-resolution video of solar granules and DKIST First light video of solar granulation (wide angle)
Why did the distribution of asteroids discovered in 2010 have a radial modulation? vid: Asteroid Discovery - 1970-2015 - 8K resolution
Why is the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (WFIRST) coronagraph considered "beyond-state-of-the-art"? vid: NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope: Broadening Our Cosmic Horizons
Which telescope's model is being shown to Albert Einstein in this file footage? What event might this be? vid: Why does time pass?
Why does the closest approach of star S2 to Sgr A* not appear to be near the focus of its elliptical orbit? vid: The star S2 makes a close approach to the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way
Why are Delta Aquariids "for the southern hemisphere" while the Perseids are "for the north"? vid: How to spot Comet NEOWISE, plus the largest 3D map of the Universe | Night Sky News July 20
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/29493 vid: Footage: Chang’e-4 making soft landing on the Moon’s far side
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/30078 vid: Moon Setting Behind Teide Volcano
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/35408 vid: lagrange points animation
How might WFIRST help us better understand dark energy? vid: WFIRST: The Best of Both Worlds
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/33695 vid: Hubble's New Image of Interstellar Object
How did TESS scientists choose which stars to observe at a "2 minute cadence" in each field? vid: Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)
At what latitude could Orion's belt and Aldebaran be ~10 degrees above the horizon at the same time? vid: The Mystery That Keeps Neil deGrasse Tyson Up At Night
How do they measure sub-centimeter wave height on a moon of Saturn? vid: The Mandelbrot Set
What exactly is the relationship between the orbits of Neptune's moons Naiad and Thalassa? vid: Neptune Moon Dance (Naiad and Thalassa)
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/33753 vid: testing Hoya UV & IR Cut Filter
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/24043 vid: Precession of the earth
Why is the opening in the Anglo-Australian Telescope's dome so small? vid: A 2dF night at the Anglo-Australian Telescope
Are there any ways in which the light time difference between the center and the edge of the solar disk is noticeable? vid: New space discovery has astronomers buzzing
How will nearby galaxies some day expand beyond our horizon? (Neil deGrasse Tyson) vid: The Mystery That Keeps Neil deGrasse Tyson Up At Night
Why does the solar wind switch to flowing straight by the time it reaches Earth? vid: 5 New Discoveries from NASA's Parker Solar Probe
Basic explanation of baryon acoustic oscillations; what if anything is actually oscillating? vid: The eBOSS 3D map of the Universe and SDSS releases largest 3D map of the universe ever created
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/31650 vid: 173 Kiloton Explosion Over Bering Sea Was Asteroid Breaking Up
How do magnetic fields mess with astronomers' observations? vid: The biggest black hole burp, a wobbly Milky Way & Betelgeuse is brighter | Night Sky News March 2020
What allows WFIRST to have similar resolution to Hubble over a 100x larger solid angle? vid: WFIRST: The Best of Both Worlds
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/32605 vid: ESOcast 173: First Successful Test of Einstein’s General Relativity Near Supermassive Black Hole
How did they make a video of the center of the galaxy, and what is it exactly that's flashing there? vid: ESOcast 173: First Successful Test of Einstein’s General Relativity Near Supermassive Black Hole
Can the interferometer called "Gravity" measure "a few centimeters on the Moon"? vid: Interview with Reinhard Genzel (in English)
How does this telescope work, and what is it for? vid: How Large Can a Telescope Be?
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/20034 vid: A Day Over the UK
What do "star noise" and "sky noise" refer to for TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite)? vid: Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)
Why were two galaxies named "The Sagittarius Galaxy"? Is this common? vid: Dwarf galaxy collisions make stars form in Milky Way
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/33401 vid: Tracing the 2017 Solar Eclipse
Does Arecibo's secondary optics compensate aberrations when viewing farther away from vertical? vid: Arecibo Uncut: Under the Dish with Phil Perillat
How can I hear (or at least detect) a pulsar at home? vid: Using Relativistic Raytracing &X-Rays To See Detail on Surface Of Neutron Star
Why does the neutral hydrogen velocity have this characteristic behavior in the galactic plane? vid: A new all-sky survey of neutral hydrogen
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/34531 vid: The Harvard Computers - Origins of the Stellar Classification System and The Glass Ceiling and The Glass Universe and Dava Sobel: The Glass Universe
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/32786 vid: Imaging the Unseen: Taking the First Picture of a Black Hole - Katie Bouman - 6/7/2019
How far have stars been seen beyond the center of the Milky Way? vid: ESOcast 173: First Successful Test of Einstein’s General Relativity Near Supermassive Black Hole
Would an extremely bright star produce same kind of shadow band effect as seen in solar eclipses just before totality? vid: Space Station Transiting 2017 ECLIPSE, My Brain Stopped Working - Smarter Every Day 175
How was Earth's "quasi-satellite" 2016 HO3 "first spotted" and it's orbit determined? vid: Asteroid 2016 HO3 - Earth's Constant Companion and The Trajectory of the Strange Object 2016 HO3
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/36012 vid: The Glass Ceiling and The Glass Universe and Dava Sobel: The Glass Universe
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/31825 vid: The Equivalence Principle
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/29115 vid: A 2dF night at the Anglo-Australian Telescope
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/29973 vid: Rough cut video of AMC-9 satellite on Friday night and Telkom-1 Satellite Debris Incident
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/25027 vid: Asteroids In Resonance With Jupiter and Asteroid Discovery - 1980-2012 - UHDTV
What telescope is this, and how does it work? vid: Amazing piece of metal (speculum)
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/18525 vid: Beehive Geyser Eruption Sept. 20, 2013 -- Yellowstone National Park
V838 Monocerotis "light-echo" images morphed into nice video, but why so few original images? vid: Hubble: Timelapse of V838 Monocerotis (2002-2006)
Did NASA/JPL get "waning" and "waxing" backwards in this video? vid: What's Up: September 2019 Skywatching Tips from NASA
Why does the eclipse in this video look annular? vid: Solar Eclipse | Incredible Footage From Flight

surprisingly, the video in https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/35967/7982 plays already!

@uhoh Maybe they already turned it on.

but the links at the bottom of this don't show https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/29973/7982

@uhoh Hmm...strange

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


text:
Is this a duplicate tag?
Here on page 9 of the tags list, there's a tag named "foundamental-astronomy", which seems to be a duplicate of "fundamental-astronomy". The tag description is the same, and when I click on it, it goes to questions with the "fundamental-astronomy" tag.
Is it a duplicate? Or possibly an alternative (British?) spelling? Should we remove it, and if so, how?

The tag foundamental-astronomy has been marked as a synonym of fundamental-astronomy. Users can't actually use "foundamental astronomy" - everything automatically routes, corrects, and or renames to fundamental-astronomy.

Okay but it begs the question of why it exists then.

No idea. Perhaps someone kept using it, so the synonym was added.


text:
Spectroscopy Spectrometry Spectra and Spectrum tags; is there room for some consolidation?
Here are four related tags and their current question count:

spectroscopy (100) (101)
spectra  (60)
spectrum  (13)
spectrometry  (10)

Here are three related questions about them:

As terms and as techniques, spectrometry is distinct from spectroscopy, but I am not sure we need both tags to distribute questions between. Would there be any harm in consolidating them under spectroscopy?
Any harm in consolidating spectrum and spectra under the plural form? (singular/plural issue)
Any benefits or harm to then (eventually) consolidating spectroscopy and spectra?

I think that synonymization might be the thing to do, but honestly I don't understand the options and tradeoffs to propose anything with confidence.
There is some fairly obvious re-tagging that could be done right away (I'll put a list here in a while) but I didn't want to start doing that until some discussion here first.

All of them have a substantial number of questions, but you are right that spectrum should be consolidated under spectra. Otherwise, I think we should probably leave them be, but spectrometry needs a tag excerpt.

okay I'll add a spectrometry tag excerpt, and double check that each of those 10 questions actually meant to use it.

@uhoh I went ahead and merged spectrum into spectra and created a synonym.

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


text:
What is the difference between the "chemistry" and "astrochemistry" tags?
Both the chemistry and astrochemistry tags have over a dozen questions.
However there are only four questions that have both tags, and three of those are mine, probably in anticipation that they might be merged in the future.

Do we need both as tags?
If so, what is the difference?
If not, should they be merged?

Here are questions that are tagged chemistry, categorized by how well I estimate that astrochemistry would suffice and a separate chemistry tag would not be needed. I'm wondering if "chemistry" is even the proper tag or something like "geochemistry" or "planetary-chemistry" might be a better name for it.

astrochemistry tag will probably suffice:

Have caged molecules ever been observed in space? unless Rob Jeffries’ “clathrates” end up being on/inside planets
Why was helium hydride (HeH+) the universe's first molecule?
What is the organic material in Saturn's rings?
Is the composition of stars in future made of more and more heavy elements?
What is the distribution of organic compounds in the Milky Way Galaxy?
What happens to oxygen produced on the Sun (or other stars)?
Why are there no green stars?
Why is there so much methane in space?
Internal heat and planetary differentiation

Not sure, depends on what astrochemistry means:

Is there any difference among exoplanets in composition due to host star?
What is germane doing in the atmosphere of Jupiter?
What aliphatic compounds were found on Ceres, and how where they identified?
What factors influence the Widmanstätten pattern in iron meteorites?

astrochemistry probably not the proper tag:

What could be the possible origin of boron found in the Martian soil if not from ancient groundwater?
Massive degraded impact crater on Mercury - chemical evidence?
Statistics of elements abundance in exoplanets
Can a planet with a hydrogen atmosphere have a water ocean with dissolved oxygen? (closed)

I don't think we need both tags. I suggest merging the chemistry questions into astrochemistry, as we have astrobiology but no biology tag. I don't think we should create a synonym between chemistry and astrochemistry though. chemistry only has four uses this year, so I don't think it will be a big deal to retag manually in the future. That said, we should keep our eyes out for questions that use chemistry for questions that are not related to astrochemistry (e.g. planetary geochemistry). If we have any of those, we should keep the chemistry tag and add a tag wiki to clarify its use.

for my own reference (I can't keep them straight): What are tag synonyms and merged tags? How do they work? I'll check the existing chemistry questions for non-astrochemistry instances, msg here if I find any.

@uhoh Did you see any non-astrochemistry instances?

yes I saw quite a mix, and decided it's best to look at all of them to see what the pattern is. Then got distracted. I'll review them all in the morning. Thanks for the ping.

I've updated the question.

@uhoh I think for the purpose of this site, the "not sure" section can be considered astrochemistry. One of the four "not astrochemistry" questions is closed, so that really only leaves three to be concerned about. Is that enough to justify the continued existence of a chemistry tag? Particularly, those three questions are all more than two years old. Maybe we should just untag the four outliers and merge the rest.

Yes I see what you mean. Given all of that, it seems like a good idea. Even if askers start typing "chem..." the astrochemistry tag will immediately appear for them.

@uhoh All right, the changes are done. [tag:chemistry] should have no questions on it now. We'll just have to make sure it doesn't get used again and it should eventually disappear.

wow that was quick! yes, it shows empty for me. Thanks for your help.


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Strange problem creating sunspots tag & should we have a sunspots tag?
As was noted in comments below the question Is the longitude assigned to sunspots spherical or projected? it is impossible to create a sunspots tag.
Trying to do so results in the error message:

The tag [sunspots] is too similar to [sunspots]. If you think this new tag should be allowed, discuss it on meta.

I wonder if the tag existed once? It seems to be on some kind of "no-fly" list now.

Why does this happen exactly?
Should we have a sunspots tag?

I wonder if the tag was blacklisted in order to favor another tag that never got created, like the newly added [tag:solar-activity]. If so, I have no memory of it. A member of SE staff made [tag:sunspot] a synonym of the blacklisted [tag:sunspots].

I made a suggested [solar-activity] tag in the meantime as it could be more generally applicable. Could also have a [stellar-activity] for magnetic-related phenomena (spots, flares etc) on other stars

Some feedback from the CM team suggests this is actually a bug, not a blacklisting.

I've recreated the tag but if you want to keep it around for more than six months, find another question to add it to or give it a tag wiki. Or, if you decide that you don't want it, just remove it from the question and it will go away in 24 hours.
This hinges on a prohibition in tag creation coupled with a synonym where the master is deleted.
Long ago we made it so that the singular and plural versions of a tag could not be user-created - because usually that'd be confusing to have both except in rare situations. In many cases, if the singular tag is created first and someone wants to have the plural instead, it's possible, it just requires a mod to intervene to "force" the tag... and by "force" I mean to create it because they're exempt from the plural check. The other option (which is available to all users) is to remove the tag from all posts, wait 24 hours for it to be deleted, and then create the plural tag.
In this case, hairboat was super helpful by not only creating the sunspots tag, but also synonymizing sunspot to it to prevent both being used separately... unfortunately, in your case, the tag only got used on one post and was deleted.
The chain of events, as far as I can see is:

The "sunspot" tag is created.
Someone realized that it should be plural ("sunspots") and asked for help to pluralize it.
hairboat created a synonym on September 24th 2013.
The tag only appears on a single question so after (about) six months, the system deletes the tag (April 19, 2014).
An attempt to recreate the tag (today) fails because the synonym exists but is pointing to a non-existent tag plus users can't create tags that are too similar to other tags.

Some notes:

If a moderator had tried to create the tag, they should have been able to just fine because they're exempt from the "too similar" rules just as I am.
The tag is not blacklisted and never was.

This is a suuuuuuper rare thing, I'm guessing... it's probably pretty uncommon for a tag with a synonym that's only one character off (plural) to get deleted and then tries to get recreated. Without the tag synonym, nothing would have stood in the way of creating this tag.
So, while we could probably poke at this and figure out how to handle this more gracefully, I'm not sure how pressing it is. Also, since mods can already override the tag creation, there's sorta already a solution.

The first bullet in the notes is wrong. I tried creating the tag and it would not let me.

And I don't think the general situation of having single use tags get synonymized like this is rare. We have a number of them on Space Exploration. Because the community over there is more proactive about tag wikis, those didn't fall prey to this problem, but in communities like Astronomy where tag wikis are created less often I could see it being a problem.

@called2voyage There's 5 single-use tags with synonyms on SE.SE and none of them are one-letter-off tags.

That's why I said general synonym situation--but maybe I overstated the case.

My guess is that the single-letter-off thing is what's really causing the problem. So, if you had biscuits -> cookies and cookies was removed, you'd be able to recreate cookies just fine... but I could be wrong. If I'm correct, though, I think it's pretty rare. That said, I'm not sure why you couldn't add the tag... you should have been able to.

Fair enough. Any insight into why I couldn't create the tag?

Just saw your edit--well, I guess that's a mystery unless this issue comes up again.

Probably worth noting in the answer though

Can you try to add "coordinates"? I see that "coordinate" is a tag but I'm guessing "coordinates" may be better? Alternatively, any other singular-> plural change (stars, planets)? ... what is y'all's policy on plural tags?

We haven't made a policy, but I think we prefer plural.

That's what most sites opt for, if they pick. I notice y'all have a bit of a mix so this might be a good chance to think about it. :D Because everyone loves tag discussions!!! (just kidding... sadly, most people find them annoying). Anyway, I'm a fan of plurals so if you want to test it, let me know whether you have issues with that.

It let me create the plural form, but I'm not sure this is a good test case, because in the case of sunspots the plural already existed but had aged away.

I mean, you can test that, too... create a plural form, remove it, wait 24 hours for the tag to get deleted, try to create it again. If anything, I'm guessing it's the synonym that caused the problem but it's all pretty simple to test if you're patient. :D

True, I guess I'll go ahead and test that.

@called2voyage Did you get the same error message about the tag being too similar? Or did something else go wrong when you tried to create it?

@AdamLear Same error message

@called2voyage Huh. Taking a look through the code, I have no idea what happened here. Could dig more, but as Catija said, this is a rare occurrence. Please let us know if you hit something similar again, but for now I think we can let it be... and maybe blame some sort of a celestial body for being in retrograde. Or sunspots. :)

@Catija it works! For what kinds of solar research does observing a total eclipse during a sunspot minimum “reduce the amount of 'clutter'”? Thanks for your help!


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Difference between resource and reference-request tags?
Resource Recommendations to systematically develop a foundation via Self study in Astrophysics/Astronomy? had the resource (25 questions) tag which I didn't see. Instead I just added the reference-request (20 questions) tag.
Now it has both.
reference-request has no usage guidance, but resource says:

Questions asking "What is a good book about X?" or more generally, "What should I read to learn about X?", typically where there is not a single authoritative reference. Also requests for multimedia, like video lectures.

Question: What is the difference between resource and reference-request tags? Do we need both? What is good usage guidance for reference-request that defines it and differentiates it from the other?

Resource is the older one, so it was probably intended to capture such requests, and someone who was unaware of the tag likely created reference-request later because that was the pattern they were more familiar with from another site.

@called2voyage I just realized that that someone might be me? This now feels vaguely familiar; knowing that there was a resource-request tag in Space SE I may have "discovered it missing" here without checking to see if there was something serving its purpose already? Now that they are merged I can't easily see, but it might have been here?

I was the OP of the question that uhoh mentioned in the question and I just used the "resource" tag to search for questions similar to mine. The presence of two similar tags of the same meaning is just misleading and may cause the creation of more duplicate and redundant questions.
So, unless the two tags do have different meanings, is it possible to merge it?

This seems like a good idea to me too, thanks! There could be a theoretical distinction (reference might be a citation of a publication, resource might be a book or website) but I don't think that distinction would be useful, and instead they'll probably get both used somewhat randomly. I agree merging is probably a good idea.

@uhoh My suggestion would be to either 1) merge the newer [tag:reference-request] into the older [tag:resource] or 2) merge both into a new [tag:resource-request], to be more explicit and capture the broader usage you mention in your comment.

@called2voyage both sound good to me; I like how the second one works but either is fine.

@uhoh Since no one jumped in with a contrary opinion, I went ahead and merged according to option #2.


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Is TESS a sky-survey? Is the tag sufficiently broad for all kinds of surveys?
The sky-survey tag currently has 21 questions after I added it to Any plans for TESS after it finishes northern sky survey?
For background, Wikipedia's Astronomical survey says

An astronomical survey is a general map or image of a region of the sky which lacks a specific observational target. Alternatively, an astronomical survey may comprise a set of many images or spectra of objects which share a common type or feature. Surveys are often restricted to one band of the electromagnetic spectrum due to instrumental limitations, although multiwavelength surveys can be made by using multiple detectors, each sensitive to a different bandwidth

I just want to double check if sky-survey is a sufficiently general term to apply to all types of surveys. TESS is an exoplanet survey and does indeed look for specific things though it doesn't a priori look at specific targets.

also note: "There is no usage guidance for this tag … yet!"

I think sky-survey is totally fine. Among astronomers, these are normally just called "surveys" because the "sky" part is implied by context and the background of the people having  the discussion. For the more general audience of SE, putting the "sky-" prefix before it helps remove any ambiguity about what is being surveyed (and would be in good company of probably the most impactful sky survey SDSS - the Sloan Digital Sky Survey). As for TESS, 'Survey' is in its acronym...

This works for me, thanks! I've written a short definition, feel free to edit further. https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/tags/sky-survey/info


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Need help with a proper Sunyaev-Zeldovich-effect tag
When posting Why does the first measurements of the thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect from ALMA show a temperature decrease and not an increase at the cluster? I tried to add a Sunyaev-Zeldovich-effect tag. I copied "Sunyaev–Zeldovich effect" from Wikipedia and added a second hyphen, but the first dash was not recognized by the tag generating algorithm as a candidate for a hyphen, so now we have a sunyaevzeldovich-effect tag rather than a sunyaev-zeldovich-effect tag with two hyphens.
Trying to create the doubly-hyphened tag is rejected as being "too close" to an existing tag.
I think in this case I need some help from moderators to delete the existing tag?
Then I plan to create a good tag and add it to:

Non-thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect
Why does the first measurements of the thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect from ALMA show a temperature decrease and not an increase at the cluster?
Explain as simply as possible how the Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effect is used to estimate the Hubble constant

and perhaps

How is it determined that the X-ray and radio intensity come from a magnetic field bridge between two clusters of galaxies?
Is the universe macroscopically transparent to CMB? Is the fraction intercepted by stars and dust so tiny that it doesn't have a correction factor?

Alright, I fixed the tag. Feel free to tag other questions.


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Do we need both ephemeris and ephemerides tags?
I just noticed that we we have both ephemeris (35 questions) and ephemerides (6 questions) tags.
I can't see how the six questions that have ephemerides need it, and I'm guessing that ephemeris is all we need, but I could be missing something.

shameless plug for my English SE question How to pronounce “Ephemerides”?

Pretty sure we don't need both, but not sure which the community thinks should take precedence, so I'll wait to see what answers we get.


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Should we at least temporarily ban chatbot-generated content (e.g. chatGPT) until it becomes clearer what it means for Stack Exchange?
Higher question-rate sites have already addressed chatbot-generated posting in an essentially universal negative way, for example:

Stack Overflow: Temporary policy: ChatGPT is banned

How can we determine whether an answer used ChatGPT?
Why was my answer deleted for using ChatGPT even when I didn't?

Politics SE: Use of ChatGPT to provide answers links to main meta:

Could ChatGPT be a viable way to answer people's questions?
Ban ChatGPT network-wide

Math SE: What is our policy on AI-generated content?

Help Center: Why posting GPT and ChatGPT generated answers is not currently acceptable

Recently a bit of ChatGTP was added to a question by the author AFTER the question was already answered by the same user. They properly cited the generating website and made it clear what was being done, but it seems almost gratuitous ex post facto chatbotting.

Can we simply multiply a positive value to each pixel in order to enhance contrast and to discard Time Delay Integration technique?

Question: While this is being sorted out in the greater Stack Exchange Ecosystem of communities and some guidelines and procedures are worked out, should we at least temporarily ban chatbot-generated content in Astronomy SE?

this was also posted in Space SE

Behind the scenes, we have already taken moderator action against a user for ChatGPT, but I support having a clear policy answer on it to avoid confusion.

See also: Is there a list of ChatGPT discussions and policies for our sites?

Yes.
We should, at a minimum, temporarily ban chat generated content on Astronomy SE.  This content doesn't cite sources, generate mathjax, and it isn't the original work of those who might post it.  Even when quoted, chat generated content is not, as itself, an authoritative source, so it has no place on the SE.
Instead of having a separate specific policy against posting chat generated content, I propose we adopt the policy from the helpdesk linked by the OP above: Why posting GPT and ChatGPT generated answers is not currently acceptable.


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Why was my answer deleted?
Not sure if this belongs here, but I had an answer with 47 upvotes, and it was just deleted an hour ago with no comment. I lost 470 rep from that. Could someone explain how it broke the rules?

That was an accident. I apologize for the mistake. I have undeleted your answer.

Somehow it was deleted again. I undeleted it.

Er, it still says it's deleted.

Refresh........


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What are the intended boundaries of this question and answers community?
Is the intended group to be serviced by this Q&A community the professional and semi-professional amateur astronomers on specific technical questions. Or is it intended to include astronomy hobbyists, or members of the general public type questions?
Professional astronomers have their own channels to date (I assume - like email), though as a small international community (relatively speaking) such a Stackexchange Q&A community could be useful and an asset I would think.  Then there are the hobbyists with technical questions like: tweaking camera software, telescope drives, photo analysis, analysis of variable star light curves, current aspect of astronomical objects being observed, those kind of things.
If it is just to be professional astronomers, given the level of public interest people will find this community and ask basic non technical public interest questions. Like "How is a planetary nebula not a planet?" type questions. An explanatory header could make it clear such questions are for other sites like Wikipedia.
One could consider two groups, Astronomy Professional, and Astronomy Amateurs. However any professional group is going to receive a lot of questions from highly keen inspired non-professionals, and likely to the point of the professional group not being useful. On the other hand, Stackoverflow seems to manage that boundary well in their version of it, software GUI users versus programmers. But then Stackoverflow have a much larger level of participants as a professional and hobbyist group to handle new interested programmer questions, help vampires, post redirects, etc.
Also, again related to boundaries, where should a question on a python package like Glue in the raft of astronomy python packages be posted? Its an overlap of either Stackoverflow or Superuser depending on the nature of the question. At this point, being a python package, I think the latter, however techniques and strategies for use may be of topic in this Q&A group.
Then there is the question of this Q&A community vs Space Exploration (which I ran into posting a recent question). What tolerance to the overlap should participants or moderators exercise? I am not sure it is meaningful to seek to discriminate too tightly on this boundary.
I think a key division is interest questions on astronomy vs technical questions related to doing astronomy. For the first there is Wikipedia and other question and answer sites, the latter for a Q&A community like this.

I featured this question because of the great answer by HDE 226868.

On the subject of how well a professional-level group can fare in a Stack Exchange environment, an important reference is MathOverflow, which is a thriving community of professional mathematicians with questions at a level that generally require at least a partial undergraduate education to even make sense of. There are many things that come together to make MO successful (not least among them the existence of the lower-level [math.se] site, and some very strict policing) and this may not be the place to discuss them, but it's an important reference point.

So a degree of separation of two interest groups was part of the success with MO? Would that be a correct understanding? @EmilioPisanty

There's a bunch of things going on, and several years of history (including the fact that MO was separate from SE until rather recently). Part of the reason that MO can fend off non-professional content is that there is a ready-made place for that content to go; it used to be closed with a comment to re-ask on MSE, and now it just gets migrated. (For a sampling of the types of questions, use this query, though it's hard to judge numbers w.r.t. other sites.)

However, it is also important to note that this is not the only thing going on; as another reference point, several attempts to start an MO equivalent for physics have failed to come together meaningfully. (In particular, a Theoretical Physics SE site folded. The current effort is PhysicsOverflow.) There is definitely something about math that makes it particularly well suited for professional discussion online, and physics struggles a bit more on that front. No idea about professional astronomy, though.

Valuable input I think. I wonder if a split to two or three: Astronomy Knowledge (general knowledge questions on astronomy), Astronomy Amateur (technical questions on conducting astronomy as an enthusiast, focus on gear, current phenomena in observation, camera's, observing sites, data processing at amateur level), and possibly Astronomy Professional Technical (with no obligation to simplify their Q&A down for public level). This last does not include theoretical Astronomy, Cosmology. That goes to Phys and Math sites. Astronomy Amateur becomes the key technical repository.

My concern with the above suggestion is that it dilutes the member case to much, so achieving the first two in the one group - ie current arrangement does seem to work best.

@EmilioPisanty That may be a valid option once Astronomy is as big as Math or Physics, but for now I don't think there is enough momentum to create a separate professional community, as Cam_Aust pointed out.

@called2voyage Yeah, I definitely don't think that there's anywhere near enough traffic for more than one astro site (and indeed, I'm just hoping that this site doesn't fold like the previous try). I'm pointing out these examples as important points for reference and comparison. Yes, it is possible to build professional communities within the SE engine. No, it is not easy. Yes, you do need to learn from the (different) communities that came before. No, you do not need to imitate them to the letter.

@EmilioPisanty Thanks, I appreciate you contributing to the discussion!

@EmilioPisanty A year ago Stack Exchange changed its policies and removed the up or out requirement that was killing niche sites due to low question volume.  As long as the moderation is still functional they won't pull the plug on any more low volume sites.  http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/257614/graduation-site-closure-and-a-clearer-outlook-on-the-health-of-se-sites

@DanNeely Yes, I'm aware of that, but that doesn't mean you've got enough traffic to spare that you can branch out into three distinct astronomy  sites. Or maybe you do have some awesome site stats to show? Either way, the point is secondary to what I was trying to say.

First, I'd like to establish that I'm someone currently trying to make the transition from an enthusiast to a professional. I'm entering college as an astrophysics major after four years of self-teaching myself physics and astronomy, so even though I've been learning to think more technically, I'm still an amateur.
Now that that's taken care of, I'll address the level of questions being asked. I joined Astronomy Stack Exchange almost a year after it entered beta, so I wasn't there for the early scope discussions. That said, I've done some research, and my impressions are that the types of questions being asked haven't changed much over the last two to three years. Non-technical, general interest questions continue to dominate the site. This is interesting to me, because most of the other science sites on Stack Exchange get far more questions from students (regrettably, many coming from homework problems). However, Astronomy contains many questions asked by those from the general public, with absolutely no technical background.
Is this a bad thing? That depends. One year ago, I became concerned that one site I moderate had a decent number of experts, but they weren't asking questions - merely answering them. I asked about this on Community Building Stack Exchange, with mixed results. One view holds that it's okay; experts may have fewer questions. Another suggested that the experts need to be incentivized a little to ask, because they might fear their questions won't be answered for quite some time. Neither seems to indicate that it's a problem if experts continue to not ask questions, but I disagree, as have many others before me.
The concern you've raised has been around since the beginning. It was first brought up in Balance between professional and enthusiast questions in private beta; Jon Ericson expanded upon this in Let's ask more meaty questions! (and that was later acted on in Everyone ask ONE expert question today!), because way too many early questions could be answered in less than 60 seconds by a simple web search. As far as I can tell, really easy questions are less of a problem nowadays. In that specific sense, Astronomy is doing a little better. However, the level of questions is still distinctly non-technical, and I think this is holding back quite a lot of experts.
Personally, I want to see way more technical questions being asked. I find a question that asks about, for example, an open problem regarding certain stellar magnetic fields1, or one about coronal heating, to be much more interesting than a basic question about the differences between different types of black holes2. That's just me, of course, but I find that the first type really make me think about the problem. If we get more technical questions, I think we'll encounter some more stimulating problems - even ones that the average person can understand and wonder about.
How we do this is a bigger concern. We obviously can't force experts to ask questions, and many, as far as I can tell, have never asked one. This might be a chicken-and-egg scenario - the experts don't ask questions because there are no technical questions asked and thus it seems unlikely that they'll get expert answers, and there are no technical questions asked because the experts don't ask them.
We then go back to the question I asked on Community Building Stack Exchange. The answer that suggested incentivization mentioned that self-answered questions might be a good idea. Self-answering on Stack Exchange has always been encouraged, so I don't think there will be much opposition to the idea from the community. If a professional feels like it, he or she can write up a question about a recent problem they came across, and write an answer detailing how they solved it. The audience that can fully understand this will be significantly, significantly smaller than the audience that can fully understand a question like Why is only one side of the Moon visible from Earth?, but I don't see that as a problem. People will still read it, people will still appreciate it, and hopefully it will encourage other technical questions.
Self-answers aren't, of course, the only way to do this. We could try to bring back the crusade in Everyone ask ONE expert question today!; if there's widespread support, maybe it could lead to change, jumpstarting people's interest in asking more complex questions and pondering more technical issues. This needs to be a site-wide effort, however - as will any other solution.
I suppose that this answer has morphed into a call to arms on the part of all Astronomy Stack Exchange users. Perhaps I'll ask it as a separate meta question, but the bottom line is this: We need to ask way more technical questions. If we don't, then comments like this one by Rob Jeffries on Physics Meta may hold for the rest of Astronomy's life:

More (high level) questions about astrophysics ... ? There is very little astrophysics on Astronomy SE (and even fewer astrophysicists) and the questions/answers have a very different flavour. You would rarely get many upvotes for a chapter and verse mathematical explanation of something.

We need to improve on this. Now. If we make this change, it can turn the site around, broaden its audience, increase its traffic, and make it healthy again.

Footnotes

1 Inadvertent self-promotion. My apologies.

2 I know, how supermassive black holes form is still an interesting and open problem, as recent questions have shown. But still.

A few other notes, not related to my main point that we need to take action:

I strongly disagree with the sentiment behind the following paragraph:

I think a key division is interest questions on astronomy vs technical questions related to doing astronomy. For the first there is Wikipedia and other question and answer sites, the latter for a Q&A community like this.

called2voyage expressed the same thoughts: Not all non-technical questions can be answered on Wikipedia, as I think a solid look around the site would show.
I really don't know where the python question you asked about would be best on-topic, as I've never done programming for a task like that. Plus, I'm not fully knowledgeable about the scopes of Stack Overflow and Super User.
There's always been some overlap (and thus confusion) in the scopes of Astronomy Stack Exchange and Space Exploration Stack Exchange. The communities do have different dynamics and different members, but there's a striking amount of overlap in these areas nonetheless. My basic summary is that information about spacecraft operation are on-topic only on Space Exploration; on topics such as planetary science or on experiments done by spacecraft, there are a lot of grey areas. Again as called2voyage said, check out each site's helper center and tour, and browse the questions a bit a lot.

Anyway, I'm going to stop writing before my answer rivals War and Peace in length.

First, I understand the hesitation to write a War and Peace length response, however, some issues require a considered more lengthy response. That such an effort can in the long run be time efficient.  It reads well, cogent, informative.

I agree Wikipedia does not answer everything. However, many simple questions can be answered, and you cover this well as a portion of the questions asked.  As for more technical and professional questions, in good measure, the lack of such questions was in part my reason for asking my question. You seem to be in a very good position to map out these issues to get Astronomy right. I think the boundary issues I raise does need more reflection, debate, consensus defining, and then promotion for success of this Q&A group.

Should my background help, my passion from almost birth was astronomy, and was on the career path to be an astrophysicist. I worked within radio astronomy in Australia as support staff, eg Parkes Radio Telescope, and the Australian Telescope Compact Array, Narrabri, NSW. Unfortunately an undiagnosed and severe illness took out my completing my science degree and career. Decades later, I am recovering slowly.  Point is, in somewhat similar vein I am familiar with being within astronomical professional environments, amateur interest, and as public bystander.

Ironically, I am currently using astronomical software in a 4 year data collection and research project to identify factors and solve this now major new disease process to regain my science capacities. Bit late for a career in astrophysics though. I am also involved in a well organised proactive small rural village, Northern NSW, at elevation a little higher than Siding Springs observatory, interested in hosting an annual Star Party event, and with a small property possibly available as a host site for a net access telescope at about 1370 m elevation.

The Tour puts it well:

Get answers to practical, detailed questions

Professional or amateur, our site is meant to deal with questions that are practical and detailed. It is up to our site to help define those boundaries.

hobbyists with technical questions

Acceptable:
Problem with Dobsonian reflector telescope

professional astronomers[' questions]

Acceptable:
What is the Lyman Alpha forest Used For?

basic non technical public interest questions

Acceptable:
Does the Sun rotate?

However any professional group is going to receive a lot of questions from highly keen inspired non-professionals, and likely to the point of the professional group not being useful.

I don't necessarily see that as being the case. A professional is never obliged to answer a question--it is purely on a volunteer basis. In fact, often a professional is not even required to answer a basic question, since a non-professional who had read enough would be able to answer. Our site gives us lots of tools to help sort questions so that professionals can find those that they are interested in.

Also, again related to boundaries, where should a question on a python package like Glue in the raft of astronomy python packages be posted? Its an overlap of either Stackoverflow or Superuser depending on the nature of the question. At this point, being a python package, I think the latter, however techniques and strategies for use may be of topic in this Q&A group.

Some questions are acceptable at more than one Stack Exchange site. In this case, if your question about the software package is of particular interest to astronomers, then it would likely be well received here, even if it were also on topic at Stack Overflow.

Then there is the question of this Q&A community vs Space Exploration (which I ran into posting a recent question). What tolerance to the overlap should participants or moderators exercise? I am not sure it is meaningful to seek to discriminate too tightly on this boundary.

The community has defined some standards on this boundary already. You can check our Help Center for guidance on what topics are allowed, and if it is unclear or you have other questions you can ask here on Meta. Furthermore, if you ask a question that doesn't seem to violate the guidelines in the Help Center, then you should also ask a question here in Meta so that the community can work out what the issue is, or if our guidelines need to be revised.

I think a key division is interest questions on astronomy vs technical questions related to doing astronomy. For the first there is Wikipedia and other question and answer sites, the latter for a Q&A community like this.

Not all interest questions on astronomy are easily answerable through Wikipedia or other Q&A sites, so we do allow those that are not too trivial here, but we also highly encourage technical questions related to the practice of astronomy.

OK, thanks, that clarifies things a lot. I have clearly missed the link to the Tour. I am sure its obvious.

@Cam_Aust Under the "help" drop-down in the toolbar there is one item labeled "Tour".

Read the Tour. I guess I did need to ask the additional detail level to understand better.  Thanks. Onward...

For what it is worth, I think a more extended description of the boundaries and goals beyond the Tour may prove of value to orientate new comers and assist quality of participation.

Or re last comment, direction to the more descriptive information in help, which I just found as well.


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Can I migrate some questions from Physics SE to here that are in scope?
Is it ok to take my early questions, sharpen them up and repost them here?
1 https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/281828/if-earth-had-rings
2 https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/225693/using-a-naked-black-hole-as-a-mirror/225697#225697
3 https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/297890/rainbow-blackhole
4 https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/283322/why-is-venus-cloud-covered-but-not-in-an-ice-age
5 https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/297729/can-a-photon-that-is-emitted-from-a-denser-part-of-the-universe-to-a-less-dense
6 https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/226458/do-magnetic-fields-exist-beyond-the-gravity-of-a-black-hole
7 https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/226917/with-gravitational-lensing-could-we-see-our-selves-from-a-right-angle
8 https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/232862/gases-expanding-and-bonding-in-the-vacuum-frozen-clouds
9 https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/298346/are-most-galaxies-expanding-from-us-as-previously-calculated
10 https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/269934/extinction-level-meteor-effects-on-earths-crust-pending-on-the-surface-area-upo
11 https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/227738/time-dilation-equals-red-shift-looking-in-or-blue-shift-looking-out
12 https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/225680/what-is-this-black-hole-merger-orbital-speed
13 https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/225673/see-behind-the-black-hole
14 https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/232759/until-when-travel-the-particles-after-the-big-bang-with-light-speed
15 https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/229629/black-hole-matter-to-subatomic-exchange
16 https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/231561/super-massive-black-hole-and-photon-reduction
17 https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/243863/spacetime-mercury-vs-earth
18 https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/228379/does-the-size-of-a-naked-black-hole-make-a-diffrence-in-photon-sphere-proximity
19 https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/271148/black-hole-and-critical-mass
20 https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/231564/can-the-outer-most-layer-of-a-black-hole-be-composed-of-magnetically-trapped-pho
21 https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/234352/o-energy-asolute-0-matter-at-the-end-of-a-black-holes-acceleration-disk
Fell free to list the one that make a good fit or the bad ones that can't be helped. Some of the questions could be spit into 2 questions.

Repost, no. Put the links here, and if we accept, you can flag for migration on Physics.

@called2voyage Can you migrate them?

No, I'm not a mod on Physics. The Physics mods have to migrate.

@called2voyage may I put the link here and you can ok it. I want to work on them before they get moved. I cannot improve  them there.

I can ok receiving them, but you'll still need to get the Physics mods to migrate. If I do give the ok to receive them, then you can link here when you flag for migration and they should be ok with migrating them.

I can remove invalid answers if necessary.

Should stay on Physics

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/281828/if-earth-had-rings (Well accepted there, no need to migrate)
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/225693/using-a-naked-black-hole-as-a-mirror (Same)
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/297890/rainbow-blackhole (Same)
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/283322/why-is-venus-cloud-covered-but-not-in-an-ice-age (Same)
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/297729/can-a-photon-that-is-emitted-from-a-denser-part-of-the-universe-to-a-less-dense (Same)
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/226458/do-magnetic-fields-exist-beyond-the-gravity-of-a-black-hole (Same)
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/226917/with-gravitational-lensing-could-we-see-our-selves-from-a-right-angle (Same)
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/232862/gases-expanding-and-bonding-in-the-vacuum-frozen-clouds (Same)
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/298346/are-most-galaxies-expanding-from-us-as-previously-calculated (Same)
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/269934/extinction-level-meteor-effects-on-earths-crust-pending-on-the-surface-area-upo (Same)
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/227738/time-dilation-equals-red-shift-looking-in-or-blue-shift-looking-out (Same)
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/225673/see-behind-the-black-hole (Same)
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/229629/black-hole-matter-to-subatomic-exchange (Answered though not well accepted, but not a net negative score, too old to migrate)
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/243863/spacetime-mercury-vs-earth (Same)

Too old to migrate, but can be reasked here

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/225680/what-is-this-black-hole-merger-orbital-speed
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/231561/super-massive-black-hole-and-photon-reduction (It does have a couple answers, but I don't think it would hurt to reask with a clearer question)
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/228379/does-the-size-of-a-naked-black-hole-make-a-diffrence-in-photon-sphere-proximity
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/231564/can-the-outer-most-layer-of-a-black-hole-be-composed-of-magnetically-trapped-pho (Needs to be substantially revised)
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/234352/o-energy-asolute-0-matter-at-the-end-of-a-black-holes-acceleration-disk (Needs to be substantially revised)

Unsalvageable

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/232759/until-when-travel-the-particles-after-the-big-bang-with-light-speed (look up other questions about the Big Bang here)
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/271148/black-hole-and-critical-mass

I would also like to move my well received ones here to if they are more appropriate here?

@Muze Sorry, that's not how Stack Exchange works. If a question is on topic on it's original site (even if it is arguably "more" on topic elsewhere), we don't move it unless it is poorly received. Doing so would detract from the knowledge base that these sites are trying to build.

I re asked the first one on the list you gave me. Do I need to space them out time wise? Thanks

@Muze Just because it didn't get caught does not make it right. Those are considered cross-posts and are generally frowned upon.

If I had asked them in the right SE and took more time in details they would have done better. Some of them got completely different responses but had tags that would made a good question in 2 or more SE at a time but bad in others.

@Muze Just looked at the way you asked that here on Astro. It is actually a different question, though it has the same title. That kind of thing is fine.

Again I want to say thank for helping me with this. I will be using this as a guide to fix the ones there now that I'm off suspension on Physics.SE.

Well I got suspended again for target up voting. As you know I do up vote to lower voted questions and editing my questions.  Space SE if this is a problem can you let me know and I'll change the way I vote? I don't discriminate or favor anyone here or there.


text:
"Serial voting was reversed" while I have only one item to vote on
On Astronomy stack exchange I have only one item that people can vote on, a question from 2016. It was upvoted once that same year and gained another upvote in 2020. How can this be the target of serial upvoting? Today I got 1 such a correction for a score of -10, meaning that it must have been a short series.
Must I imagine that someone upvoted one of my contributions on another stack exchange site, then looked up my profile on astronomy stack exchange and found this question that was so beautiful that it also needed an upvote and that was it, and that's not allowed? Which is found out two years later? Is SE going to be like that?

To my understanding serial upvoting can mean that someone did a lot of voting in a short time, perhaps on many posts of different users. I don't think it always has to mean that it was focused on one user's posts. We all see these messages from time to time, I guess some user's voting spree just happened to include your post for one of its votes. I'm no expert and just guessing so I won't post this as an answer. For reference, I have a lot of posts and I get a message like this roughly once a week. It's just a sign that the SE site bots are doing their job. :-)

I'm here for the same reason. I don't exactly have a lot of posts or a lot of activity. It feels like the algorithm went a little rogue, at least for small data sets like mine https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/users/1315/eric-j?tab=reputation

I've added the [tag:status-review] tag, so that SE staff can take a look and make sure this is expected behavior.

Related MSE post: "Serial voting was reversed" on a community where I have only 1 post. As stated in Catija's comment there (referencing this answer by animuson to the question it was closed as a duplicate of): "The answer from animuson is identical to any answer that would be put here - it's the broader voting behavior that's problematic, not voting targeted at a specific person - we can't really explain each and every case of this happening."


text:
Could we change the badges to a saturn like planet?
On Bio SE the badges look like genes. Could Astronomy SE change the badges to a ringed planet like Saturn?

Sites get special designs when they "graduate". I'll explain more on Monday. You can also look up graduation on Meta SE for more info.

Building site design is a large effort, so this effort is limited to "graduated" sites. Further explanation is below.

What is graduation? From Graduation, site closure, and a clearer outlook on the health of SE sites - Meta Stack Exchange:

Graduation is a hard concept to pin down quantitatively, but we basically expect that a graduated site should be able to continue growing and governing itself indefinitely without any outside help unless something truly catastrophic happens.

User summary of graduation:

[T]here are six effects of graduation:

Site Design: [...]
Moderator Elections: [...]
Community Ads: [...]
Reputation Levels: [...]
Full migration target: [...]
Being listed in the footer: [...]

From What are the design elements that could be changed upon graduation of a site? - Meta Stack Exchange:

Each graduating site gets its own unique design theme created by Stack Exchange's professional in-house design team (currently Jin), working with other designers as needed.
So far, every site's theme has included

a custom logo and favicon
custom decorative graphics (or intentional lack thereof)
a consistent color scheme

Most sites have also received

unique fonts consistent with the site theme
decorative boxes and borders consistent with the site theme
themed badge shapes/sizes/colors (color referring to background color, not bronze/silver/gold)
themed tag shapes/sizes/colors
unique upvote/downvote/favorite button images

Some sites have other changes that have to do with their topics. Photography's top bar is organized differently to make room for a "featured photo." Unix and Linux has slashes prepended to the text of its header buttons to give the feel that those link to "subdirectories" of the site. And Apple's <kbd> markup looks like an Apple keyboard's key.

From When Will My Site Graduate? - Stack Overflow Blog:

How long can a site stay in beta?
The simple answer is, it takes as long as it takes. We'll wait. If a site needs more activity, go out and evangelize it. As long as your site shows steady progress and continues to make the Internet a better place to get expert answers to your questions, it will march on. We don't want to kill a site because it hasn't reached full status in 90 days. Nor do we want to set a hard 90-day limit and launch a site too soon.
There's more to the health of a Stack Exchange site than having a lot of questions and answers. There's an economy to the site with reputation as its currency, and voting drives that economy. A site absolutely needs on-going, sustained voting to build a class of leaders that help run and govern the site. Without leadership, there can be no community.
So from this point forward, the graduation date of a site will depend heavily on having enough users with sufficient reputation to properly lead and govern the site. It's much more important to graduate a site when it has become self-sustaining, and has established a healthy community of avid users, closers, and editors -- rather than imposing an arbitrary 90-day limit.
Thus, the order of launch will favor those beta sites which have achieved the most "excellent" ratings on our Area 51 stats panel. For everyone else -- keep going!

Also, now, graduation does not necessarily mean that we will receive a design right away. From Feedback Requested: Design-Independent Graduation - Meta Stack Exchange:

The Community Team announces that a site is cleared for graduation. Without delay...

the beta label is removed
elections are held
migration paths are set up
community ads are run
a link to the site is added to the footer

...Then, as it becomes available

the site gets their custom design.
privilege thresholds are increased to graduated site levels

Nice answer. It might be worth mentioning something about design-independent graduation. In the case of some sites, there's been quite a gap. On Worldbuilding, six months and one day elapsed between the graduation announcement and the launch of the design.


text:
What does a good "What is this thing in the sky?" question look like?
As per the help center,

Avoid asking questions about unidentified aerial objects unless you are prepared to provide detailed pictures and/or sufficient description to identify the time, location, and characteristics of the sighted object. Specifically, this is not a UFO reporting site, but identifying things in the sky is a part of astronomy. If you must ask about that thing in the sky, be prepared to explain a lot and add additional information requested by commenters, or your question may be closed quickly.

I've seen a fair number of questions along these lines. Many are not good, because they're basically, "I saw this light in the sky. What is it?" I've done some searching, but I really can't find an example that I think meets the criteria in the help center.
So, I have to parts to this question:

Do we have any really good "What is this thing in the sky?" questions we can reference in the help center?
If not, what does a good question in this category look like? Can we come up with an itemized list for a prospective asker to go over?

Here's one: http://astronomy.stackexchange.com/q/7753/6

These questions are generally very poor and I'm not sure they add anything useful to the site in terms of knowledge.
How many times have we seen the "moving flashing lights in the sky" type question ?
How many ways are there to say "navigation lights" ?
How many times is useful in terms of StackExchange's function ?
Yes, astronomy is about observation, but these questions are just not about astronomy.  They're about aviation most of the time and about people with too much imagination the rest of the time.
So could we just automatically close these ?  Pretty please with cream on top. :-)

The community would have to vote their approval to take such action, as in the past the community decided that these questions are on topic but should be strictly regulated. Fortunately, upvotes on this answer would be a good way to indicate community decision. I disagree, however, that we should close questions just because a certain topic is generally poor. That just means we should keep a closer eye on those questions.


text:
Should we have a speed-of-light tag?
I have seen a few questions relating to or using light speed. These seem to often be tagged with speed and/or light. I would think the speed tag would be better categorised as kinematics/motion sort of questions and light lends itself more to questions about the EM spectrum or visible wavelengths. Should we make a speed-of-light tag to be used for questions more about relativity/quantum/faster than light travel etc.?
Examples:
When stars explode why can we still see them?
Is there an objective difference between space expansion and reduction in speed of light
Is Darkness Faster Than Light?

Hm, can you show some examples?

I'm not sure if there's enough of a case yet with just those examples. The second question is the best fit out of those, and it is just tagged with speed, not light; and I think that's appropriate.

A couple of points:

Those were just a few examples, do you want an exhaustive list?
They are all discussing the speed of light as a concept, rather than the speed of anything else or the electromagnetic spectrum. I thought for people who have expertise in particular areas and want to answer questions, it would be useful to separate these concepts so people can easily find questions they know about.

Sorry, not trying to shoot you down, just trying to make sure I really understand the category of questions we're talking about here. I'm not sure "speed-of-light" is the best name for a tag, and I'm trying to think of ideas; but I need to know the subject area better. If you wouldn't mind, a longer list might be helpful.

@called2voyage Surprisingly,a "hubble-constant" tag exists, but no other.

I've thought about this some more. How about a more generic physical-constants tag?

If someone said "physical constants" to me, I might think of the speed of light, but also things like G (gravitational constant), permittivity of free space, Planck's constant, charge of an electron...
Many things would come under this heading which might not relate to the same kind of questions. However, I think it would be a good compromise, although it should be "constants" not "constant".

@FJC Right, that's why I said more generic. It would apply to questions of the other constants as well. There is some disagreement over whether tags should be plural or singular, but it does seem like plural would probably be better in this case.

@FJC And it looks like the tag "physical-constants" already exists for two questions! That is great because it means it is likely to be used.


text:
Tag synonyms for the Moon
We have three tags that should be synonyms: moon, the-moon, and lunar. Tags related to the Sun (the-sun and solar) have been marked as synonyms of sun, which is the master tag for this group. In keeping with this, tag:moon should be the master tag for questions related to the Moon.
There are a number problems with this, however. The correct tag for the Sun should be Sun rather than sun, and for the Moon, Moon rather than moon. This is not possible as SE tags are lowercased. Related to this is that there's a big difference between a moon (with a lowercase m) and the Moon (with an uppercase M). Despite the verbiage, there are already some questions tagged as "moon" that pertain to moons other than the Moon.
Another problem is that the tag "the-moon" has many more questions (247) than do the tags "moon" (32 questions) and "lunar" (10 questions). Making "moon" the master (without a capital M) will invite continued mis-tagging.
My proposal:

Make "the-moon" the master tag for questions pertaining to the Moon.
Make "lunar" tag a synonym of "the-moon".
Add a new tag "moons", a synonym of "natural-satellite", and retag the few questions tagged as "moon" that don't belong in that category as  "moons".
Retag as "the-moon" all the remaining questions tagged as "moon" that do indeed pertain to the Moon.
Lock the tag "moon" as ambiguous given the lowercase nature of SE tags.

I can't do the retagging presently; work beckons. I can undertake this effort later this evening, about 12 to 13 hours from now.

[tag:the-sun] and [tag:the-moon] are now the official tags. [tag:lunar] is now a synonym of [tag:the-moon]. [tag:moons] is now a synonym of [tag:natural-satellite]. Only developers can blacklist tags, but I don't think we need to blacklist [tag:moon]. I made it a synonym of [tag:the-moon]. Even though [tag:moon] is ambiguous, in most cases people will be looking for [tag:the-moon]. When they are not, they will see that they have not used the correct tag and can either look for another or seek assistance.

I have not done any retagging, so folks will want to keep their eyes out for Qs that need retagging.

I just retagged a bunch of questions that were tagged with [tag:the-moon], but just the obvious ones asking about moons of Venus (or lack thereof), Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus, Pluto, exoplanets, etc.

@called2voyage - Just to finalize this, make your comment an answer and I'll accept it.

the-sun and the-moon are now the official tags. lunar is now a synonym of the-moon. moons is now a synonym of natural-satellite. Only developers can blacklist tags, but I don't think we need to blacklist moon. I made it a synonym of the-moon. Even though moon is ambiguous, in most cases people will be looking for the-moon. When they are not, they will see that they have not used the correct tag and can either look for another or seek assistance.
I have not done any retagging, so folks will want to keep their eyes out for Qs that need retagging.


text:
Can we change the tags from sun to Sun and moon to Moon?
A recent question raised a problem with the current tags.
When referring to the Sun, our star, capitals should be used. This tag could rarely be misused, but that is not the case for the Moon, which orbits Earth and is distinct from a moon which orbits another body.
I think there needs to be some capitalisation of tags.

Tags are lower case by default. We could fix this by making the tags the-sun and the-moon as they are at Space Exploration.

Ok, the tag rename is complete.


text:
Merge [photography] and [astrophotography]
We have two very similar tags on the site: photography and astrophotography. According to the excerpts, the first one is for

Questions about photography of celest[r]ial objects by amateur astronomers.

and the second one for

Questions related to techniques and equipment related to amateur to professional astronomical photography.

Neither of them has a tag wiki. There aren't many professional (astro)photography questions for the second tag either, so can a ♦ moderator merge them, please? Since 'astro' is already in our site name, I'd prefer to keep the photography tag as the main one. I've suggested an edit to the excerpt to provide some usage guidance:

Questions about photography of celestial objects by amateur or professional astronomers. Questions about photography of other objects are off-topic but might be asked on our sister site Photography Stack Exchange.

I've merged [tag:astrophotography] >> [tag:photography].


text:
2021 Community Moderator Election
The 2021 Community Moderator Election is now underway!
Community moderator elections have three phases:

Nomination phase
Primary phase
Election phase

Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends on how many candidates there are.
Please visit the official election page at
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/election
for more detail, and to participate!
If you have general questions about the election process, or questions for moderator candidates, feel free to ask them here on meta -- just make sure your questions are tagged election.

I saw the nomination phase announcement, but I didn't see any other announcements. I guess we didn't have many nominations...

@PM2Ring Yes, I noticed that too. It felt like this election skipped straight from nomination to a winner being announced.

@PM2Ring looking at the election results page it says "2,024 voters were eligible, 0 visited the site during the election, 178 visited the election page, and 0 voted". It would appear that, with only one nomination, an election wasn't needed.

@AaronF Correct.  on the other side of the candidate card it said:  "This election was cancelled Apr 5 at 19:57. There weren’t enough candidates to proceed to the election phase.  The following moderators were appointed:"

You're all correct. ProTempore elections for Beta sites don't have to be competitive so if there is only one eligible candidate at the end of the nomination phase that person is appointed.


text:
Off-site Astronomy community promotion ads
Should we make some to help get some more traffic here from other stacks? Does anyone have design ideas?
For clarity, I am asking if we should make an ad for Astronomy.SE to put on other stacks. Astro is not ready for its own community promotion ads yet.

What are Community Promotion Ads?
Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will
  show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this
  question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are
  provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be
  shown.
Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?
This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to
  visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following
  things:

the site's twitter account
useful tools or resources for physics research
interesting articles or findings for the curious
cool events or conferences
anything else your community would genuinely be interested in

The goal is for future visitors to find out about the stuff your
  community deems important. This also serves as a way to promote
  information and resources that are relevant to your own community's
  interests, both for those already in the community and those yet to
  join.
Why do we reset the ads every year?
Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other
  things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads
  every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served
  their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This
  helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject
  matter of the community, but to the current status of the community.
  We reset the ads once a year, every December.
The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an
  ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very
  valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good
  idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the
  process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale
  after a year of exposure.
How does it work?
The answers you post to this question must conform to the following
  rules, or they will be ignored.

All answers should be in the exact form of:
[![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]

   [1]: http://image-url
   [2]: http://clickthrough-url

Please do not add anything else to the body of the post. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.
The question must always be tagged with the magic community-ads tag. In addition to enabling the
  functionality of the advertisements, this tag also pre-fills the
  answer form with the above required form.

Image requirements

The image that you create must be 220 x 250 pixels
Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)
Must be GIF or PNG
No animated GIFs
Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB

I think it's definitely the time to do that. We had nice success with [space.se] community ads placed on other, graduated and suitable [se] sites for promoting our cause that have this feature enabled. I've been gathering a few ideas for [astronomy.se] too, so I'll post my suggestions as soon as I get the time to (it does take quite some time to fiddle with, optimize for size and get the texts right). ;)

Backyard astronomy: "Reflections"
The idea is to present astronomy as an activity available to everyone. The Moonrise is exaggerated in size to suggest magnification of even the hobbyist grade equipment like the ones depicted (refractor, reflector and binoculars), the numerous observers represent the helping community of people sharing same passion, and reflections in water represent experience. Strong, contrasting colors and shadows are intentional to help improve ad's visual impact. The main font used is "Rockets" in golden color of Moon's reflection and white "Man on the Moon" O's decor.
Ad hypertext:
[![Astronomy Stack Exchange][1]][2]

  [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/HQ5S2.png
  [2]: https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/

Main image:

                                                Click for poster size (880x1000 px)
Posted on:
These are the Stack Exchange websites that the ad is currently competing for rotation frequency with other advertised community promotion ads:

Cross Validated
Physics
Role-playing Games
Science Fiction & Fantasy

Additional locations where Backyard astronomy: "Reflections" will compete will be posted as the list updates. If you'll be adding this ad to any other location that could use our community support with votes, please mention location where you posed it in the comments below. Thanks!

Alternative variants:
These are some of the prepared design previews that are a product of the work in progress. Feel free to use them for Astronomy.SE promotion at your discretion:

                                                 https://i.sstatic.net/VEEG9.png

Ask the Universe
Bottom line: emphasize the balance between enthusiasts & professionals: it's not that hard to observe such a large Moon, but if you want to get any more details, better ask professionals and their big toys.
"Ask the Universe": come on astro.SE to ask any question about the Universe. And these radiotelescopes are also, in their own way, used to ask the Universe fundamental questions.
  [![Astronomy Stack Exchange] [1]][2]

  [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/44G6J.png
  [2]: http://astronomy.stackexchange.com/

Font: Linux Biolinum (plus an home-made "A").

Moon: adapted from a picture I took of the full Moon on December, 2012

Radiotelescopes: adapted from this APOD picture

Posted on:

Cross Validated
Role-playing Games

Discover our universe
Updated ad:

Up on these sites (2019):

Physics
Chemistry
Academia
Computer Science
Worldbuilding

Would you post on Skeptics? http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3498/community-promotion-ads-2016

@called2voyage Yep, done!

Would you mind running the ad on the usual sites again?

@called2voyage I actually ran a newer version on Physics, Chemistry, Academia and CS, though they need more votes. Math seemed to hate it though.

Well, I voted for the Physics and Academia ones. The other sites I'm not a member of.

I've posted this on Worldbuilding for the 2019 ads.

@HDE226868 I've posted them on other sites and updated the links here.


text:
Would we benefit from having a self-answered question explaining why the "dark side of the moon" terminology is confusing?
I notice that it comes up a lot around here and Space Exploration that someone seems to have a misconception regarding the "dark side of the moon". Would it be beneficial to our community to have a self-answered question addressing this to point people to from both Space Exploration and Astronomy?