Questions tagged [discussion]

The question you're asking is designed to solicit opinions or best-practices on a particular topic, with the goal of reaching community consensus.

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Preferred English version to use on MMSE

Is there a preferred choice of English (US or British) version that is preferred while asking questions and writing answers on ...
1 vote
1 answer
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We are on the brink of getting answers to the following closed questions:

The idea/origins of this question is from the comments on this answer: How it differs from that answer is that the answer linked maintains questions which are still "alive" and are closed to ...
2 votes
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MMSE editing policy

Unfortunately, all edits on questions or answers lead to the question being bumped to the top of the front page. This is something that happens across the Stack Exchange network, and MMSE has no ...
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3 votes
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Conditions under which a question should be deleted

I have been extremely supportive of nearly all questions here. I've never downvoted a single post on this site, yet I've voted on 5000+ posts. I encourage users not to downvote, and to avoid voting to ...
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2 votes
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Clarifying close vote reasons

Due to the close votes on this question: Transiesta warning (Error on inverting X6/C7 with error: 1) (one of them being an "opinion-based closure" and the other being "needs more focus&...
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4 votes
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Removing "duplicates" from mailing-list/forum RSS feeds

In many of our chat rooms (e.g. the Quantum ESPRESSO one), we use RSS feeds to inform us when new discussions take place on mailing lists or forums. However we get feed items posted not only when new ...
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2 votes
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Why do we not allow links to Google Drive files?

Google Drive is not accessible to all users, depending on their country of residence Google Drive files are almost always temporary, but we want future users to be able to click on a link and actually ...
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2 votes
0 answers
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2022: a year in moderation

As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year. As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange ...
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1 vote
0 answers
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Be careful with edit summaries!

For a while, I've been planning to write a series here (MMSE.Meta) about tips on how to get along well with people in the SE network (which can be hard at times, when people are very passionate!). ...
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2 votes
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Just out of curitosity: Would anyone closer to UTC+8 be interested in becoming a diamond moderator?

It was agreed on Meta that we'd wait a while before our next election: We had an election relatively recently, shall we keep our current moderation team for a bit longer? My opinion on that has not ...
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1 vote
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Please remove the hyperlink in the sentence "Would you like to automatically move this discussion to chat?"

Under certain conditions, the following message appears: "Please avoid extended discussions in comments. Would you like to automatically move this discussion to chat?" except with a ...
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6 votes
0 answers
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Congratulations on another strong Winter Bash for Matter Modelers in 2022!

As Winter Bash 2022 comes to an end I want to thank everyone who participated! This is a follow-up to last year's post: Congratulations! Matter Modeling rocked at Winter Bash 2021! I was initially a ...
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1 vote
1 answer
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Looking for a deleted post

If you're looking for a deleted post that you would be able to see if you had the URL (e.g. if it's your own post or if you have enough points to view deleted posts), here's a place where you can make ...
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1 vote
0 answers
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"ab-initio" vs "ab initio" when we cannot use Italic font?

For titles, the Stack Exchange network does not allow us to use Italic font, without resorting to the use of MathJax, which we've agreed not to use in titles, in these discussions: MathJax or Unicode ...
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2 votes
1 answer
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Bounties! At the end of each month I plan to give away a lot of my rep via bounties. Please suggest questions to receive bounties :)

SE tracks our users who earn the most rep yearly, quarterly, monthly, and weekly. I often find myself at the top of all of these lists, and I figure that if I'm on the top of all of these lists, it ...
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5 votes
2 answers
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Is MMSE the right site for asking materials science questions?

I am Materials science Ph.D. student. I just want to know is it the right site I am in to ask my question related to materials science related field?
2 votes
1 answer
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Who should I try to recruit to help answer these questions?

I would be willing to devote more of my time and energy towards increasing our user base to include experts in the following areas if you can let me know who the appropriate experts are!
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Why did this question not get any votes in the last 5.5 months despite getting 61 views and comments from at least 3 different people?

This is a question about a specific-question: Force convergence in Wannier orbitals based DFT code I am curious to hear opinions about why this question didn't deserve any votes over such a long ...
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1 vote
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Unanswered questions that also appear elsewhere

Many of our questions get repeated as GitHub issues or in other places. Once in a while it might be helpful to check here to see whether or not questions have been answered elsewhere so that they can ...
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4 votes
0 answers
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Why have people stopped voting?

We have hit another all-time weekly low in voting: Previously in the week of Sunday April 10 2022 we had an all-time low of 106 votes on the main site. Recently in the week of Sunday August 21 2022 ...
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7 votes
3 answers
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The next step in the evolution of MMSE: upgraded reputation levels!

After: a failed proposal in 2018, a new proposal in August 2019, entering the commitment phase in December 2019, entering Private Beta in April 2020, entering Public Beta in May 2020, and having ...
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2 votes
7 answers
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The MMSE Sandbox

Similar to this sandbox, you're encouraged to write drafts of your questions here before posting them on the main site, if you think this may be beneficial. I was tempted to come up with a set of &...
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2 votes
1 answer
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Why has MMSE activity reduced so much after 9 January 2022?

There seems to be a drop in usage after the red vertical line: We had: 59 posts and 33 questions in the "week of" 2 January 2022, and 59 posts and 31 questions in the "week of" 9 ...
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1 vote
0 answers
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A faster process for migrating questions from other sites?

Occasionally a question gets migrated from a different site to this one (e.g. Chem.SE, Physics.SE, etc.). This often happens after a diamond moderator from a different site consults us in the MMSE ...
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4 votes
1 answer
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To what extent do we want to enforce the use of MathJax and ChemJax in MMSE posts?

If I write a 2000 character answer that has one reference to the molecular formula H2O, is it necessary for this to be changed to $\ce{H2O}$? Already the above sentence looks a bit weird because the ...
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4 votes
1 answer
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Interest in turning on the YouTube viewer?

In Astronomy SE meta I asked Interest in looking into adding the YouTube viewer? and the justification was straightforward; in my answer there I documented almost 40 previous posts with links to ...
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2 votes
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MathJax in titles: Can we give users a warning prompt (or an error prompt) when they try this?

There's many reasons not to use MathJax in our titles: MathJax or Unicode in titles? Does it matter? (pun intended) Ask yourself why Stack Exchange immediately disqualifies all questions with MathJax ...
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0 votes
0 answers
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The logistics around referring our users to other places

It's extremely rare, but I occasionally see people referring our users to other forums or mailing lists. We have migrated a tiny number of questions to Engineering.SE but only when it became apparent ...
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1 vote
1 answer
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MMSE Art Gallery

Similar to Journal of the Matter Modeling Stack Exchange, we have had some great pictures posted on this site. Here's an appreciation thread for all the beautiful pictures!
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2 votes
0 answers
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What ads are you seeing on this site?

As someone who regularly advertises MMSE to many people, how MMSE looks when people visit it upon my recommendation, will affect my personal reputation. I recently noticed that with only 141 rep on ...
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1 vote
1 answer
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Since our community agreed that we don't want unregistered users participating on the site, what shall we do if the SE company does not listen? [duplicate]

Considering the average number of votes we see on Meta posts here, the 11 upvotes on the question Does the Matter Modeling community want to ban unregistered users from asking questions? and 9 upvotes ...
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8 votes
2 answers
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Journal of the Matter Modeling Stack Exchange

Some of our answers (or questions) here rise to the level of a "mini-publication" for their high-standards in original research or educational/pedagocial value. This is an incomplete list of ...
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2 votes
2 answers
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Which of these two formats do we prefer for reference lists?

Format #1 Format #2 I'm not looking for a 1-dimensional poll which simply counts nothing but a single number (difference in number of upvotes) like some Meta posts across the network try to do, so ...
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1 vote
0 answers
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A summary about edits

Posts can be edited (often by users other than the post's original author) for numerous reasons. Each SE site will have its own culture and policy, hopefully described on the site's Meta, as this post ...
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6 votes
1 answer
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We are *close* to getting answers to the following questions:

Based on the comments, some progress has been made in the following questions. In many cases, people have indicated that they know the answer, and/or people have encouraged some of the commenters to ...
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4 votes
0 answers
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New stack exchange! Provers.SE (for interactive theorem provers and automatic theorem provers) will go live soon!

Update: The ProofAssistants Private Beta has started. Stack Exchange will soon (February 8th) start Private Beta site for Proof Assistants and Automatic Theorem Provers. If you want to see what a ...
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3 votes
0 answers
27 views

2021: a year in moderation

As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year. As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange ...
  • 101
11 votes
2 answers
294 views

Does the Matter Modeling community want to ban unregistered users from asking questions?

Update: We just (3/25/2022) received confirmation that, in response to this post, SE will turn off unregistered posting on the site starting later today. When I first learned about the concept of an &...
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6 votes
0 answers
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Congratulations! Matter Modeling rocked at Winter Bash 2021!

Winter Bash 2021 is now over and I want to thank everyone who participated! I think it was very successful, and in many ways even more fun than last year. Furthermore, one of our very own diamond ...
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0 votes
3 answers
320 views

Why moderators of Matter Modeling SE encourage off-topic questions?

Recently Matter Modeling SE became a site that attracts lots of off-topic questions (see a recent one here that is more suitable for SO and has nothing to do with matter modeling: Is there a way to do ...
4 votes
1 answer
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Let's avoid editing the following questions if possible

There's two ways I considered doing this. One is by making a community-wiki answer so that anyone who wants to add or remove questions from this list, can do so freely. Another option would be to ...
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1 vote
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Matter Modelers: Let's all wear our hats!

I pointed out last year in this question: HATS !!!!! GET SPECIAL HATS ON 21 DEC, 25 DEC, AND 1 JAN!, that activity on SE sites often drops during late December / early January, and a loss of momentum ...
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9 votes
1 answer
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We had an election relatively recently, shall we keep our current moderation team for a bit longer?

Now that we've graduated out of Beta, there will be an election some time in the future. We had an election very recently about 1.5 years ago (this may not seem recent to some people, since many ...
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2 votes
0 answers
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Matter Modelers! Try to get these hats!

It's that time of the year again, and I've picked out the hats that I think would be most valuable to our site and community if as many people as possible were to try to get them! Gem detector Cast ...
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4 votes
1 answer
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How does one increase reputation on stack exchange

I know that is not directly related to the theme of the site. However, upon registration I am unable to comment or vote on questions without reaching a specific threshold. Is it normal for new members ...
user avatar
6 votes
0 answers
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0 downvotes in 2 weeks, across ~3500 users!

When examining the stats from 13 October to 3 November, we find that our ~3500 users have in total only downvoted once (on 15 October) and we went more than 2 weeks without ever downvoting. Thanks for ...
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17 votes
0 answers
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Matter Modeling is Graduating!

I have some very exciting news to share: On December 16th, our site is officially moving out of Beta! This is a great sign that the SE network has faith in our site and thinks we are a valuable ...
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8 votes
1 answer
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How would we like to describe ourselves?

Currently our site is described as: "Q&A for materials modelers and data scientists" This was chosen by Robert Cartaino during Area51, with no input from our community. I think it's ...
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8 votes
2 answers
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Changing the way we pin "accepted" answers to the top? (Update)

Decision On December 17th, the vote total was 3-2 in favor of unpinning. However, neither option reached the minimum number of votes (5) or minimum amount more than the other option (3). Therefore, ...
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10 votes
2 answers
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Are questions about topics proximate to, but not exclusive to, matter modeling on-topic for the site?

I'm asking this because of a recent string of questions*: Which image format is best to use in a scientific paper? How can I learn LaTeX? How to determine the right size of Gnuplot terminal output? ...
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