created by BernardJOrtcutt on 05/11/2018 at 14:36 UTC
96 upvotes, 12 top-level comments (showing 12)
Today we are going live with a new set of rules and guidelines which we hope will clarify our vision for /r/askphilosophy and help improve this community going forward. This post contains four major parts:
1. An explanation of our goals for /r/askphilosophy.
2. An updated rule-set.
3. An updated set of guidelines for user flairs.
4. An explanation of the Open Discussion Threads.
/r/askphilosophy aims to provide serious, well-researched answers to philosophical questions. We envision this subreddit as the philosophical counterpart to /r/AskHistorians, which is well-known for its high quality answers to historical questions.
/r/askphilosophy is thus a place to ask and answer philosophical questions. **/r/askphilosophy is not a debate or discussion subreddit.**
All other comments are off-topic and will be removed.
1. All questions must be about philosophy. Questions which are only tangentially related to philosophy or are properly located in another discipline will be removed. Questions which are about therapy, psychology and self-help, even when due to philosophical issues, are not appropriate and will be removed.
2. All submissions must be actual questions (as opposed to essays, rants, personal musings, idle or rhetorical questions, etc.). "Test My Theory" or "Change My View"-esque questions, paper editing, etc. are not allowed.
3. Post titles must be descriptive. Titles should indicate what the question is about. Posts with titles like "Homework help" which do not indicate what the actual question is will be removed.
4. Questions must be reasonably specific. Questions which are too broad to the point of unanswerability will be removed.
5. Questions must not be about commenters' personal opinions, thoughts or favorites. /r/askphilosophy is not a discussion subreddit, and is not intended to be a board for everyone to share their thoughts on philosophical questions.
6. One post per day. Please limit yourself to one question per day.
7. Discussion of suicide is only allowed in the abstract here. If you or a friend is feeling suicidal please visit /r/suicidewatch. See also a discussion of philosophy and mental health issues here[1]. Encouraging other users to commit suicide, even in the abstract, is strictly forbidden.
1: https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/wiki/mentalhealth
1. All top level comments should be answers to the submitted question, or follow-up questions related to the OP. All comments must be on topic. If a follow-up question is deemed to be too unrelated from the OP, it may be removed.
2. All answers must be informed and aimed at helping the OP and other readers reach an understanding of the issues at hand. Answers must portray an accurate picture of the issue and the philosophical literature. Answers should be reasonably substantive.
3. Be respectful. Comments which are rude, snarky, etc. may be removed, particularly if they consist of personal attacks. Users with a history of such comments may be banned. Racism, bigotry and use of slurs are absolutely not permitted.
4. Stay on topic. Comments which blatantly do not contribute to the discussion may be removed.
5. Frequent commenters should become panelists and request flair. See here[2] for more information on becoming a panelist.
2: https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/wiki/flair
After some discussion and a few challenging flair request cases, we are significantly revising the way in which we label panelists in the hopes of making flair more clearly communicate certain sorts of panelist expertise.
But first, a reminder of the purpose of flairs on /r/askphilosophy. Unlike in some subreddits, the purpose of flairs on /r/askphilosophy are not to designate commenters' areas of interest. The purpose of flair is to indicate commenters' relevant expertise in philosophical areas and research. As philosophical issues are often complicated and have potentially thousands of years of research to sift through, knowing when someone is an expert in a given area can be important in helping understand and weigh the given evidence.
Given this understanding, **flair will only be given to those with research expertise in some area of philosophy**. Flair is not simply for those interested in a given area or topic, but rather for those who have studied it intensively and are qualified and prepared to provide well-researched and developed answers to questions.
Further, flair will be given only in particular areas or research topics in philosophy. Typical areas include things like "philosophy of mind", "logic", "continental philosophy". Flair will not be granted for specific research subjects, e.g. "Kant on logic", "metaphysical grounding", "epistemic modals". Flair of specific philosophers will only be granted if that philosopher is clearly and uncontroversially a monumentally important philosopher, e.g. Confucius, Kant, Nietzsche.
Flair will be given in a maximum of three areas.
Previously, there was some confusion about the scope and difference between graduate and professional flair, and some reasoned disagreement about what sorts of academics might appropriately be understood to be experts about certain philosophical topics. As such, we have fully redesigned our flair guidelines and increased the types of flair to better respond to the various ways in which people develop their expertise and the various stages of that development which they find themselves in. The names of some of the categories remain the same, but their scope is slightly different to accommodate two new panelist areas.
These new divisions aim primarily at two things: (1) more clearly communicating the kind of expertise held by panelists and (2) streamlining a few troublesome aspects of the flair application process.
Since some of these changes involve carving up old flair categories, some re-categorizations of panelists may be required. In order to make this as simple as possible, the flair conversion will go as follows for each respective, current flair category:
The following types of panelists should message moderators for a change in flair color:
As always, panelists who could qualify for more than one type of flair are welcome to choose how to represent themselves. In making this choice, panelists should at least try to represent their expertise in a way that will match how they tend to answer questions in the sub.
If you are not sure whether or not you should be re-classified, then message the moderators and we will help sort out your flair.
Frequent commenters should become panelists and request flair, pursuant to the above flair guidelines. To request flair, please send a message to the moderators via modmail with the subject 'Flair Request for /r/askphilosophy', detailing which flair you are requesting and why. All flair requests should contain:
/r/askphilosophy **does not require users to provide proof of their identifies for flair requests, nor to reveal their identities. There is thus an expectation that all frequent commenters will become panelists and request flair.**
Each week /r/askphilosophy has an "Open Discussion Thread" (ODT), which is posted once a week and stickied to the top of the subreddit. These threads are a place for posts/comments which are related to philosophy but wouldn't necessarily meet our posting rules. For example, these threads are great places for:
We hope that the ODTs provide a venue for the /r/askphilosophy community to engage in the types of discussion which do not formally meet our rules, but with and within the excellent community of /r/askphilosophy.
Comment by mediaisdelicious at 05/11/2018 at 15:20 UTC
19 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Thanks to /u/ADefiniteDescription for doing the heavy lifting on this overhaul!
Comment by TychoCelchuuu at 05/11/2018 at 15:31 UTC
18 upvotes, 2 direct replies
I don't know how /r/AskHistorians works, but is there any way of accommodating the worry that a lot of questions are people copying and pasting homework prompts, such that if the only answers that fit the rules are substantive answers (as opposed to invitations for the OP to give their own opinion or some other sort of Socratic dialogue opening) they're just going to get copied and pasted into someone's homework assignment?
So for instance with this post[1], in the past I would have posted an SEP link or two, but that's out of the picture. Another option would be to ask OP to do their best job answering the question and then I could critique what OP writes, but that's out of the picture too. I *could* write a short paper on liberty, but chances are OP is just going to say "thanks for doing my homework, sucker" or even worse they'll just turn it in without thanking me.
The fourth option is to leave these questions unanswered, which is nice from the point of view of preventing plagiarism, but I always thought it's good that this subreddit is a place for people to get homework help, so it would be a shame if some of the main ways to help people with homework (pointing them to papers to read so they can do their own research or inviting them to engage in a Socratic dialogue) are out of the picture.
Again I don't read /r/AskHistorians but I suspect perhaps this is less of an issue for them because it's rarely the case that you can just say "go read this short, professional article that covers precisely this topic" because history has no SEP and besides that, it's rare to have a single history article that answers a specific question OP asks (whereas this is relatively common in philosophy - say someone asks about bisecting a brain and putting it in two bodies). Moreover, my impression is that you can't teach history via Socratic dialogue, because nobody can figure out on their own when some king chopped off someone's dick or whatever. Meanwhile, philosophy is quite amenable to being taught through Socratic dialogue - I suspect someone with free time could find dozens of examples of people successfully learning *a lot* in this subreddit via Socratic dialogue just by browsing through my posts alone!
Again, not the end of the world, but I wonder if maybe there aren't options that might better address these issues?
Comment by TychoCelchuuu at 05/11/2018 at 15:42 UTC
15 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Is there any reason the flairs don't distinguish between someone who got a PhD and then has spent their next twenty years salmon fishing in the Yemen, vs. someone who got a PhD and then has spent their next twenty years reading, writing, teaching, and thinking about philosophy every day? I mean, I love people with philosophy PhDs as much as the next person - they're basically the highest form of human being - but it's not like your expertise stops developing once you get your degree. People who stay in the profession get much more sophisticated as time goes on!
Comment by TychoCelchuuu at 06/11/2018 at 15:14 UTC
4 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Could the question rules include a suggestion that people check the FAQ first? Questions answered by the FAQ are still relatively[1] common[2].
Comment by Mauss22 at 05/11/2018 at 15:34 UTC
6 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Might the Mod Team consider implementing changes to the Flairs so that they are more accommodating to those using the "New Reddit" design? For example, I've seen other Subs add: <PhD> next to the user's AoS.
Comment by garland41 at 05/11/2018 at 16:15 UTC*
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Hmm... I'm relatively new to reddit, so I didn't know how flair worked. I'm also glad that even being without formal education in this area I can try my hands at answering.
I will also say I hope this is a nice change of pace because there have been times where I have seen interesting or great questions but all they were answered with was see x book. So from this two things, are the moderators able to add to posts afterwards and in a matter similar to r/AskHistorians label the questions as good or great questions, and for questions that are general, for instance I saw a question was asking for an explanation or demonstration of Husserl's Phenomenological method which was simply answered with read x book, to answer such questions would take a great deal of time and sourcing.
Comment by [deleted] at 08/11/2018 at 10:29 UTC*
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Just one minor detail that I havent seen here
Shoudnt answers actively say that their answer is just one of other alternatives in the literature? And reflect that anything past "one group of philosophers say" is pure personal opinion?
I mention this as I have seen answers that in a way reflect the opinion of majority the experts on the literature, alright then, but many times this majority is in no way big enough to justify not mentioning that this is just *one* answers of an ongoing debate.
To give a pratical example years ago when I started browsing this sub without any knowledge of philosophy I kept finding answers that made me have a mistaken impression about the field. When seeing a PHD or a graduate providing an answer to a question without mentioning alternatives, or that it was just one position in the literature, I mistakenly thought that this answer was just the definitive consensus of the entire field, when in fact it could have just been the main position by a small percentage, and sometimes not even the mainstream position. I got the impression that philosophy was a field much less broad than it actually is, and that some issues were already completely solved. Luckly I started reading sources and the SEP and so on, and the reflection of the field that those things give is *vastly* different than this sub gives, and I personally think is for the reason I mention.
This also seems like a good solution to avoid bias by the commenters.
Some areas of philosophy especially have less consensus than other fields, and philosophy does not care only about the results, like some other fields might, it also cares about the process of arriving in this result, which I think is another reason to enforce this rule even in cases where the comment reflects the opinion of the majority of philosophers. Surely I can agree with a commenter that Thomists are wrong, and so would most ethicists, but the fact that there are serious philosophers who believe it and keep writing about it is enough reason to mention it and not to assume or imply that is wrong. "Reflecting the agreement of the literature" then, imo, is not enough.
This rule, if already exists, does not seem to be enforced consistently, and can be observed to be ignored when a commenter feels strongly about some particular area
To put a pratical example, when someone asks " is this action wrong? " an answer like " Yes, it seems to be clearly wrong " should be deleted even if most ethicists would say so, even if is common sense and even if the commenter is a regular a professional and an expert on the area and can expand on why if asked so. An appropiate answer should be something like " some philosophers would say that is wrong based on (insert deontological reasoning or whatever) but others might disagree [...] "
I am not sure if realistically though this is too demanding, but in priori it doesnt seem so.
/u/mediaisdelicious /u/tychocelchuuu
What do you think?
Comment by Pyrrhic_Defeatist at 06/11/2018 at 05:56 UTC
2 upvotes, 2 direct replies
You guys do great work, thanks for everything mods.
One addendum: posting on here to answer a question can be really intimidating. I get that that probably helps in weeding out unqualified answers, but it also makes me pass over answering a question that I could because I'm worried I don't have enough citations or specifics off-hand.
Elsewhere in this thread I read
We want something more substantial in the answer, even to silly questions. It may be a link to an article, or paper, or what have you, and that's fine. But just dismissing a question or answering it in the affirmative without saying anything more isn't helpful.
Couldn't this (or something like it) be added to the rules themselves? When I read "substantive and well-researched" I imagined a standard much higher than what it seems you have in mind.
Comment by Madokara at 06/11/2018 at 11:23 UTC
2 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I love this sub and people here patiently clarified many things for me, so I really hope this doesn't sound confrontational, and I absolutely don't question that the vast majority of people who are flaired here are very knowledgeable. But I wondered about the same thing in /r/askscience and similar subs:
Are 'flairs' really worth a whole lot if mods don't ask for any proof whatsoever because of privacy concerns?
/u/ADefiniteDescription (thanks for your work) said:
The panelist tags are not for you to show off your knowledge. They are, as stated in the post above, for readers' use to figure out how much weight they should give your testimony (amongst other types of evidence of course).
I don't really understand how that works if flairs are based on what a user says on the internet about his/her own level of education. I believe that /r/askscience asks users to point to a high-quality post of theirs. But it seems if I read a couple of books and papers on a very specific topic, I might give a high-quality answer but I probably shouldn't be able to effectively label myself a PhD by saying I'm a PhD. I just don't see how I can determine how much weight to give to a post, if that's decided by the user who wrote the post him or herself, via saying 'I'm a...'. Seems quite circular, in the same way everybody who writes an answer probably thinks it's the right and appropriate answer.
Again, I hope that doesn't sound rude, just asking for clarification and to give some feedback.
Comment by peridox at 05/11/2018 at 17:06 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Comments other than answers on /r/askphilosophy should be one of the following: […]
Points of clarification or addition (e.g. "Yes, and […]" comments) aren't listed here. Are they against the rules?
Comment by playdead_ at 05/11/2018 at 18:04 UTC*
1 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Can I ask about the flair guidelines?:
I'm a grad student in philosophy & I guess I have been commenting more recently, but I really don't care about having any sort of badge on this subreddit. I'm not sure how much "frequently" means in your flair rule -- all it says is that I *should* request one, but I'm unsure if this just means "as a matter of good citizenship" or "you will get in trouble if you don't." Do I have to request one?
Comment by [deleted] at 11/11/2018 at 23:04 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
[removed]