I have noticed an unfortunate trend within a sub-group of the RG community. These researchers ask an urgent question, and after the question has been answered by one or several people they then go ahead and delete the question. The reason for this seems to be to avoid having questions on their profile, and instead act as a paragon of knowledge and insight. This hurts both the community and the researchers whom provide answers within the platform. By spending time and effort into solving someone else's problems, these people should be rewarded by increasing their answer/solution reads, and potentially even recommendations. In proxy, their research and themselves as researchers are also promoted from this effort, in gaining traction. By deleting questions (and the answers) this sub-group is hurting the very foundation of research by discouraging researchers to solve others problems. Science is fundamentally about cooperation in solving problems, and is something that should always be encouraged to contribute to a flowering community.
What does the RG community think of this phenomena and what can be done to discourage this damaging behaviour?
Hello Carl Alexander Frisk
I had not realised that this happened. Sometimes when I respond to a question, I find a similar one that has been answered in the past, and supply the link. And in the notifications about response to questions I have asked in the past, I enjoy seeing that they are still being read and answered.
If I respond to a question, I quite often look things up and supply references and links, so would be disappointed if they were then deleted.
I will be interested to read what other members feel about this.
The only time I have deleted questions is if they have not been read much or answered at all, and I have felt a bit embarrassed in asking what people must regard as a 'silly question!'
Very best wishes,
Mary
This discussion is similar in scope to several others I've responded to lately, and can be broadly considered under the heading "Why do RG members do the counter productive things that they do?" The answer, I think, is similar in each case: "It takes all kinds to make an information sharing platform." Some RG members value dissemination and upload poster presentations, most don't. Some RG members like to supply feedback to colleagues by answering their questions, most don't. Likewise, some RG members like to archive their interactions for future use by the community by leaving questions and answers on the platform, most don't. Personally, I'm an archivist/curator/collector by nature, and have spend much of my career worrying about such stuff, so it seems intuitively obvious to me that we'd want to see the fruits of our interactions stay on the platform for future users (why repeat history here). I intend to leave everything posted so my students and others can continue to benefit from these communications.
Make all posts and responses permanent with accessible/visible version histories
I do not see another possibility to group the opinions that are written, than to establish a title under which all of them are found. It would be a co-author's book. P.e. title: "Reality". The order of formation
of the text should be chronological for greater ease of composition, or thematic, for greater use of the readers.
Best wishes
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Cognitive Science
- Thinking