Timeline for Should questions about CS-related standards be allowed?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
20 events
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| Apr 10, 2012 at 22:25 | comment | added | Kaveh | I went along with your suggestion though my personal opinion is expressed in the answer, i.e. if an undergrad CS student taking a computer networks course comes to Computer Science and asks a question from her (standard) computer networks textbook we should not tell her the question is off-topic because that is not CS. We can have a site policy based on some other reasons to exclude those questions if community prefers that, but not being computer science should not be one of them (in my humble opinion). | |
| Apr 10, 2012 at 22:08 | comment | added | Kaveh | @Raphael, as you can see I have explicitly stated that there is less emphasis on that one because of disagreement, so if you (and others) don't agree with my reason 3 then you can just ignore it, even without that there is enough reasons to exclude programming per se questions (I could present arguments for my personal opinion but I didn't think it is of any help and will be just a distraction, I stated it originally because I didn't expect disagreement). The suggestion to ask from networking people was yours by the way :). | |
| Apr 10, 2012 at 21:49 | comment | added | Raphael | I think we are aware of what you are saying, Kaveh. That does not make it consistent. I will try and get hold of a networking guy. By the way, I am also confident I can find CS researchers who say that programming is CS, and there certainly have been exam questions that asked me to program something. So where does that leave your reasoning? | |
| Apr 10, 2012 at 20:58 | comment | added | Kaveh | It looks to me that although you agree with what I am saying here, you are trying to use it to argue that the decision made about excluding programming questions was wrong. If that is the case please do it there, not here. If you really think that implementation related questions should generally be off-topic post a new meta post about it. (Please remember that each of us have opinions that are not shared by majority and that is normal, e.g. I think pure math questions related to CS can be on-topic, same about career questions, but it looks that majority don't share my opinion and that is it!) | |
| Apr 10, 2012 at 20:43 | comment | added | Kaveh | What I am claiming here is that questions about internet standards are part of CS (if there is any doubt, we can ask CS researchers working in computer networks to check this claim), therefore by default and based on discussions that the site is for questions in CS in the general sense (not just theoretical, not just conceptual, not excluding questions in CS which are related to practice and implementation) the default should be that they are on-topic. Moreover, I don't see any harm in allowing them, if you have a reason for why we should excluded them from the scope then please state it. | |
| Apr 10, 2012 at 20:34 | comment | added | Kaveh | @Patrick87, it is a separate issue with its own thread (it has nothing to do with logic, you are trying to misinterpret what I wrote in a way I did not intended it so you can stretch it and use it against what I am saying here (or what I am saying here in there). Even if there was a inconsistency in my position regarding these two issues, it would not help you). The reasons I have stated there does not apply to question related to implementations in computer networks. | |
| Apr 10, 2012 at 17:12 | comment | added | Patrick87 | @But the indefensibility of your position, from a logical standpoint, is on-topic in both meta threads. Whether you agree that your positions are contradictory... well, I don't see a need to start a separate meta thread for that. Too localized. | |
| Apr 10, 2012 at 17:00 | comment | added | Kaveh | Btw, I am still waiting for you to give a reference for your claim that we have agreed that implementation questions in CS are off-topic (also the reply from computer network guys in your department about whether they consider internet standards part of CS or not). | |
| Apr 10, 2012 at 16:55 | comment | added | Kaveh | @Raphael, I don't equate the two. Circumstantial or not, those are the reasons I think programming questions should be off-topic, not because they are about implementation, I don't remember saying anything like that, if that is what you understood from my post then you have misunderstood what I said. Let me be clear, abstractness has not been a criteria for me about on-topicness of a question. | |
| Apr 10, 2012 at 16:49 | comment | added | Kaveh | @Patrick87, programming question is separate issue and there is a devoted meta question to it. Please keep argument about it there. | |
| Apr 10, 2012 at 16:21 | comment | added | Raphael | @Kaveh: You state there (rephrasing) "Programming is not (per se) CS and thusly offtopic" (the other reasons are circumstantial; you go on to equate programming with implementation, even if you don't use the word) with the same conviction as you say "Factual knowledge about implementations of CS concepts should be ontopic" here. If you stand by both, I think you contradict yourself (regarding required abstractness). | |
| Apr 10, 2012 at 16:20 | comment | added | Patrick87 | I agree with @Raphael; it's hard to defend allowing implementation questions about computer networks without allowing other implementation questions (why not allow C++ code and issues writing it?). I think it's possibly a mistake to exclude implementation issues only because they're implementation issues; a lot of non-theoretical CS can be construed as an implementation issue, and lots of questions involve practice and convention (you can even have such questions about theoretical and mathematical aspects, e.g., Turing machines or Landau notation). | |
| Apr 10, 2012 at 16:06 | comment | added | Kaveh | (ps: the only answer I up-voted in the FAQ question was yours because it seemed to be a good template for FAQ, the question was never intended to be a place where the scope is decided and as I wrote there I posted it because I felt the community has reached an agreement about the scope which turned out to be incorrect, I am removing my up vote since I didn't interpret your answer as excluding that part of CS) | |
| Apr 10, 2012 at 15:57 | comment | added | Kaveh | @Raphael, if you recheck my answer, you will see that the reasons I stated for excluding programming question is not being about implementation (and generally correlation does not imply causation :) | |
| Apr 10, 2012 at 15:55 | comment | added | Raphael | As for references: the highest voted answer on the FAQ discussion does not mention implementations to be ontopic. The highest voted answer on the programming discussion (yours, ironically), argues strongly against implementation questions. I don't see how programming and other implementations differ. Arguably, huge parts of CS could not work without C or coffee, but that does not make either ontopic. | |
| Apr 10, 2012 at 15:54 | comment | added | Kaveh | @Raphael, please note CS course, and I am not talking typical questions in CS course exams, not extreme cases. (btw, I am interested in knowing in which CS course they asked you to calculate 2+3 :) | |
| Apr 10, 2012 at 15:51 | comment | added | Raphael | I have been asked to calculate $2+3$ in exams; does that make elementary arithmetics ontopic on the site? Granted, there have probably not been whole questions dedicated for this. "Solve this system of linear equalities!" comes close, though. The point is: not everything asked on exams (in a CS course) is necessarily computer science. Maybe the examiner is lazy, can not come up with better questions, wants his students to look better than they are or has been forced to lower standards? I am strongly of the opinion that pure recitation should not be part of any university exam. | |
| Apr 10, 2012 at 15:39 | history | edited | Kaveh | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Apr 10, 2012 at 15:29 | history | edited | Kaveh | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Apr 10, 2012 at 15:21 | history | answered | Kaveh | CC BY-SA 3.0 |