Overview

Hey everyone, it's been a hot minute since I've done one of these and I wanted to give an update as to what all is going on these days with AskEngineers. I'll try to keep this brief, as there are a few things in the pipeline.

As always, your feedback is important and we're always looking to improve. Please use this thread as a forum to ask questions, express concerns/grievances, etc. Critical comments are welcome as long as it's constructive.

1. Updated CSS

AskEngineers is now using r/eddited, courtesy of /u/12px. It's not actively maintained anymore, but it's much more simplified compared to the old code. The old code had quite a few bugs which prompted me to finally sit down and roll out this update.

Please report any bugs with the new style, and we'll do what we can. Unfortunately no one on the mod team has much CSS experience, so if you're interested in helping out in this capacity please message us.

The dm URL prefix to enable native Night Mode doesn't work with this style, so if you want Night Mode you'll have to use RES for now.

2. Filters

Probably the number one complaint I've heard is that AskEngineers has too many career posts. I understand the frustration and often it feels like they've taken over the sub. However, at the same time it has generated some of the more interesting discussions and it seems like there are plenty of users that want to discuss career topics. I've tried my best to remove some of the more spammy topics like "what major should I pick?" and similar posts, and redirecting those users to our FAQ which I think does a fair job of answering the question.

Regardless, career advice posts are here to stay and we'll continue to manage them. But if you prefer to not see any career posts at all, there is now a filter in the sidebar which will let you do just that. This obviously only works if users flair their posts, and we do have Automod set up to remind all OPs to do so, which seems to be working. I was completely remiss on this for a long time, so I apologize for that.

Also be sure to use the hide button below the post title if you don't want to see it.

When to use which flair for your post

• Mechanical, Electrical, Civil, and Chemical are reserved for technical questions only.

• Career must be used for all questions asking for career advice, salary, job market, etc.

• Discussion can be used for general questions not specific to any discipline, which may also include workplace topics if OP isn't asking for advice. Some examples of posts that should use the "Discussion" flair:

  • What's your best/favourite response to "Oh you're an engineer, you must be really smart then eh"?
  • If you shat cubes, what orientation would you prefer?
  • What are the simple engineering solutions you wish people knew?
  • What is the biggest mistake that you made or you’ve witnessed at work?

3. New recurring topics

Recently we've gotten some ideas for potential recurring threads. The two most popular ones are:

1. "What's your salary?" (quarterly)

2. Engineering challenges (courtesy of /u/mudtug)

The first is easy to implement, while the second requires considerably more logistics. Depending on how the challenges are setup, it would take more bandwidth than the mod team has right now, but we're still interested in setting it up in a way that makes it easy to participate. Feedback and ideas on this are welcome.

4. Other stuff

• Setting up acronym bot (this request is a year old, if you want to add to the acronym list go here: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/wiki/acronyms)

• User flair applications are on hold indefinitely until we expand the mod team to the point where we can process applications in a timely manner.

• FAQ additions / updates planned

• Sidebar cleanup planned, specifically the "Resources" section

• Minor rules revision planned (mainly wording to provide clarity)

/u/ansible /u/poopsquisher