How does this forum differ from PhDcomics.com Proceedings?

[InquilineKea]

Just wondering - what are your thoughts?

This forum seems to cater more towards those who are applying, while PhDComics.com caters more towards those who are already in. Phdcomics and this place seem to tolerate a fair amount of silliness, whereas the other places (discussed below) have little silliness on them (although CC has plenty of it on the other subforums)

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And what are your thoughts about the other forums? There are several others as well: Physics Forums, PhysicsGRE.com, MathematicsGRE.com, College Confidential, several subreddits, Quora, and a few others. You could also try SomethingAwful and other forums that have lots of intelligent twenty-somethings (they have fewer threads about grad school, but people often post more enthusiastic replies because there are fewer such threads)

Here are my impressions:

Physics Forums mostly has a small core of posters who are well past graduate school. They sometimes offer really useful advice, but there's also a high chance that your thread will get no replies. There are also several posters who are pretty mean and attack lots of people. Still, the forum archives probably have the best targeted information for science grad schools (whereas this place is better just for general advice)

PhysicsGRE has the most useful information for Physics+Astronomy grad schools. But again, there's a problem of the "small core" that often attacks people.

College Confidential: hmm, hard to say. All I'll say is that it's WAYYY too easy to get sidetracked and then to start posting silly threads in High School Life. And then get banned by the mods. I normally don't get banned from most forums, but I have at least 10 permabanned accounts at that place. =/

subreddits: AskAcademia is dead, but you can get some useful information through AskScience (which has a higher density of science grad students than anywhere else on the Internet) - but they don't like too many questions about grad school

Quora: low chance of getting a helpful reply, but occasionally worth a shot.

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That all being said, I've found useful application-related information (i couldn't find elsewhere) on all the other forums (except possibly phdcomics proceedings)

Edited April 27, 2011 by InquilineKea

[Strangefox]

Interesting post, thanks!

[Eigen]

I visit 4 academic forums on a regular (read:daily) basis: Gradcafe, PhDComics Proceedings (old) PhDComics Proceedings (new), and the Chronicle of Higher Education forum.

I find that they fall pretty much into three stages: Gradcafe is primarily applicant-related, PhDcomics (both) are mostly current grad students, and CHE is mostly faculty.

Because of this, I visit them for different reasons:

I come to GradCafe mostly to help out people applying to graduate school. I didn't find the site until I was here, but I think it's a great resource for people who have questions about grad school, applications, research, etc.

I go to the PhDcomics forums to find grad students to relate to- I agree that they can be a bit sillier, they're mostly a place to blow off steam. That said, while the Vortex can be quite silly, the On Academia subforum has some of the best references of any of the three- specifically the place to exchange full text papers between universities. I use it as much as I use our interlibrary loan system. And if I want to complain/vent about advisors, colleagues, research, etc... I'll go to PhDcomics over any of the others.

I read the CHE forums to get a perspective on what's coming, what the trends are in higher education- listening to people who are post-docs, TT faculty, tenured faculty and administrators talk about the relative struggles of their positions is quite enlightening.

I find the three together provides a nice trend- where I was, where I am, and where I will be. That's not to say that each forum doesn't have some place for the other stages to talk- and indeed there are some great faculty and post-docs that post regularly at PhDcomics- but the forums each have a primary audience.

Edited April 27, 2011 by Eigen

[Strangefox]

What do you mean by old and new PhDComics Proceedings? I thought there is only one PhDComics forum...

[hardcrashxyz]

I just looked at PhDComics forum. The first several pages of each sub-forum is drug hawking spam. I assume this is a new problem, because as is the forums seem unusable. Does this have something to do with old and new forums?

[Eigen]

Yes, the spam is the reason for the old/new forums.

Last September or so, the spam got bad enough that Jorge shut down the official forums. Subsequently, some forum members started a forum of their own. The official forums came back online a few months ago, but now seem to the target of continual spam again (800 or so posts per forum per day).

phorummers dot freeforums dotorg is the new address- we're being quite careful to try not to distribute the actual address of the site lest the spam follow us. New moderation procedures are helping with that a bit, however.

The new forums are a bit more active, mostly just because the regulars got used to posting there over the 6 mos that the official forums were down.

I will note that in accordance with the OP, I don't find either Proceedings or CHE to have much useful for applicants, although they can be great resources for current grad students.

Edited April 27, 2011 by Eigen

[Strangefox]

Very interesting info!

I wonder why there is so much spam there and not so much here, on Grad Cafe. Is it some difference in moderating tactics?

[Eigen]

My guess is a combination of moderation (Jorge was the sole moderator on Proceedings, and quite busy) as well as the fact that the comic and the attached store draws more attention from spam.

[Strangefox]

This is crazy!