user19099: Recently I (and some others in chat) realised that there is some scope for improvement in the site's structure, graphics, fidgets, etc. So we have decided to give it a shot. But since Stack Exchange is run by you, we'll first gather some opinions about how this site can be improved. Go ahead and give your opinions through comments and/or answers. Preferably, write just one proposal in one answer (instead of "we can improve this, this, this and that here"). If possible (like if the feature's already available on other SE site, or you can depict how it would look), add an image of that feature (can be real or even a drawing), just to give a better representation. The best ones will be voted up. Later, we'll call in community manager(s) to let them know and make the final decision.
List of Proposals: (oldest ones first)

Greeting Bot

Species ID Question Template

SO-like Floating Header

Some more buttons in the visual-editor toolbar

Little bit Improvement in Fonts

Ability to "Accept" clearly correct answers for non-active members

Want a countdown clock for comment-editing and chat editing

Ability to search Species ID posts using Pictures

Improve Image Attachment

Improve Migration options

Improve support for subscripts, superscripts and special characters

Make it clear that basic and trivial questions are off-topic

Making comment mandatory with Downvote

Bring the article about formatting, on main help page

Increasing visibility of all answers to a single question

Option to enable "Grid view" in question browsing list

Make the Question/Answer Preview Editable

WhatsApp®-like tick-mark besides the comment

A user-friendly tutorial and help for MathJax within Help Centre

Ability to notify moderators who put my question on-hold/closed


The time period of this question has been extended. All the answerers are requested to edit and improve their answer, during this time period, if they need to do so.

user19099: SO-like Floating Header
Stack Overflow is famous for its floating header (among many other things). This is what I mean:


Though, obviously, biology.SE is not as big a site as Stack Overflow, yet such a floating header might be useful in many ways like:

it would let someone instantly know if they have received a notification (especially when they're down somewhere, reading comments below a very long answer, it'd save the effort of scrolling).
given the amount of users who actively participate in review (which is very low), this could instantly notify someone if there is pending review on their part (by replacing 'Documentation' and 'Jobs' with 'Close Votes' or 'First Posts' etc., much like what currently happens with Suggested Edits).
It looks nice...(will hopefully attract more new users to join in and actively participate)

PS: What if we display the user's all-time rank on their header? It will, most likely, encourage competition among users and they will tend to write better answers, both quantitatively and qualitatively. We could also put a "hide" button so that the floating header converts to the normal header we have now. This would be helpful for the users for whom floating header seems messy.

user25568: A user-friendly tutorial and help for MathJax within Help Centre. 
Our help centre articles on formatting, Advanced formatting (or expended formatting guide), Editing help-LaTex though explains very well about markdown language and basic HTML commands, but they contains too little informations. The Right hand side help panel for MathJax help, leads to 
 http://www.math.harvard.edu/texman/ but it is not much appropriate for who want to quickly learn MathJax to write equations in Stack Exchange. Such as the Begin and End commands that we usually do not use in Stack Exchange; may confuse the user. 
There are also big efforts, done in form of questions and answers in Mathematics meta and Chemistry Meta; but it still needs to be arrange the informations in an easily readable and systematic way, and to include in help articles. 
I'm learning MathJax (from Web sources) as well writing some sample tutorial materials within one answer in Sandbox. It seems I would be able to finish it within this week (however that is undefined). I'd be grateful if it is reviewed by experts and the material or patterns included in the proposed tutorial. 
Update:
I've resumed writing the tutorial material. But I'll be able to contribute only 15 minutes to 1 hour per day, for upcoming 1 month at least. So the required time to finish it, would be accordingly. However the chapter content may give a tentative idea.    
I'm also looking for a safe offline MathJax editor where I will be able to save the files. 

user25568: Allow users manually add some similar or related question in a righthand-side panel. 
Sometimes we found highly-similar question or question with related concept (within one SE domain say bioSE or cross-domain say one at physics SE and another in Chemistry SE) that the automatic prediction system often miss. We often add them as comments. 
But besides the currently used prediction system; if we could add them manually at a separate field (not just as comment); then- 

It will help the users to found similar concepts (quite like wikipedia's feature "See-also" that is also done manually). 

It would help to find similar topics, compare, correlate and better learn. 
It would be enjoyable; and engage more readers in actively reading.  as I enjoy wikipedia's see also section a huge lot.  
would help an expert answerer to a similar or related problem being searched by many people in separate domains. Thus would increase interdisciplinary nature and would reduce tunnel-vision.   

Would help the moderators to finding and suggesting "possible duplicates", and "other helpful sources".
It could be also used to improve digital track-record of similar question; and could be used to make more accurate tag map and improvement of automatic prediction of similar questions. 


user16866:  Ability to "Accept" clearly correct answers for non-active members 
[NOTE: based on a discussion in the comments below [here and here], I now see that this is not a necessary proposal. -- However, I've left it here for discussion sake.]

(Less of a visual idea and more of a functional proposition).
Problem: 
There are countless number of answers on this site (like most SE sites) that have received correct answers but were never checked as accepted. In many cases, the asker is no longer active on the website so acceptance will likely never occur.

This is often times a result of a user getting an answer they like to a specific question and never returning to the website. 
My definition of "correct" entails that an answer has an obviously correct answer that has preferably been upvoted and has not been contradicted by answers from other "well-respected" users. 
Some examples: here, here, here, etc. 

Motive:
The site is littered with questions that have been well answered but appear to need further attention because of never having been checked as accepted.

When I scan through tags of interest to answer "unanswered" questions, I have to weed through a number of these questions to find questions that actually still need a good answer.

Proposal:
In cases where both an answer is correct AND the user is no longer active (i.e., maybe has been > 1-2 years since last log-in) we should incorporate some form of community or moderator initiated answer-accepting protocol.

Again, we would have to define what constitutes a scenario in which an answer can be accepted by someone other than the OP.

Answer deemed "Correct " (see above)
User has been inactive for X period of time (I propose 1 year)
Answer does not contradict the intentions/wishes of the OP (asker)
Other criteria??


This could be incorporated in a number of ways:

Add a mod flag
Give ability to mods + users with silver or gold tag badges regarding the specific tags of the post in question.  
Create a pathway to acceptance via meta post voting.
Other ideas?


user25568: Bring the article about formatting, on main help page. 
Summary: 
Bring the article about formatting, on main help page. Also along-with separate purely technical articles (including formatting) from non-technical, moral/ ethical, law/ regulation/ moderation related articles

Details: 
On current version of Help centre; there is no mention about formatting on the main or top help page. 

.
  Screenshot of main page of help centre, current-view. 

It actually displayed in Our model, and trimmed into "view more".  


  After clicking view more- screenshot of full list of articles under "Our model", as per current set up.

Alongwith a lot of irrelevant (in that sense non-technical or partly-technical) articles like Be nice, expected behaviour, how not to be spammer etc; making it finding purely technical-help articles like formatting and search hard. 
IMO formatting help is an important technical lesson that should be easily reachable. So it should be brought to the top page of help centre; and also with similar purely technical support separated from code-of-conduct, reputation etc non-technical or partly-technical articles. 

user25568: Want a countdown clock for comment-editing and chat editing. 
While comment-editing we get an indication about how many character-spaces remaining; but not the time. Though times in minutes passed after first publishing, is shown; that is not exactly a "countdown"; and often inaccurate probably because the page sometimes get desynchronized from the main SE server at phases of network connectivity problems or maybe there is some-other cause. And also that timing cannot be seen while editing turned on.    

 .       

Screenshot-1: Current view of comment editing window.  There is no indication of time remaining. After 5 minutes from the moment of first publishing the comment; the edit could not be submitted.     

There is similar problem in Chat.     

.     

Screenshot-2: Current view of chat edit; part of this conversation.    

However; it gives some indication; when only 10 seconds left.   

.        

Screenshot-3: Warning at ten seconds left.   

Which ends at a glance.         

 

Screenshot-4: Times up for continue editing.    
And also, there is no direct way for knowing while edit chat; how much total time is provided to edit a chat. 


It would be very nice; if a small countdown watch shows  
Time remaining / total time. 
Here is one sample: 



Picture-5: Sample format of clock. The "indicator" is the main feature; showing the available time (remaining time). 5.a. is the sample of layout of entire clock (the actual size could be smaller, as the community decides. My recommendation is 3cm (wide) X 1cm (tall) or something similar). 
In the diagram 5.b. the rightward contraction of the indicator with time, has been shown. The coloured (highlighted) region is at right- side because it is the indicator for "remaining" time (and NOT of consumed or spent time). The colour green indicates a safe time. The yellow means warning; and the red means danger-time started, or unrecommended-amount of time has been consumed. 
Also other forms like circle/ pie-chart type clock could be used; however IMO the bar-graph is more simple. 

PS-1: Once such a countdown clock has been developed; we would be able to use the
 same  clock/ its variant for broader purpose; like countdown for bounties (in days), or election time (in weeks or days) etc. 
PS-2: The block-quotes in this post are just to increase readability... otherwise having problem to recognize which-one caption goes to which-screenshot. 

user22057: Improve support for subscripts, superscripts and special characters
This is a major annoyance which, in my opinion should have high priority in our wish list.
There are three aspects to this:

In the editor it should be possible to select subscript or superscript or bring up a palette with Greek letters and arrows. The lack of this results in badly formatted chemical formulae, or when people use the obscure mark up with dollar signs (this is 2017 for crying out loud) it appears in a different typeface. I personally don’t have a problem as I use HTML markup and paste UTF-8 characters from my Mac’s character palette. But others don’t know how to do it, and I shouldn’t have to. (Likewise the lack of a spell-checker.)
There is a problem with titles. Apparently it is not possible to do subscripts and superscripts in titles. Users should be warned to spell out the names of compounds instead.
Titles with markup that renders ok on my Mac, just show the raw markup on my iPhone. This is really poor. Everything else is mobile-friendly. SE should sort this as a matter of urgency.


user19099: Making comment mandatory with Downvote
Many a times people just go on and give a downvote to a question or answer, with absolutely no intention of giving a reason for it. Although SO already gives a notification of giving a comment with a downvote,  it barely helps. Thus, we should make giving a comment compulsory when someone gives a downvote. 

this could happen as when one clicks the -1 button, the user would be notified that there downvote will not be registered unless they write a comment for it. 
this option could be made optional for questions or answers if they already have -1 points or lesser. 
in that case (above),  we could give an option that if they agree with a comment already there (the first downvoter always has to give a comment), they can give a +1 to that comment instead of writing another comment (but they must either +1 the comment or write another comment). 
we could make a comment template like I am downvoting this answer because.....
if the OP does not like the reason for downvote (or they don't consider the reason as appropriate)  or if they have improved what the downvoter had critisized, they could give a (kind of) notification so that the downvoter (or mods maybe) can remove that comment and downvote from that question/answer. 

We could also make some template comments for people so that they know what to post with a downvote, or people who are reviewing close votes (or maybe low quality posts) as it will save their time. Some suggestion from my point of view are (you can add/edit/remove suggestions based on your opinion):

Lack of (Proper) Citations: I am downvoting this post because it does not contain valid/any references for the claims it makes.
Content Problem: I am downvoting this post because, in my opinion, there are severe problems with the content in this post which need to be edited and improved immediately.
Different Opinion (from OP): I am downvoting this post because I do not find the OP's claim satisfactory/justifiable. In my opinion, the claim "[put the line from post here which you find incorrect]" incorrect or not sarisfactory because [your opinion].
Other (please give details on what you find wrong in the post): I am downvoting this post because [write the comment here].




user19099: Make the Question/Answer Preview Editable
It often happens that I (or anybody) write long answer and put some MathJax (or image or something) at the end. Then I have to scroll down and check whether it is displayed correctly. For example, I scroll down...scroll down...scroll down and see that I forgot to put the $ symbol after the equation. Then I scroll up...scroll up...scroll up and put that symbol. After that again scroll down...scroll  down...scroll down and see that I forgot to put the closing braces. This takes a lot of time and causes a lot of irritation. To counter this, we could instead make the preview itself editable. One could simply write their answer in preview, put some links, images and symbols from the floating toolbar (which could be placed at the side of screen). This would make editing a lot more easier and one would be able to edit the answer preview instead of the code for it.
The visual editor toolbar would be floating (so that it remains at the same position even if you scroll the screen). Also when we write some equation, it would get converted to its preview form as soon as the equation gets completed and you press the spacebar. For example, suppose you are writing \$\ce{H_2O}\$. Now, as soon as you press spacebar, it automatically gets converted to $\ce{H_2O}$. And when you click anywhere on $\ce{H_2O}$ (or press backspace), it will again display as \$\ce{H_2O}\$. This would make editing equations and formulas a lot easier.

user28778: Greeting Bot
How about having a bot that greets new users and provides them all the valuable information about the site in a short summary so that users tend to read it and post on-topic questions and write good referenced answers. I know that new users get notification about the tour page, but only some people read them and also the on-topic and off-topic questions are not mentioned in the tour page. There is help center for that but it has many questions in it, and I don't think anybody goes through it. The representation of the bot should be attractive enough to lure the user to read it. It should only provide the information about posting on-topic questions and writing a good answer and not about other features of the site. The new user should not think the bot as a human, a message like "I am a bot" also should be included in the welcome message.
The bot should provide information about:

Personal medical questions and health advice. (covered in the tour page)
Homework questions.
Low-research effort questions.
Too broad and opinion based questions. (covered in the tour page)
Providing well-referenced answers.
Avoiding copy-paste of answers from other sites and articles.  



The greeting bot may do its works in following ways.  
1. When the user first opens an account in the site; the bot will send a greeting message. The bot will show a flash-card/pop-up and (also send a copy to inbox) The message would be kept always on top until 3 months spent after the user reads it and visits all the links. The preview of this particular message in the inbox dropdown; with a bright, red or orange flair. 
Here is a sample template of the message:  

"Hi User@X. Welcome to biology SE, a great place to submit questions about biology, from any corners of the world. Please take a very small tour of 1 small page, to get some  overall idea. For any help required, browse the Help centre. 
However, we primarily look for your own, unique questions, that would enrich or/and rectify the world's knowledge, when the question will be saved to the database. For detailed informations; see what/ how to ask and don't ask. 
You can answer, too. However we look for a clear and logical answer, backed up with reference(source) or axiom. You could include pictures, graphs etc to improve the understanding. However, opinion-based answers and hypothetical (speculative) answers are usually discouraged. For details, go through how to write a good answer and other articles about answering. Whatever if you find a question about which you can tell  or explain well, or something important not yet mentioned in existing answers; please feel free to write an answer. 



To write the questions or answers, you will need to use some simple commands or codes for input or edit. As a result, a formatted-text will be found as output. That means the system is NOT- what you see is what you get.  Some very basic of them are also available in form of visual editor toolbar at top of edit field. Also at right side of the edit area, the yellow box. However, to know the  codes in details; visit correct methods of formatting ". 





When the user will publish a question / answer for the first time: 
The user will obtain a flash-card as well as a inbox-message (for future use). 

For question: 


"Congrats! You have successfully posted your first question. Let the world visit  what you've pointed out. Don't forget to follow-up your post. Visit the coming answers and comments whenever possible. Check your notification inbox.  
Your reputation or score will change depending upon how the visitors across world are rating it. They may upvote or downvote it.  If any downvotes come, please don't take those emotionally. See the reasons and try to improve the question accordingly. Visit articles about asking" 


For answers: 


"Congrats! You have successfully published your first answer.  Your effort will help the world on now and for future. Don't forget to follow-up your post. Visit the coming comments. Check your notification inbox.
Your reputation or score will change depending upon how visitors across the world, and the asker, taking it. The users may upvote or downvote your answer, and if your answer satisfy, the asker may accept your answer. If any downvotes come, please don't take those emotionally. See the reasons and improve the answer accordingly. Visit articles on answering"   


When the user will receive the answers to their first question. 
Both a flash-card and a message (for future use).

"Hurrah! you have some answer(s) for your question. Read them carefully. Upvote those answers, which are useful and clear. You may downvote too, if you found an answer wrong or unclear. But please don't use any of them in hasty or rampant way. Read thoroughly before taking any actions. Downvoting without any comment, is highly unrecommended. If you downvote, it is your responsibility to retract it, if the answerer has been improved that fault.
Accept the answer which one best solves your purpose, or satisfy you the most. But before accepting the answer, make sure you've read the answer well, the answer indeed solves your purpose/satisfy you, and the answer is correct and authentic". 
For further information, see What should I do when someone answers my question?


When the user gives the first vote on any of the post (Question or answer)
For first upvote: 

flash-card: 


"Congrats; you're going to put your first upvote. Have you read the post carefully? Your vote matters a lot. Judge a post according to its content. Help us find the hidden gems."
Button: OK 
Button: No, I'll read once more


and after the upvote a message at inbox: 


"Congrats; you've put your first upvote. Have you read the post carefully? Your vote matters a lot. Judge a post according to its content. Help us find the hidden gems.". 

In case of first downvote: 
(a bit more elaborate flashcard than the current)

Flash card:


" You are going to downvote a post. Are you sure this post contain something wrong/unclear? Your vote matters a lot. Do not misjudge any post. We are all here to learn. Be respectful to others. 
It is strongly recommended to put some comment to the user, so that they can improve the post or understand their fault.
Button: Vote-down.  The post contains something wrong or unclear.  
Button: Not now...  I want to read again.  
* Do not forget to retract the downvote if the user later on sufficiently rectify their post. 


Inbox message: 


"You've put your first downvote, because you were sure that the post wrong or unclear. Your vote matters a lot. Do not misjudge any post. We are all here to learn. Be respectful to others. 
It is strongly recommended to put some comment to the user, so that they can improve the post or understand their fault. "
* Do not forget to retract the downvote if the user later on sufficiently rectify their post. 



Anyone can add if anything more should be provided by the bot.

user22057: Improve Migration options
This suggestion relates to those with sufficient reputation to vote to close, who see a ‘close’ link under a question.  On clicking the ‘close’ link one gets a set of options for one’s reason for doing this, one of which is “off-topic because...”. After clicking this one gets another set of options, one of which is: “This question belongs on another site in the Stack Exchange network”. Clicking this gives only a single option: “belongs on biology.meta.stackexchange.com”, which is never appropriate for me. Why? And why can’t one just enter the SE site that one thinks it should be migrated to?

user25568: Some more button for the Visual editor tool-bar
(for improved visual editor support for the formatting task). 

In a list form; some features that are important, so requires visual support. (Also the visual support works as a good tutorial, on the same time.)
For special characters like  degree sign or ° (as in °C or °F), greek letters like γ , Γ etc; angstrom sign (I do not know command for it), Subscript , Superscript , Strike-out ,  no-execution <sup> abcd </sup> , etc;  And for math and chemistry equations (as SE prefers MathJax and Lattex language for that sort of formating) some basic templates for chemistry and math equation, and if possible and a draw table feature with MathJax or Lattex Array. 
.................................................

P. S. 1 : some formatting tasks which are very important, allowed, but absent in visual editor: . 

The commands are mostly from markdown with allowing some basic HTML commands
Feature Name,   Example,  Command,   comment 
Greek (Caps),   Λ,  &Lambda; (Greek letter name initial in caps)
Another example, Ω, &Omega;
Greek (small),  λ,  &lambda; (Greek letter name initial in small)
Another example, ω, &omega; 
Degree , °, &deg; Application: °C, °F 45°
Subscript,  Subscript, <sub>Text under Subscript</sub>, application: 6CO2 ,   8O2 . 
Superscript, Superscript, <sup>Superscript</sup>, application: 10-9,  13C , 136C168O2. 
Strike-out, Strike-Out, <strike>Strike-Out</strike> , (given only in question mark ?) 
No-execution of command; <strike>abcd</strike> , `` Text under a pair of backtick characters. 
These type of commands should be available in the visual editor. 
.............................................................

PS:2 Some of the formatting task, like basic chemistry and math equations require MathJax; but Lack of visual editor makes them cumbersome for beginners in this site. 

SE recommends MathJax, a variant of Latex, to write chemistry and math equations. Some sites use LaTex array to make tables; which could be helpful in answering, too, as the text could be easily extracted from such type of tables. 
..............................................................
Update: 
The proposal is being declared as community wiki. If anyone want to add/ elaborate/ reframe statements (except delete others' input); they could do that. As it seems user@David tried to add up lot of details through a separate answer. Anyone could improve this answer. 
...........................................................................
A "community wiki" post means a post designated for edit and improve by multiple users' collaborative efforts; so not restricted by ownership of one individual user.  Anyone with certain small-amount of reputation (score or points), can participate in a community wiki. In contrast to community-wiki posts; a "NON-community-wiki" means anything here excluding than community wiki; i.e. non-community wikis are any posts restricted to ownership of one user. 

user25568: Little bit improvement in fonts 
At-present the font being used for output / executed forms, creates some confusions places to places; such as the small-letter-L (EL) (l) and capital-letter-i (Aye) (I) are indistinguishable. 
For say, when to type Isoleucine or Ile (should be aye(i)-el(L)-ee(E)), Illicium sp or i-L-L-icium (and Illiceaceae)... it is quite ridiculous (however BioSE is no exception, manyother sites show this problem).
I(i), l(L). 
Current output form: 
. 
Current input form: 

It would be very nice if the font which-one currently being used for input/editing/mark-up/pre-formatting, is used also in output. It doesn't have any such problems. Additionally; it has a strike-mark inside zero; making it very distinctive from capital-O (however on current output font the big, floppy circle for O looks very nice). However, this probably wouldn't look unprofessional- because I've seen several old research paper used clear fonts looking like Courier-new or DotumChe, and much more extreme than the current input format.
Update :
As user@David suggested; I have no objection to modern-alternatives- if it is distinguished well. However I would not much  prefer Georgia because the small-letter-o and the zero is not very well distinguished. 
Here I attach some example of common and standard fonts; with a suggested rating. (Don't worry; others' opinions to be consider)

Some of the common confusions are I (cap i), l (small-L), O (cap-o), o (small-O), 0 (Zero); which has been sequentially shown in diagram. However there is another common type of confusion; that take place between 5, S and s (in some railway dot-matrix prints I've faced... I have read an S2 compartment as 52 !) however probably none of the modern, standard fonts do have that problem; so I did not included it. 
Some other sources that may be utilized: 
This webpage explains about cross-platform, serif fonts ; and also refers to Google fonts for some "web fonts". Among them; 
Lora,  Josefin Slab, Taviraj, Droid serif, Noto serif, Libre Baskerville, Crimson text etc are some very good options. 
This webpage mentions the list of font common to windows and mac. 

user22057: Make it clear that basic and trivial questions are off-topic
It seems obvious that if this site has any pretensions to quality, basic and trivial questions should be pulled. When I gained enough points to vote to close questions it appeared to me that there was no scope for doing this. Then I discovered others were voting to close questions of this type by classifying them as homework questions, much to the chagrin of the posters.
However, on following the link to the help entry on homework, I discovered the following:

What is a homework question?
• A request for help with an assignment
• Asking for help after exam
feedback - i.e. "Why was this marked incorrect?"
• A question that
addresses a basic biology concept that may seem trivial to biology
professionals

Good. But we need to be honest about this and put it in a category that describes it, e.g. “Low-quality question” (which incidentally comes up as a review category). That way users (and editors) will become aware that the site has certain minimum standards (even if they have to be interpreted subjectively).

user16866:  Ability to search Species ID posts using pictures 
Problem:
Most people coming to Bio.SE to have their unknown specimen identified have two options: either browse through dozens (or hundreds) of old posts to see if they can find a match for their specimen, or (much more commonly) just ask a new question.

This first option requires opening each post individually, and therefore is incredibly time consuming. As a result, most users opt for option 2.
This is ok if it's in fact a new species (i.e., one not previously ID'd on Bio.SE before) or if one of our users can recognize it as a duplicate of a previous post. 

However, with 600+ species ID posts, there is a good chance that there are un-marked duplicate posts.


Proposal:
Wouldn't it be so much better if you could sort through old species-identificaion posts by picture? 
I have no idea how this could be done (and I'm fairly sure it actually cannot be done), but it would make our species ID posts MUCH more accessible to visiting users. 

This would likely result in heavier traffic through the site.

Here's an example of how I think this could be done:

How this could work:

I envision one of 2 ways:

Auto selects 1st image in a post
Provide some ability for a user to select which image to include in search.



user16866:  Species ID question template 
Problem: 
Being especially focused on species ID questions here, I notice I spend a lot of my time asking for addition/ clarification of specimen details (e.g., better photo, location, size, etc.).

Although the species-identification tag suggests adding some detail 

Please include as much information as possible on habitat (esp. where in the world you found the organism) and behavior, and ideally provide images.

users still more often than not fail to include necessary information.

Proposal: 
It would be great if we could create some kind of template (or at the very least a series of annoying prompts or stops) to prevent questions from being posted without these info. 
I'm not sure how this would work or if it was even possible, but here are my ideas about 2 separate approaches:

When a user selects the species-identification tag, text is auto added to the question box:
Location:
Size:
... etc. ...

The user would of course have the option to fill in those pieces of information or just delete the sections (b/c sometimes something like size is not well known). But the idea is that if we do half the work for them, the prompting might get them to just fill in the details.

Because the above idea has some obvious issues (and may or may not even be possible)...

Instead of auto-generating text in the question box, what if instead a series of prompts or stops was initiated when someone selects the species-identification tag.

Perhaps this could be implemented on the side of the question box in the How to Ask instruction box.
Perhaps a dialogue pop-up appears when a user tries to submit a question without the words "location" or "size" or without including a picture. The pop-up could either reqire some mention in the question or simply re-iterate those data's importance in successful IDing (and not fully prevent question submitting). 



 
Related Thoughts:  

 I think in general, the How to Ask instruction box could be used much more broadly and effectively. If dynamic instructions or examples could be generated based on keywords or tags, that'd be great. Even if additional links were added for common question types/issues (e.g., the species ID q's), that'd be an improvement.



Update:
I added a new meta post to address this proposal: Species Identification tag warning proposal. 

This seems like the most viable approach to making something happen quickly. We can see how well it works!
Please vote/comment!


19099: <p>Recently I (and some others in chat) realised that there is some scope for improvement in the site's structure, graphics, fidgets, etc. So we have decided to give it a shot. But since <em>Stack Exchange is run by you</em>, we'll first gather some opinions about how this site can be improved. Go ahead and give your opinions through comments and/or answers. Preferably, write just one proposal in one answer (instead of &quot;we can improve this, this, this and that here&quot;). If possible (like if the feature's already available on other SE site, or you can depict how it would look), add an image of that feature (can be real or even a drawing), just to give a better representation. The best ones will be voted up. Later, we'll call in community manager(s) to let them know and make the final decision.</p>
<p><strong>List of Proposals:</strong> (oldest ones first)</p>
<ul>
<li><p><a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3639">Greeting Bot</a></p>
</li>
<li><p><a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3642">Species ID Question Template</a></p>
</li>
<li><p><a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3644">SO-like Floating Header</a></p>
</li>
<li><p><a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3647">Some more buttons in the visual-editor toolbar</a></p>
</li>
<li><p><a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3648">Little bit Improvement in Fonts</a></p>
</li>
<li><p><a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3649">Ability to &quot;Accept&quot; clearly correct answers for non-active members</a></p>
</li>
<li><p><a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3651">Want a countdown clock for comment-editing and chat editing</a></p>
</li>
<li><p><a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3652">Ability to search Species ID posts using Pictures</a></p>
</li>
<li><p><a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3653">Improve Image Attachment</a></p>
</li>
<li><p><a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3655/16460">Improve Migration options</a></p>
</li>
<li><p><a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3656/22057">Improve support for subscripts, superscripts and special characters</a></p>
</li>
<li><p><a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3657/22057">Make it clear that basic and trivial questions are off-topic</a></p>
</li>
<li><p><a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3660">Making comment mandatory with Downvote</a></p>
</li>
<li><p><a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3662">Bring the article about formatting, on main help page</a></p>
</li>
<li><p><a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3663">Increasing visibility of all answers to a single question</a></p>
</li>
<li><p><a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3664">Option to enable &quot;Grid view&quot; in question browsing list</a></p>
</li>
<li><p><a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3673">Make the Question/Answer Preview Editable</a></p>
</li>
<li><p><a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3670">WhatsApp<sup>®</sup>-like tick-mark besides the comment</a></p>
</li>
<li><p><a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3676">A user-friendly tutorial and help for MathJax within Help Centre</a></p>
</li>
<li><p><a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3678">Ability to notify moderators who put my question on-hold/closed</a></p>
</li>
</ul>
<h1>The time period of this question has been extended. All the answerers are requested to edit and improve their answer, during this time period, if they need to do so.</h1>
 19099: <p><strong>SO-like Floating Header</strong></p>

<p>Stack Overflow is famous for its floating header (among many other things). This is what I mean:</p>

<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/pAMUK.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/pAMUK.png" alt="header"></a></p>

<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/cbETW.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/cbETW.png" alt="floating"></a></p>

<p>Though, obviously, biology.SE is not as big a site as Stack Overflow, yet such a floating header might be useful in many ways like:</p>

<ul>
<li><p>it would let someone instantly know if they have received a notification (especially when they're down somewhere, reading comments below a very long answer, it'd save the effort of scrolling).</p></li>
<li><p>given the amount of users who actively participate in review (which is very low), this could instantly notify someone if there is pending review on their part (by replacing 'Documentation' and 'Jobs' with 'Close Votes' or 'First Posts' etc., much like what currently happens with Suggested Edits).</p></li>
<li><p>It looks nice...(will hopefully attract more new users to join in and actively participate)</p></li>
</ul>

<p><em>PS:</em> What if we display the user's all-time rank on their header? It will, most likely, encourage competition among users and they will tend to write better answers, both quantitatively and qualitatively. We could also put a "hide" button so that the floating header converts to the normal header we have now. This would be helpful for the users for whom floating header seems messy.</p>
 25568: <p><strong>A user-friendly tutorial and help for MathJax within Help Centre.</strong> </p>

<p>Our <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help">help centre</a> articles on <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/formatting">formatting</a>, Advanced formatting (or <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/editing-help#comment-formatting">expended formatting guide</a>), <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/editing-help#latex">Editing help-LaTex</a> though explains very well about markdown language and basic HTML commands, but they contains too little informations. The Right hand side help panel for MathJax help, leads to 
 <a href="http://www.math.harvard.edu/texman/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.math.harvard.edu/texman/</a> but it is not much appropriate for who want to quickly learn MathJax to write equations in Stack Exchange. Such as the Begin and End commands that we usually do not use in Stack Exchange; may confuse the user. </p>

<p>There are also big efforts, done in form of questions and answers in <a href="https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5020/mathjax-basic-tutorial-and-quick-reference">Mathematics meta</a> and <a href="https://chemistry.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86/how-can-i-format-math-chemistry-expressions-here">Chemistry Meta</a>; but it still needs to be arrange the informations in an easily readable and systematic way, and to include in help articles. </p>

<p>I'm learning MathJax (from Web sources) as well writing some sample tutorial materials within <a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/654/stack-exchange-experimentation-sandbox/3675#3675">one answer</a> in <a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/654/stack-exchange-experimentation-sandbox">Sandbox</a>. It seems I would be able to finish it within this week <em>(however that is undefined)</em>. I'd be grateful if it is reviewed by experts and the material or patterns included in the proposed tutorial. </p>

<h2>Update:</h2>

<p>I've resumed writing the tutorial material. But I'll be able to contribute only 15 minutes to 1 hour per day, for upcoming 1 month at least. So the required time to finish it, would be accordingly. However the chapter content may give a tentative idea.    </p>

<p>I'm also looking for a safe offline MathJax editor where I will be able to save the files. </p>
 25568: <p><strong>Allow users manually add some similar or related question in a righthand-side panel.</strong> </p>

<p>Sometimes we found highly-similar question or question with related concept (within one SE domain say bioSE or cross-domain say one at physics SE and another in Chemistry SE) that the automatic prediction system often miss. We often add them as comments. </p>

<p>But besides the currently used prediction system; if we could add them manually at a separate field (not just as comment); then- </p>

<ol>
<li><p>It will help the users to found similar concepts (quite like wikipedia's feature "See-also" that is also done manually). </p>

<ul>
<li>It would help to find similar topics, compare, correlate and better learn. </li>
<li>It would be enjoyable; and engage more readers in actively reading.  as I enjoy wikipedia's see also section a huge lot.  </li>
<li>would help an expert answerer to a similar or related problem being searched by many people in separate domains. Thus would increase interdisciplinary nature and would reduce tunnel-vision.   </li>
</ul></li>
<li><p>Would help the moderators to finding and suggesting "possible duplicates", and "other helpful sources".</p></li>
<li><p>It could be also used to improve digital track-record of similar question; and could be used to make more accurate tag map and improvement of automatic prediction of similar questions. </p></li>
</ol>
 16866: <p><s><h3> Ability to "Accept" clearly correct answers for non-active members </h3></s></p>

<p><em>[<strong>NOTE</strong>: based on a discussion in the comments below [<a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3636/redesigning-biology-stack-exchange-3-days-left#comment4797_3649">here</a> and <a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3636/redesigning-biology-stack-exchange-3-days-left#comment4798_3649">here</a>], I now see that this is <strong>not a necessary proposal</strong>. -- However, I've left it here for discussion sake.]</em></p>

<hr>

<p>(Less of a visual idea and more of a functional proposition).</p>

<p><strong>Problem</strong>: </p>

<p>There are <em>countless</em> number of answers on this site (like most SE sites) that have <strong>received correct answers but were never checked as accepted</strong>. In many cases, the asker is no longer active on the website so acceptance will likely never occur.</p>

<ul>
<li><p>This is often times a result of a user getting an answer they like to a specific question and never returning to the website. </p></li>
<li><p>My definition of "correct" entails that an answer has an <em>obviously</em> correct answer that has preferably been upvoted and has not been contradicted by answers from other "well-respected" users. </p></li>
<li><p>Some examples: <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/q/56667/16866">here</a>, <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/a/57920/16866">here</a>, <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/q/39243/16866">here</a>, etc. </p></li>
</ul>

<p><strong>Motive</strong>:</p>

<p>The site is littered with questions that have been well answered but appear to need further attention because of never having been checked as accepted.</p>

<ul>
<li>When I scan through tags of interest to answer "unanswered" questions, I have to weed through a number of these questions to find questions that <em>actually</em> still need a good answer.</li>
</ul>

<p><strong>Proposal</strong>:</p>

<p>In cases where both an answer is <em>correct</em> AND the user <em>is no longer active</em> (i.e., maybe has been > 1-2 years since last log-in) we should incorporate some form of community or moderator initiated answer-accepting protocol.</p>

<ul>
<li><p>Again, we would have to define what constitutes a scenario in which an answer can be accepted by someone other than the OP.</p>

<ul>
<li>Answer deemed "Correct " (see above)</li>
<li>User has been inactive for X period of time (I propose 1 year)</li>
<li>Answer does not contradict the intentions/wishes of the OP (asker)</li>
<li>Other criteria??</li>
</ul></li>
</ul>

<p>This could be incorporated in a number of ways:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Add a mod flag</p></li>
<li><p>Give ability to mods + users with silver or gold tag badges regarding the specific tags of the post in question.  </p></li>
<li><p>Create a pathway to acceptance via meta post voting.</p></li>
<li><p>Other ideas?</p></li>
</ol>
 25568: <p><strong>Bring the article about formatting, on main help page.</strong> </p>

<p>Summary: </p>

<p>Bring the article about formatting, on main help page. Also along-with separate purely technical articles (including formatting) from non-technical, moral/ ethical, law/ regulation/ moderation related articles</p>

<hr>

<p>Details: </p>

<p>On current version of <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help">Help centre</a>; there is no mention about formatting on the main or top help page. </p>

<blockquote>
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/ErNRJ.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/ErNRJ.png" alt="Screenshot"></a>.<br>
  Screenshot of main page of help centre, current-view. </p>
</blockquote>

<p>It actually displayed in <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/stackexchange">Our model</a>, and trimmed into "view more".  </p>

<blockquote>
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/TIN32.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/TIN32.png" alt="After clicking view more"></a><br>
  After clicking view more- screenshot of full list of articles under "Our model", as per current set up.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Alongwith a lot of irrelevant (in that sense non-technical or partly-technical) articles like <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/be-nice">Be nice</a>, <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/behavior">expected behaviour</a>, <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/promotion">how not to be spammer</a> etc; making it finding purely technical-help articles like <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/formatting">formatting</a> and <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/searching">search</a> hard. </p>

<p>IMO formatting help is an important technical lesson that should be easily reachable. So it should be brought to the top page of help centre; and also with similar purely technical support separated from code-of-conduct, reputation etc non-technical or partly-technical articles. </p>
 25568: <p><strong>Want a countdown clock for comment-editing and chat editing.</strong> </p>

<p>While comment-editing we get an indication about how many character-spaces remaining; but not the time. Though times in minutes passed after first publishing, is shown; that is not exactly a "countdown"; and <em>often inaccurate</em> probably because the page sometimes get desynchronized from the main SE server at phases of network connectivity problems or maybe there is some-other cause. And also that timing cannot be seen while editing turned on.    </p>

<blockquote>
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/FElEe.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/FElEe.png" alt="Current view of comment editing window"></a> .       </p>
</blockquote>

<p><strong>Screenshot-1:</strong> Current view of comment editing window.  There is no indication of time remaining. After 5 minutes from the moment of first publishing the comment; the edit could not be submitted.     </p>

<hr>

<p>There is similar problem in Chat.     </p>

<blockquote>
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/vMV34.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/vMV34.png" alt="Current view of comment edit"></a>.     </p>
</blockquote>

<p><strong>Screenshot-2:</strong> Current view of chat edit; part of <a href="http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/37109606#37109606">this conversation</a>.    </p>

<hr>

<p>However; it gives some indication; when only 10 seconds left.   </p>

<blockquote>
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/EV5kK.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/EV5kK.png" alt="Warning at Ten seconds left"></a>.        </p>
</blockquote>

<p><strong>Screenshot-3:</strong> Warning at ten seconds left.   </p>

<hr>

<p>Which ends at a glance.         </p>

<blockquote>
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/Vzt1S.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/Vzt1S.png" alt="Edit blocked"></a>    </p>
</blockquote>

<p><strong>Screenshot-4:</strong> Times up for continue editing.    </p>

<p>And also, there is no direct way for knowing while edit chat; how much total time is provided to edit a chat. </p>

<hr>

<hr>

<p>It would be very nice; if a small countdown watch shows  </p>

<p>Time remaining / total time. </p>

<p>Here is one sample: </p>

<blockquote>
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/WwqFH.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/WwqFH.png" alt="Sample clock"></a></p>
</blockquote>

<p><strong>Picture-5:</strong> <strong>Sample format of clock. The "indicator" is the main feature</strong>; showing the available time (remaining time). 5.a. is the sample of layout of entire clock <em>(the actual size could be smaller, as the community decides. My recommendation is 3cm (wide) X 1cm (tall) or something similar)</em>. </p>

<p>In the diagram 5.b. the rightward contraction of the indicator with time, has been shown. The coloured (highlighted) region is at right- side because it is the <em>indicator for "remaining" time</em> (and NOT of consumed or spent time). The colour green indicates a safe time. The yellow means warning; and the red means danger-time started, or unrecommended-amount of time has been consumed. </p>

<p>Also other forms like circle/ pie-chart type clock could be used; however IMO the bar-graph is more simple. </p>

<hr>

<p>PS-1: Once such a countdown clock has been developed; we would be able to use the<br>
 same  clock/ its variant for broader purpose; like countdown for bounties (in days), or election time (in weeks or days) etc. </p>

<p>PS-2: The block-quotes in this post are just to increase readability... otherwise having problem to recognize which-one caption goes to which-screenshot. </p>
 22057: <p><strong>Improve support for subscripts, superscripts and special characters</strong></p>

<p>This is a major annoyance which, in my opinion should have high priority in our wish list.</p>

<p>There are three aspects to this:</p>

<ol>
<li><p><em>In the editor</em> it should be possible to select subscript or superscript or bring up a palette with Greek letters and arrows. The lack of this results in badly formatted chemical formulae, or when people use the obscure mark up with dollar signs (this is 2017 for crying out loud) it appears in a different typeface. I personally don’t have a problem as I use HTML markup and paste UTF-8 characters from my Mac’s character palette. But others don’t know how to do it, and I shouldn’t have to. (Likewise the lack of a spell-checker.)</p></li>
<li><p>There is a problem with titles. Apparently it is not possible to do subscripts and superscripts in titles. Users should be warned to spell out the names of compounds instead.</p></li>
<li><p>Titles with markup that renders ok on my Mac, just show the raw markup on my iPhone. This is really poor. Everything else is mobile-friendly. SE should sort this as a matter of urgency.</p></li>
</ol>
 19099: <p><strong>Making comment mandatory with Downvote</strong></p>

<p>Many a times people just go on and give a downvote to a question or answer, with absolutely no intention of giving a reason for it. Although SO already gives a notification of giving a comment with a downvote,  it barely helps. Thus, we should make giving a comment compulsory when someone gives a downvote. </p>

<ul>
<li><p>this could happen as when one clicks the -1 button, the user would be notified that there downvote will not be registered unless they write a comment for it. </p></li>
<li><p>this option could be made optional for questions or answers if they already have -1 points or lesser. </p></li>
<li><p>in that case (above),  we could give an option that if they agree with a comment already there (the first downvoter always has to give a comment), they can give a +1 to that comment instead of writing another comment (but they must <em>either</em> +1 the comment <em>or</em> write another comment). </p></li>
<li><p>we could make a comment template like <em>I am downvoting this answer because.....</em></p></li>
<li><p>if the OP does not like the reason for downvote (or they don't consider the reason as appropriate)  or if they have improved what the downvoter had critisized, they could give a (kind of) notification so that the downvoter (or mods maybe) can remove that comment and downvote from that question/answer. </p>

<ul>
<li><p>We could also make some template comments for people so that they know what to post with a downvote, or people who are reviewing close votes (or maybe low quality posts) as it will save their time. Some suggestion from my point of view are (you can add/edit/remove suggestions based on your opinion):</p>

<ol>
<li><p><strong>Lack of (Proper) Citations:</strong> <em>I am downvoting this post because it does not contain valid/any references for the claims it makes.</em></p></li>
<li><p><strong>Content Problem:</strong> <em>I am downvoting this post because, in my opinion, there are severe problems with the content in this post which need to be edited and improved immediately.</em></p></li>
<li><p><strong>Different Opinion (from OP):</strong> <em>I am downvoting this post because I do not find the OP's claim satisfactory/justifiable. In my opinion, the claim "[put the line from post here which you find incorrect]" incorrect or not sarisfactory because [your opinion].</em></p></li>
<li><p><strong>Other (please give details on what you find wrong in the post):</strong> <em>I am downvoting this post because [write the comment here].</em></p></li>
</ol></li>
</ul></li>
</ul>
 19099: <p><strong>Make the Question/Answer Preview Editable</strong></p>

<p>It often happens that I (or anybody) write long answer and put some MathJax (or image or something) at the end. Then I have to scroll down and check whether it is displayed correctly. For example, I scroll down...scroll down...scroll down and see that I forgot to put the $ symbol after the equation. Then I scroll up...scroll up...scroll up and put that symbol. After that again scroll down...scroll  down...scroll down and see that I forgot to put the closing braces. This takes a lot of time and causes a lot of irritation. To counter this, we could instead make the preview itself editable. One could simply write their answer in preview, put some links, images and symbols from the floating toolbar (which could be placed at the side of screen). This would make editing a lot more easier and one would be able to edit the answer preview instead of the code for it.</p>

<p>The visual editor toolbar would be floating (so that it remains at the same position even if you scroll the screen). Also when we write some equation, it would get converted to its preview form as soon as the equation gets completed and you press the spacebar. For example, suppose you are writing \$\ce{H_2O}\$. Now, as soon as you press spacebar, it automatically gets converted to $\ce{H_2O}$. And when you click anywhere on $\ce{H_2O}$ (or press backspace), it will again display as \$\ce{H_2O}\$. This would make editing equations and formulas a lot easier.</p>
 28778: <p><strong>Greeting Bot</strong></p>

<p>How about having a bot that greets new users and provides them all the valuable information about the site in a short summary so that users tend to read it and post on-topic questions and write good referenced answers. I know that new users get notification about the tour page, but only some people read them and also the on-topic and off-topic questions are not mentioned in the tour page. There is help center for that but it has many questions in it, and I don't think anybody goes through it. The representation of the bot should be attractive enough to lure the user to read it. It should only provide the information about posting on-topic questions and writing a good answer and not about other features of the site. The new user should not think the bot as a human, a message like "I am a bot" also should be included in the welcome message.</p>

<p>The bot should provide information about:</p>

<ul>
<li><p>Personal medical questions and health advice. (covered in the tour page)</p></li>
<li><p>Homework questions.</p></li>
<li><p>Low-research effort questions.</p></li>
<li><p>Too broad and opinion based questions. (covered in the tour page)</p></li>
<li><p>Providing well-referenced answers.</p></li>
<li><p>Avoiding copy-paste of answers from other sites and articles.  </p></li>
</ul>

<hr>

<hr>

<p>The greeting bot may do its works in following ways.  </p>

<p><strong>1. When the user first opens an account in the site; the bot will send a greeting message</strong>. The bot will show a flash-card/pop-up and (also send a copy to inbox) The message would be kept always on top until 3 months spent after the user reads it and visits all the links. The preview of this particular message in the inbox dropdown; with a bright, red or orange flair. </p>

<p>Here is a sample template of the message:  </p>

<blockquote>
  <p>"Hi User@X. Welcome to biology SE, a great place to submit questions about biology, from any corners of the world. Please take a very small <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/tour">tour</a> of 1 small page, to get some  overall idea. For any help required, browse the <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help">Help centre</a>. </p>
  
  <p>However, we primarily look for your own, unique questions, that would enrich or/and rectify the world's knowledge, when the question will be saved to the database. For detailed informations; see <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic">what/ how to ask</a> and <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask">don't ask</a>. </p>
  
  <p>You can answer, too. However we look for a clear and logical answer, backed up with reference(source) or axiom. You could include pictures, graphs etc to improve the understanding. However, opinion-based answers and hypothetical (speculative) answers are usually discouraged. For details, go through <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer">how to write a good answer</a> and other articles about <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/answering">answering</a>. Whatever if you find a question about which you can tell  or explain well, or something important not yet mentioned in existing answers; please feel free to write an answer. </p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <blockquote>
    <ul>
    <li>To write the questions or answers, you will need to use some simple commands or codes for input or edit. As a result, a formatted-text will be found as output. That means the system is <em>NOT</em>- <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WYSIWYG" rel="nofollow noreferrer">what you see is what you get</a>.  <em>Some very basic of them are also available in form of visual editor toolbar at top of edit field.</em> Also at right side of the edit area, the yellow box. However, to know the  codes in details; <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/formatting">visit correct methods of formatting</a> ". </li>
    </ul>
  </blockquote>
  
  <hr>
</blockquote>

<hr>

<p><strong>When the user will publish a question / answer for the first time</strong>: </p>

<p>The user will obtain a flash-card as well as a inbox-message (for future use). </p>

<ul>
<li>For question: </li>
</ul>

<blockquote>
  <p>"Congrats! You have successfully posted your first question. Let the world visit  what you've pointed out. Don't forget to follow-up your post. Visit the coming answers and comments whenever possible. Check your notification inbox.  </p>
  
  <p>Your <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/whats-reputation">reputation</a> or score will change depending upon how the visitors across world are rating it. They may <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/vote-up">upvote</a> or <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/vote-down">downvote</a> it.  If any downvotes come, please don't take those emotionally. See the reasons and try to improve the question accordingly. Visit articles about <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/asking">asking</a>" </p>
</blockquote>

<ul>
<li>For answers: </li>
</ul>

<blockquote>
  <p>"Congrats! You have successfully published your first answer.  Your effort will help the world on now and for future. Don't forget to follow-up your post. Visit the coming comments. Check your notification inbox.</p>
  
  <p>Your <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/whats-reputation">reputation</a> or score will change depending upon how visitors across the world, and the asker, taking it. The users may <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/vote-up">upvote</a> or <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/vote-down">downvote</a> your answer, and if your answer satisfy, the asker may <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/accepted-answer">accept</a> your answer. If any downvotes come, please don't take those emotionally. See the reasons and improve the answer accordingly. Visit articles on <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/answering">answering</a>"   </p>
</blockquote>

<hr>

<p><strong>When the user will receive the answers to their first question.</strong> </p>

<p>Both a flash-card and a message (for future use).</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>"Hurrah! you have some answer(s) for your question. Read them carefully. <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/vote-up">Upvote</a> those answers, which are useful and clear. You may <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/vote-down">downvote</a> too, if you found an answer wrong or unclear. But please don't use any of them in hasty or rampant way. Read thoroughly before taking any actions. Downvoting without any comment, is highly unrecommended. If you downvote, it is your responsibility to retract it, if the answerer has been improved that fault.</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/accepted-answer">Accept</a> the answer which one best solves your purpose, or satisfy you the most. But before accepting the answer, make sure you've read the answer well, the answer indeed solves your purpose/satisfy you, and the answer is correct and authentic". </p>
  
  <p>For further information, see <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/someone-answers">What should I do when someone answers my question?</a></p>
</blockquote>

<hr>

<p><strong>When the user gives the first vote on any of the post (Question or answer)</strong></p>

<p><em>For first upvote:</em> </p>

<ul>
<li>flash-card: </li>
</ul>

<blockquote>
  <p>"Congrats; you're going to put your first upvote. Have you read the post carefully? Your <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/why-vote">vote matters</a> a lot. Judge a post according to its content. Help us find the hidden gems."</p>
  
  <p>Button: <strong>OK</strong> </p>
  
  <p>Button: <strong>No, I'll read once more</strong></p>
</blockquote>

<ul>
<li>and after the upvote a message at inbox: </li>
</ul>

<blockquote>
  <p>"Congrats; you've put your first upvote. Have you read the post carefully? Your <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/why-vote">vote matters</a> a lot. Judge a post according to its content. Help us find the hidden gems.". </p>
</blockquote>

<p><em>In case of first downvote:</em> </p>

<p>(a bit more elaborate flashcard than the current)</p>

<ul>
<li>Flash card:</li>
</ul>

<blockquote>
  <p>" You are going to <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/vote-down">downvote</a> a post. Are you sure this post contain something wrong/unclear? Your <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/why-vote">vote matters</a> a lot. Do not misjudge any post. We are all here to learn. <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/be-nice">Be respectful to others.</a> </p>
  
  <p>It is strongly recommended to put some comment to the user, so that they can improve the post or understand their fault.</p>
  
  <p>Button: <strong>Vote-down</strong>.  The post contains something wrong or unclear.  </p>
  
  <p>Button: <strong>Not now...  I want to read again</strong>.  </p>
  
  <p><code>*</code> Do not forget to retract the downvote if the user later on sufficiently rectify their post. </p>
</blockquote>

<ul>
<li>Inbox message: </li>
</ul>

<blockquote>
  <p>"You've put your first <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/vote-down">downvote</a>, because you were sure that the post wrong or unclear. Your <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/why-vote">vote matters</a> a lot. Do not misjudge any post. We are all here to learn. <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/be-nice">Be respectful to others</a>. </p>
  
  <p>It is strongly recommended to put some comment to the user, so that they can improve the post or understand their fault. "</p>
  
  <p><code>*</code> Do not forget to retract the downvote if the user later on sufficiently rectify their post. </p>
</blockquote>

<hr>

<hr>

<p><em>Anyone can add if anything more should be provided by the bot.</em></p>
 22057: <p><strong>Improve Migration options</strong></p>

<p>This suggestion relates to those with sufficient reputation to vote to close, who see a ‘close’ link under a question.  On clicking the <em>‘close’</em> link one gets a set of options for one’s reason for doing this, one of which is <em>“off-topic because...”</em>. After clicking this one gets another set of options, one of which is: <em>“This question belongs on another site in the Stack Exchange network”</em>. Clicking this gives only a single option: <em>“belongs on biology.meta.stackexchange.com”</em>, which is never appropriate for me. Why? And why can’t one just enter the SE site that one thinks it should be migrated to?</p>
 25568: <p><strong>Some more button for the Visual editor tool-bar</strong></p>

<p>(for improved visual editor support for the formatting task). </p>

<hr>

<p>In a list form; some features that are important, so requires visual support. (Also the visual support works as a good tutorial, on the same time.)</p>

<p>For special characters like  degree sign or &deg; (as in &deg;C or &deg;F), greek letters like &gamma; , &Gamma; etc; angstrom sign (I do not know command for it), <sub>Subscript</sub> , <sup>Superscript</sup> , <strike>Strike-out</strike> ,  <code>no-execution &lt;sup&gt; abcd &lt;/sup&gt;</code> , etc;  And for math and chemistry equations (as SE prefers MathJax and Lattex language for that sort of formating) some basic templates for chemistry and math equation, and if possible and a draw <a href="https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/49065/what-is-a-united-word">table</a> feature with MathJax or Lattex Array. </p>

<p>.................................................</p>

<ul>
<li><strong>P. S. 1 : some formatting tasks which are very important, allowed, but absent in visual editor:</strong> . </li>
</ul>

<p><a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/formatting">The commands are mostly from markdown with allowing some basic HTML commands</a></p>

<p>Feature Name,   Example,  Command,   comment </p>

<p>Greek (Caps),   &Lambda;,  <code>&amp;Lambda;</code> (Greek letter name initial in caps)</p>

<p>Another example, &Omega;, <code>&amp;Omega;</code></p>

<p>Greek (small),  &lambda;,  <code>&amp;lambda;</code> (Greek letter name initial in small)</p>

<p>Another example, &omega;, <code>&amp;omega;</code> </p>

<p>Degree , &deg;, <code>&amp;deg;</code> Application: &deg;C, &deg;F 45&deg;</p>

<p>Subscript,  <sub>Subscript</sub>, <code>&lt;sub&gt;Text under Subscript&lt;/sub&gt;</code>, application: <sub>6</sub>CO<sub>2</sub> ,   <sub>8</sub>O<sub>2</sub> . </p>

<p>Superscript, <sup>Superscript</sup>, <code>&lt;sup&gt;Superscript&lt;/sup&gt;</code>, application: 10<sup>-9</sup>,  <sup>13</sup>C , <sup>13</sup><sub>6</sub>C<sup>16</sup><sub>8</sub>O<sub>2</sub>. </p>

<p>Strike-out, <strike>Strike-Out</strike>, <code>&lt;strike&gt;Strike-Out&lt;/strike&gt;</code> , (given only in question mark <code>?</code>) </p>

<p>No-execution of command; <code>&lt;strike&gt;abcd&lt;/strike&gt;</code> , `` Text under a pair of backtick characters. </p>

<p>These type of commands should be available in the visual editor. </p>

<p>.............................................................</p>

<ul>
<li><strong>PS:2</strong> <strong>Some of the formatting task, like basic chemistry and math equations require MathJax; but Lack of visual editor makes them cumbersome for beginners in this site.</strong> </li>
</ul>

<p>SE recommends <a href="https://chemistry.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/86/how-can-i-format-math-chemistry-expressions-here">MathJax</a>, a <a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3466/want-to-know-commands-codes-for-following-formatting-tasks/3467#3467">variant of Latex</a>, to write chemistry and math equations. Some sites use LaTex array to make <a href="https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/46705/what-is-a-symbiotic-word">tables</a>; which could be helpful in <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/55901/using-anatomical-terms-for-human-organs-and-parts-of-plants/55928#55928">answering</a>, too, as the text could be easily extracted from such type of tables. </p>

<h2>..............................................................</h2>

<p>Update: </p>

<p>The proposal is being declared as <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/community-wiki">community wiki</a>. If anyone want to add/ elaborate/ reframe statements (except delete others' input); they could do that. As it seems user@David tried to add up lot of details through a separate <a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3636/redesigning-biology-stack-exchange/3656#3656">answer</a>. Anyone could improve this answer. </p>

<h2>...........................................................................</h2>

<p>A <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/community-wiki">"community wiki"</a> post <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts">means</a> a post designated for edit and improve by multiple users' collaborative efforts; so not restricted by ownership of one individual user.  Anyone with <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/edit-community-wiki">certain</a> small-amount of <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/whats-reputation">reputation</a> (score or points), can participate in a community wiki. In contrast to community-wiki posts; a <a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3462/what-are-non-community-and-community-wiki-answers">"<em>NON-community</em>-wiki"</a> means anything here excluding than community wiki; i.e. <em>non</em>-community wikis are any posts restricted to ownership of one user. </p>
 25568: <p><strong>Little bit improvement in fonts</strong> </p>

<p>At-present the font being used for output / executed forms, creates some confusions places to places; such as the small-letter-L (EL) (l) and capital-letter-i (Aye) (I) are <em>indistinguishable</em>. </p>

<p>For say, when to type <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isoleucine" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Isoleucine</a> or <a href="http://www.bmrb.wisc.edu/referenc/commonaa.php?ile" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Ile</a> (should be aye(i)-el(L)-ee(E)), <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illicium" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><em>Illicium</em> sp</a> or i-L-L-icium (and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illiciaceae" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Illiceaceae</a>)... it is quite ridiculous (however BioSE is no exception, manyother sites show this problem).</p>

<p>I(i), l(L). </p>

<p>Current output form: </p>

<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/524ad.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/524ad.png" alt="confusing form"></a>. </p>

<p>Current input form: </p>

<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/vgapu.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/vgapu.png" alt="clear form"></a></p>

<p>It would be very nice if the font which-one currently being used for input/editing/mark-up/pre-formatting, is used also in output. It doesn't have any such problems. Additionally; it has a strike-mark inside zero; making it very distinctive from capital-O (however on current output font the big, floppy circle for O looks very nice). However, this probably wouldn't look unprofessional- because I've seen several old research paper used clear fonts looking like Courier-new or DotumChe, and much more extreme than the current input format.</p>

<p>Update :</p>

<p>As user@David suggested; I have no objection to modern-alternatives- if it is distinguished well. However I would not much  prefer Georgia because the small-letter-o and the zero is not very well distinguished. </p>

<p>Here I attach some example of common and standard fonts; with a suggested rating. (Don't worry; others' opinions to be consider)</p>

<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/r0Rzd.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/r0Rzd.png" alt="rating of some common fonts"></a></p>

<p>Some of the common confusions are I (cap i), l (small-L), O (cap-o), o (small-O), 0 (Zero); which has been sequentially shown in diagram. However there is another common type of confusion; that take place between 5, S and s (in some railway dot-matrix prints I've faced... I have read an S2 compartment as 52 !) however probably none of the modern, standard fonts do have that problem; so I did not included it. </p>

<p>Some other sources that may be utilized: </p>

<p><a href="https://templates.mailchimp.com/design/typography/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">This webpage</a> explains about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-platform" rel="nofollow noreferrer">cross-platform</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serif" rel="nofollow noreferrer">serif</a> fonts ; and also refers to <a href="https://fonts.google.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Google fonts</a> for some "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_typography" rel="nofollow noreferrer">web fonts</a>". Among them; 
<a href="https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Lora" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Lora</a>,  <a href="https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Josefin+Slab" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Josefin Slab</a>, <a href="https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Taviraj" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Taviraj</a>, <a href="https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Droid+Serif" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Droid serif</a>, <a href="https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Noto+Serif" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Noto serif</a>, <a href="https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Libre+Baskerville" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Libre Baskerville</a>, <a href="https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Crimson+Text" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Crimson text</a> etc are some very good options. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.ampsoft.net/webdesign-l/WindowsMacFonts.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">This webpage</a> mentions the list of font common to windows and mac. </p>
 22057: <p><strong>Make it clear that basic and trivial questions are off-topic</strong></p>
<p>It seems obvious that if this site has any pretensions to quality, basic and trivial questions should be pulled. When I gained enough points to vote to close questions it appeared to me that there was no scope for doing this. Then I discovered others were voting to close questions of this type by classifying them as homework questions, much to the chagrin of the posters.</p>
<p>However, on following the <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/help/homework">link to the help entry on homework</a>, I discovered the following:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>What is a homework question?</strong></p>
<p>• A request for help with an assignment</p>
<p>• Asking for help after exam
feedback - i.e. &quot;Why was this marked incorrect?&quot;</p>
<p>• <em>A question that
addresses a basic biology concept that may seem trivial to biology
professionals</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Good. But we need to be honest about this and put it in a category that describes it, e.g. <em>“Low-quality question”</em> (which incidentally comes up as a review category). That way users (and editors) will become aware that the site has certain minimum standards (even if they have to be interpreted subjectively).</p>
 16866: <h3> Ability to search Species ID posts using pictures </h3>

<p><strong>Problem:</strong></p>

<p>Most people coming to Bio.SE to have their unknown specimen identified have two options: either browse through dozens (or hundreds) of old posts to see if they can find a match for their specimen, or (much more commonly) just ask a new question.</p>

<ul>
<li><p>This first option requires opening each post individually, and therefore is incredibly time consuming. As a result, most users opt for option 2.</p></li>
<li><p>This is ok if it's in fact a new species (i.e., one not previously ID'd on Bio.SE before) or if one of our users can recognize it as a duplicate of a previous post. </p>

<ul>
<li>However, with 600+ species ID posts, there is a good chance that there are un-marked duplicate posts.</li>
</ul></li>
</ul>

<p><strong>Proposal:</strong></p>

<p>Wouldn't it be so much better if you could sort through old <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/species-identificaion" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;species-identificaion&#39;" rel="tag">species-identificaion</a> posts by <strong>picture</strong>? </p>

<p>I have no idea how this could be done (and I'm fairly sure it actually <em>cannot</em> be done), but it would make our species ID posts <em>MUCH</em> more accessible to visiting users. </p>

<ul>
<li>This would likely result in heavier traffic through the site.</li>
</ul>

<p>Here's an example of how I think this could be done:</p>

<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/s2vkl.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/s2vkl.jpg" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>

<p>How this could work:</p>

<ul>
<li><p>I envision one of 2 ways:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Auto selects 1st image in a post</p></li>
<li><p>Provide some ability for a user to select which image to include in search.</p></li>
</ol></li>
</ul>
 16866: <h3> Species ID question template </h3>

<p><strong>Problem</strong>: 
Being especially focused on species ID questions here, I notice I spend a lot of my time asking for addition/ clarification of specimen details (e.g., better photo, location, size, etc.).</p>

<ul>
<li><p>Although the <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/species-identification" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;species-identification&#39;" rel="tag">species-identification</a> tag suggests adding some detail </p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Please include as much information as possible on habitat (esp. where in the world you found the organism) and behavior, and ideally provide images.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>users still more often than not fail to include necessary information.</p></li>
</ul>

<p><strong>Proposal</strong>: 
It would be great if we could create some kind of template (or at the very least a series of annoying prompts or stops) to prevent questions from being posted without these info. </p>

<p>I'm not sure how this would work or if it was even possible, but here are my ideas about 2 separate approaches:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>When a user selects the <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/species-identification" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;species-identification&#39;" rel="tag">species-identification</a> tag, text is auto added to the question box:</p>

<pre><code>Location:
Size:
... etc. ...
</code></pre>

<p>The user would of course have the option to fill in those pieces of information or just delete the sections (b/c sometimes something like size is not well known). But the idea is that if we do half the work for them, the prompting might get them to just fill in the details.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Because the above idea has some obvious issues (and may or may not even be possible)...</p>

<ol start="2">
<li><p>Instead of auto-generating text in the question box, what if instead a series of prompts or stops was initiated when someone selects the <a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/species-identification" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;species-identification&#39;" rel="tag">species-identification</a> tag.</p>

<ul>
<li><p>Perhaps this could be implemented on the side of the question box in the <strong>How to Ask</strong> instruction box.</p></li>
<li><p>Perhaps a dialogue pop-up appears when a user tries to submit a question without the words "location" or "size" or without including a picture. The pop-up could either reqire some mention in the question or simply re-iterate those data's importance in successful IDing (and not fully prevent question submitting). </p></li>
</ul></li>
</ol>

<hr>

<p><sup> 
Related Thoughts: </sup> </p>

<ul>
<li><sup> I think in general, the How to Ask instruction box could be used much more broadly and effectively. If dynamic instructions or examples could be generated based on keywords or tags, that'd be great. Even if additional links were added for common question types/issues (e.g., the species ID q's), that'd be an improvement.
</sup></li>
</ul>

<hr>

<p><strong>Update:</strong></p>

<p>I added a new meta post to address this proposal: <a href="https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3680/16866">Species Identification tag warning proposal</a>. </p>

<ul>
<li><p>This seems like the most viable approach to making <em>something</em> happen quickly. We can see how well it works!</p></li>
<li><p>Please vote/comment!</p></li>
</ul>
