Ed Policies and Guidelines
Author: Itai Smith

Introduction

In Spring 2021 we will use Ed Discussions as our course forum. If you’re new to Ed, please read the Ed guide, which should get you familiar with this platform. This post includes a collection of guidelines for etiquette on Ed, that we ask you to read entirely so we can all have an enjoyable experience this semester!

In CS 61B, we are moving into a more realistic programming environment, with real world tools and open ended problems. This generates lots of posts. To help keep Ed concise, and to help build your independence as a programmer, you should post a question only after you have done the following:

Recent research from Duke/NC State/UNC/UF has shown that student participation on course forums, like Piazza and Ed, is most beneficial when students ask constructive questions that reflect their reasoning or attempts to solve a problem. Especially since problems in CS 61B are more involved, it’s important to include:

Please do not post:

Most importantly, please find the appropriate mega thread to post your questions in. Every assignment will have its own mega threads. Some assignments will even have a mega thread for various subparts. Before posting your question, make sure it has not been asked already in the mega thread. Please refer to our Ed guide to see how to search mega threads efficiently. Only make your post outside of a mega thread if you can’t find one that is appropriate for your question.

We reserve the right to decline or delete any Ed posts or follow-ups that violate these rules without notice.

Keeping Ed Inclusive

Any content on public forums like Ed that targets, excludes, disrespects or discriminates against a certain individual or community will be removed and the person responsible for the content will face repercussions. Please aim to keep the climate inclusive for everyone. If at any point you have felt targeted, excluded, disrespected, or discriminated against by a student or someone from our course staff, please report the incident with any member of course staff that you are comfortable with, the head TAs or professor. If you would rather not speak to someone from staff, consider contacting the ASUC Student Advocate’s Office.

Making Ed Posts About Grades/Gradescope/Submitting

If you are making a post about Gradescope, the autograder, the scores tab, or other grade issues, you must include:

As a reminder, your CS 61B login is not something that you need to censor on any posts. Only staff knows the map between logins and students, so your anonymity is preserved from other students.

Using Ed Effectively

One way in which Ed is different from Piazza is that not all comments on posts are “resolvable”. When staff is looking over Ed, we filter posts to see only those marked as “unresolved”. These would be comments on mega threads, with an “unresolved” tag, or stand alone posts whose green checkmark is not marked. See our Ed guide for more information about these features. Again, note that comments on non mega thread posts do not have a notion of being “resolvable” and staff will not see them in a timely manner when filtering Ed.

Change your email settings to receive fewer emails. In the upper right corner, click on the person icon, hit “Settings”, and then hit “Notifications” to adjust the number of emails you receive from Ed. Announcement emails will always reach you.

Don’t provide elaborations or +1s in the student response of a post. When answering a question, do not reply with anything other than an answer, because answering will mark the post as answered. This can prevent the original author from getting an answer. If you have a clarification or some question about the question itself, you can reply to the question by hitting “Comment” directly under the question.

If you figure out the answer to your own question, tell us your answer. Everyone hates when somebody replies to their own question with something like “Nevermind, I got it!”. Other students can not learn from that if they happen to have the same problem. Instead, update the answer with what steps you took to resolve the issue so others can learn.

Follow posts you want to know more about. If you see an ongoing question you’d like to keep track of, you can either:

Make code (and stack traces) readable. Use the runnable code button in the editor toolbar so that your code looks nice

public class Example {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println("Formatting code nicely is the way to go");
    }
}

If you have a question about a personal matter that you don’t want other students to see, please make a private post on Ed. Private posts are only seen by the course staff. If you want only the head TAs and Josh to see your question, please email cs61b@berkeley.edu.