It appears that the question is not as controversial as was initially anticipated. Good, I think it's a good question, and few places spring to mind as a good alternate forum where it could be asked.

I wish that this hadn't been asked, or that if it had then it had been asked a little more carefully. What I would have preferred is a much tighter question where the fact that the question is asking for places to find out more was more clear. I am afraid that the informal style of the question will lead to anecdotal answers. So far, the split is half-and-half between references to other material and anecdotes.

I've left a comment requesting that people confine themselves to reference-style answers and not anecdotes.

(This brings to mind something I've pondered for a bit: an SE site devoted to academic teaching. It would be for academics trying to find out how to become better at the teaching side of their job, but who find it a little tricky to wade through the education literature and to translate the theory in to action.)

I would be happy to hear such anecdotes! But over a beer in a pub, not on MO. I do not see what value such anecdotes would have. They are, by nature, quirky and not typical. Quite often, they deal with "horror situations" that most of us won't encounter. And they are usually completely out of context. So in a place where this question is a dubious fit to start with, if the answers fill up with anecdotes then I would vote to close.

There is a proposed SE site for academia (http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/16617/academia) in the commitment stage.

I would like to give a little pushback to the idea that informal settings are the right place to have these kinds of conversations. I certainly understand your point that lots of the good stories aren't things that people would want to make public, so I'm not going to strongly disagree on this particular point. But I don't think it's a coincidence that the setting you chose ("over a beer in a pub") is not a place that everyone feels comfortable. The more often important things happen in informal situations the more difficult it is for people who don't match the dominant culture in the field. Formal communications are more fair and easier to find for everyone.

(Of course, I like talking about these things over beer in a pub, so I'm not really trying to make a very vehement point here. I just think that the discriminatory affects of informal rules and information being passed down only informally should be kept in mind.)

Noah: Interesting proposal, but looking at the on-topic questions it doesn't (yet) encompass what I was thinking about (but I don't really have the time or energy at the moment to look deeper).

Of course, "over a beer in a pub" is a facetious comment, designed to be at the opposite end of the scale to MO. In actual fact, I don't drink beer (beyond the odd bottle of jule øl) and haven't been to a pub for a very long time (at least, not to drink). So "over a beer in a pub" is not meant to be taken too seriously.

To expand a little on my point, what I'm trying to say is that an anecdote cannot exist in and of itself and therefore cannot be an answer to a question. Without wider context, anecdotes are useless. The point of the pub setting was that the anecdote can be shared in the context of a wider discussion where it would make sense. Anecdotes are useful when they illustrate a general point, or provide a counterbalance to a sweeping generalisation. In a conversation, whether in a pub, over lunch, or in an online forum, the anecdote appears as part of a longer and more detailed argument. That doesn't work on MO. In addition, if the discussion in which the anecdote appears is "live" or is laid out clearly in the order it took place, it is easier for the "audience" to follow. Again, on MO that isn't easy to do.

I find your last (non parenthetical) sentence interesting:

Formal communications are more fair and easier to find for everyone.

I agree! But MO does not match my idea of a system of "formal communications". In this situation, I feel that either an issue is too trivial to be worth recording on MO or is too important to be wasted by being recorded on MO. In particular, in the latter someone may feel that by putting their anecdote "in the public domain" by putting it on MO then they have achieved something. Tvert imot! They have achieved nothing because very few of the people who needed to know will have read it.

To completely twist Screwtape here, something (anecdotal) that is important enough to put in an answer to this question is actually too important to put in an answer to this question.

To put the knife in, I as a reader of these anecdotal answers cannot judge their importance and therefore they are useless to me. If they were used as illustrations of a well-reasoned and well-laid out text that set out all the possibilities with careful judgement as to how to act, I would know how to use them. As it is, I think it does more harm than good to have them here on MO.

(Incidentally, I'll happily buy the first round at that pub; but clearly I've been over-using the "over a beer at a pub" phrase. I'll try to think of a better one next time.)