So I was just about to say the last line here seemed unnecessary. Then he goes and removes it.

:P

@trogdor:

Hidden Youth is looking for submissions.

@Canageek Hi!

@BESW Salutations

What's new?

@BESW Not much, waiting for some equpiment to run at work

I have a bit of time to kill while x-raying things, that is too long to do nothing in, but too short to walk back to my lab

Well, isn't this just smurfy.

@JohnP ?

@Miniman What?

@JohnP What's so smurfy?

Oh, just not getting responses to requested emails. I live on email and instant message apps for work, so drives me a little batty when emails go unanswered.

Been stuck for a week on a project because the guy that has the info I need is always "unavailable".

Hehe, I was a bit worried that I'd be facing terror in the data compression exam tomorrow. Then I noticed our cool TA has created supplementary material concerning the exact bit[vector]s I was struggling with.

@William'MindWorX'Mariager He's been removing comments that explain why it is not a useful answer because they're "arguing" but that's exactly what the comments are for. Way to abuse your moderator position, @BrianBallsun-Stanton

Umm.

No.

Comments are not for explaining why an answer is bad.

They are for explaining how answer can be improved.

Exactly.

@WesleyObenshain 'zackly.

If it's just "I disagree," or "You're wrong," there's no improvement to be had.

If you think an answer is bad/wrong, then post up your own answer.

Help Center says: Comments are for asking for clarification or providing constructive feedback on answers and should not be long discussion threads; comments are considered temporary and will be cleaned up by mods. If you have a major point to make, write your own answer and let people vote on it. Comment warring will not be tolerated.

Oh, I did that too

Excellent, then by downvoting his and posting an alternate, you've done your part to improve the site.

But that's kind of my point. It wasn't a comment war. It was a single comment explaining why I thought his answer was not as good as it could be.

Comments are not meant to be permanent anyway. No use getting worked up about them getting deleted.

@WesleyObenshain I'm tempted to post a comment on your post simply stating "No, you're wrong there. -1"

Was it "This answer is bad," or "This answer would be better if..."?

I'd paste it for you but...

@JohnP You've missed the point of this conversation, John...

If you disagree or think its unuseful or you have some criticism please feel free to comment.

@WesleyObenshain No, you've missed the point of my sarcastic witticism.

But I didn't say "You're wrong"

@WesleyObenshain IIRC, you said something along the lines of "For these reasons, you haven't really answered the question."

I know nothing of Microscope, was just poking fun at the situation. Loosen up.

@Miniman I did say "I don't think you really answered the question" but the substantial part of the criticism was to point out that he'd phrased it from an ableist viewpoint

That's not a suggestion for how to improve an answer, that's a suggestion that it needs to be deleted. Those should be made with flags, not comments.

Yeeah. That's not "this answer can be improved by..." it's "this answer should not be."

@WesleyObenshain At the time when he answered it, there was nothing to indicate the subject of the question was mentally disabled.

Downvote it, and flag if you think it's offensive enough.

But that's my point... the rest of his answer is at least an answer. But phrasing is exactly the sort of thing that can be improved.

"Your "player", by choosing not to know the rules nor involve herself in the world nor involve herself in the mechanics nor involve herself with the rest of the group... fails this requirement."

What annoys me is that he has this comment saying "Please don't argue in comments" and then deletes a criticism out of hand...

That smacks less of moderation and more of "I don't want to deal with people who disagree with me today"

@WesleyObenshain Would it annoy you if it was done by mxy?

@Miniman Less so. Was it?

@WesleyObenshain Then leave a comment saying "Based on new information, we now know the player is not making that choice. Perhaps an edit to reflect this would be appropriate."

@WesleyObenshain No, I'm just making the point that it's a standard moderator action.

@WesleyObenshain You have no idea who deleted it.

Which is fair but I can make a pretty good educated guess.

@BESW Thank you for the suggestion. I will do that.

@WesleyObenshain That's... dangerous.

Almost all the comments that get deleted on this site are deleted because a non-moderator flagged them for attention.

@BESW

Moderators have much much better things to do with their time than trawl for comments to purge. If your comment was challenging rather than constructive, I would have flagged it.

If you want to challenge the flag, or suggest that Brian's abusing his moderator powers, do it in meta.

The chat is not the place to resolve these things.

In principle I think it'd be cleanest if moderators wouldn't vet comments of their own posts. But still it's just a comment. SE sites are sites of questions and answers, comments are less than second-class citizens.

@BESW At any rate, I appreciate your choice of phrasing and have opted to use it.

@WesleyObenshain And he's already made the edit.

See? Easy. Just make comments about how the post can be made better, rather than all about what's wrong.

@BESW Don't see the difference between a "shouldn't be [x]" and "should be [y]" if x = -y, personally but I hear you

Is it just me or is this an unfounded assumption?

Kinda. I don't think 5e RAW covers that.

@kviiri Well, it doesn't. But it's a big leap from "the rules don't have a way to do this" to "the question was specifically asking for homebrew".

Canonical rules could offer a viable equivalent, maybe.

@Miniman Not that big, methinks... but I'm not that big on heavy RAW.

I might not appreciate it correctly! :P

@kviiri Don't get me wrong, a homebrew solution would be a perfectly acceptable answer. But changing the question to ask specifically for homebrew seems a bit drastic.

If he tagged it homebrew it would imply he was explicitly looking for homebrew options, though, which is generally a much broader category than "homebrew acceptable"

And there's a pretty big difference between "homebrew" and "house rule"

@Miniman I guess.

Isn't there a meta about this?

@BESW I was looking for one, couldn't find one. I'd be happy to be wrong, though.

I like how the Barbarian class of Dungeon World has more than just ol' Conan for inspiration.

@Miniman I thought it was unwarranted enough to revert it, until I noticed the reasoning: the question does subtly imply that they expect to go outside the rules when it says "without being overpowered". It makes it borderline to my eyes. I'd like to see the OP's thoughts on the edit, but I don't see it doing damage meanwhile enough to take action.

@SevenSidedDie I can see what you mean, I guess. I suspect we're never going to get any feedback from the OP anyway, sadly.

@Miniman Yeah. In which case, it's a dead question and not critical to polish. I do sometimes wish we still had "too localised" for when that kind of question (that will never help anyone else) gets abandoned.

I dunno, it's actually a pretty common trope.

3.5 has a template for it.

Well this is "exciting." There's a major hazardous chemical fire at the Port of Vancouver.

Ooh.

> The City of Vancouver tweeted that people in the area should stay inside and close their windows.

As much as this is a terrible disaster and all, I have to pause and marvel that we live in a world where tweeting is a form of emergency public broadcast.

Hover cars and jetpacks or not, the future is now.

@BESW I know; that's intensely weird. We're being told to pay attention to local media and three related Twitter feeds.

we need more pf experts in chat