The Junk Drawer - 2015-01-09 (page 3 of 3)

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8:01 PM

I haven't upvoted or accepted any answers on there yet as I haven't got around to trying them.

@J.Musser So you listed a “solution” that destroys the object, one that requires a rare piece of equipment, a method that doesn't produce the desired result, and another object-destroying method. Listing these does make your question better, and they avoid people wasting their time suggesting solutions that you already know won't work. But they aren't what makes your question on-topic.

@J.Musser I hadn't seen apaul's answer to that question yet; the guy put a lot of effort and detail in that one

@Gilles Uh, what rare piece of equipment?

@J.Musser In fact I don't see how your question is on-topic. What makes it a lifeHACK question as opposed to a life question?

@J.Musser the air compressor

@Gilles Because a regular solution doesn't work

8:04 PM

@Gilles @J.Musser you might have one, but I don't

@Gilles commonplace. At least here

16 secs ago, by Shokhet

@Gilles @J.Musser you might have one, but I don't

@Shokhet saw

it pinged me the first time...

@J.Musser Aright

I expect most people I know only have a bicycle pump. Would you include that in “air compressor”?

What do you use an air compressor anyway? Car tyres?

8:05 PM

I have a lot of other equipment other people don't have, but it seems most neighborhoods have at least 1 air compressor.

I'd expect petrol stations to have one, but that can be a long walk away

Anyway, again, what makes lifehacks.stackexchange.com/questions/2423/… a lifehack question?

@Gilles Car tires, truck tires, tractor, lawn mower, wood chipper, slicer overseeder, stump grinder, wood splitter, preseeder, aerator tires, and several more.

@Gilles He needs a solution to unstick his buckets quickly. Why isn't that an LH question?

@J.Musser “how do I go to the moon, I tried jumping and airplanes” — is that a lifehack question? I can't think of a conventional solution that works.

buckets being everyday items, and getting them stuck is pretty commonplace, I think

8:07 PM

@Shokhet in what way is it calling for a hack?

@Gilles cause it's obviously impossible and stupid

@Shokhet That makes it a life question

Judging by the open questions, this site is everydaylife.SE

not lifeHACKS.SE

@Gilles The "in less than 20 minutes" part?

@Shokhet that's an additional difficulty

@Gilles with a ot of hack answers for some reason, yeah.

8:09 PM

@J.Musser Yes, because it was founded by lifehack enthusiasts, who enjoy creative solutions whether they're needed or not

But in the end a fundamental goal of Stack Exchange is to produce useful answers, not to provide fun times to a few people

@Gilles I found most of the answers on the site useful, and would use them

@Gilles I think that it fits these rules:

* **solves [a] problem**: a lifehack must be about solving a concrete problem. It's a “how” question, not a “what” or “why” question.
* **an everyday problem**: a lifehack concerns everyday life. Problems encountered as part of professional life, or requiring specialized knowledge, are not lifehacks.
* **increases productivity or efficiency**: a lifehack is about solving the problem quickly and with few resources, not about finding the solution that produces a high-quality result.

....doesn't it?

@Shokhet doesn't meet the third point

weird formatting there...

@Gilles how not

@J.Musser chat formatting is a subset of site formatting, and is turned off for multiline messages

8:11 PM

@Gilles I wonder why

@Gilles No? ....he could do it by twisting the bucket, but that could take a while. It would certainly "increase efficiency" if there's a way to do that quickly

@Shokhet doesn't always work anyway.

@J.Musser where is the increase of productivity or efficiency compared to a hypothetical “conventional” solution?

@Gilles See my last message

@Shokhet if you twist the words that way then any efficiency improvement to any method whatsoever is on-topic

8:12 PM

@Gilles I don't think I'm twisting your words in any way. Am I misunderstanding something?

@Gilles if it's an improvement, yeah

on topic

@J.Musser BRB, asking “how can I make an airplane fly faster?” “how can I boil water faster?” “how can I increase my salary?” …

@Gilles middle one alreadyy asked iirc

@J.Musser <facepalm>

@Gilles first one stupid

8:14 PM

@J.Musser is it still open?

Well, why not. But rename this site to everydaylife.SE.

@Gilles for hack answers

@J.Musser No, a site is defined by its questions and by its audience, not by its answers.

7

Q: Fastest way to boil water?

When I want to make hot chocolate, one of the steps is, obiously, boiling water. It seems to take forever. Is there a faster way? The method I am currently using is putting water in a metal can and using the stove.

Keep in mind that the vast majority of users of the site are not participants and don't care about the site name. They find the post in a web search.

8:16 PM

@Shokhet yeah that

People searching “Fastest way to boil water” are not looking for a hack. They're looking for a fast way to boil water.

I have to run now; see ya!

@Gilles You keep trying to say how bad things are, but it's not constructive unless you can provide a positive alternative, which you've been failing to do.

@J.Musser I've proposed two alternatives in this discussion: restrict the scope to questions that actually call for hacks, or rename the site to match the current effective scope

@Gilles First alternative doesn't work unless you have a definition backup

Which you could use the most upvoted answer on the 'what is a lifehack' meta post

8:27 PM

22

A: What is a lifehack?

Going by the answer from @Bobo, I think that the very definition of what a lifehack is, is actually a solution, not a question. So we need to try and flip it around and think what sort of questions produce lifehack solutions. Looking at this list of top lifehacks, these are the questions that wo...

> They all seem to revolve around lifes little annoyances, so maybe that's what the question scope should be? True, not all of them are going to produce lifehack answers, but in a Q&A format, these are the questions that are most likely to do that.

that means the site would be everydaylife.SE

which I'm not personally opposed to

the rest of Adi's answer contradicts the paragraph I quoted though

@Gilles No, not if this is the definition of a lifehack

2 hours later…

darthnesscoveredthesky

10:52 PM

79

Q: Welcome to New Users

I am a new user here on Skeptics.SE. What do I need to know?

discussion faq featured

I was checking this out again maybe we need one.

@darthnesscoveredthesky wait till we all agree on the scope

darthnesscoveredthesky

If we made one we could change it whenever something changed and this way everyone would be up to date

@J.Musser But what's the harm of putting the scope we already have in it.

@darthnesscoveredthesky because we're not entirely going on that anymore

darthnesscoveredthesky

@J.Musser That way at least we are up to date with changes. We can't keep changing and expect people to keep up with it.

@J.Musser Well, that's what I am talking about when did you decide this and who knows. The site would be getting up dates from the changing scope welcome

@darthnesscoveredthesky yeah, once things settle down, that type of post won't harm anything

darthnesscoveredthesky

10:56 PM

What better than to have a message that shows people what's going on and welcomes users automatically. we would get better posts that way. Please tell me if I am wrong.

@darthnesscoveredthesky Read my above statements

darthnesscoveredthesky

@J.Musser But why not now. New users are blindsided and there aren't enough people knowing what's going on to show them.

@darthnesscoveredthesky Do you know what's going on?

darthnesscoveredthesky

@J.Musser I think. But these changes are getting to me.

@darthnesscoveredthesky ok, what's going on?

:p

darthnesscoveredthesky

10:58 PM

I want the scope that is agreed on put into a post so that we can change it and see what we are working with currently. Pieces of scope are everyewhere. We need to consolidate into one easy to understand package.

@darthnesscoveredthesky The problem is, they contradict all over.

darthnesscoveredthesky

@J.Musser We keep changing the site. And because nobody can keep up with the changes things they offer contradicting changes and thus we have scope everywhere. By having a welcome scope we can show people what's going on and that way we can get genuine changes.

@darthnesscoveredthesky What would you do about the fact that there are many upvoted posts on meta that contradict each other?

darthnesscoveredthesky

@J.Musser Exactly and how can we change without the community seeing what's going. A catchy sign pointing them toward the scope helps us get the message across.

@J.Musser I would analyse them and see which ones are better to me and how I can make them less confusing. Then I would post the contradicting ones and all of them in Meta and the community would help decide. We would then draw up a changes sheet and post it as the welcome scope. Everybody would learn.

@darthnesscoveredthesky so why aren't you?

darthnesscoveredthesky

11:04 PM

@J.Musser Who says I'm not?

@J.Musser I am trying to see what the community agrees upon and how to introduce the scope the better.

@darthnesscoveredthesky Seems the communtity is split.

darthnesscoveredthesky

@J.Musser Because they don't understand. I think a welcome post would help guide them. We need guidance.

@J.Musser Very few people were at the other scope drawing. Maybe this can be changed.

@darthnesscoveredthesky Yeah, but you can't put condradictory info in that post. How would you choose?

darthnesscoveredthesky

@J.Musser By putting the contradictory stuff in Meta post and having the community choose. This might be the only way to save the site.

@darthnesscoveredthesky The stuff is already voted on by the community.

darthnesscoveredthesky

11:10 PM

@J.Musser No it isn't. It is voted in a contradictory way. And the way I see it, we need a clean slate. We need to take these broken pieces of scope and create a mosaic of a real site.

@darthnesscoveredthesky But the peices don't like eachother

darthnesscoveredthesky

@J.Musser So we vote. Your making this really complicated. And a lot of stuff is already decided upon we just need to dig.

@darthnesscoveredthesky Decided upon in several directions, yeah

darthnesscoveredthesky

If you find any things that you think are contradictory or would change tell me. I am writing something up.

@J.Musser Not all of it. You sound really negative, have you given up on the site?

@darthnesscoveredthesky Uh, I'm the last person to give up on the site.

But what yuo were saying didn't make much sense.

darthnesscoveredthesky

11:14 PM

@J.Musser Where?

@J.Musser Good to know :) I didn't mean to insult

darthnesscoveredthesky

11:34 PM

Does anyone want to see what scope I have already written up. Or do you think that rewriting scope is a bad idea.

@darthnesscoveredthesky er, depends what u wrote

darthnesscoveredthesky

@J.Musser First I want to know your solutions.

This room is empty. Why?

@darthnesscoveredthesky because almost no one is in it

darthnesscoveredthesky

@J.Musser Where can I post my post so that you can view it. Its not finished and its on my computer.

@darthnesscoveredthesky pastebin

darthnesscoveredthesky

11:45 PM

@J.Musser Do I have to sign in

@darthnesscoveredthesky I think so

darthnesscoveredthesky

@J.Musser And you still haven't told me your site solutions. If you don't want to that's fine, but I just thought we all need more communication.

@darthnesscoveredthesky in which department?

darthnesscoveredthesky

@J.Musser Scope.

@darthnesscoveredthesky yeah, but what department?

darthnesscoveredthesky

11:52 PM

@J.Musser Medical then. I wrote briefly about medical.

@darthnesscoveredthesky lemme see

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The Junk Drawer

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