@MonicaCellio yes, as far as I can see, either accepted answer or question should be tweaked. Thing is, the answer refers term "Agony Aunt", which is now not present in the question. That may look confusing for readers, so we better "sync" it somehow. I feel like it would be better to re-insert a mild reference to agony aunt in there, but I haven't yet made my mind, maybe an edit to the answer could be better. Need some time to figure it out
@gnat Yeh, it does sort of change the question enough to invalidate part of the answers. I'll probably just edit out references to Agony Aunt because I'm not sure I can see a way to keep it without it being polarizing.
My advice to people is to either add contexts to links they're referencing in contexts, like "Hey user, on our site, we try to steer away from discussion-oriented posts and look for ones that have a clear question. While I believe this may need to be put on hold, you may be able to edit it to make it more objective and more clear as to what your question is. See <insert link> for context."
That sounds a lot less passive aggressive than just posting nothing but a link.
Especially when that link uses words that new folks may not understand and may have an adverse reaction to....
Hello user3416398, on our network, it's best to tailor your questions to different sites or avoid cross-posting them. We see you asked the same question here: programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/236317/…. This spreads answers across different sites and makes it hard for future visitors to find all of them. I'm removing this post. See the one on Programmers SE from this point forward. Good luck! — jmort253 ♦10 secs ago
@jmort253 I have a mixed feeling about this. On one hand, posting raw links to high quality, thorough, written in friendly manner meta posts explaining close reasons seems to work well per my experience at Programmers. On the other hand, at the same Programmers I frequently use verbose comments, and this frankly feels better.
@gnat Maybe "friendly manner meta posts" is the key. One of the things we might consider doing is going through our documentation, such as the agony aunt post, and make sure it's not going to use words that people won't understand...
maybe I just need a bit more time to build my own repository of comments / templates oriented at Workplace topics, like I built it at Programmers (that took quite a lot of time and effort)
@jmort253 sure, thanks! to be honest, half or more of my "standardized" comments at Programmers are borrowed from someone else. When I see a good comment making a great match to particular typical issue, I tend to copy it for further reuse
something that outlines the reasoning behind the decisions without clouding it up with the actual discussions themselves... especially for things where there was some disagreement.
If I had more time, one of the things I'd put up on a site would be a good comment generator..
It would have 3 fields:
1. Say something nice/cool.
2. Explain the problem.
3. Provide a solution
A good example would be:
1. Nice avatar man!
2. Just wanted to let you know your question might be considered a X.
3. See this <link> for how to fix it.
Kind of reminds me of one of those word games where they have you pick a bunch of words and then plug them into a funny sentence :)
I actually did that once... the #1... some user had an awesome avatar.... so it was a genuine comment.
Yeh, and the takeaway for me when I started to really think about this is that the positive thing we say doesn't even have to be about the user's work.... just.... something positive, anything, seems to make a difference... even just a nice, friendly hello...
When I worked doing call center QA, I never really understood that and ended up making up positive things.... which looking back on it may have made me seem un-genuine... "Bob, you did a good job on that call, but you said everything on the call you weren't supposed to say. Including X, Y, Z, A, and B, but it sounded good though otherwise..."
Are the below questions unique to specific jobs / career paths (i.e. not generalizable)?
Are they off topic for this reason?
I see similar questions, but I'm still left a bit unsure.
The questions:
What would my actual duties be per this job description?
What are common job titles for roles ...
Explain that your experience is in creating in house intranet applications that you have no way of showing the client. If you plan on doing freelancing side work I would recommend you put together a personal project that looks great and has some jquery/ajax/any other tech you want to showcase. it does not have to be anything special just a basic fizz buzz that you can talk about with experts. They will understand that you created this for this purpose and it not hold it against you... probably it will be a benefit. — ChadJun 27 '12 at 14:07
^^^ +1: I strongly agree.
@jmort253 That's a good story, and would I be correct in saying that you've come a long way since that job?
@JimG. I would like to think so... sometimes it feels like a two steps forward one step back situation, but I'd like to think there's definite forward progress.
Are the below questions unique to specific jobs / career paths (i.e. not generalizable)?
Are they off topic for this reason?
I see similar questions, but I'm still left a bit unsure.
The questions:
What would my actual duties be per this job description?
What are common job titles for roles ...
The Water Cooler
The Water Cooler