V'dibarta Bam

12:03 AM

@MonicaCellio @MonicaCellio I think you raise a good point--that people don't use "those" chat rooms. In my case, I am barely aware they exist, and have no idea where or how I could find chat about a given question on this site. In theory, chat seems like a good enough place to sequester "random" information about a question, but in practice, I'm not sure how many people are aware of it and/or comfortable using it.

Double AA

@msh210 There is such an ability IINM...

@SAH I can't prove it to you, but that's been SE's modus operandi and it's worked well for them. It has not been the m.o. of numerous online fora that have largely failed. I agree correlation does not imply causation, but I don't think anyone here is willing to risk ruining our site for an experiment (assuming SE would let us).

SAH

@DoubleAA Funnily, I have started poking around in other SE sites, and they seem to keep a lot in comments that would (now) be deleted around here. Don't see it leading to their downfall but what do I know

Fred

@DoubleAA That doesn't seem like a significant risk. SE's success seems mostly built on its Q&A and voting model (along with convenient access for users), and most comments in long comment threads are hidden (with the most upvoted comments getting priority visibility).

SAH

I seriously wonder if there are any just-plain Users who share the moderators' position on comments.

Double AA

12:21 AM

@SAH I doubt that, and I'm not sure how exactly you'd compare.

@SAH thoughts @IsaacMoses ?

@Fred Sure, tampering with one element is probably not going to lead to sudden catastrophe, but there's only so much tampering we want to spend time doing. I'm just not seeing any need whatsoever to go tampering. A little bit of sorta useful info got lost. It's pennies in the bucket around here.

2

@SAH You should know that the mods around here spend way more time on each comment than those on the bigger sites (SO etc.). Mods there routinely purge whole sets that just smell funny without reading them all (accd to my impression from general mod chatrooms). (cc @Fred about mod tools)

We mods are people too and there's only so much thinking and reading of other people's arguments that we want to do. And the site is reliant on our volunteering.

Fred

@DoubleAA While I am occasionally flummoxed to find what I thought was a valuable comment disappear into the ether (and I'd personally prefer a slightly more conservative approach towards removing comments - despite the automated system flags), that is far outweighed by my appreciation for the hard work and devotion of the moderators.

Isaac Moses

@SAH there's a way to test that. Write a post on Meta saying "Let's move away from doing structured Q&A and toward doing open-ended discussion in the following concrete ways, for the following reasons." and see how it's received by the subset of the community that is invested enough in the workings of the site and the community to participate on Meta.

Monica Cellio

@Fred those are flags on other people's posts, which as a 10k user you are trusted to evaluate. Clicking on the circle will show you the flag(s). Note that flags can come from any room on the network (except SO and Meta.SE, which have their own servers for some reason), so the vast majority of the time you probably won't know the room or its norms. I ignore a lot of those flags and it's totally fine to do so.

@DoubleAA mods on other sites have told me that they do this; it's not just speculation. On big sites they just don't have the time to thoughtfully consider each individual comment in its context.

Fred

12:39 AM

@MonicaCellio Interesting. Thanks for the explanation.

SAH

@IsaacMoses That's not at all what I'm advocating for. I am merely talking about deleting comments more judiciously. Indeed, I have posted on Meta about it significantly already.

As for other SE sites, I have no idea what the moderators go through there. Only as a user/reader, I see a lot of comments that stick around indefinitely that pretty clearly would be deleted under the current policy here. (I am not on the biggest sites, though...)

@IsaacMoses Meta is not the right forum to gauge this accurately for other reasons: the user base presumably targeted by the limited-comment policy is exactly the complement of the users who would be reading/posting on Meta.

@DoubleAA So how about not tampering by deleting comments? Seems like that's a way to "waste time tampering" if there ever was one...

Double AA

12:54 AM

@SAH I meant 'tampering [with site policy]' and I think you knew that.

@SAH I don't understand this remark. What's the relation between meta-usage and commenting?

@IsaacMoses SAH sorta did something similar to that already meta.judaism.stackexchange.com/q/2166/759 and her suggestions weren't viewed so enthusiastically.

SAH

@DoubleAA No, the main thing I posted about it on Meta was this: meta.judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/3607/… -- although, as expected, it wasn't replied to by anyone outside the usual crowd.

Double AA

@SAH You mean "our core group of contributing users"? That's the best group you could ask for to measure the community's feelings on something.

SAH

@DoubleAA Re: your second question above. People keep defending the limits on comments with this notion that keeping a streamlined site--with exclusively high content -quality--keeps people on this site. Meta, by contrast, presupposes invested users, not those debating about whether to stay. They are different groups.

Double AA

@SAH The users on Meta are actually exactly the one who we'd care most about losing.

2

SAH

@DoubleAA Same point. I wondered above whether there were actually any just-plain-Users who agreed with the moderators' current position on this. IsaacMoses suggested I post on meta to find out. I countered that Meta is not going to be a representative sample of the average visitor to the site.

@DoubleAA Fair enough, but when it comes to numbers...There is, by definition, a large user set that lacks a voice here by their own choosing. I think if we are trying to judge their needs, we should assume that their opinion could be different from what is most broadcasted on Meta and by moderators.

Double AA

1:05 AM

@SAH And what do you propose to do about them? They can speak if they want. You think they'd agree with you. I think they'd agree with me. Teiku.

SAH

@DoubleAA Then I'd say it's a teiku about whether comments need to be deleted this much.

Double AA

@SAH No. That's a terrible plan. Then it's Teiku on anything and the site can't function.

Less than 50% of Americans vote for president. We don't not elect a president bc of that.

SAH

@DoubleAA ...And thus you guys have the power to decide, and are. Fine. But someone needs to hear the actual "user" voice. At the very least, I am AN actual user voice.

Double AA

@SAH You are. And you have every right to continue speaking. If the majority of voices decides against you, then that will be acting policy. (I am an actual user too btw)

SAH

The stronger point, IMO, is that StackExchange makes the rules.

Right, I get that.

Sorry. Wish there were a way to say users who are not mods. Yisroilim?

Double AA

1:09 AM

@SAH I don't know why my being a mod matters at all. As mod, I just enforce policy, not make it.

SAH

@DoubleAA being a mod matters because the people who are informing, making, and carrying out these policies are all mods. Exclusively, apparently.

Double AA

@SAH No. Only carrying it out. Not informing or making.

SAH

That's what I disagree with!

Ok "making" is SE, fair enough

Double AA

We are the executive branch, not the legislative branch.

SAH

And judicial apparently

Double AA

1:11 AM

@SAH There's not much to disagree with. We have a policy. We do it. If you get the community consensus to change that, we'd change our implementation.

SAH

Right, my point is that I will never get community consensus because the people whom this affects are not the one who are gonna speak. So fine.

Double AA

@SAH I don't think so. I think there just aren't a lot of people who'd agree with you. But it doesn't really matter why you can't, if you can't. Believe what you will.

SAH

But since this affects my day-to-day use of this site so much, I don't know that I will stop complaining about it when it presents yet another problem with getting and keeping information here.

Double AA

@SAH While we don't bring every small decision to Meta, large issues of interpretation often are. Maybe we're circuit judges, but not the supreme court.

SAH

But yeah, you guys are going to do what you guys are going to do.

Isaac Moses

1:13 AM

@SAH why complain when you can pr

SAH

PR?

Isaac Moses

Sorry...

... write concrete proposals that may actually persuade the community to adopt them?

SAH

@IsaacMoses I've tried

0

Q: Mass-deleting of comments threads

It seems this has been going on for awhile, especially in the last several months: mass-deleting of the discussions of relevant details that often arise in the comments on questions and/or answers. I had thought that these were valuable as part of the content, and that the questions and answers a...

Isaac Moses

Not a concrete proposal.

SAH

Fair enough

I suppose what I'd need would be SE-level, right?

Because you guys don't want to break SE rules. Which I agree your standards agree with.

Isaac Moses

1:16 AM

@SAH it really depends what behavior, in particular, you want. There are ways in which this community has chosen to be different from other SE sites.

SAH

Something that I think would help a *lot* would be to ask mods to be very cautious about using the "batch delete" for comments--that is, to delete one at a time if they're gonna delete--and not to delete comments that add actual information.

But I don't think any of this would go over well with the segment of the community that actually comments on Meta. And, as I have said previously, it's worth distinguishing the community that comments on Meta from the (actual) global community.

Isaac Moses

... But in general, if you're proposing a change to the standard SE model and/or to local precedent, your proposal will likely need pretty strong reasoning/evidence behind it to get the community to go along with it.

SAH

Another proposal: if mods are going to delete an information-containing comment, they ought to be required to move it to chat. I think this is in keeping with current SE standards anyway.

If you think any of these proposals would be worth posting on Meta, do let me know. I'm not very optimistic though.

Double AA

@SAH I don't see any benefit to such a distinction. Despite how good you think your proposal is, you have no right to speak on their behalf. The only relevant group is those who care to speak.

SAH

I have to speak on their behalf because I am the only one of them who is speaking! How many other "regular users" have we heard from on this topic? Fred? He's on my side, too!

(by "regular" i mean non-mod)

Double AA

1:22 AM

@SAH Isaac is not a mod.

SAH

Fair enough.

He's only the founder of the site, though, right?

Double AA

@SAH You should not do so as you don't know what they think. And @Fred, as wonderful as he is, is not a representative sample.

@SAH He is.

SAH

@DoubleAA I thought we still vote for president even if not everyone votes?

All I'm saying is that the yisroilim who are talking are all saying the same thing.

Double AA

@SAH That is my experience with US elections...

Isaac Moses

@SAH operationally, no, not really. Meta participation is open to nearly anyone who's contributed content on Mi Yodeya. Those who care to participate, do. If you think there's a silent majority of people out there who would use Mi Yodeya if it were different in certain ways and are not interested in providing input to that effect, open a competitor site tailored the way you think they'd like it (maybe after some market research) and see how it goes. You can even reuse, with attribution, ...

... All of the existing MY content.

SAH

1:26 AM

@IsaacMoses Wouldn't have opened things up that way had we not had talk about aiming to attract and retain people to this site, apropos the comments issue.

OK, this is becoming quite draining, so I'm done for tonight. I hope others are at least aware that a dissenting opinion exists on the comments issue. Thanks. Happy Chanukah.

BSteinhurst

1:38 AM

@DoubleAA do you like/find fulfillment being a moderator?

I have noticed, watching the chat logs go by and the comments on posts that as both a mod and a major user that you seem to find yourself involved in a lot of what would be to me frustrating situations.

So I ask after your well being.

Isaac Moses

2:40 AM

@SAH Happy Chanuka

msh210

5:42 AM

I'm using a phone right now, which makes chat use difficult, but the post which you mentioned above, @SAH, as answered by only the usual gang was answered by Yishai. He's not a mod, nor did he found MY. If your criteria for inclusion in the class of people who constitute this inner clique you seem to sense on Meta is that they post on Meta, then you're in it (and as someone -- I think @IsaacMoses -- said above, so can anyone else be). If not, then I'm not sure what your criteria are. Perhaps you're simply frustrated that your opinion isn't shared by more people who are speaking up. I wholly…

(And pardon my typos in the above.)

SAH

6:03 AM

@msh210 Thanks for the interesting comment. I'm trying to write a new Meta post on this, since Isaac Moses is quite right that concrete ideas are better than complaints. There are in fact a good handful of examples of people speaking out against the comments deletion thing; I'm trying to put them together. (Yishai himself is hardly a radical in support of deletion.)

Meta-Man

6:44 AM

0

Q: Some matters regarding comment deletion

I have argued--in forums such as Chat--that the zealous deletion of "extraneous" comments by mods is not appreciated by the general community. I would like to provide a little more evidence for this claim. Although, importantly, only a small proportion of site users actually use Meta to expre...

discussion comments

msh210

4:10 PM

@msh210 @Fred, yes, there is such. I was right the first time. Apparently I'm more confused than I thought.

Hi anon. Welcome to Mi Yodeya! To improve your post, please edit in motivation for asking this question, as right now I'm having a hard time seeing why it matters which of your options is correct. Consider also registering your account to fully access this site's features. Hope to see you around. — Double AA ♦ 3 mins ago

@DoubleAA re "a hard time seeing why it matters which of your options is correct" -- we study Torah lishmah; I don't think explaining "why it matters" is necessary for a question about Torah. You're right that this asker may have some specific reason for wanting to know; if so, that may make the answers more on-point; but that's not "why it matters" (nafka minah) so much as "where's this coming from" (has he heard the universe is older than Gen would have us believe, or something?).

Double AA

4:42 PM

@msh210 I merely said it would improve the post, not that it was necessary to be a question.

Showing how a question could have applications not only makes it more interesting for people to read and makes them more interested in reading and finding answers, but it provides for ways of potentially testing the relevant point and other places to check for discussion.

msh210

5:01 PM

@DoubleAA I agree with all that.

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