@ACuriousMind I agree with this.

As a general rule the quality of the typesetting has no particular relation to the quality of the work. But it is easier to remember when it's not distractingly bad like that.

(again playing devils advocate) the guy seems to have decent content/ refs in the paper. maybe just try visualizing exactly the same content typeset in impeccable latex...? (or maybe do it yourself if you feel it would help that much?) and then what would be the judgement/ verdict? think SE types esp sometimes focus on superficialities

@Slereah lol sounds like a physics blues song? maybe you can cook up a few more verses/ lyrics eh? ;)

@dmckee Yeah, which is a damned shame.

Communication is important. It's annoying and somewhat puzzling how often smart people choose to ignore that fact.

but... as this chat room transcript highly attests, and as many stories/ folklore/ history from science/ academia reaffirm, very smart ppl may have an eccentric/ unruly side...

hi @SevenSidedDie

@vzn Right, and that introduces a lot of drag into the progress of science.

@DanielSank ohai

3 minutes

2

1

?

30 seconds

14 seconds

wb @0celo7

WHAT?

Ah.

Well that was, pardon my French, fucking useless.

@skillpatrol Did you really not flag anything I said?

correct

@skillpatrol Then I apologize.

np

Wanna know which message got me banned?

"I must be stupid because I don't get that"

I can guess

Ooooh

lel @0celo7 Again?

@skillpatrol Did you guess that one?

@BernardMeurer Yes.

nope

@skillpatrol Yeah, me neither.

All of my French stuff is still up there.

I saw

I think the mods just like banning me at this point.

There was no reason for that.

I'm a battered wife.

I know

I should stop coming here.

me too

It's gone past ridiculous

Also, didn't know Richard had a year-long chat ban.

Yup

And the user Rennie was talking about is Ron Maimon, I think.

Shog is a tough guy

@skillpatrol Serves him right.

He banned me once for something.

I think he was the first one to ban me.

Don't remember what for.

My bans used to be for JD, now it's just when mods get bored.

You're a target

Like me

@SevenSidedDie Thanks for the ban, really scratched that weekly itch.

Cool down

Also, had to write a paper today so I wasn't here anyway :)

@0celo7 Do not taunt the Happy Fun Ball.

@skillpatrol I'm very cool.

Hi @SevenSidedDie

@SevenSidedDie I'm not taunting.

I'm thanking you.

@skillpatrol Hallo.

Jeez you're jaded.

@0celo7 Except I'm smarter than a bag of hammers, so nope.

@SevenSidedDie Well I would hope so!

No really, don't push it. If I'd looked at your suspension history before suspending you, you'd have had a week off.

Wow!

Wonder what I did to deserve that.

Seriously.

A week?

Come on get real

I don't know what my second to last one was for.

Something JD related, probably, but David never cares to explain those.

Why did you get an extension @@0celo7 on the 24 hours?

@skillpatrol Hmm?

Barry too

What do you mean?

The clock added 2 hours in

By now you should know that SE mods don't care about anything other than punishment.

Rehabilitation is not exactly their strong suit.

I didn't even notice that it was extended.

Look at Barry he's still suspended and you were both suspended starting at the same time for 24 hours @0celo7

@skillpatrol Huh, weird.

@SevenSidedDie Any particular reason?

Time dilation?

Hah.

I would like to know why I was suspended though.

Did you finish Uncle Tom cabin yet?

@skillpatrol Yeah, a week ago

Currently finishing a paper on it

How many words?

1500

@skillpatrol The room cleanup after their suspension added more hours to the clock.

So 0celo7 is the younger twin in this paradox @SevenSidedDie ;)

@SevenSidedDie You're a dad, huh.

@0celo7 So, rehabilitation is your job, not the mods'. The mods' job is to moderate those who fail to clue-in that they need to self-moderate. It's a pretty simple flowchart.

@SevenSidedDie Ah, so wonderfully vague.

I love that style of moderation.

It's by far my favorite.

@0celo7 It's a link. You have the ability to click and then investigate the messages prior to it.

We know, we were all here

@SevenSidedDie I'm a bag of hammers, sorry.

Just don't start posting any ban hammer gifs :-D

@0celo7 If we could make users behave that would be lovely, but alas we're all only human beings and that's not in the cards. So we ask nicely, and then enforce the rules when that doesn't work.

@SevenSidedDie And I'm asking nicely for an explanation of what exactly I did wrong.

^

I don't know why "what did I do wrong" is answered by "you know what you did wrong"

My parents did that and it's probably why I'm a shit now.

But we can't fix that.

I understand that chat has been a Wild West until recently and this will take some adjustment. Think of it as a competition to see who can get up to speed first.

Wild...west?

Seems pretty normal to me.

@0celo7 You can read the Be Nice policy and compare it to your messaging habits. If that doesn't explain what the problem is, then that's not our problem, it's yours.

@SevenSidedDie Wait, I violated the "be nice" policy yesterday?

:29029229 So, there's a good example. Calling a fellow user a goblin is name-calling, explicitly not allowed by Be Nice. I'm sure you can put 2 and 2 together in that regard, if you wanted to. Because, despite your protestations, you're not dumb.

You're being read the riot act @0celo7

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_Act?wprov=sfsi1

I have more interesting things to do right now, and you've copped a half-hour break anyway. I'll pop buy every once in a while to see how things are going. That whole Eye of Sauron metaphor, you know.

cya later

@DanielSank "drag"? quite to the contrary, maybe its inseparable. like "yin & yang"...

But some have more yin than yang ;)

and vice versa

I didn't see that suspension coming @0celo7

:-/

1 minute

30 seconds

10

5

3

2

1

@BernardMeurer <3

@DanielSank <3

@SevenSidedDie I have a serious problem with this. If someone breaks the rules it is in no way constructive to punish them without explaining the crime.

@0celo7 you might say that, but I couldn't possibly comment

When you say "...that's not our problem..." I hope you realize that "our" does not include everyone who uses this site.

A user breaking the rules should be informed of the violation, with examples, and given time to adjust. If they fail to adjust, provide examples of the failure and then administer countermeasures (bans, whatever).

in an ideal world, yes

@skillpatrol In a well functioning governed community, yes, by necessity. This is why we have close reasons rather than just nuking bad posts.

but this is the administration of an ideology

@DanielSank I would agree with you in general. In this case it has been explained plenty, based on a review of 0celo7's suspension and message history.

I'm not saying @0celo7 hasn't been properly warned (because I have no idea either way), but the implications of @SevenSidedDie's comments is troubling.

@SevenSidedDie See comment after yours.

@SevenSidedDie you made a statement about punishment strategy that reaches beyond any one user's history, such as @0celo7.

I hope you didn't mean what you said.

@DanielSank To clarify: someone being deliberately obtuse, or deliberately cultivating an ignorance of the rules, isn't our problem. Given they've been warned and advised, it's on them to learn, and up to us to enforce.

@SevenSidedDie Agreed.

Thank you for this crucial clarification.

@SevenSidedDie May I pose a question?

@DanielSank No problem. I can see how that would be alarming to read.

@BernardMeurer Shoot.

@BernardMeurer Of course. Don't ask to ask a question.

That's rule #1 of the internet. Asking to ask is against intergalactic law.

@DanielSank I always do when I'm not being spoken to, kinda like how I don't just say my question in class but rather raise my hand :p

I don't when It's just quiet

@BernardMeurer This isn't class. Internet law says to never ask to ask.

This law is written... somewhere...

@SevenSidedDie It may be my timezone, but I haven't seen you around here a lot and, doesn't the not-knowing of the social relations in a room (i.e. Me and DS being friends and having liberty so call each other goblins knowing it's non-offensive) impair in the moderator's ability to enforce some rules?

^ This is important.

Great question, @BernardMeurer.

@DanielSank Thanks :)

I haven't seen @SevenSidedDie here ever before a few days ago.

Hey, @BernardMeurer, you're a mango. Ha, take that.

He's a RPG mod

@DanielSank I don't even like that fruit! You Melon!

@BernardMeurer wtf mangos are delicious.

I was spectating when the ban happened, and 0celo7 and Barry Carter were deliberately flagging posts to see what happens. I would guess that's why they were banned.

@BernardMeurer SE (the company) is trying to drag the various chat rooms and their cultures towards compliance with the network code of conduct. Part of the motive for that is that insider-only knowledge about whether something is offensive or just cute banter drives away non-insiders, because those two things are functionally indistinguishable.

i doubt anyone would get banned just for calling someone a goblin

@DanielSank I can't eat them without almost turning my face into a mango

@JohnRennie That's obviously ban worthy.

They were egging each other on :-)

@BernardMeurer I bought one a couple days ago. Delicious. However, I have no idea how to properly cut them up so I wind up more or less shoving my face into it...

I didn't see any other obviously ban worthy behaviour

@DanielSank Yeah, I wound up here yesterday because of flags, and what I found required the deployment of serious modding.

but I do take SSD's point: we may be all lads together, but it puts off new members if they see insults being traded even though we don't take offence

@SevenSidedDie I see, I'm just always wary of this kind of thing (micro-cosmos of each room) because I know how difficult it can be to: a)Penetrate the existing environment b) Mod when you're not there all the time. I see where you are coming from

@JohnRennie At the same time, lack of local color turns away others. I like this site because you guys are fun.

@DanielSank That's exactly my problem, I'll just absorve the mango and make a mess in the process

There's a balance to be struck, and generally I'd say we get it right.

Were you around during the science fiction room shut down @SevenSidedDie?

^ For sure.

I'd argue there's no "right" here.

If the terrible twosome hadn't been messing with the flags and drawn attention to themselves nothing would have happened.

Yeah, messing with flags is obviously no bueno, but that's not what we're talking about.

@JohnRennie Yeah. And beyond that, the content of traded insults can be directly insulting to silent observers (and only some flag, if they're confident). Some of the stuff that caught 0celo7 and barrycarter a day off was calling each other stuff that was highly inappropriate.

We're talking about whether or not jabbing each other is ok.

@skillpatrol I wasn't, but I got mostly caught up on it after the fact.

I see

I realize this is no substitution for enforcing good behavior, but I did simply use the "ignore" feature a while back and it considerably improved my experience in this chat room...

@DanielSank Guess that means I'll have to go to SB to call you a @*&$% now

@BernardMeurer LOLOL

See, look, that was hilarious.

:D

But ok fine I can see how such exchanges aren't critical for a physics chat and bother some people.

Jabbing each other is OK. The fruit stuff up there is silly and not going to offend any, I don't know, actual mangos. It's when someone thinks casual (e.g.) antisemitism is a fun jab that it's a problem.

Yeah... it's just... those lines are so blurry some times.

I just had a thought:

SE uses community voting for a lot of things with great success.

@SevenSidedDie What about jewish mangos?

Why not use something similar for bans?

^ Terrible idea.

::tells self to shut up::

@DanielSank The Staff have gotten the lines as un-fuzzy as possible in the Be Nice policy, especially with the "if in doubt, just don't" part → that means err on the right side, beyond the fuzzy parts.

@BernardMeurer Did you already know that existed or did you just Google "Jewish mango"?

@DanielSank I googled it hahahaha

You caught me there

@SevenSidedDie I get it, I'm just debating for the sake of learning.

In my defense on or first conversation you googled the average weight of a banana to be scientifically correct in your example

And so did I when I read your email because it was an oddly specific weight for an example banana

One of the funniest jokes I've ever seen came from @Danu in the form of a message here that someone could construe as offensive, but I don't think was. It would be a shame to be too PC at the expense of people having fun.

But yeah yeah I know I know.

I'll stop now.

@BernardMeurer That was pretty funny.

Thanks for being a mod, @SevenSidedDie.

@DanielSank Yeah I was laughing hard when you responded "Guilty as charged"

i remember that :D

@skillpatrol What do you remember?

@ChrisWhite I guessed that was the case, it's alrighty, you don't have to respond quickly to me until we get married

Is august a good month for you?