The Reading Room - 2017-03-19

« first day (2048 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (2605 days later) »

4:58 AM

Teache poetrye By cause whanne we walke on a strange planet undir anothir sun We must be able to descrybe yt exaclty wyth unclinical wondir

Tweeted by LeVostreGC on March 19, 2017 at 4:46 AM

3 hours later…

8:01 AM

0

Q: What is the role of Jane Eyre in The Cider House Rules

In the Cider House Rules, Jane Eyre and several works by Charles Dickens (such as David Copperfield and The Great Expectations) are repeatedly mentioned and cited. One of the roles of David Copperfield is the citation “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that stat...

charlotte-bronte jane-eyre cider-house-rules john-irving

8:55 AM

@BESW What does it mean that I had no problem understanding that?

9:05 AM

@Mithrandir That you're in the right place?

Also, Happy Naw-Rúz!

I take it you're not working today? :P

Also, a month of fasting? o_o

Yeah, 19 days is a Bahá'í month.

I assume you eat at night?

Yeah. There's no unusual dietary restrictions at night.

10:04 AM

@BESW oh hey, funny that you're discussing *punk genres, I literally just read up on the etymology of cyberpunk and various derivative genres yesterday. (although probably not quite as much of a coincidence because I may have been indirectly prompted to do so after reading your mention of silkpunk on meta a couple of days ago)

10:15 AM

@MartinEnder Cool!

10:33 AM

BTW, @Randal'Thor, congrats on the HNQ.

1 hour later…

11:40 AM

@Mithrandir Danke :-)

11:51 AM

@Napoleon Better watch out, @Gallifreyan is beating you to all the Witcher questions these days!

12:12 PM

@Randal'Thor * Witcher answers. I'm still pretty low on witcher questions

That's what I meant: "beating you to [answering] all the Witcher questions".

@Randal'Thor sorry, me not an naiteve spiker

:D

Glad to hear you don't spike the natives.

Seriously though, I wouldn't have guessed that. Your written English is pretty flawless; I don't remember ever seeing you make a clearly non-native mistake.

@Randal'Thor Thanks! One thing I'm aware of is the use of articles. It's not a problem on the Internet, where no one cares, but I'm not as good with them in my essays. I just can't judge when to use 'the' and when not to

@Gallifreyan Are you Slavic?

Slavs often seem to have problems with articles in English, for obvious reasons.

12:26 PM

@Randal'Thor Russian doesn't have articles, but we're close to German in the sense that our nouns have genders

@Gallifreyan Да, я знаю :-)

@Gallifreyan I don't know how much it will help, but google searches about when to use particular types of grammar or punctuation often leads to some very helpful articles -- for example, this one on when to use the English articles.

As a native speaker & writer I've often found them very helpful myself.

There's notions even native speakers have trouble with or have debates around, such as: when should I use a comma? when should I use the various types of dashes? when do i use a semicolon?

The ESL marker I see most often locally is using male and female pronouns interchangeably.

A lot of Philippine languages don't have gender-marked pronouns.

@doppelgreener in my experience, the mistakes made by native and non-native speakers tend to be very different. I think the missing articles Gallifreyan talks about are cases that would just sound clearly wrong to a native speaker, whereas native speakers tend to make weird spelling and punctuation errors that a non-native speaker would never come up with, because they learn mostly from the written word to begin with.

(eggcorns like "would of" come to mind)

@MartinEnder I agree with that; lots of ESL errors seem to simply come from implementing patterns from the person's native language. Thankfully for something very specific like "when do I use a/an/the?" there tends to be fairly thorough articles on the matter which I hope are also relevant to an ESL individual.

12:37 PM

See also the generations who were taught that commas indicate breath pauses.

@doppelgreener I'm pretty confident on a vs. the, or count/non-count. The problem is very occasionally locations, or when nouns have other adjectives in front of them - can't provide examples now, but I clearly remember my last essay having some problems on that. Not very serious ones, or not frequent, but some of those nuances that aren't usually described in internet articles.

One thing I see somewhat regularly on the Stack is a tendency to, say, write "Hagrid is allowed to take classes in Hogwarts?" instead of "Is Hagrid allowed to take classes in Hogwarts?" -- the only issue is an "is" placement, but it results in a difference between stating a fact with a question mark on the end, versus actually stating a question. The former formulation seems to be common to some languages.

@Gallifreyan Oh, fair enough. Alright. :)

@doppelgreener a real wrench in this is when you're learning English and another unrelated language, so the patterns from 3 languages start mixing. After some point I'm not even sure which language a pattern comes from, including even Russian

@Gallifreyan I was recently trying to learn both Spanish and Italian at the same time, which was a bad idea... I was mixing them up a lot. <_<;

^^^ Here's an example: should I have said "so the patterns from [the] 3 languages start mixing"?

12:40 PM

@doppelgreener I think mistakes along those lines might be common among people from India? (I know there are many different languages spoken in India, but don't know enough to guess at which particular one has this way of formulating questions.)

There's also things like "didn't got", when people try to use both the simple past tense and the auxiliary verb.

I've seen some confusion from Russian speakers over "do" vs "make," which is interesting to me because our local dialect often switches up "make" and "let."

@BESW Would people say things like "let me some porridge"?

@doppelgreener No, it's in the context of "allow" vs "force."

@BESW the corresponding Russian verbs are "делать" and "сделать", so I kind of understand that one

"He won't make me play with him," for example.

12:45 PM

@BESW Oooh, okay.

@Gallifreyan not a native speaker either, but I think they're both valid with slightly different nuances (which would both get your point across)

without the article you're saying something like "so we have a situation in which the patterns from (any) 3 languages start mixing". with the article you're saying "so the patterns from these 3 languages start mixing".

@MartinEnder exactly what I'm talking about. Both sound equally valid to me, though I think the version with "the" is somehow better

@Gallifreyan How about "пьяница", "Пятница", and "задница"? ;-)

@Gallifreyan not necessarily, since you're just making a general statement about learning multiple languages at once, and the three specific languages you've chosen aren't that relevant.

@Gallifreyan in this scenario I get the exact same reaction as you. it works either way, "the" works marginally better.

12:49 PM

@Randal'Thor I can see the connection between the first two, but the third? :)

@Gallifreyan Don't the second and third sound almost exactly the same except for the first phoneme?

Or is the "д" actually voiced, because unlike in "зад" it's not at the end of a word?

@Randal'Thor you read it pretty much the same as it is written - "zadnitsa"

Oh. I always thought it was more like "zatnitsa".

@Randal'Thor "Пятница" you spell as "pyatnitsa", where the first part is like "pyat'" (five), except for the ' part.

Spell?

Did I get it wrong?

12:59 PM

* pronounce. See? :D

for some reason, I used to get these two mixed up as well.

I will admit that I'm copy-pasting from Google Translate, but only because I don't know where else to get Cyrillic characters from. I do remember these words, just don't have the right keyboard to type them easily.

@Randal'Thor Me neither :) I bought the laptop I'm using now abroad, so no Russian keyboard for me either

when I had Russian in school, I activated the Russian layout on my keyboard, but it took forever to vaguely remember which letters go where (I had a printout lying next to the keyboard)

you can always enable multiple layouts and switch between them

I tend to use an English layout for almost everything (because the German one is a massive pain for programming) but switch to the German one when I need any umlauts.

@MartinEnder that's what I'm doing now, but even after using Russian keyboard for 15 years I don't know the position of letters

1:03 PM

(and conveniently my keyboard is unlabelled so that I don't get distracted by the wrong labels when switching)

1:17 PM

Hey, Depeche Mode uploaded they Berlin concert:

Depeche Mode Live in Berlin ( Spirit Tour ) 2017

1 hour later…

Napoleon Wilson

2:18 PM

@Randal'Thor Meh, I'm not really that much of a pro in answering them, just because it's one of the few things I have read. Besides that, they're not really all worth answering anyway. (And some of them are about the games, of which I haven't even played the 3rd one yet.)

@doppelgreener Indeed, that's one of the most common edits I do, especially in titles. The next one would be missing articles.

@NapoleonWilson I believe the third game is on sale on GOG. Strongly recommend

2 hours later…

4:36 PM

Our QPD just dipped below 5.

We've had hardly any questions this weekend.

Need to work on that.

yesterday, by Rand al'Thor

Seriously, people should be asking more questions.

4:57 PM

@MartinEnder I do this for Hebrew :)

Although English is my first language

@MartinEnder Right, but IMO it depends on the language. I used to have a good time looking at English language signs in Jerusalem, and figuring out where the mistakes came from :)

0

Q: Which real-life languages other than English, Welsh and Old English/Norse did Tolkien draw on for naming things?

According to Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey, Tolkien believed that people had an innate ability to "hear" subtle differences in names and dialects, even if they didn't full understand why things sounded different. Accordingly, in the area of the Shire, he gave things names dervied from English and ...

j-r-r-tolkien the-lord-of-the-rings

@Hamlet This is in the star bar without context. I'd just like to point out that there are many cases where users are agreeing, that policy should still be posted on Meta. First, in case non-chat users of the site disagree; second, so that it's on record as site policy.

@Gallifreyan I've got all three in my library but haven't started one of them. What's your opinion on having to play 1 and/or 2 before playing 3?

I think I read somewhere that 1 can be skipped if you just read up on a story synopsis or something?

@MartinEnder Well, 3rd game is much closer to books than previous two, and can in fact be considered direct continuation. But you will lose a lot of backstory if don't play the previous games, and I think they are essential before playing the third. There's also the issue of choices - some of them reflect on minor events further in series, but it's not vital, I believe

Well I haven't read any of the books and am probably not going to do so any time soon.

(I wasn't even aware until this point that the games were based on books and not the other way round. That's quite surprising for the quality of the games.)

5:13 PM

@MartinEnder there are multiple easter eggs and other references to books, but the games explain all the relevant plot details in one way or another - you just may need to read the journal entries slightly more often.

Hmm, just read up on the books a bit, and they do sound quite intriguing. Maybe I'll put those on my backlog...

@MartinEnder the translation for the last book must have been published already

Oh wait, you German, right?

German translations are already there, if memory serves

ah well, when I say "backlog" this is likely going to be 2019 or something ;)

also, purely statistically, there's a good chance that the English translation will be better, so I might go with that anyway

@Gallifreyan Yeah, the German translations are well ahead of the English ones.

@Napoleon will know the details.

@Randal'Thor it was him I've heard that from, I think

Napoleon Wilson

6:02 PM

@Gallifreyan Well, sure, if I find the time.

(And the money, conceptually.)

@MartinEnder They are, I highly recommend them.

@MartinEnder Is this an actual experience you made? With books not originally wirtten in either English or German?

Btw @Napoleon, I noticed you reTARSified yourself on SFF. Trying to keep distinct names on all your SE sites? ;-)

Napoleon Wilson

I guess.

@NapoleonWilson No, it just seems more likely that on average English translations will be better because there are probably more people capable of doing the translation in the first place. Of course, for any given work in particular it might always be the other way round, but it's rarely possible to determine which translation is better up front.

Napoleon Wilson

But not all, on any but the media-related ones I bear my own name. (And I would in chat if it wasn't for the messed up parent site system.)

@MartinEnder Well, but then again, you also have to consider the factor if translations are even in demand. Take The Witcher for example, the English translations are lacking behind, which points to a lower priority/demand to translate a work very well-received in Poland (or maybe other Eastern-bloc countries by extension). Which in turn might point to less experienced Polish-English translators as compared to Polish-German translators.

On the other hand, the fact that they are being translated now could indicated that the translations were done in the wake of the hype for the games which could mean that they were able to get particularly good translators once it was clear that the demand exists. ;)

Napoleon Wilson

6:11 PM

This is something very noticable in films at least. English-speaking people can't understand the tremendously high-quality work that the German dubbing industry produces, primarily because their own dubbing industry isn't too well-developed since it's rarely ever needed, maybe only for the occasional French arthouse flick or Japanese anime.

@NapoleonWilson good reasoning that one

It's really hard to say.

@NapoleonWilson How much of an "Eastern bloc" feeling remains these days in the former East Germany?

(By the way, we might be able to get a good question for the main site out of Witcher translation issues.)

@Randal'Thor ... once the translations are finished

Napoleon Wilson

@MartinEnder Which is also understandable indeed. In fact I'm pretty sure they're translated because of the games' popularity.

6:14 PM

I mean the only way really to find out is to find someone who is very proficient in both languages (or ideally all three) and has read both translations (or ideally the original as well).

@NapoleonWilson some editions even have hideous covers that are mock-ups of game scenes

@Gallifreyan I didn't mean that kind of question.

Disgusting

Napoleon Wilson

@Randal'Thor I feel unable to answer this. To my particular enviroment, hardly any (largely because my generation largely grew up in a Western capitalist society.) But that's a really broad question.

Something like "why are the German translations ahead of the English ones?" might be OK as a question on Lit.

Napoleon Wilson

6:15 PM

@Gallifreyan Yeah, I know.

Polish covers are awesome

Napoleon Wilson

@MartinEnder Indeed.

user image

Versus

user image

Business idea: an online translation rating community... I'll be so rich...

Napoleon Wilson

@Randal'Thor Hmm, that's...interesting. But I think that might just come down to popularity due to neighbouring countries. Or maybe more of an openness towards literature of different languages, but I'm unable to judge that.

6:18 PM

@Gallifreyan I recently bought the American editions of the original Mistborn trilogy. shortly afterwards I discovered the British editions... I'll definitely be selling mine and buying the British ones, even though I already read the books. there's something really really unappealing about the American covers of fantasy novels for some reason (I'm sure there are exceptions)

@Gallifreyan Hey, that one looks a bit like the avatar ~~@Napoleon~~ Cahir uses here.

Napoleon Wilson

@Gallifreyan Especially considering that I don't even remember him fighting in any kind of more than 5 people battle at all in that specific book (but this might as well be my memory).

@Randal'Thor See what I mean? Polish covers rule

Napoleon Wilson

@Randal'Thor It actually is.

@NapoleonWilson Heh, I just realised your town (or at least the town mentioned on your SE profile) was called Karl-Marx-Stadt until less than 30 years ago :-)

Napoleon Wilson

6:21 PM

@Randal'Thor Well, we're famous for the big stone head of that guy afterall (which I once actually laser-scanned for work).

@NapoleonWilson Oh, I never knew that. What was his connection with the town? I only know about him and Trier.

Napoleon Wilson

@Randal'Thor I...don't really know. I doubt there was one, the whole thing seemed more like a stupid propaganda move without much sense. But well, I'm not too well-versed in those iussues.

I could have understood if it was named after some "bad guy" before, but it's named after a friggin' river. Meh, Scoialists. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

7:16 PM

2

Q: What is the relevance of the essays in Tolstoy's 'War and Peace'?

War and Peace is regularly interspersed with essays -- something that I have not seen anywhere else in literature. How significant are these essays? They obviously help in exploring the themes and messages of the novel, but how do they fit in the definition of fiction? Large sections of the nove...

russian-literature leo-tolstoy war-and-peace

O_o that was a quick upvote.

1

Q: How did Art Spiegelman decide which animals to use to represent the different countries?

In Art Spiegelman's Maus, he represents different people from different countries as different animals. For instance, he represents the Jews as mice, the Germans as cats, the Polish as pigs, the Americans as dogs, and the French people as frogs. How did he decide which animal to represent each on...

comics art-spiegelman maus

Napoleon Wilson

7:36 PM

Well, it's one of those obvious but good questions. The "Duh! Why didn't I ask that?" kind. But I know pretty much zero about that thing anyway.

@Randal'Thor I've been trying, but most of the ones that I thought of were stupid. So I didn't post them.

@NapoleonWilson obvious? Huh. I didn't think it's obvious (or I wouldn't have asked)

@Mithrandir I think Napoleon meant obvious to ask, not "question with an obvious answer"

@Shokhet Ah, that would make more sense.

Another problem with my asking questions is that I mostly read young adult scifi. So...

@Mithrandir Not a problem. That's still literature

Niche problems. Apparently we've got too many scifi questions ATM.

7:44 PM

Meh. Ask good questions about whatever you're reading and the site will sort itself out

*asks questions about Masechet Orlah*

Lol

Try Mi Yodeya for those

I have, don't worry...

It's my second time, so it's easier now.

I wonder how a Is the situation described in <book>realistic question would go over.

That could be SFF

Or WorldBuilding

(Which doesn't mean it won't work here. Just saying that there are already places for that)

@Shokhet not Hatchet

7:49 PM

31

Q: What is our actual policy on science questions?

One of the most contentious close reasons we have on the site is the one that designates real-world science questions as off-topic. The close reason is worded as follows: "Questions seeking scientific solutions or explanations are off-topic unless they relate directly to a cited work of ficti...

discussion faq scope

@Mithrandir Fair

Napoleon Wilson

@Mithrandir I don't mean the answer, I mean the question (which the second sentence was supposed to substantiate further).

@Randal'Thor Ah. Okay

@Randal'Thor or maybe people are enjoying the weekend :)

The real answer is that we're a beta site, our activity is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. Ask @HDE226868.

Being pessimistic is fun, eh?

:P

7:56 PM

And I'm not sure if number of questions is a good metric anyway. Read this: feverbee.com/active

> Community activity is often several layers removed from clear value.

Also, I was wondering when that - 1 would come...

@Hamlet I was never one for accepting what appears to be an inevitable fate rather than striving against the odds for success.

Wouldn't be where I am now if I was.

*thinks about election*

@Mithrandir ?

Oh gawd. I've just found an 82-page academic paper about Maus. @Mithrandir, what have you got me into?

@Randal'Thor linky?

8:06 PM

@Mithrandir Oh, ha! I didn't realize we'd "met" before Lit.SE. You changed your name

@Shokhet :P Yeah, I changed it a long time ago...

And when I read some of my first posts, I smack my head and go ooooffff...

@Mithrandir I think we all do...

@Mithrandir There'll be a linky in my answer when I post it :-)

That paper is entirely about just one part of the answer.

@Randal'Thor I was thinking about how many people were against you. And you prevailed, and triumphantly carried the blue diamond, and now have lots of work to do ;)

@Randal'Thor good, so I can waste a few hours...

@Mithrandir Oh right.

@Mithrandir I hope you're not a big fan of Spiegelman and Maus, because I'm digging up a lot of dirt here ...

8:23 PM

Really? Hmm...

Seems he was quite racist against the Poles.

Just put a bounty on my question regarding the Adems if anyone if interested

8:44 PM

There you go, @Mithrandir. Long enough for you?

8:56 PM

@Randal'Thor now I have to read that 82-page long essay...

BTW, @Shokhet, would the Maus question and this belong on the Mi Yodeya Meta list?

Anyway, nice answer, @Randal'Thor. I'm off for a bit; back soon.

@Mithrandir Very possibly. I mentioned the Maus question in chat about 15 minutes ago

Mi Yodeya Meta list?

14

Q: What questions on other Stack Exchange sites are of special interest to Jews?

What questions on other Stack Exchange sites are relevant to Mi Yodeya? I'm thinking of ones that might be on-topic or almost on-topic on MY (or entire tags of such questions). (But I'm not interested in a question that's relevant only to a specific MY question, and linked therefrom, and not oth...

discussion stackexchange question-catalog

> But I'm not interested in a question that's relevant only to a specific MY question ...

Why do they keep going on about THEIR questions?

:-P

@Randal'Thor Ask on judaism.meta.meta.stackexchange :P

9:06 PM

On a more serious note, this might also be one for the list. (Self-promotion alert.)

2

Q: Should questions about speeches by authors be on-topic?

I recently answered this question: Did Twain mean the coin should be enlarged or not? But after answering it, I began to wonder what it actually has to do with literature. It's about a speech given by a man who happens to be most famous for writing books, but the speech itself wasn't about litera...

discussion scope

@Randal'Thor Thanks. I put that in already (rev 36) :)

@Librarian Dude, I even had a shower since that was posted on Meta

@Gallifreyan Apparently the librarian will only do her job when the resident Time Lord is clean.

@Randal'Thor It's a she?! TIL. Also, I'm a mere gallifreyan, no fuss

9:10 PM

@Gallifreyan I decided it's a she just now :-P

Since most of the librarians I know are female.

Alternatively, maybe it's an orang-utan.

@Randal'Thor another downside of speaking Russian - "библиотекарь" is masculine, and "библиотекарша" just isn't used in literature

1 hour later…

10:20 PM

HNQ:

5

Q: How did Art Spiegelman decide which animals to use to represent the different countries?

In Art Spiegelman's Maus, he represents different people from different countries as different animals. For instance, he represents the Jews as mice, the Germans as cats, the Polish as pigs, the Americans as dogs, and the French people as frogs. How did he decide which animal to represent each on...

symbolism comics maus art-spiegelman

@Mithrandir Yay!

10:40 PM

:/

I wish that the two people who downvoted explained why.

@Gallifreyan seems to be something with meta feeds. Our meta feed on PPCG is also by far the slowest of the bunch.

@Mithrandir I didn't downvote, but I have a suggestion: why not rephrase your question to be more along the lines of (e.g.) "why were these animals appropriate choices to represent the different countries" and not focus so much on the author?

11:15 PM

@Randal'Thor I said "our activity is going to get a lot worse before it gets better"

@Mithrandir I agree with Rand completely

There are things we can do to increase activity. Our topic challenge will be helpful. And I have a feeling questions will pick up once this weekend is over.

@Hamlet My only issue with the phrasing I suggested is that it assumes they were appropriate choices. Which, at least in the case of pigs ~ Poles, I don't think they were.

But the wrong thing to do is freak out, post a bunch of questions, and then burn out/run out of ideas to post questions.

Perhaps "why were these animals chosen", but then we're basically back to Mith's phrasing with passive voice instead of active.

Like it or not, it was the author who did the choosing.

@Hamlet I'm trying to keep up a slow and steady rate, posting exactly one question per day.

I did post more than one per day in the first few days of private beta, and there've been several days I failed to post anything, but that's the overall aim.

@Randal'Thor OK, not everyone has time to do that, and that's OK. The truth is, if our stats go below 1 question per day, nothing bad will happen to the site. I would prefer a site with a lot of activity to a site that doesn't have activity. I suspect that we will eventually get a lot of activity, based on how broad our scope is. But there's no need to worry. And it's quite normal for a private beta site to decline in activity at the beginning, before picking up in activity again.

For example, getting our questions indexed in Google will have much more of an effect on our stats than people posting questions ever will.

@Hamlet We can't get our questions indexed in Google if people don't post them in the first place :-)

2

11:26 PM

Activity is important and it's good that we're thinking about it. But telling people to post more, on a weekend, when people are hopefully taking time away from the computer isn't the best plan.

Private betas follow a pattern. At the beginning, they get a lot of activity because they're new and everyone on Stack Exchange wants to check them out. Then the newness wears off, and people post less. That's where the hard work begins, and that work consists of finding new members and reaching new audiences, instead of telling the audience we have to post more questions.

I hope you realise I'm not being entirely serious when I say things like "hey everyone, post more questions, stat". I am a bit disappointed by the low number of questions in the last few days, but I'm definitely not advocating quantity over quality.

2

@Hamlet Ah yes, outreach. Any ideas for how we can go about finding those new members and audiences?

@Randal'Thor I'm saying don't even worry about questions per day. That number isn't very important.

Questions per day tells us how much activity the site gets. But saying "we have a low number of questions per day" doesn't tell you how to improve things.

I recently remembered there's a Fantasy Stories chatroom over at Arqade, and dropped a plug for Lit in there. One of their regulars (Ash) was already here, and another has signed up since.

0

Q: Was FitzGerald the first to collect the poems of the Rubaiyat together?

According to Wikipedia: Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his translation of a selection of poems, originally written in Persian and numbering about a thousand, attributed to Omar Khayyám (1048–1131), a Persian poet, mathematician and astronomer. Was Edwar...

edward-fitzgerald omar-khayyam the-rubaiyat

@Randal'Thor most Stacks get their traffic through Google. The Stack Exchange sites are designed to do well in Google. So if we post questions that people are googling, then we'll get traffic that way. That happens naturally.

@Randal'Thor I strongly recommend that you take a look at the site feverbee.com. It will tell you everything you need to know about promoting online communities.

I'm not sure if promoting the site on other Stack Exchange communities is the best course of action. People who use Stack Exchange know that there are other sites, they'll find our site eventually.

11:35 PM

@Hamlet Well, like I said before, the desire to post more questions, provided that it's tempered by the prioritisation of quality, can bring about healthy growth and expansion of the site.

@Randal'Thor no. not the way you're promoting it.

If I say "we have a low QPD" and then "OK, let's try to come up with some really good questions to post" and then post really good questions ... mission accomplished, surely?

@Hamlet Thanks, I will.

Take a look at the site. But essentially, we need to change people's behavior so that if they're reading a book, their first thought when they come across something interesting is "I want to talk about that on the literature stack exchange site."

People aren't motivated by increasing the number of questions per day. They'll force themselves to ask some questions, but then they'll see that asking a few questions doesn't magically increase the number, so they'll stop

@Randal'Thor you need to find something that motivates people. I'm not sure what that is yet. Take a look at feverbee.com, think about it for a few days, and then let's talk.

@Hamlet Which "people" though? Initially, us (the active users of Lit); then later on as the site becomes better known, all sorts of people across SE and maybe even beyond. But it's us who're currently bearing the burden of getting enough content on the site that it can become better known.

I'm going AFK for a bit now, but will check out Feverbee and let you know. Thanks for the chat.

@Hamlet Can confirm.

« first day (2048 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (2605 days later) »

Transcript for

Mar '1719

The Reading Room

Welcome to chat for literature.stackexchange.com — Read any go...

authors stories these-aren't-real-tags 💧🚢⬇️🐇

join this room
about this room

00:00

06:00

12:00

18:00

all times are UTC

site design / logo © 2024 Stack Exchange Inc; legal

mobile