The Reading Room

Is it allowed to leave recommendations in comments on ID questions on this site if we are unsure of the answer? Just curious :)

You might be referring to Cecily of York (the daughter of Edward IV of England) which would fit in the timeline of the Wars of the Roses. There is a 4 part series of Historical Fiction about her written by Eleanor Fairburn. You might also want to look at works by author Philippa Gregory. She has several historical fiction novels surrounding the same time period. — steelersquirrel 2 mins ago

I left the following comment on a story ID question. If it's not allowed, just let me know :)

Mithrandir

9:12 AM

@steelersquirrel I'd prefer if people don't leave half-answers in the comments (I've written more about that on Interpersonal Skills Meta), but I'm not going to immediately delete it.

Well, I saw That there were 2 others on that question, so I thought that it was fine. I didn't know what the site policy was on this site.

Mithrandir

Well, it's technically the same policy across the entire network, but some sites are just more lax about enforcing it ;)

Okay!

I really don't understand how so many individual Stacks have abandoned the basic default Stack Exchange principle that answers should be provided in the place where they're searchable, sortable, votable, and improvable.

Because it's not just that some sites are more lax about enforcing it; a surprising number of them have explicitly revoked that policy.

"Science fiction isn’t only about thinking about alternate technologies or science concepts and so on, but it’s also about re-fashioning or re-imagining our futures, and the way we live. Imagining, for instance, what if things weren’t this way?” https://wired.trib.al/yVlmYes

Tweeted by WIRED on March 18, 2018 at 2:33 AM

I am thrilled to share the cover for my first book, and writing for the iconic Corduroy Bear. The book comes out in September and I can’t wait for you all to read it. #CorduroyTakesABow #CorduroyBear http://bit.ly/CorduroyTakesABow

Tweeted by violadavis on March 14, 2018 at 4:09 AM

Story ID is different. It's just easier to get clarification in comments on what exactly the OP is looking for.

Users are always going to leave comments on ID questions as long as ID questions exist.

9:23 AM

Comments can get clarification without providing answers.

Your comment is not clarification. It's speculating about answers. A new user who gets the answer they need from your comment has no incentive to improve their question.

Okay. You answered my question, then. Those types of comments are not accepted here. Delete it, then.

[amused] I'm not a mod.

Both of us are capable of flagging the whole comment thread for deletion, and you've got a lovely delete button of your own.

Will do. Thanks for all of your friendly help.

9:49 AM

@steelersquirrel Just to add another opinion to the pile: I would say yes, there's nothing wrong with comments like that. I guess what you can take away from all of this discussion is that Lit doesn't have any particular policy about such comments.

Also, you gotta understand where people are coming from here. BESW is most used to Role-playing Games, which AFAIU tends to delete non-constructive or answer-like comments. Mith, despite being a mod here, is also influenced by Interpersonal Skills, which is massively intolerant of comments since they get so many. I come from Science Fiction & Fantasy and Puzzling, which are both very permissive about comments.

@steelersquirrel That said, this particular comment of yours actually looks like a potential answer. Why don't you post it as an answer instead? :-) (I really hope you do - we need more answered questions here, especially when there's an answer already lurking in comments!) Remember, you don't have to be certain you're right in order to post an answer to an ID question: it's fine to post a possible answer, which may still help future searchers for similar stories.

Mithrandir

@Randal'Thor I try to be slightly accommodating to each site's comment culture - that's why I don't flag stuff on SFF that I'd flag in a heartbeat if a similar comment was posted on IPS, and why I barely ever flag comments on Puzzling. Here, there isn't really any such culture yet, as you said, but of course it's fine to try to shape that culture ;)

@Mithrandir Yup, but in the end it's probably going to be shaped by people from a bunch of different sites with different ideas, and become a different beast all of its own.

@Randal'Thor Sure. I totally understand and am open to any and all input, that's why I asked in chat. Mith explained his opinion on it without talking down to me and treating me like an idiot, as did you :)

@Randal'Thor I guess that I wanted to be sure that OP was referring to Cecily of York first. That's what I was trying to clarify.

@Randal'Thor I see that you answered a Poe question!!!

@steelersquirrel I think I've answered a few. Which one?

Q: Meter and number of syllables per line in "The Raven"

It was a recent one. It's still on the front page.

3

After reading some analysis of "The Raven", I've become confused about how syllables are counted. For example, in the second line: Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore A few sources say there are 15 syllables, and that it ends with half a foot. However, I count 17 syllables, ...

poetry edgar-allan-poe scansion

^^

10:00 AM

@steelersquirrel Ah, OK. Looking at your comment again, it is more pointing to a specific RL figure than a specific book series. You could still try that Eleanor Fairburn series as an answer though :-)

@steelersquirrel Oh yes!

@Randal'Thor Yeah, I would have to look into those books more first. I don't really remember them, except that they were centered around Cecily of York.

@steelersquirrel If I was condescending, I apologize. I'm kinda distracted and probably shouldn't have engaged at all. And if so, please address such concerns to me directly so I don't have to try and interpret whether I'm being called out with coy asides to others.

I'm on noc shift all week next week. I'm planning on answering a lot of my starred questions on a few sites because I will have more time :)

Scansion in poetry is like computational complexity in maths or cryptic clues in puzzling - one of those things that has a whole load of strange rules all of their own which I never fully understand the details of and which always seem overly restrictive to me.

But hopefully my "The Raven" answer made sense.

I wouldn't know. I'm hardly The Raven expert ;)

Anyways. Gotta go. See you later :)

10:07 AM

@Mithrandir I propose that absent a site-specific policy decision, the default policies of the Stack Exchange reign.

I realize this is not a popular position, but it's the only one I can think of which doesn't wind up with mass confusion and/or apathy as each user tries to apply their own native Stack's perspectives, or avoids applying any perspective at all.

A: Let's follow official Stack Exchange policy regarding comments

We did actually have a meta discussion about answers-in-comments here, with no clear consensus (one answer scoring 0, the other -1).

And another one, more centred around a specific comment, which got a great answer from Zye:

5

I'm going to ignore Stack precedent for a moment, and come back to it in a minute - it's not enough to say, "this is Stack policy," without investigating whether and why it might make sense to apply in this context. I'm not typically one to blindly follow policy, especially not when it asks me to...

Policy decisions are usually more productive when we've got a specific example of behavior before us, rather than just speculation about future behavior. Almost like the Stack Exchange meta works better when it follows the same "actionable solutions to actual problems" model it encourages on main-site.

[wry]