The Reading Room

4:37 AM

@Randal'Thor I looked into this and am planning to buy a set of Hundred Acre Woods teas for my mom, who absolutely adores the characters.

Rand al'Thor

7:51 AM

@bobble Aw, nice!

It's based in the UK, so I hope the cost of shipping isn't too ridiculous for you.

Rand al'Thor

10:12 AM

Hmm. I remember someone a while ago (@bobble maybe?) was drafting a meta post to document and catalogue how we use tags. What happened to that project?

We have a fairly strict and consistent tagging system, much more so than many SE sites, so it could be really nice to have all the tagging policies gathered together in one place. It'd be a great faq post and a good resource we could point new users to.

Bookworm

0

Q: What is meant by "traffic" in this list of men's activities?

In the introduction (proem) to the Decameron, the author spends some paragraphs writing about lovesick women and how he hopes his stories may give them some solace as their situation means they're often less readily able than men to distract themselves outwardly from their inward woes. He lists a...

Rand al'Thor

It doesn't need to be as exhaustive as this honking great post on SFF; just a summary of our policies on e.g. author tags, title tags, language tags, etc. would be nice to have all in one place. And I remember someone already did the legwork to compose that summary, but for some reason it never got posted.

Bookworm

12:19 PM

0

Q: What are the explored elements in 'Bark's Blue-jay yarn'

What was the purpose of Mark Twain when he wrote What Stumped the Bluejays (Baker's Blue-jay yarn) is it human indifference to animal suffering or what?

history-of-literature mark-twain theme plot-element

Rand al'Thor

1:35 PM

1

Q: Updating the "existing literary works" close reason to point to Literature SE?

One of the current custom close reasons of Writing SE is: The community has decided that questions about existing literary works, except in a writing-specific context, are off-topic. For more information, see this meta answer. Asking about existing literary works is off-topic on a site about Wr...

feature-request close-reasons

I've asked if Writing SE can edit one of their custom close reasons to point users asking there about existing literary works to us instead.

bobble

2:13 PM

@Randal'Thor I paused it because I was discouraged at the mismatch between meta and policy

Apr 14 at 23:30, by bobble

Anyways, against my better judgement (with an e!) I've spent a goodly amount of time making a first draft of a tag FAQ. Google Doc link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/12UlxewnCrsT2z3Z38G2OBG2fB_Tr2ZT7lpqeuH_-Xyc/edit?usp=sharing (request access to edit). Anything else to add, or can someone help me find meta consensuses for the non-sourced stuff?

@Randal'Thor shipping is stupid expensive (as in more than the original item) but when it's all put together I can pay in an hour and a bit of tutoring. I've been attempting to poke around for a coupon code though

My meta brain is currently focusing its energy on finishing my Puzzling attribution project but I have time this afternoon to look into the tag FAQ if you want

Rand al'Thor

2:46 PM

That would be awesome. Don't remember if I said this before, but thank you very much for putting in the legwork to gather all this info.

Our tagging policies are usually quite clear and consistent and I'm proud of our site for that, but the meta discussions (consensi?) are scattered all over the place and not always so clear.

bobble

3:02 PM

I have a few hours before my first "job" (tutoring session), so let me check what the blockers are for this meta post

> If the work is best-known under a pseudonym, use the pseudonym. (meta discussion)

I link to the "current practice" answer, which is 5 votes below the top answer.

Can anyone else figure out what the querent is asking here?

I'm linking to this currently to justify "use a series tag instead of a title tag", is there something better?

AncientSwordRage

@bobble maybe asking what are the themes or topics explored? It reads as though somebody told them one thing, the title asks the question, but the body/comments presume something else?

bobble

[theme] was a tag on the original Q, but I removed it since it didn't seem relevant

I'm still unsure what they're asking

And... that is all the problems I can see right now. Just the pseudonym thing, mainly

Rand al'Thor

3:25 PM

@bobble I don't think so. Title tags were discussed at great length in the early days, with votes swaying this way and that, and some of the eventual emerging practices weren't properly codified as policies until much later.

bobble

For formatting in general, there are currently section headers using h2, sublist headers using bold (and being list items themselves), and then the sublists indented under the sublist headers. I'm open to other options.

Rand al'Thor

@bobble Maybe just leave out the item on pseudonyms? I'm not sure if we even have a consistent practice on that yet.

Formatting is the one thing I can't visualise clearly from the plaintext draft, but that can easily be amended after posting, either by you or someone else.

bobble

lemme finish updating everything, then you can copy-paste into some answer box and see the formatting

There we go, cleaned up a bit. If you copy-paste into some SE answer-box or new-question you can see the formatting

are you going to? just asking

Rand al'Thor

3:51 PM

Don't worry about the formatting, we can edit after it's posted if need be :-)

I'm a bit AFK now.

Rand al'Thor

4:52 PM

@bobble I'm back, and formatting looks good. Just one suggestion: maybe use a few more <hr> to more clearly distinguish the different sections (with the biggest headers) from each other?

bobble

Done. When should I plan to post it? Does it need more feedback?

Rand al'Thor

I don't remember how much we discussed it back in April, but I suppose you already took into account all the feedback you got back then.

I'd say go ahead and post it whenever you want. If anyone does come up with an extra thing to add or something to improve, we can always edit it on meta.

It'll need editing anyway to add the mod-only faq tag.

bobble

If I click the CW checkbox, does that CW only the answer or both the Q and A?

Posted @Randal'Thor

Imaginary meta rep, let's goooooo

Rand al'Thor

@bobble If the question is CW, then all answers are automatically CW too. But I think questions can't be CWed any more except by mods.

@bobble The rep for the answer is doubly imaginary :-)

bobble

I played it safe and CW'ed after posting

Rand al'Thor

5:05 PM

But imaginary times imaginary is real ... mind blown

Librarian

2

Q: How do I tag questions properly?

How do I tag questions properly? I see that all questions here have tags, but I do not understand the reason behind the tags. What are the tagging rules? People keep editing the tags on my questions. How can I use the right tags to start with? I suspect someone else’s question is improperly tagg...

support faq tags

bobble

Well both the timeline and the revisions list of the answer are messed up - the former lacks "made wiki" and the latter lacks an entry for the initial post

Tsundoku

5:35 PM

@bobble In my opinion, the querent wants to know what the main theme in Mark Twain's Jim Baker's Blue-Jay Yarn is

Rand al'Thor

The revisions list combines the CWification with the initial post entry, probably because you CWified within the 5 ninja minutes in which changes don't show separately in the revision history.

bobble

@Tsundoku Would editing over the separate body question be acceptable?

Tsundoku

I'll have a try.

bobble

Have at it!

I've deleted my comments as they don't make sense now

Rand al'Thor

Have at ry?

Tsundoku

5:42 PM

I hope the question is fine now.

bobble

I've retracted my CV

Tsundoku

@Randal'Thor Had you seen the comment "Invented specifically for a Native American language." before you edited the question about the "Oldest Native American book / written literature"?

The Canadian Aboriginal syllabics were invented by a missionary, and this may be the sort of thing the question was actually about: the first literature in a writing system that outsiders invented for native American languages. I admit the original wording was not very clear in this regard.

Rand al'Thor

The original question, edits, and comments combined to make the OP's intent very unclear. After vacillating for a while, I decided to edit it into something that is at least a clear, coherent, and good question, even if we can't be sure whether it's what the OP intended or not.

He also tried to add tags for "invented language" and "invented written language", and the comment you refer to was in response to Peter Shor's comment which mentioned "written alphabet invented specifically for that Native American language".

FWIW he's now accepted the given answer, which doesn't mention invented writing systems, and I don't think any of the cited works were written in such systems?

Tsundoku

6:08 PM

The answer is about Mayan texts. If they accepted the answer, they may have not been clear themselves about what they wanted to know...

Today, I got copies of A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords and A Feast for Crows for free. Somebody just gave them away.

b_jonas

6:29 PM

@Tsundoku tha question got undeleted?

Or was it never deleted? I'm confused

Tsundoku

He had asked a similar question before, and that one was closed.

Rand al'Thor

@b_jonas This one (asked 2 days ago) was closed and deleted. The recently answered one was asked back in January.

A nice example of editing a question to make it clear, after months of languishing unanswered, and watching it rapidly get upvotes and an accepted answer.

b_jonas

@Randal'Thor I see.

Tsundoku

@Bookworm The HNQ is increasing traffic to our site.

b_jonas

6:54 PM

@Tsundoku What went HNQ? literature.stackexchange.com/q/2009/139 "The author of a literary work disagrees with critics about meaning" can't be it, question is too old

Tsundoku

@b_jonas What is meant by "traffic" in this list of men's activities? went HNQ 45 minutes ago.

b_jonas

But it says "Viewed 41 times". Can't be HNQ with that.

Rand al'Thor

That's surprising, it's only got 2 upvotes on the question and 1 on the answer.

b_jonas

It also doesn't have the question votes or answer votes enough for that.

Rand al'Thor

@b_jonas It can if it only went HNQ 45 minutes ago and didn't get many clicks yet.

You can see the HNQ entry in the revisions now.

b_jonas

6:57 PM

@Randal'Thor I thought it already needs views to go HNQ, but maybe not, maybe it only needs question votes, answer votes, and be recent.

But indeed the timeline says it went HNQ. Odd.

Rand al'Thor

No, only votes, age, and number of answers (mostly votes) factor into the HNQification of a post.

Views are an effect of HNQ, not a cause.

Rand al'Thor

7:40 PM

@Tsundoku By the way, it's the first HNQ in our newest topic challenge. After asking two questions requiring some deeper analysis, I posted this one as more low-hanging fruit.

As well as having started reading the Decameron, I'm also still reading some Premchand short stories from a topic challenge that ended more than a month ago.

Bookworm

8:11 PM

0

Q: What is speaking "plainly" in this context?

In Book IV of The Iliad, there are several instances where the translation refers to someone speaking "plainly": Athena now took the form of a Trojan, the doughty warrior Laodocos Antenor's son, and went about searching for Pandaros. She found him standing among the ranks of targeteers who had m...

greek-literature homer the-iliad

Mithical

@Randal'Thor I'm just working my way through The Iliad still.

Rand al'Thor

I've actually never read the original Iliad (in any language, I mean, not "original" as in Ancient Greek) - only an assortment of retellings.

Mithical

Sep 28 at 19:08, by Mithical

It's been sitting on my shelf after I rescued it, along with several others, from a pile of books someone had left by the trash, and I figured I should probably at least try to get through it.

Bookworm

8:36 PM

0

Q: Antagonist in Jim Baker's Blue Jay Yarn

Who or what is the antagonist in Baker's Blue Jay Yarn (What Stumped the Blue jays)

short-stories character-analysis mark-twain