The Reading Room - 2017-01-18 (page 4 of 5)

« first day (1988 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (2645 days later) »

10:00 PM

Hopefully I can be of use.

Napoleon Wilson

While you're at it, feel free to upvote this thing:

59

Q: Increase limit on tag length

I recently asked a question on Stack Overflow which was primarily about UICollectionViewController, a frequently used class in UIKit on iOS 7. I wanted to tag the post with the tag uicollectionviewcontroller, but could not do this because it exceeded the limit of 25 characters. Please will you ...

feature-request tags character-limit

Figure I'll start with a SAQ and a provocative meta Q.

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

@DJMcMayhem ah thanks for the edit, didn't realize we had a poems tag

@Helmar your edit must already have been rejected when I made mine, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to make it. I could have seen it pending, or seen it rejected in the author's activity (where I went to see after reading your chat message). But I hadn't.

@NapoleonWilson You want me to create ~~another~~ a sockpuppet on MSE?

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

lol

Napoleon Wilson

10:04 PM

@Gilles Why?

@BESW I'm about to quote some of your thoughts on tagging in a meta post. You're already being of use without even doing anything ;-)

@Randal'Thor Yey!

@NapoleonWilson I am not free to upvote that post. The system won't let me.

@NapoleonWilson Presumably because he already did upvote it?

Napoleon Wilson

@Gilles I see.

user61230

10:05 PM

@Randal'Thor I actually think the rep cap is more valuable in private beta. It's very easy to dominate by contributing too much, too quickly.

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

I understood that as "voting cap", not "rep cap"

maybe not though

@Emrakul @HDE I think you misunderstood me. I didn't mean abolish the repcap, only the vote limit of 40 per day.

Yes, what Easterly said.

@Randal'Thor Never mind. Apparently I've been reading too much today to read properly.

Making the tag length bigger is not feasible

Der satanarchäolügenialkohöllische Wunschpunsch

Der satanarchäolügenialkohöllische Wunschpunsch ist der Titel eines Kinderbuches des deutschen Schriftstellers Michael Ende, das 1989 erstmals erschienen ist und 1990 mit dem Schweizer Literaturpreis „La vache qui lit“ ausgezeichnet wurde. == Handlung == Der böse Zauberer Beelzebub Irrwitzer, Personifikation der Wissenschaft bzw. die durch den Menschen verursachte Zerstörung der Umwelt, hat sich vertraglich bei Seiner Höllischen Exzellenz dazu verpflichtet, jedes Jahr eine vorgeschriebene Zahl an bösen Taten, wie Naturkatastrophen, Seuchen und andere Unglücke, zu vollbringen. In diesem Ja...

Won't ever fit in a tag

user61230

@Randal'Thor Oh! My bad, yeah.

10:09 PM

Whoof, this chat's whizzing fast. I'm not gonna be able to keep up with everything.

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

lol

hey guys

is a release date off topic?

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

hey bleh

@bleh probably

what book?

@DVK-in-Florida D: are you saying that's a bad movie?

@bleh The ones of Patrick Rothfuss or GRRM for sure

@bleh Is it answerable by reading the first line of the Wikipedia article?

10:10 PM

@Helmar yeah rothfuss

@bleh Here's RPG.SE's discussion on the topic.

(Spoiler: no, they expire too quickly for a long-term information collection like the Stack.)

@BESW Give up while you still can.

@BESW same general idea on Science Fiction & Fantasy

@Catija The Stack is totally fine with collecting answers which can be found elsewhere, because we're a neatly-sorted pile of solutions. The only problem is whether it's the kind of information we can handle well.

@BESW: meta.literature.stackexchange.com/a/89/17

10:12 PM

@BESW You can always launch a test question, let it be voted into oblivion and set a valuable precedent ;)

@BESW That really depends on the site. Questions like that would be utterly off topic on M&TV because we're not duplicating IMDb. Otherwise, we'd be full of questions like "Who was the star of _____"... we really don't need a site full of that crap.

@BESW Except on sites like English Language & Usage (or Science Fiction & Fantasy at one point) which have a "general reference" close reason.

@Randal'Thor this was one of the lessons of Stack Overflow's private beta; originally, there were no limits on how much you could vote... Then someone decided to upvote everything.

4

Q: Should questions be for trivial definitions?

How should we treat "trivial question" questions? There are a number of questions coming in that seem like exercises in laziness IMO. "What is a macguffin," "What is railroading," etc. At best these should be wiki entries, but really they are "I don't feel like checking Wikipedia, let me make ...

discussion appropriateness closed-questions

Something tells me Literature would be dominating the HNQs today, if it was able to be on the HNQs :-P

10:13 PM

7

Q: Is trivia on-topic?

We have an old question about trivia questions that we wrestled with, without a real consensus emerging: How do 'Trivia' Questions meet the requirements for posting? I went searching out that question due to recent wrangling over various questions, but it's too out-of-date to be a good resour...

discussion on-topic policy

Note, the difference between trivia and trivial.

@Randal'Thor thats all private betas really

Napoleon Wilson

@BESW Information found elsewhere is fine. But if your answer is a one-liner that is answered by a mere factoid, I'd question the question's value.

@Randal'Thor Yep, since HNQ is site-size-based

@Randal'Thor are you going to go for the protem?

@NapoleonWilson Right. Hence my objection to using "Is it on Wikipedia" as a crition.

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

10:14 PM

@bleh don't admins appoint those at first?

@EᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏIʀᴋ but like theres a meta post about it

@BESW I didn't say "it's on wikipedia"... I said "the first line of the Wikipedia article".

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

ah okay

Napoleon Wilson

I'll throw out my standard phrase: "trivia" doesn't mean "easy to find", it means "noone cares".

@BESW I thought that was on the lit.se meta, and my hackles were raised for a second (only read the title)

10:15 PM

@Randal'Thor Oh, no. Not the HNQ.

Though, I admit to editing it... but I edited it before your comment.

...this room needs feeds.

@BESW yup

@HDE226868 Oh, is Worldbuilding another site that hates the HNQ system?

@Randal'Thor On second thought, no answers means always 0 hotness

10:16 PM

@BESW btw, really appreciate the meta about "snobbery"

@BESW Wouldn't they be flooding the room at this point?

I volunteer as tribute; I've got experience managing feeds to keep a room informed but not overwhelmed.

Napoleon Wilson

@Randal'Thor Well, want to know why I mistook it for WhatIf.SE today? ;-)

HNQ can be very good for early betas actually

@Randal'Thor That's complicated. I often dislike it because it puts the worst of our stuff out there (I feel), but my last 15 WB questions have hit the HNQ. So I dislike it even though it's helped me.

10:18 PM

wb.se gives me a sad. It's a site for scientific speculation experts, not for worldbuilders.

@Randal'Thor just once when the feed first wakes up

@BESW Tribute = RO?

@Randal'Thor Yes.

@BESW shall we set the usual feeds for meta questions and bounties?

Napoleon Wilson

@Gilles But probably now, too. Seeing how someone seems to post a new question about every minute.

10:19 PM

@Gilles Questions have been coming in thick and fast today, on both main and meta.

@Gilles That's the general idea but I'll have to monitor the flow for a little while before I decide what goes in and which gets main-lined and which go into the ticker.

(Which I guess is normal for first day of private beta? I've never been in one before.)

This recent IoT HNQ gave us about 200 new users and a bunch of new users posting questions actually.

I'm expecting aggressive use of the ticker, not so much one-boxing in main chat.

That was end of first week of public beta.

Yes, please, ticker, not one-boxing

10:20 PM

@Randal'Thor yes, although I think this one is busier than average

@fi12 Any ideas for our first weekly book?

@Gilles Is that indicative of a strong future site? I hope it stays like this.

Napoleon Wilson

@Benjamin Well, it definitely won't stay exactly like this.

@Gilles Btw, did you see the meta about ID questions? I know that's a subject you feel strongly about (and that your stance is similar to mine ;-) )

@Benjamin Extremely low activity would be a bad sign, but in the low-high activity range I don't think there's correlation between activity and success

As long as quantity is not abysmally low, and it isn't, the important thing now is quality

Napoleon Wilson

People are eager to throw out their stuff now. But once the gates get opened to the public, and contrary to what one might expect, it generally tends to decline from private beta traffic.

10:23 PM

@BESW Oh, please not the ticker :-(

3

of both questions and answers

@Randal'Thor Well, again, it's an art to match feeds to chats.

Napoleon Wilson

And once public beta starts, the ID discussion will get into focus again, too.

@Randal'Thor yes

In the long run I'd also set up a community-sourced contribution form.

10:24 PM

@Randal'Thor but this one had a lot more interest than the common beta cause it's a retry

@-moz-document domain("chat.stackexchange.com"), domain("chat.stackoverflow.com"), domain("chat.meta.stackexchange.com") {
div#feed-ticker {
    display:none !important;
}
}

@BESW Quite honestly, I can't see any advantages in the ticker system. The onebox can be ignored; it doesn't block other messages; it slides off your screen without having to be manually dismissed; ...

@Randal'Thor ^^^^ Before someone wrote that for me, I spent months (years?) avoiding the Unix & Linux chat because of that *@#(&*(#@& ticker

“But no one goes to a sushi restaurant for shredded carrots.” [citation-needed] “I've never heard a group of friends walking out while patting their bellies and saying to one another, ‘boy howdy, the salmon was ok but those radishes - what a sublime delight!’” — I have (no these exact words, but the general idea. And the implied idea that nobody comes to a Q&A site for identification questions is total bullshit, since you are aware of a counterexample. — Gilles 2 hours ago

@Gilles Yep, I seem to remember finding a main meta question from you on this subject.

With an answer from Shog saying "how to block tickers? just use oneboxes instead"

Napoleon Wilson

@Randal'Thor Exactly. It would be different if it disappeared automatically after a short time (which would also render it quite useless).

10:26 PM

@Benjamin You can probably expect a half of the first 48 hours in the week after

How come my parents never told me about their adventures with the dimension-hopping machine? There's no way you aren't my evil twin.

Way less on meta

@Gilles Wait, is the counterexample you?

Just the realities of a 200 user site

@SQB the Mos (Eisley?) background hurts me eyes >_>

10:29 PM

@Helmar What is this in response to?

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

> me eyes

argh matey, I do agree with ye

@ConorO'Brien The Arqade background resonates with my screen flicker.

@Benjamin Your hopes of this site staying as active as today

Napoleon Wilson

@Gilles Thanks for that comment, it spawned my second-favourite comment today, if not this week/month.

@Randal'Thor yes

10:32 PM

Does anyone have 2000+ rep? If not, how can tag wikis be approved?

@Gilles OK, then you're even more pro-ID than me. If ID questions end up banned here, I wouldn't consider quitting Lit for that reason.

Maybe we should come up with one or two really good ID questions ourselves, to set an example.

@Benjamin A CM?

TrojanByAccident

e.e

I have a downvote for some reason

@Benjamin Yep, needs a CM. Robert has already been at work in the massive First Posts review queue, since none of us can access it until tomorrow.

TrojanByAccident

disreagard me lol

10:35 PM

Urgh, so many meta posts I have to wait 1.5 hours to vote on.

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

:/

In the meantime, I may as well get on with finishing up my 40 votes on main.

I was under the impression beta sites have lower requirements for such things, but it's been a long time since my first/last beta site.

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

they do

@Randal'Thor Wait a few minutes and you can upvote my SAQ.

10:36 PM

I must say, I expected the site to be busy, but not THIS busy.

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

@BESW just you need 500 and 350 for any suggested edits and first posts

@BESW SAQ?

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

@Randal'Thor I mean, it was hyped on SFF before this so

@Randal'Thor I misread this as "fishing up my 40 votes..." Fishing might be a nice thing to do in the meantime, too :P

@BESW We only need 350 to review First Posts. But association bonus plus one repcap is still less than 350.

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

10:36 PM

also the number of blue is decreasing

@Randal'Thor Self-Answered Question.

Why is rep cap enforced on betas?

@Benjamin Because it's too easy for a few users to skyrocket out of proportion. The reasons for the rep cap (encouraging consistent use and getting experts to go out and do expert things away from the site) don't magically vanish in beta.

@Benjamin Why shouldn't it be? Otherwise, it just serves to expand the inequality in rep between folks who join early and folks who join later if they put in the same amount of work.

user61230

@Benjamin It's actually more valuable in private beta: it prevents rep hunger from dominating the conversation, and helps keep quality up early on.

user61230

10:39 PM

That's always valuable, but particularly during the formative period of a site.

Thanks for the explanation, I thought rep cap was more about stopping cheating.

@Emrakul Unfortunately, it can also demotivate people from posting much in a day after they've hit their repcap.

(although I agree it shouldn't be abolished for private betas)

literature.stackexchange.com/help/badges/41/…

user61230

@Randal'Thor I think, early on, that can be a good thing.

I made it to the club!

10:40 PM

@DJMcMayhem Grats!

12 of us already.

@Mithrandir tried my best ot put to words my feelings on the topic meta.literature.stackexchange.com/a/93/16

TrojanByAccident

Anyone that cheats to gain worthless internet points should find something better to do with their life

@TrojanByAccident yup

Apparently there's a poetry tag as well as a poems tag, even though it's used on 0 questions (must have been edited out of some).

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

hm which do we keep?

10:42 PM

Reckon it's worth asking a CM to synonymise those explicitly?

@EᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏIʀᴋ I think synonymize and keep poetry.

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

I like poems more but that's just me

@Randal'Thor poetry

it's more poetic

@Randal'Thor Make that 13! Not sure if I'm top rep user right now though.

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

@fi12 tied with me

wait, you are

10:42 PM

I think poetry makes more sense

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

nvm

poetry isn't limited to poems

TrojanByAccident

@Randal'Thor 12 of who?

Is it more important to do a lot of small contributions or a number of major ones?

....Don't curate tags on the first day.

10:43 PM

@EᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏIʀᴋ No, tied with cheese now.

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

hm, you're right

Burn both poetry tags

Wait to see how tags get used and then curate problems as they emerge, not as we anticipate them.

2

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

it's not sorting by rep gained for me

They're like the novel tag

10:44 PM

@TrojanByAccident Mortarboards. And I think that counted @fi12.

@Mithrandir ... why?

@BESW Indeed. But some problems are obvious on the first day.

TrojanByAccident

@Randal'Thor Mortarboards?

@Gilles What's the problem?

TrojanByAccident

@Mithrandir not at all

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

@TrojanByAccident rep-capped people

10:44 PM

I agree with besw, let it settle a bit first

@BESW In general, yes. I think it's safe to get rid of things like fiction and spoiler at once though.

@BESW for example, someone created a fiction tag earlier

TrojanByAccident

@EᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏIʀᴋ oh

@TrojanByAccident Mortarboard badge.

It's like tagging every book question books

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

10:45 PM

boiks r very gut tu reed

...I tagged my question audiobook.

@BESW I think that is helpful because it is a separate medium.

@BESW Wow, 1 view and 1 answer?

Oh, it's a self-answer.

And now I realise what SAQ stood for.

Napoleon Wilson

@BESW Well, is it about an audiobook or about audiobooks?

@NapoleonWilson I'm not sure what the protocol is on plurality for these kinds of tags.

10:47 PM

What the heck. In my rep inbox it says 323 and on the site 320..

It's about a series of three audiobooks.

Napoleon Wilson

@BESW No, I was asking if it's about the intricacies of audiobooks or just about a work that happens to be an audiobook.

@BESW On SFF we have books and movie, so ...

@Randal'Thor like you said, the rep cap is quite demotivating now. A compromise that SE could make is perhaps increasing the rep cap by, say 100 rep, (only during private beta). This could encourage users to visit and participate daily as well as encourage high-rep users to keep answering and asking.

Imo those should go just based on how they're misused

10:48 PM

@Mithrandir cache lag

How?

@fi12 the rep cap is supposed to be a little bit demotivating

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

@fi12 1. he was actually referring to the vote cap iirc. 2. I think that would still exclude some of the lower-rep users from participating as much

@Shog9 word of god is canon there we go

2

@NapoleonWilson The work being an audiobook is important to the question.

@EᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏIʀᴋ *word of shog

10:49 PM

> The current system is designed to reward continued participation, but not to the point that it creates obsession. Programmers should be out there in the world creating things, too. The rep cap requires that you come back to our community over a fairly significant period of time, and contribute regularly during that time.

Napoleon Wilson

I guess not flooding the site with all your great questions and then suddenly dwindling in activity after 3 days is a good thing.

@Randal'Thor god = shog

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

^

@NapoleonWilson Yeah, definitely.

Ouch that downvote was painful

10:50 PM

> "This question does not appear to be about literature, within the scope defined in the help center."

Napoleon Wilson

@Benjamin Than the tag seems justified.

:-/

That was one of Jeff's better answers, IMHO - it shows some real thought behind these seemingly-arbitrary mechanics.

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

why is that closed?

downvote I get but it's not off-topic IMO

Napoleon Wilson

@Randal'Thor It's a stupid question, but I can't see how it's off-topic.

10:51 PM

@EᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏIʀᴋ for the record, I was the first to vote to close, personally I just thought it was broad/opinion-based because it's asking about the hypothetical actions of a character.

@EᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏIʀᴋ because of that, there's no real one right answer

If y'all think it's on-topic, then vote to reopen / raise the issue on meta.

The sff version has lots of upvotes

This is the time to establish scope, not assume scope

8

@Shog9 There's a meta about it already:

3

Q: Thoughts on "why didn't character x act rationally" questions?

A big pet peeve of mine about Stack Exchange's Science Fiction and Fantasy website is that's filled with questions that I describe as "why didn't character x act rationally" questions. Recently, someone asked the question Why did Hermione not kill Voldemort in 'the Prisoner of Azkaban'?, which is...

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

@fi12 yeah, opinion based I get

and/or broad

10:52 PM

@Mithrandir in the words of Gilles popularity != on-topic

I should probably think about writing up an answer, from the point of view of having seen a lot of these questions on another site.

@Randal'Thor Yeah, I saw that, but so far no one's written an answer defending the question and/or the style

I find it amusing that Hamlet is supporting questions dealing with character inaction.

6

@Randal'Thor basically, WHY is almost always significantly more detailed than WHY NOT

I came here to be able to talk about the meaning of literature, not to discuss fruitless hypotheticals that stem from laziness on account of the question asker :/

10:56 PM

@ConorO'Brien my thoughts exactly.

user61230

@ConorO'Brien Both can coexist.

Tag filtering may be useful.

user61230

I agree with you - that's what I'm here for too. But we shouldn't go into it assuming that they can't share the same space.

@DForck42 Yeah. The answer to "why not" is very often "well, because the author didn't think of it" or "because that would have made the book only 10 pages long, duh".

@fi12 and bad question ≢ off-topic question

that question may be unanswerable because it's POB, but I don't see how it can be construed as off-topic

10:57 PM

@Randal'Thor exactly. and I think the hp question's true intent was "what prevented the use of the time turner to go back and kill/prevent voldemort?"

@Gilles true, but personally that question seems far too opinion-based to me. there's no real answer in canon and thus all answers will simply just be speculation.

@Emrakul I don't believe I assumed that. And sure, I think they can. However, I wish question askers would first think about the material at hand. I mean, what's the point of literature if you're just going to have it spoon-fed to you?

the answers have nothing to do with Hermione or dumbledor or anyone from the ministry of magic for that matter

@Emrakul Exactly. To borrow a phrase from our old acquaintance AE: "just because I don't like sprouts, I'm not going to stop everyone else from being able to enjoy them".

Of course, that argument can be taken too far and used to mean "don't close anything ever".

So wait. How is it that the rep inbox shows 323 but my rep is 318?

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

10:58 PM

probably other site rep

+5 on something else

@Mithrandir cache lag

user61230

@ConorO'Brien Careful. Down that way dangers lie.

@EᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏIʀᴋ No

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

then magic

@Emrakul which way?

10:59 PM

@Gilles And it seems I wasn't the only one to feel the same way, others voted to close as well. There seems to be strong disagreement here in chat with my vote, so if you do feel that way, I may have been in the wrong on this one. go ahead and reopen if you happen to disagree :)

« first day (1988 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (2645 days later) »

Transcript for

Jan '1718

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