@fi12 I voted to reopen because that question is absolutely not off-topic. I haven't decided whether the question is POB so if it had been closed as POB I wouldn't have voted to reopen.
@Lord_Gareth I find it's very easy, once we've gained understanding of a thing, to forget what it was like to not have that understanding --and even more, to not remember what it was like when we didn't know it was a thing at all.
@DForck42 great, private beta is all about figuring out the scope of the site and closing/reopening is the best way to do that, so it's best to be generous with our close/reopen votes
We want to assume good faith in our querents; a question can be off topic without the querent being lazy/trolling/etc. We've had a recent reminder to avoid personal attacks on people who say or do things we disagree with. That includes people posting questions we don't think are up to snuff.
@BESW I don't think I'm in danger of going any further than other sites. E.g., SO has a "show that you've at least worked on the problem" stipulation. I think that an ideal "simple" question as it were would show that the user has thought about it or has at least attempted to think about it (or demonstrate their confusion). What I'm saying is, I don't want simple homework questions on this site.
@fi12 Regarding literature.stackexchange.com/questions/123/… , what translation are you reading? I don't think password is correct. Have you found other places where the translation looks suspicious?
@ConorO'Brien Agreed, but it's going to be a happier site if we frame it as "Please [edit] your question to show what you've done and why it hasn't solved your problem" rather than assuming they didn't do the work in the first place.
Something that'd be nice to see here would be more examination of how/why something was written rather than the in-universe explanations that are usually expected on SFF. Mithrandir's answer to the time travel question adds something there, and I wonder if y'all couldn't find a way to emphasize it.
The effect of "Please show your work" on the site is more positive than "Please do your work."
If they haven't done the work, now they know there's an assumption of it. If they have but didn't express it clearly, they've been reminded without having someone assume they're a lazy bum.
The title pretty much sums it up. It seems plausible to me that an assumption that a question about a book is liable to contain spoilers is enough reason to not use spoiler markup. I wanted to ask and be sure, though.
Default to assuming that folks are here to learn. Respect the others so far as you are able, but don't make the experience worse for those who are on account of those who are not.
@Shog9 hm about tagging questions properly: do you mean just to include the title of the book? Because the meta question seems to suggest that people dont like the idea of a spoiler-tag
@user159517 title of the book, author, potentially series if one exists (not sure if that's been discussed here yet, y'all might decide they're a bad idea, same goes for characters if those happen)
Essentially, any/all tags needed to describe where the question "fits"
No, a "spoiler" tag isn't necessary / useful - you're just guessing at what others won't want to know.
If you don't want a book / author / series spoiled, then you don't read about it. How do you avoid reading about it without reading about it? You don't read questions whose tags suggest they may be about the topics you're hoping to avoid.
well I'll think I'll just try to go with no spoilers in title if thats possible without mutilating the original meaning and try to tag properly. In the beginning that might be difficult though because it seems I can't create tags yet.
@Benjamin The problem is to get people to use the right tags.
user61230
@Gilles Small post hoc corrections can be applied, but it's unlikely that an artificial tag will be used if the majority of people didn't find it to be intuitive.
@Shog9 I really do not understand spoiler and book combo. So what if someone tells one what book is about. It is in words of this person. I'm usually not buffaloed by something like this.
@Eugene I don't "get" spoiler-fear in any context, but some folks are very serious about it and so I try to respect that as long as it doesn't get in the way of what we're here for.
It's kind of fun for me to learn people's view about what makes a good question here, because I'm mainly active on math.SE. Some aspects are quite similar, others are really different.
as just a kind of fun activity thing, what're all of your favorite authors? Personally, I myself do like Orwell and Bradbury. Steinbeck is nice as well.
@fi12 I like anything related to philosophy tbh, but also Tolkien, Dashner, oc Riordan, Lewis (for his non-fiction; his fiction is fun but inferior to his non-fiction), and I love Poe(try)
King just doesn't do much voyage back, and that bugs me because some of my favourite authors are folks like Allingham, who said:
> I write every paragraph four times - once to get my meaning down, once to put in anything I have left out, once to take out anything that seems unnecessary, and once to make the whole thing sound as if I had only just thought of it.
@fi12 I'm mainly a fantasy guy (as you can tell from my main site): Jordan, Tolkien, that kind of thing. But I'm also a fan of various more classical works like Shakespeare, Poe, Borges, Thomas Hardy, ...
The generally-accepted way of making a pun funny is to explain it while simulating the jabbing of your audience in the ribs by writing, "eh? EH?" until they give up and laugh heartily
@Emrakul Well, if you have to explain a pun, it's already not much of a pun to start with. But perhaps it relies on some sort of inside Steven King knowledge... or any, for that matter... I've never read any of his work, so I'm clearly not getting this pun.
@Catija well prepare yourself then :) In my case I tried to play with words crucify and the point, that author in context is Stephen King. Horror. But pun is meant to be a part of joke and if joke is explained, then it is not a joke anymore.
@Eugene ah, so for example rand might just as well say, "I hope you folks don't kill me and hide my body under the floor for admitting this, but my favorite author is Poe"
@Randal'Thor I dunno. He's fascinating as a worldbuilder, but most of it is salad-bar appropriation of mythos and the rest is stuff that gets in the way of the stories he wound up trying to tell. Tolkien started from language and real-world myth, built a world out of that, and then started telling stories in it. That means his world is complex but not very original, and obstructs the stories as much as it supports them.
@user159517 You have about... four minutes to edit them yourself... down arrow on the left side of the post... after that, you have to be a mod. Also, only mods can edit other people's posts.
@Catija did not know, that mods here like to edit other people messages. Even with misspelling. By editing @user159517 first message sent to me, you've created a paradox.
@bleh Meta discussion is here. Top answer essentially says "They might be OK, as long as there aren't too many of them"; second answer essentially says "They're really good, let's give them a try".
@BESW I guess it depends on what you consider "underage"... if you really want to read something that hits the underage bar a little low for my taste, read Men, Women, and Children by Kultgen.
The title pretty much sums it up. It seems plausible to me that an assumption that a question about a book is liable to contain spoilers is enough reason to not use spoiler markup. I wanted to ask and be sure, though.
