The Reading Room

DVK-on-Ahch-To

00:14

@Gilles - let me know if this passes muster on the topic of language tags please.

Rand al'Thor

00:24

@Riker Apparently you're a pedant too. thumbs up :-)

DVK-on-Ahch-To

@Randal'Thor yeah, and you pedants are destroying my substantive edits to address your own comments :( :)

Rand al'Thor

@DVK-on-Ahch-To Did you see Riker's image?

Jan 28 at 17:09, by Riker

On a more serious note, I think I've finally come around to your and Gilles's point of view on language-based tags. I've reverted my downvote on Skooba's meta answer (my upvote on Robert's stays, because some of those broad tags are less useful, for the reasons he says), and even edited the russian-literature tag into a couple of questions earlier :-)

3

@DVK Btw, is my statement about the meaning of "Герой" correct?

Riker

@Randal'Thor uh

sorry?

@DVK-on-Ahch-To sorry about that :(

Rand al'Thor

This bunch should be able to provide us with some fun questions:

Oulipo

Oulipo (French pronunciation: [ulipo], short for French: Ouvroir de littérature potentielle; roughly translated: "workshop of potential literature") is a loose gathering of (mainly) French-speaking writers and mathematicians who seek to create works using constrained writing techniques. It was founded in 1960 by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais. Other notable members have included novelists Georges Perec and Italo Calvino, poets Oskar Pastior, Jean Lescure and poet/mathematician Jacques Roubaud. The group defines the term littérature potentielle as (rough translation): "the seeking of...

(chatting about lipograms in another room; got inspired)

DVK-on-Ahch-To

00:45

@Randal'Thor as in "protagonist/character" instead of "hero"? Yes, quite correct.

@Randal'Thor And THAT was precisely what I was alluding to in my main Q&A answer about dificulties with literary translations.

@Randal'Thor If that proposal fails, you, Skooba, Gilles and me should quit this site and make a new SE Literary site, with blackjack and language tags :)

Riker

dont' forget bridge

bridge is fun

DVK-on-Ahch-To

@Riker No problem. Lucklily, I noticed the warning in time and copy/pasted my edits into a fresh attempt (on 3rd try :)

Riker

ah sorry

DVK-on-Ahch-To

@Riker Them's the breaks on shared content platforms :)

Rand al'Thor

@DVK-on-Ahch-To Rofl :-P

Riker

00:51

@DVK-on-Ahch-To lol

DVK-on-Ahch-To

@Randal'Thor Forgot to add "...and use jQuery"

Rand al'Thor

@DVK-on-Ahch-To Well, there you lost me.

No, actually, you lost me at blackjack.

DVK-on-Ahch-To

01:10

@Randal'Thor It's a somewhat unfortunate SO meme, having to do with people liking to treat question as XY question.

158

Q: When is "use jQuery" not a valid answer to a JavaScript question?

How many JavaScript questions can be answered with "use jQuery"? Looking at JavaScript questions, all too often the answer seems to be "use jQuery," sometimes in as few words. We can end up with answers which feel more like plugs getting the asker to try jQuery (the Silver Bullet) than a concise...

steelersquirrel

OMG. There goes Rand and Napoleon using those complicated and intellectual type words again :P

Rand al'Thor

@steelersquirrel If you think we use lots of those words, try talking to BESW ;-)

3

steelersquirrel

01:25

@Randal'Thor Hehehe! I know, right?

Rand al'Thor

Gotta expect a certain amount of that on SE. It's supposed to be all about attracting experts, after all.

steelersquirrel

Oh, I don't mind. As long as they don't mind talking to me. I'm hardly an intellectual ;)

...or an expert

Rand al'Thor

Maybe that's less true in the film industry. Even the professionals over there are called things like "best boy" and "dolly grip" - hardly complicated or intellectual words! :-P

Napoleon Wilson

@steelersquirrel I doubt many of us can keep up with all those weird medication names and their purposes either.

steelersquirrel

@NapoleonWilson Yeah, I guess so.

Napoleon Wilson

01:34

@Randal'Thor Like "assistant coordinating producer" and "director of photography"?

Rand al'Thor

@NapoleonWilson Sure, I was mainly joking.

Napoleon Wilson

I know.

@steelersquirrel It's the truth! Cheer up! ;-)

steelersquirrel

@NapoleonWilson WUT? I'm cheered, silly :)

Napoleon Wilson

Goooooode! \o/

steelersquirrel

I'M TIRED AND GOING LOOPY!!! ;)

Rand al'Thor

01:43

@steelersquirrel So what else is new? ;-)

Napoleon Wilson

@steelersquirrel You don't say. ;-P

steelersquirrel

:p

Riker

02:03

@steelersquirrel this deserves more stars

@steelersquirrel are you on meds or just tired?

steelersquirrel

@Riker Hehe! I'm at work. Just tired!

Riker

ah

Rand al'Thor

02:19

We have another HNQ!

steelersquirrel

Oh, wow! Skooba has the highest voted question!! Awesome!!

Rand al'Thor

@steelersquirrel The two highest voted questions.

steelersquirrel

Oh, nice! I just saw that!

BESW

02:44

Apropos of nothing, Amiri Baraka on why he would not want a newspaper critic to review one of his plays:

> Our critics are the ones out on the streets. They tell me what they think. [Newspaper critics are] superfluous, an artificial thing. The word “art” is something the West has never understood. Art is supposed to be a part of a community. Like, scholars are supposed to be a part of a community. A person who has trouble should walk across the street to a scholar, who'll be the heaviest person in that vicinity on that subject, and ask about that. Art is to decorate people’s houses, their skin, their clothes, to make them expand their minds, and it’s supposed to be right in the community, wher…

Bookworm

03:10

1

Q: Reading order for Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere

Brandon Sanderson has plans in place to write many books set in different worlds, but in the same Cosmere. These books include series that have already begun (eg Stormlight Archives, Elantris, Mistborn, and others), and some that have not yet started (eg Aether of Night, Dark One, and Dragonsteel...

reading-order brandon-sanderson cosmere

Bookworm

03:23

0

Q: How did the Inklings originate?

The Inklings were a group of Oxford academics and writers, their most famous members including J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Hugo Dyson. They used to meet regularly, often at the Eagle & Child pub in Oxford, and read portions of their work to each other. Out of this group came...

history-of inklings

BESW

04:36

> ...what we call literature is after the fact, and it's difficult to say what a writer, a witness, should do. All I ‘mow now is what I'm trying to be a witness to, and at this moment, in the life of a living man, it is not literature but a question of trying to translate what you see. Trying to move it from one place to another. Afterward, it may be literature. While you're living, dealing with other human beings, people whom you love, all you can do is have passion. The bottom line is this: You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can't, but also kn…

Librarian

05:35

0

Q: Is a question asking about the real-life inspiration for ALL characters in a book too broad?

Would a question that asks for the inspirations for all or any character in a book be considered too broad? There is some precedent for questions that appear to have done that, and have not been closed (eg In Foucault's Pendulum, which names are allusions to the real world, and which are not?, We...

discussion scope asking-questions

Mithrandir

@Librarian attempting to write an answer...

Shokhet

@Mithrandir Thank you kindly :)

Mithrandir

Okay, I wrote something. Now I'm heading back to bed for a few minutes. Zzzz

Shokhet

@Mithrandir Good night! I have thoughts on your answer that are probably better as a comment there...maybe we'll discuss it tomorrow

Hamlet

05:59

@Benjamin I couldn't sleep (even though I have to get up early tomorrow) so I added some links to the sources page on my blog

taxicrash.github.io/2017/01/24/literary-analysis-examples

There's a link there about Borges, which you might find helpful

BESW

10:24

An interview with J.Y. Yang, a prolific Chinese-Singaporean author whose silkpunk novellas are debuting in September.

2

Mithrandir

10:52

Wow, could I really get Lit's first gold?

Benjamin

@Mithrandir Which one?

Thanks, I'll check it out.

Mithrandir

@Benjamin The one for +20 answer to -5 question. Over here.

I just posted a link to a question about The 39 Clues on a Twitter account which I know at least one Scholastic Multiplatform author reads...

Mithrandir

12:10

@Randal'Thor the Inklings group still exists.

Rand al'Thor

12:22

> The Inklings was an informal literary discussion group associated with the University of Oxford, England, for nearly two decades between the early 1930s and late 1949.

Also, most of your answer has kind of missed the point. Hold on, let me write up a comment ...

BESW

Or, maybe, edit the question.

Mithrandir

> A resurrection of the Inklings in Oxford was made in 2006; the group still meets every Sunday evening, currently at St Cross College nearby the Eagle and Child. It has similar aims and methods to the original group, albeit with somewhat gentler criticism.

BESW

Generally speaking if you have to leave a comment telling an answerer that they didn't get the question, the information in the comment would be good to have in the question.

3

(And if there's no information in the comment which could improve the question, then the comment's unlikely to help on its own either.)

Rand al'Thor

@BESW If I ask who were the founding members and get an answer listing all the notable members over a twenty-year period, is the problem with the asker being unclear or the answerer missing the point?

BESW

I think the problem with the answer is less that it's missing the point, and more that it's just copy-pasting source material without comment, context, or elaboration.

Rand al'Thor

12:29

@Mithrandir That's like saying Latin isn't a dead language because this site exists. The real Inklings are the group from the 30s and 40s. If they've inspired another group with the same name sixty years later, great, but it's still another group.

BESW

@Mithrandir Are you familiar with synthesis writing?

Mithrandir

@BESW no.

Benjamin

@Mithrandir It is definitely a skill you should learn.

BESW

Synthesis is a form of writing which takes information from other sources and presents it in a particular context to convey a particular message. It's probably the single most important kind of writing for lit.se answerers to understand.

In the case of the Inklings answer, it means not just copy-pasting information from other sources, but rather using that information as the groundwork for your own writing.

Mithrandir

@BESW I wish I had been able to copy paste it :P. But when the quote directly answers the question, what's the need to elaborate?

Rand al'Thor

12:37

Isn't that pretty much what all the best SE answers should be doing?

BESW

You get to quote, yes. But you also get to write your own sentences and paragraphs about why the quotes are important, relephant, and/or reliable, and how they inform the subject at hand. You're commenting on their usefulness and meaning.

2

Benjamin

@BESW What is silk punk?

BESW

@Benjamin Author Ken Liu Explains "Silkpunk."

Benjamin

@BESW Oh, cool!

BESW

Broadly speaking, *punk (originally cyberpunk) derives from the real-life counterculture movement called "punk," which had a core ethos of taking the resources (material, cultural, psychological) of an established oppressive regime and subverting those resources to undermine and abolish that regime.

These roots are most obvious in early cyberpunk, wherein underdogs achieve victories against technologically omnipresent overlords by mastering and exploiting their oppressors' technologies.

Because of these roots in viewing the dominant culture--its values, its fashions, its resources--as an antagonistic force whose elements can be subverted to one's own ends in defiance of the dominant culture's goals, most *punk fiction focuses on themes of creativity as a form of rebellion or revolution.

Rand al'Thor

12:45

@BESW That sounds familiar ...

> Rule number one of being the Doctor. Use your enemy's power against them.

Oh look, here come the suggested edits. @Benjamin on the rampage again? ;-)

BESW

Steampunk is a notable outlier; it's defined more through aesthetic than content, and so its creative revolution is usually... metatextual.

2

Benjamin

@Randal'Thor Yes.

BESW

in RPG General Chat, Dec 20 '16 at 12:08, by BESW

It's about the creator of the work's innovation and inspiration in hacking one era's technology to replicate the effects of a later era's technology.

(I'd just be copy-pasting more of that conversation, so I'll simply link it.)

(Context is working out the themes that a solarpunk RPG would want to explore.)

Rand al'Thor

@Benjamin cough

If you don't know anything about the topic of a tag, maybe leave writing the wiki to someone who does?

BESW

[amused]

Mithrandir

12:55

@Hamlet no. That provides a usage guidance, which is useful. It may not be wonderful, but it's not bad. — Mithrandir Jan 31 at 22:53

BESW

@Mithrandir Look up "Sredni Vashtar."

Rand al'Thor

We don't have any meta discussion here yet of how many edits are acceptable to do in one go, right?

Mithrandir

...oh. Heh.

Rand al'Thor

Reckon I'd get frowned at for doing tag edits to nine questions?

Mithrandir

@Randal'Thor remember the mod message you sent to me in SFF when I hit 2k?

BESW

12:57

Yes, but not by me.

Large blocks of edits always get somebody's eyebrows in a twist, but a healthy site's front page recovers within hours and it's better to have the sorting system settled efficiently.

If we've got someone who's willing to do the gruntwork of necessary tag curation, I see no reason to make their life artificially harder by forcing them to spread the work across hours and days.

2

Rand al'Thor

Some SFF people always get their proverbial knickers in a twist about messing up the front page. M&TV is quite different, and the front page is often full of Napoleon.

Since this site is new enough not to have a consensus yet, I'll just go ahead and see if anyone complains on meta.

Mithrandir

So if I find a tag I want to rename, like I did [Chronicles-of-narnia] to [the-], we can do it together :P

BESW

(Given how many different ways you can sort the front page, I wouldn't have a problem with it anyway.)

@Randal'Thor SFF seems to consider knicker-twisting a professional sport.

4

Mithrandir

I'm not posting on SFF right now, I'm enjoying my 7777.

Anyway @Randal'Thor - my Inklings answer better now?

Rand al'Thor

@Mithrandir I'm on 4242 here now. A double answer?

@Mithrandir Slightly better after the 1925/1926 paragraph. But that could definitely stand to be pinned down better.

VTD?

BESW

13:13

@Randal'Thor Why? It's a bad question, but it's not a problem-causing question once it's closed.

Rand al'Thor

@BESW Just for a bit of cleanup. Why do we VTD any question, unless it's spam or abusive?

I do this a lot over on Puzzling - find bad closed questions and ping the nearest 10k users to help get rid of them.

Admittedly this one isn't answered, so it'll disappear soon enough anyway.

Mithrandir

Ha!

Rand al'Thor

Ha?

Benjamin

@Randal'Thor I looked at the questions about it and it seemed like an author.

Mithrandir

Found a source for a specific month in which they started.

Rand al'Thor

13:17

> Of the many short stories by Saki, I found Sredni Vashtar to be one of the darkest.

^ first line of the only question with that tag

@Mithrandir Great!

BESW

48

A: When should I vote to delete a question?

You delete a question when the content no longer adds anything to the site. Questions are closed for a variety of reasons, so let's look at each close reason and whether they should likely be deleted: Exact Duplicate: It depends; Look at the context of how they are asked. You'll want to keep...

In my experience, it's useful to be charitable when deciding whether a post has no redeeming value whatsoever.

Rand al'Thor

@BESW That seems to be saying we should almost always delete closed questions unless they're duplicates.

Although this will probably vary a lot from site to site.

BESW

It does indeed.

Rand al'Thor

The former Programmers SE needed all the delete votes it could get.

BESW

My experience says that deletion should be more vigorous in larger sites and/or sites with a lot of drive-through traffic.

Rand al'Thor

13:21

On M&TV I think they even delete certain classes of open and upvoted questions if they go unanswered for long enough.

BESW

But for smaller sites with a fairly regular contingent of users, deletion can easily become overzealous and do more harm than good.

It's useful to see what doesn't work.

Mithrandir

I'm proud of finding that :P

Rand al'Thor

@Mithrandir Wikipedia says they were already around in the early 30s, and I'm certain they were around at least before the start of WW2.

Are you sure that April 1940 thing isn't just about when they started to meet regularly on Tuesday mornings?

@Benjamin status-completed on this.

Mithrandir

Seeing if I can find something

Can't find anything better at the moment; if someone could find the whole page that would be good.

Rand al'Thor

13:39

Do we need a theory tag?

BESW

For which questions?

Mithrandir

Why would we?

Rand al'Thor

Regardless of whether it's a useful tag, I think it should at least be renamed. It's not unambiguous, nor does it mean the same in all common contexts.

@BESW @Mith Ask whoever created it.

I tend to think we don't, which is why I brought it up.

I'm a bit leery of the literary-analysis tag too - especially since 2/3 of its questions so far have been closed.

Benjamin

@Randal'Thor I can't add that.

BESW

I'm inclined to agree, but I'm also inclined to wait and see what happens so we can act on an active problem.

Benjamin

13:42

@Randal'Thor Yes.

Rand al'Thor

@Benjamin I know. Just letting you know that it's resolved.

@Benjamin Why? What does the tag mean, and on what types of question should it be used?

Benjamin

@Randal'Thor Questions about literary theory, but I also accept that more specific tags would be more helpful.

Rand al'Thor

@Benjamin How do you define literary theory? For that matter, which questions on this site aren't about literary theory?

Benjamin

@Randal'Thor I can't really find an all-encompassing and succinct definition, so I take your point about the fact that it is not needed.

doppelgreener

This is probably a thing to bring to meta.

Rand al'Thor

13:50

Yeah, I'd definitely bring it to meta before taking any action. Just wanted to canvas for a few more opinions in here, in case I was missing something.

BESW

As always, my perspective is "Show the problem."

2

Mithrandir

@Randal'Thor ^

Rand al'Thor

@Mithrandir Looks good.

Mithrandir

The problem is that that's the only thing I can find.

Okay, I've updated the answer.

@Randal'Thor tell me what you think.

Rand al'Thor

14:22

@Mithrandir Better and better, but still a few suggestions: 1) remove the long list of members, as that's not what I was asking for (and is already right there on Wikipedia); 2) include quotes (and links to Google Books if you like) instead of just screenshots; 3) did you mean to screenshot the same quote twice? I think you had a more suitable one to put in instead in the first place.

Mithrandir

1.) okay, sure. 2.) the pictures are all that they gave me, I just saved directly. I'll try to transcribe. 3.)...I think so. It's applicable in both spots.

Martin Ender

How would people feel about an ergodic-literature tag? It's not exactly a genre, and it's probably a lot more clear cut if something is or isn't ergodic literature (than whether something is of a particular genre).

Rand al'Thor

@Benjamin Congrats on 2k rep.

@Mithrandir Wouldn't this one be even better in the first spot?

Mithrandir

Wait pressed the wrong one, you're right, wrong image :P

Benjamin

@Randal'Thor Thanks!

doppelgreener

14:34

@Randal'Thor For a while on RPG.SE we were averse to disrupting the front page too much, and then after a huge swathe of edits we realised it made basically no difference -- site users were just looking in the list of newest questions and answering those.

Mithrandir

At the moment, I can't do the transcript, it's impossible on my phone. If anyone else would like to help that would be awesome.

doppelgreener

> These three men knew each other well. Lewis and Tolkein met in 1926 and soon achieved an intimacy which lasted for many years. Around them gathered a group of friends, many of them Oxford dons, who referred to themselves informally and half jestingly as 'The Inklings'. When in 1939 Charles Williams found himself obliged to [ends]

Martin Ender

@doppelgreener interesting. on PPCG, almost everyone uses only the front page (so you get quite a number of complaints if you edit more than a handful at a time)

Mithrandir

@doppelgreener thanks, I'll credit you, :D :D

doppelgreener

> who edited the university magazine *Isis* and published a couple of novels while still studying for his degree. There were also a few dons present at the meetings. The club existed so that members could read unpublished compositions aloud, and ask for comments and criticisms. Tangye Lean named it 'The Inklings'.
No record of its proceedings survives, though Tolkein recalled that [ends]

> -ings of the Inklings did not begin until April 1940. Though members of the Inklings often met at various times throughout the week, the regularity of Tuesday mornings [ends]

@Mithrandir no worries

Rand al'Thor

14:38

@doppelgreener *Tolkien :-)

doppelgreener

@Randal'Thor Thanks, yes. I always get the e and i mixed up in his name. @Mithrandir You'll have to do a spelling fix on Tolkein -> Tolkien in two of the passages I wrote.

Mithrandir

Agh my page reloaded while I was in the middle and now I have to restart. Thanks for the transcripts :)

@doppelgreener done. Thanks a million.

@Randal'Thor 1.) done. 2.) done. 3.) done.

doppelgreener

14:56

@Mithrandir you're welcome. if you'd like to thank me in your post i recommend snipping out the first two thanks, and turning the last one into "thanks for the transcriptions". thanking me three times in one post is a little weird for me, haha

Mithrandir

There, squished and provided a link :P

@Mithrandir so please look at it and tell me what needs improvements.

Rand al'Thor

@Mithrandir PMYP :-) I'm kinda busy atm.

Mithrandir

@Randal'Thor Yeah, just wanted to say it because I'm going out for a few minutes soon to, so... *shrug*

Bookworm

15:31

0

Q: In what order should the works of Jorge Luis Borges be read?

I understand that there are many overarching themes in Borges's work, but I am not sure if the order of reading matters within these themes or overall. So, In what order should Jorge Luis Borges's works be read?

reading-order jorge-luis-borges

Mithrandir

Okay, back for ~20 minutes and ready for criticism on every single one of my answers. Start looking through them :P

Standback

@Mithrandir TOO MANY COMMAS

Mithrandir

@Standback מה הבעיה שלך?

There we go ;P

Benjamin

@Mithrandir Does Standback use Hebrew?

Standback

Indeed he does :)

Benjamin

15:41

:35387333 I believe this comment is obsolete.

Mithrandir

@Benjamin and so was removed ;)

Standback

@Mithrandir אויה. התכוונתי בצחוק; מקווה שזה היה ברור?

3

סליחה אם לא :-/

Mithrandir

@Standback כן, הבנתי. זה גם היה בצחוק o_o

Standback

@Mithrandir אוקיי, אז בסדר :D

האינטרנט הוא מקום קשה ואכזרי :P

2

...annnnd back to English, maybe :P

2

Mithrandir

That's probably a good idea for the sake of the other users :P

Riker

15:45

@Standback lol hebrew still breaks the little star thing

Mithrandir

Incidentally:

66

Hebrew Language

Proposed Q&A site for linguists, teachers and students of the Hebrew Language.

Currently in definition.

Benjamin

@Riker Why?

Mithrandir

@Riker were you following with Google translate? :P

@Benjamin the time gets pushed oddly

Riker

@Mithrandir no

@Benjamin I was testing the RTL char chat bug

Benjamin

@Mithrandir I was.

Mithrandir

15:48

@Riker so...? How?

Riker

look on the starboard

@Mithrandir uh

I wasn't paying attenntion

Mithrandir

... Oh.

Riker

I don't even konw what that messaeg says lol

I just wanted to bork the starboard

Mithrandir

It says that he meant it as a joke and apologized if that wasn't clear.

Riker

ah lol

Mithrandir

15:55

And off again for a few minutes.

Mithrandir

16:22

חזרתי

(aka 'I'm back')

Mithrandir

16:43

Woo, Civic Duty...

Riker

noice

Mithrandir

Yep. That's 11 silver...

steelersquirrel

@Mithrandir How are you feeling? Better, I hope :)

Mithrandir

Unfortunately, I still have a cold and my nose is stuffed up. thanks for asking though.

steelersquirrel

Awwww. I'm sorry.

Mithrandir

16:51

Winter always makes me sick :/

@steelersquirrel thanks

steelersquirrel

:)

Mithrandir

17:20

I am practicing being patient and am not pinging Rand...

Gallifreyan

@Mithrandir you're his sock, why bother? :P

Mithrandir

Feb 1 at 14:21, by Mithrandir

1 hour ago, by Mithrandir

@Randal'Thor given how often we disagree, I doubt it. </trail offthrowing>

Gallifreyan

18:40

@DVK-on-Ahch-To don't know if my ping from Mos got through, so I'll post here as well:

1

Q: Who were the "visitors" in Solaris?

In the different versions of Solaris (book and three movies), the eponymous sentient ocean planet creates simulacra of persons who were important to the cosmonauts on the space station in orbit. The main character Kris/Chris Kelvin's simulacrum is his dead wife. The reason Solaris created her as...

solaris

DVK-on-Ahch-To

19:05

@Gallifreyan afaik, if there's no autocomplete, there will be no ping, but i'm not certain that's the case. As I don't feel comfortable to appear in Mos, the system removed the userID from autocomplete cache after a certain # of days of not seeing the user. Good question!

Mithrandir

19:17

Uh oh. Hnq incoming!

@DVK-on-Ahch-To two weeks or ten days or so.

Gallifreyan

@Mithrandir what? where?!

Mithrandir

7

Q: How did the Inklings originate?

The (original) Inklings were a group of Oxford academics and writers, their most famous members including J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Hugo Dyson. They used to meet regularly, often at the Eagle & Child pub in Oxford, and read portions of their work to each other. Out of this...

history-of-literature inklings literary-discussion-group

Gallifreyan

@Mithrandir I can't see it among HNQs? Are you typing this from future?

Mithrandir

@Gallifreyan I saw it there, @Benjamin saw it there. You're the time lord, are you in the past?

Gallifreyan

I even used Ctrl-F (how deep I've fallen), but wasn't able to find it here

HDE 226868

19:25

@Gallifreyan It should be on Page 3, I believe.

Mithrandir

I see it there...

See, we need Gideon. Where is he?

Gallifreyan

@Mithrandir now I see it. I thought the list was ordered according to the date the question was posted

Rand al'Thor

@Riker If you think Hebrew on the star-board is buggy, go and check out the second item on the Charcoal star-board right now :-)

Though being a PPCGer, you've probably already seen all the chat bugs and hacks there are ...

Mithrandir

19:45

Someone duplicate Gideon please...

I don't like having all these pending flags. Take care of em, Robert, :P

Rand al'Thor

This is apparently what M&TV uses for their chatroom feed detecting HNQs.

If someone who knows something about programming could change "movies" to "literature" in there?

Gallifreyan

@Randal'Thor is there another version of this? Clicking it adds some feed to my Opera.

Rand al'Thor

20:04

@Gallifreyan shrug

@NapoleonWilson might know.

@Gallifreyan Also, you have an opera? You should make some posts about it on the site!

<afk>

Gallifreyan

@Randal'Thor Don't come back. Ever.

@Randal'Thor I give up. Let the new generation take some action

@Riker ^^^

Riker

what about it

it's actually fairly clear to read

@Randal'Thor maybe.......

TNB was recently testing the ol' move-the-message-and-it-retains-stars bug

@Gallifreyan give up what

SevenSidedDie

@Randal'Thor That URL sends an rss feed to the browser when clicked on. To view the script itself needs a different url with /edit on the end instead of /exec, but that requires being invited to have edit permissions on the script. Easier to just ask whoever made that for M&TV for a copy.

Riker

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:creativeCommons="http://backend.userland.com/creativeCommonsRssModule" xmlns:re="http://purl.org/atompub/rank/1.0">
   <title type="text">Hot Questions - Stack Exchange</title>
   <link rel="self" href="http://stackexchange.com/feeds" type="application/atom+xml" />
   <link rel="alternate" href="http://stackexchange.com/" type="text/html" />
   <subtitle>30 hot questions from stackexchange.com</subtitle>
   <updated>2017-02-12T20:17:40Z</updated>

^ current output

but that's not the script, that's just the rss output I think

Mithrandir

So can you please create a HNQ detector for us?

Riker

20:18

me?

Mithrandir

Sure

Anyone who can

Riker

looks like @Gallifreyan has got it

Mithrandir

I don't code, except for ciphers...

Gallifreyan

@Riker no, I gave up

Riker

lol

which HNQ feed though?

I never noticed M&TV having one

only gideon in mos

Mithrandir

20:21

*shrug* make a Olivia for Gideon

For the people who didn't get that, read the-39-clues.

Gallifreyan

in Movies & TV Moderation and Maintenance, 10 hours ago, by Top 30 Hot Network Question

2

Q: Are guest hosts paid for being on Saturday Night Live (SNL)?

I realize that hosts on SNL are often there to plug whatever project they're working on. But unlike going on a talk show for 15 minutes, it's a much bigger multi-day commitment with practices, learning lines (err..I mean reading cue cards), etc. Other than perhaps lodging/meal/incidental expenses...

saturday-night-live

Something like that, I guess. It only displays M&TV questions.

Riker

20:43

ah

Rand al'Thor

God, you people are pingy.

Riker

@Randal'Thor kek

removed

Rand al'Thor

I was only away for half an hour.

Riker

@Randal'Thor that's a long time

Mithrandir

@Randal'Thor welcome to the Internet. A half hour is a long time.

Rand al'Thor

20:49

@SevenSidedDie I think Napoleon made that one for M&TV, so he's already pinged.

@Mithrandir As long as you don't make an Osborne for Gideon.

shudder

:-P

Riker

@Randal'Thor lol

@Randal'Thor who's osborne?

Mithrandir

I don't get that one. ..

Please remove that screenshot of unread messages from my screen, I keep trying to click it :P

Rand al'Thor

You pair of non-Brits.

Don't Stop Me Now

►

Mithrandir

There are waay more Americans than Brits now, buster :)

Riker

lol

*more americans

Rand al'Thor

20:56

@Mithrandir But you're neither?

Mithrandir

@Randal'Thor actually, I'm American by birth. I'm an American citizen.

Caption: working on SE.

Rand al'Thor

21:15

@Mithrandir Just what have you done to your copy of The Fellowship of the Ring? :-O

HDE 226868

Hey, has anyone here read Howl?

BESW

Ginsberg? Probably but I can't remember. My Beat phase is kind of a blur.

...and weirdly mixed up with the transcendentalists in my head.

Mithrandir

@Randal'Thor that wasn't me...

That was my sister...

Rand al'Thor

@Mithrandir Book vandals will be banned from this site.

HDE 226868

I've been considering writing an answer to this question, but it really seems too simplistic. Most analyses agree with what you could understand just from carefully reading the text a couple of times.

Rand al'Thor

21:19

:-P

HDE 226868

I don't know if it's worth an answer.

BESW

Write an answer that teaches the querent how to do that careful reading.

Mithrandir

@Randal'Thor good thing I'm not then...: P

HDE 226868

@BESW The querent no longer has an account here. I suppose future readers might benefit, which is, after all, the whole point of SE.

BESW

Indeeddiblydoo.

2

Mithrandir

21:22

@Randal'Thor also, I've got an excuse: I died in that book.

Rand al'Thor

@Mithrandir Only to rise greater than ever before.

Also, why would you need an excuse if it was actually your sister?

suspicious look

Mithrandir

@Randal'Thor but that was in TTT

@Randal'Thor just in case I got mixed up with the copy of The Hobbit that's right under it, in essentially the same condition...

Rand al'Thor

@Mithrandir No, it happened during the timeline of tFotR. It was just that Aragorn and co only found out in tTT.

Frodo and Sam only found out in tRotK, for that matter.

Mithrandir

@Randal'Thor yep, so it wasn't in the text of TFotR. It was only in the text on TTT.

Well, one of them my sister destroyed, the other I kinda maybe accidentally dropped it a little bit from a hight of less than 3 stories while reading, but which was which...?

Mithrandir

21:59

It's midnight... I should go to bed...

Heh, another 7 helpful flags for 1300.

@Riker I think review stalker is crashing my computer...

Riker

22:22

lol

HDE 226868

22:49

Is there any problem with profanity in a quote, assuming its necessary?

Rand al'Thor

@HDE226868 Nah.

6

Q: Do we need/want any sorts of content warnings?

I've writing a question revolving around the rape in Ian McEwan's Atonement. I do not want to put "rape" in the title, as it will show up on the main page. On the other hand, I also don't want to surprise readers who didn't realize the question would heavily involve rape. As I don't expect (or ...

discussion

HDE 226868

@Randal'Thor Ah, right. I forgot about that.

Librarian

23:52

0

Q: Do we really need the [theory] and [literary-analysis] and [literary-criticism] tags?

Consider the following three tags: theory (5 questions, 60% closed) literary-analysis (3 questions, 67% closed) literary-criticism (3 questions, 0% closed) All of these tags strike me as at best unclear and likely to be misused, at worst pointless and likely to encourage off-topic questions. ...

discussion tags

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