@HDE226868 Well, I've finally found enough time to piece together all those pieces of information from many different links and provide an answer to your Rhun question. What do you reckon?
That said, I'm not sure how accurate those numbers are. According to my profile, I've cast 273 downvotes: your link has me at 335 downvotes.
(I'm at 182 upvotes, which is more than your link has me at).
But the mod tools have me at 47 / -89, which can't be right.
@Randal'Thor technically I'm at 56% downvotes.
I think part of the reason is just that I'm more consistent with my downvotes. And there have been times when I've been nicer with my votes than a lot of the community members of this site
@Hamlet regarding your point about not down voting the recommendation question, it seems like you are taking pride in not gratuitously down voting something that at last check was already at minus 4
For example, the Maya codices are folding books, meaning that you can read the pages in different orders, etc.
I've seen some really interesting stuff done with interactive fiction.
For example, the game Unmanned is a story about a drone operator(is that the correct word?). However, through the structure of the game the reader experiences what the main character's life feels like (boredom, repetitive tasks, disembodied violence, etc.)
But unfortunately I haven't seen much interactive fiction that accomplishes this.
I've been meaning to find time to create my own game, but it's hard to come up with ideas and bring my ideas into the real world.
I guess Invisible Cities kind of counts as such a book. The great thing about it is that while you can go really deep with the analysis, it also is just beautiful writing, and can be appreciated on aesthetic grounds without having to think too much.
Also, tempted to tag my Kendrick questions with poetry.
@Randal'Thor my position on the symbolism tag is that we first need to clean the tag up so we actually know what it accomplishes. Then we can discuss making it a synonym etc.
I would clean the tag up myself, but I don't really care enough to want to defend my definition of symbolism.
The video version of Kendrick Lamar's single Humble begins with the following three lines:
Wicked or weakness
You gotta see this
Waaaaay (yeah, yeah!)
However, the version of the song on streaming sites like spotify opens with three different lines:
Nobody pray for me
It's been th...
This site currently has a song-lyrics tag with about ten questions. However, it seems to me that the "song" part of "song lyrics" is redundant; the word lyrics implies that the question is about a song.
Is it worth changing song-lyrics to lyrics?
In a recent meta post about the symbolism tag, Rand makes the point that way the tag is currently being used is very broad:
... but we've been using symbolism in a very broad way.
Our questions tagged with symbolism include not only ones about symbolic objects (e.g. What does the sukebin...
@DForck42 Sorry but can't see a better use of this tag. I think we should have tags as close to possible to day-to-day English use, rather than using jargon/technical terms when not needed
I recall a short story I read in High School. We read it in English class so it was likely published in an anthology intended for use in schools. (This was in Scotland in the 1970's if that helps.)
The story begins, I think, with a robot being programmed to collect an example of every type of fau...
@Hamlet Data.SE only updates once a week, so that would explain why your most recent votes aren't counted there. I can't see how it would list more downvotes than you've actually cast though.
@Hamlet Not sure where you're looking; I just checked your profile and it says 343 downvotes.
@Hamlet That's probably a good thing. Too many people are unwilling to downvote answers because of losing the 1 rep (sounds ridiculous, especially for people with thousands of rep points, but there you go).
AFAIR, very few of my answers have had downvotes, and you or someone else has usually told me why :-)
Questions are a different matter, but I tend to take lone question downvotes less seriously.
@Shokhet We only had two broken images when the HTTP -> HTTPS change happened, and I fixed them both.
Also, the images in that post you commented on don't look broken to me.
@Hamlet Ooh, I didn't know I was a resident tagging expert :-) At first I was going to say "make it so", but then I thought, well, we're not losing anything by having a slightly longer tag name, and it may even help for clarity. There might be people who think all poetry counts as lyrics, but they'd be less likely to call it song lyrics. I'll put up an answer on meta.
Also, good call on making a meta post about the use of symbolism. Let's hope we can get some sensible suggestions and a coherent consensus there.
@Mithrandir That tag wiki excerpt wasn't much use: it's obvious that a tag called inspiration will be for questions about inspiration, and "e.g. you could ask about the inspiration behind this, that, or the other" doesn't add much unless those "this, that and the other" are non-obvious things to ask about.
@Randal'Thor funnily enough, I have no recollection of creating that o_o It doesn't even seem to be in the style that I would write it. Thanks for editing it.
@Randal'Thor Secondly, I really think you're making an error in reading my answer. We can use technical terms yet avoid jargon. Jargon is the use of non technical terms to convey technical meanings, and I think on a site with an expected broad audience, we should avoid it at all cost
@VicAche Right, but if you're saying something completely different in the comments from what I'm reading your answer as, then it's more likely that I'm misinterpreting your answer somehow than that you're being completely inconsistent on the very same page.
Which is why I haven't voted on your answer yet. It may not be saying what I think it's saying.
@Randal'Thor "symbol" is something we use in our day to day life. No way "allegory" fits in this category. "Allegory" has a defined, unambiguous meaning as a representation. Think Uncle Sam: it's not saying Americans are rich, it's not saying they are white-haired or implying they're old. It's just an allegory of America/Cans
Uncle Sam is no symbol of America, the dollar or the burger may be. Find something that you believe is both an allegory and a symbol and we can try to discuss this further.
@VicAche But if you're using the words "Uncle Sam" or a picture of Uncle Sam as an allegory for the United States, then those words or that picture are representing more than their literal meaning, which is precisely how you want to define symbolism.
Yes, as you say, allegory is a representation. And you're also proposing to define symbolism as a representation.
@Randal'Thor In symbolism, more would mean (something else additionally to x) while in allegory it means (something totally different than x instead of)
The fact that you can write both definitions using the same world does not mean they are the same word!
@VicAche OK, so the distinction you're drawing is that in symbolism the non-literal meaning is in addition to the literal one while in allegory it's instead of the literal one?
I'll have to think about whether or not I agree with that, but at least I understand what you're saying now :-)
Does this question need retagging? I was browsing through the inspiration questions, and this one seems to be more about realism than inspiration.
@Randal'Thor the basic implication of this is that allegories are generally obvious (and should not make for much questions in a homogeneous cultural setting: one will ask about an allegory when reading an old/foreign book but not a present/local book) while symbols are much more widely subject to discussion, interpretation and questions. We need specialists to be able to focus on allegory questions.
@BESW Right, that was my understanding: that the difference is mainly about the breadth of the metaphor, whether it's a single object or a whole story that represents something else.
An allegory is a kind of work which, through its narrative, contains a "hidden" or subtextual theme; a symbol is a thing which represents another thing. Symbols don't contain themes, and allegories aren't stand-ins for other things.
The Chronicles of Narnia are Biblical allegory; they don't represent the Bible, they comment on it by re-framing familiar symbols (which represent Biblical elements) in new ways to expose particular themes.
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/allegory You're talking about definition 2., I'm talking about definition 1. The second can be linked to symbolism, I can't see how the first would
Not sure what you're arguing there. I'm saying that, like your definition 1 says, allegory is about commentary (meaning, treatment of a subject) beyond simply having one thing stand in for another.
But I do think it's a narrow needle to thread between making useful distinctions and making tagging a barrier to users unfamiliar with academic terminology.
As always I'd err toward how our users are using the tags.
If that's the level our site's at, okay. RPG.SE used [fate] and [fate-core] pretty much interchangeably for years and it hasn't made enough of a problem to squawk about until a couple days ago.
It could mean
Would you sing if you were dead (still, motionless)?
This allusion to stillness is reinforced by the above:
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Ode to a Nightingale, verses 57 and 58 (just above the one the OP mentioned)
(don't know why that link is to the answer, was trying to link to your edit on the question)
@VicAche Why add [allusions]? The wiki excerpt says "Use this tag when asking for sources of a reference in books," which is not something that this question is doing. — Shokhet17 hours ago
I think there's a sense that lit.se's moderators may have an overdeveloped sensitivity to what actually constitutes a problem worth formal action (including calling for a meta discussion), vs something that should be allowed to play out.
@Mithrandir "@Shokhet I think we should modify the wiki excerpt" "The question has nothing to do with allusions" => yet both answers had to explain what an allusion was + explain that this was what implied by "2 meanings" in the comment
@Mithrandir @Shokhet I haven't checked this particular one, but in general, a lot of our tag wiki excerpts aren't much good and shouldn't be taken too seriously.
Because Benjamin went crazy with edits and created loads of wiki excerpts for tags which only had one or two questions and no clear usage pattern yet.
I've yet to see any site with more quality tag wikis than poor ones. Even sites that wiki assiduously tend to describe the subject without commenting on the tag's use cases.
@Randal'Thor I have nothing against reflecting on a more coherent policy for tags, but yes, I do use tags and no, I don't understand why a single flaming user should imply an edit reversion
I also think it's much to early to engage in tag wars and that, anything that "reasonably' can be tagged as (a) should be tagged as (a) if a user having sufficient rep to do so decides to.
lit.se citizens need space to make mistakes, establish trends, and learn from experience. Helicopter moderation doesn't cultivate a vibrant, participatory community--quite the opposite.
@Mithrandir "As a site, our primary value is in our answers (the questions are basically SEO for finding the answers). When there is a high-quality answer on a question -- whether or not it's the question the original poster was actually trying to ask -- I'd argue that our priority should always be to protect the answer, not the original poster's intent."
@BESW Yes, this is true. There've been a few times Hamlet has been tearing his hair out over what he saw as a major problem, which went away naturally a few days later; some of my top posts on Puzzling meta have been telling Emrakul "no, calm down, you don't need such a drastic measure to deal with <problem>"; and of course Mithrandir always needs to be told "patience, my young padawan". But at least they're all open to improvements and don't think they're always right.
@VicAche On RPG.SE we frequently get questions which don't mention the system they're using--a very important thing! Often people can guess what system is meant, but we strongly discourage tagging based on guesses; instead we close as unclear and ask the OP to edit in the system.
This is for two reasons: first, it gives the OP an easy close-and-reopen experience which enforces good question-writing practices; second, those guesses are sometimes quite wrong and then a lot of effort is wasted on totally useless answers.
@BESW I tend to agree with this on principle (and it is inline with the answer referred), but for minor changes and given the slowness of the close and reopen on small, beta SE, I think we can do without when OP's intent is consensual among answers and comments
@BESW Right, yes. I've heard it said that beta mods often need to play a bigger role in shaping the site, whereas elected mods can sit back and let the community handle stuff. That might be true on beta sites with very little activity, where the mods are actually a significant proportion of the active users, but it's probably less true here, where there are so many committed people.
Out of curiosity, were you on RPG.SE during beta, or did you only join when it was already a mature site?
@BESW And maintaining them as good is also hard, since they tend to get invalidated without people noticing by changes in circumstance, site policy, or even how the tag is used.
@VicAche (did you mean to use "consensual" there? doesn't seem like it fits)
@Randal'Thor I joined in the first year after graduation, I believe. I've participated in other betas, and I've talked extensively with citizens and moderators about the ups and downs of RPG.SE's beta and its impact on the site going forward.
We have a tag setting with 7 questions so far:
one, two, three asking about whether places in a story can be connected to real locations;
one asking about when a particular story was set;
one asking about the realism of a feat described in a book;
one asking about ethnic diversity in a fictiona...
@BESW Hmm. The site's very first question was asked in August 2010. You joined in September 2012, I joined in January 2011. I'm not sure when it graduated but it was still in beta during Dec 2011. You might've even joined the same year it graduated!
(Weird. I don't even remember a time when the site didn't have its current design.)
@doppelgreener You're user #1204 and you only joined five months after the site started? Well, Literature is certainly doing well at attracting users! We already have more than 1204 users here after only two and a half months.
@Randal'Thor Well it was also 7 years ago, when the Stack network was a little smaller. :D From what I can tell, RPG.SE was one of the first non-programmer sites.
The Corrupted Blood incident was a virtual plague in the MMORPG World of Warcraft, which began on September 13, 2005, and lasted for one week. The epidemic began with the introduction of the new raid Zul'Gurub and its end boss Hakkar the Soulflayer. When confronted and attacked, Hakkar would cast a hit point-draining and highly contagious debuff spell called Corrupted Blood on players.
The spell, intended to last only seconds and function only within the new area of Zul'Gurub, soon spread across the virtual world by way of an oversight that allowed pets and minions to take the affliction out of...
Yeah, the Corrupted Blood incident was before my time but had a lasting impact on the game. And I was there for the Great Zombie Plague, which was well-intentioned but very poorly designed and executed.
This message by Rand al'Thor is starred in Literature chat:
In the sidebar it looks like this:
I imagine that should say @E.Bob not @@1208@literature.stackexchange.com. Turns out I can ping people with that second format though!
I got curious about the significance of that "1208"; turns ou...
@Hamlet that is an interesting question (although I probably don't want to know regarding my own, useful questions.) It's comforting that Stack only shows me aggregate rep (so I don't have to see that people are consistently down voting my questions which otherwise have positive vote count i.e. I gain 10 rep although the question is up 3 votes;)
Lately I've been reading Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. I know many have read this in high school but I'd never got around to it. The weird thing is that the book was written in 1953 but the future United States it envisions is very close to our own in some ways, which isn't a good thing.
@DForck42 I've noticed that. (In general, I try to avoid downvoting except where absolutely necessary, but I actually like that I have to spend a little cred to do it.)
@RobertF imo SciFi is the most literary of the genres per it's history of prescient social critique
@RobertF I recently noticed that Phil Dick was writing about Evolutionary Game Theory in Electric Sheep five years before the field was formalized. I'm a tech with an arts background, and continue to notice the greatest artists seem to have insights as profound as the greatest scientists and philosophers.
@DukeZhou Interesting. It's been a while since I've read Electric Sheep. What stuck with me were everyone owning artificial pets & the weird religious cult that people would access via a device.
Which wasn't in the film Bladerunner.
The VK test was really cool, sort of a reverse Turing Test.
I wonder if we could apply the VK test to Siri? "You're reading a magazine and come across a full page nude photo of a girl. You show it to your husband and he likes it so much he hangs it on your bedroom wall. The girl is lying on a bearskin rug."
Should a question where the topical stuff is mostly in the answer(s) be tagged based on its answers?
I'm thinking primarily of mi-yodeya-series and jewish-date-series questions, and also of riddle questions.
For example, "Shisha Ushloshim Umatayim - mi yodeya?" has two answers to date. The acce...
@RobertF All of Dick's major novels (and most of the minor) were about the nature of identity in relation to reality, with empathy as the central theme, in the context of the human condition. When I went back to Electric Sheep recently, I was incredibly impressed that he began the book with his estranged wife seeking connection through a device, and choosing to be depressed instead of using the "mood organ"
@Randal'Thor I added a site to your legal resources question. It doesn't give full text, but does give lengthy previews and other stuff which I mentioned. Is this Ok to add?
@RobertF I am very interested in Lem, but have only yet read a couple of his books. (I tend to agree with him in the sense that Dick transcends even the greatest American scifi authors. Transmigration of Timothy Archer isn't even science fiction, and like CS Lewis, Dick can be understood as a Christian philosopher, primarily preoccupied with empathy in a technological society.)
What I really don't like about these story-id questions is that they consistently get a lot of upvotes, while other, more difficult questions seem to be ignored.
@Hamlet That's because Story-ID can be understood by more people. The harder questions don't get more attention because people aren't looking at stuff way over their heads. Which is another reason we need more experts, but we can still have good analysis without them.
A lot of my PhD friends talk about wanting to engage in more public scholarship, but imo, Stack is a great place for that, traffic-wise in addition to having some very knowlegable contributors.
I look at how many people I've reached in 6 months on Mythology, and suspect it's more than any research paper in the field on JStor gets read.
It's also why I'm fairly certain usefulness, not activity, should be the standard for new sites. (i.e. Stack originated out of a drive to provide useful engineering resources, as far as I can tell.)
The Humanities can be quite fun, but they are also extremely important, despite not being hard sciences
@DukeZhou I find this site enjoyable because in most cases, people base their answers on the fact that they've read the book that the question asks about
But when you start to see the merging of philosophy, mythology, literature, for instance, with mathematics and AGI in fields like Symbolic Systems, there is a strong case for nurturing these Stacks
@Hamlet As a one time playwright, it is truly astonishing how a given actor will interpret a line quite differently, not just from the author, but from different actors.
(If you're wondering why I participate in mythology less now, it's because people keep posting answers without citing sources [i.e. doing research]. In this site, people do research and don't seem to mind doing it.)
I guess it's because on mythology people don't want to read the original texts, while on literature people do. Which I never understood: why participate on a site about mythology if you don't read any mythology.
@Hamlet I suspect a large part of the animosity toward DukeZhou on Mythology derives from calling people out on the poor sourcing, and trying to spur them on to better scholarship.
The maddening thing is that Perseus at Tufts has not only most of the sourcework in English and the original, but Ancient Greek and Latin lexicons that do all of the time consuming work for you.)
@DukeZhou personally, I think mythology is too much of a niche topic to become active. It might be better off merging with literature, since 99% of the questions are on-topic here.
@DukeZhou my current one or my former one? (I also never understood how my former avatar didn't get any comments on a site about mythology. My current avatar is a protest against things I don't like.)
@DukeZhou yeah, I think that perspective is valuable on the literature site, and I not so sure about the value of sequestering it off into its own silo.
the problem is that sort of thinking creates a negative feedback loop, they're not on here cause the content's not here but the content's not here because they're not on here contributing
@DForck42 that definitely is something that has hurt the mythology site in the past.
But in terms of activity, I don't think the site can ever get above more than one question per day, just because of how small the mythology community (outside of SE) is.
I'm definitely capable of asking multiple questions per day, but I feel like DukeZhou is already way too present on Mythology, since so few people are contributing atm
Anyway, I think you should consider merging myth into the lit stack. I'm don't want to propose it because I'm a mod at lit, but I think it would benefit everyone.
But I do hope that if they do shut it down, instead of killing it they roll into into this forum to preserve the excellent work that has been done over there.