The Reading Room

Rand al'Thor

22:16

@BeastlyGerbil Anything that's useful in finding the text of, or even quotes from, works of literature is going to make a good addition.

@Shokhet There's no "necessarily" about it. Policy on one child meta doesn't at all carry over to another. The only time when posts from one child meta should be used to determine policy on another is when they reflect some SE-wide policy; otherwise, they can at most be used as a source for persuasive arguments which might apply on both sites.

(Sorry if that sounds harsh. With so many Lit people who are already active users on other SE sites, I'm keen to nip in the bud any thoughts of copying policies wholesale from SFF or M&TV or RPG or wherever.)

@Hamlet As Mith said, they appeal to a wide audience, whereas questions about a specific work appeal mainly to people who happen to have read it. Also, some people (such as myself) check every ID question and make sure to upvote the good ones, because I suspect there may be people who downvote every ID question just because they don't think ID questions should be on-topic, and that behaviour needs to be countered in the case of the good ones.

@Hamlet Because SE tends to focus on verifiably correct answers?

(I've never understood how a Philosophy SE is a thing that exists and apparently works.)

@Hamlet One thing that slightly bugs me about this site is that a significant proportion of the top echelon of high-rep users aren't really producing particularly good answers, while many people who write really top-notch answers are languishing in the middle ranks.

I'm hoping this will sort itself out as time goes on. We do generally seem to be quite good at voting for good answers over bad ones these days, and a lot of those high-rep users I mentioned became high-rep users right at the start when we weren't so discerning in our votes.

Rewarding some of those really great answers with bounties is something I might do at some point, although for the moment I'd rather stick to posting bounties on unanswered questions since we have too many of those.

@Hamlet @DukeZhou 10 questions per day is still a thing (in fact, it's the criterion) for site graduation. But the criteria for closing sites are much laxer than they used to be, probably because SE as a whole has a lot more people willing to handle problems and keep things running smoothly.

Napoleon Wilson

22:38

@Randal'Thor Which I'm sure is what a bunch of people on Mathematics say about a Literature site.

@Randal'Thor I'm sure the "necessarily" was primarily just there for exactly those cases where you just admitted that it could cary over.

Rand al'Thor

> "The Minister I believe has written learnedly on the Differential Calculus. He is a mathematician, and no poet."

"You are mistaken; I know him well; he is both. As poet and mathematician, he would reason well; as mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all."

(Not that I agree with the bashing of mathematicians in that passage, but in some sense it does resonate with me, as both poet and mathematician myself.)

Napoleon Wilson

Well, I just picked them as an example. In fact, I'm sure there's way more practical sites anyway, like any of the programming-related ones, especially Stack Overflow.

Rand al'Thor

Yeah, you're right. I just didn't want to pass up the chance for a literary quote ;-)

Hamlet

@Randal'Thor believe it or not, there is a such thing as a correct answer in the humanities. It's just that there are more than one correct answer. However, there are incorrect answers.

The problem is that when no one knows how to tell an incorrect answer from a correct answer, sites become unattractive to experts.

Which is the case for the majority of humanities Stack Exchanges. For example, the History Stack Exchange is particularly atrocious.

@Randal'Thor I agree. I try to give bounties when I see good answers. (I haven't seen that many good answers lately unfortunately).

Rand al'Thor

@Hamlet I suspect incorrect answers being upvoted above correct ones is a problem on many SEs, even more objective ones. There've been several meta posts about it on SFF. The trick is to minimise the (possibly inevitable) problem.

Hamlet

22:53

@Randal'Thor I personally think that SE would be better off if there was a system for "closing" answers similar to the system for closing questions.

Come to think of it, I think the Stack Exchange platform does several things that hold it back.

Rand al'Thor

@Hamlet I don't know much about History. I've heard that Politics suffers from partisan voting (people voting according to their own political views rather than the correctness of the answers).

@Hamlet What would it mean to "close" an answer?

I mean, we can delete answers.

Hamlet

@Randal'Thor answer is at the bottom of the page, it has a post notice, it can't be voted on, etc.

@Randal'Thor History just has consistently incorrect answers, mostly because users there aren't doing research and citing sources.

Politics is actually slightly better as far as accuracy goes.

Rand al'Thor

It's possible for a mod to lock answers. But again, it's not really a mod's job to decide on the correctness or otherwise of an answer - that's what community votes are for.

If community votes aren't working to do that, well.

Hamlet

@Randal'Thor yeah, similar to how the community can vote to close questions, I think a community should be able to vote to close answers

based on objective criteria, i.e. "this answer doesn't cite sources, etc."

Of course, that's way out there as far as opinions go, and it goes completely against the Stack Exchange philosophy.

So this is just a hypothetical "this is what I would do if I was creating a q&a site from scratch.

Rand al'Thor

@Hamlet Yeah, there are always going to be some problems with the way the system works. It still works reasonably well most of the time, and at the end of the day that's why we're all still here.

Hamlet

22:59

@Randal'Thor I'm here because I'm procrastinating from actual work.

Napoleon Wilson

Cue Churchill quote.

Hamlet

And because sometimes I learn things.

I actually use the technical Stack Exchange sites a lot, but I just don't ask questions because all the questions have been asked.

BESW

> King Azaz insisted that words were far more significant than numbers and hence his kingdom was truly the greater, and the Mathemagician claimed that numbers were much more important than words and hence his kingdom was supreme. They discussed and debated and raved and ranted until they were on the verge of blows, when it was decided to submit the question to arbitration by the princesses [Rhyme and Reason].
After days of careful consideration, in which all the evidence was weighed and all the witnesses heard, they made their decision:

Rand al'Thor

@BESW I LOVE that book.

Hamlet

@BESW we should get some Phantom Tollbooth questions, that was a good book.

Rand al'Thor

23:04

@Hamlet I'm tempted to suggest it for a topic challenge.

Wonder if it's legally available online ...

Hamlet

@Randal'Thor don't really think it would increase the diversity of questions; it's pretty well known and similar to a lot of books we have questions about.

BESW

Agreed. Great book, but not particularly useful for challenging the site's breadth.

Rand al'Thor

In a similar vein, anyone here read James Thurber?

Oh blimey, he's written a lot.

BESW

I have a James Thurber pullover.

Rand al'Thor

I only read The 13 Clocks and The Wonderful O.

BESW

23:06

I adore his dogs.

Napoleon Wilson

@Randal'Thor A few of his short stories in school.

Rand al'Thor

As a connoisseur of wordplay, I really appreciate both The Phantom Tollbooth and those Thurber stories.

What I found particularly impressive about Thurber was the way he could write prose in such a way that it reads like poetry.

Like, with rhyme and rhythm and everything, but just plonked down in paragraphs like any old text - you only appreciate the beauty of the language when you read it aloud inside your head.

BESW

Have you read any Chris Van Allsburg?

Some of his stuff is just weird in a mediocre sort of way, but he hits surreal prose-poetry semi-regularly.

Hamlet

Also, @Randal'Thor you saw my answer on the symbolism question?

-1

A: What should the symbolism tag be used for?

The symbolism tag currently seems to be used as a tag to denote questions about the meaning of a scene. It's being used in a way similar to the literary-analysis, which we agreed to get rid of because about half of the questions on the site could fall under that category. I think we should give ...

Rand al'Thor

23:25

@BESW Nope, never heard of him.

@Hamlet Ah. I did, but only while not logged in. Hang on, let me write up a comment.

BESW

@Randal'Thor He wrote and illustrated the books which became the sadly-insufficient-given-the-source-material films Polar Express and Jumanji.

Polar Express is beautiful and haunting and sad.

Most of his work has a kind of quiet, bittersweet, surreal quality.

But then there's stuff like Bad Day at Riverbend which is some of the best existential horror I've ever read.

Rand al'Thor

@Hamlet Posted a comment. I downvoted your answer because I think it's based on a false premise.

Oh wow. A CM just linked to one of my Literature answers from a featured main meta post! :-O

Hamlet

23:43

@Randal'Thor where

Rand al'Thor

8

A: Why don't we keep public records of suspensions?

To address a few of the concerns from comments and other answers in no particular order: It's inappropriate to compare the penalty box with criminal justice. Well, yes. I agree. Thankfully the stakes are a lot lower on a internet site that's supposed to be enjoyable. I probably could have used ...

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