The Reading Room

user15026

00:00

@Hamlet the genre is really huge.

BESW

@Ash May I add you as a friend?

user15026

00:22

@BESW Sure!

user15026

Anyone who uses it is welcome to, as a general note. I like having book-friends.

BESW

Yey friends!

Bookworm

02:42

0

Q: What should we make of the newspaper vendor in Atlas Shrugged?

Related: How should we view Dan Conway? First, a quote from the opening scene of the book: "Who is John Galt?" The light was ebbing, and Eddie Willers could not distinguish the bum's face. The bum had said it simply, without expression. But from the sunset far at the end of the street, yel...

user61230

I hate to beat a dead horse, but if you want an example of musical quality as literature, there's an amazing album that was just released: the Hadestown Original Cast Recording

user61230

It's a wonderful example, specifically because the way the music intertwines with the lyrics is so fundamental to experiencing the story.

Shokhet

@Gallifreyan Saw some floof, and thought of the daily floof. Y'all still doing that? twitter.com/FluffSociety/status/917359075662409728

Mithrandir

07:09

@Shokhet mostly. It's slacked off a bit lately

(insert tag wiki reminder here)

Gallifreyan

07:44

@Shokhet You can post it in the Restaurant, we'll pin ;)

Scanner on the fritz, have this 2014 #inktober sketch of @neilhimself 's SANDMAN until It's functioning again.

Tweeted by ColleenDoran on October 9, 2017 at 9:43 PM

Rand al'Thor

10:30

@Bookworm Woo, HNQ.

I'm not necessarily against easy questions - they can help to improve our site's SEO, as well as maybe giving less confident people a foothold in answering here.

Sometimes "does not show research effort" -> DV seems to be at odds with the goal of building a repository of knowledge and becoming the top result on Google.

(I'm sure some Bestower of Excellent Stack Wisdom will have some interesting thoughts on this too ... ;-) )

BESW

@Randal'Thor Basically, "can find it on Google" is a pretty lame excuse for invoking "did not do the research" if there's any other kind of research the querent did--partly because it's bad to expect everyone to use Google, and partly because if we want to be the Google search result... but refuse to host any material that's already on Google... um.

BESW

10:56

In my experience, "shows no research effort" is a poor voting justification in most Stacks anyways. It's usually code for "I could do the research easily and lack the imagination or empathy to understand that other people might lack my skills, experience, or specific context that make it so easy for me."

And when that's not the case, it's still a snipe hunt that results in frustrated users no longer asking questions because they don't think they can "prove" to the community's satisfaction that they did the research--and if they do try, their research justification overshadows the question itself and the question becomes "unclear."

It's important, as always, to evaluate a site mechanic in the context of the goal it's designed to achieve.

What site quality are we actually cultivating when we downvote questions which don't explicitly state their previous research efforts?

Is it a quality this site lacks and needs active cultivation? Is it a quality this site needs, or is it an artefact of the original Stack's requirements and is unnecessary in a Stack 2.0+ environment?

Rand al'Thor

@BESW This, so much this. It's depressingly common (not specifically here, but on SE in general) for people to blindly apply "the rules" without stopping to think about why those rules exist, what their underlying purpose is, what they're there to achieve.

BESW

And, if the quality is desirable and requires active cultivation to get this Site to display it... are there negative side effects of the application which outweigh the benefits?

@Randal'Thor See also: RPGs.

Rand al'Thor

Common sense isn't really all that common.

BESW

There's a conservative tendency in many social groups to take rules, once established, as congruent with good.

Human rules and laws are often created, in theory at least, to promote and sustain good. But they are not inherently good themselves; their goodness is granted by virtue of their effects, rather than their effects being good by virtue of emerging from rules.

It's certainly easier to conflate rules with goodness, oh my yes.

Rand al'Thor

@BESW Yeah, because rules are written down and clearly defined, while goodness is much harder to get a fix on.

BESW

11:05

(It's really kind of scary how much tabletop RPGs are a microcosm of social order.)

Debates about rules vs adjudication and their effects depending on the group's play goals, are little mirrors into broad philosophical issues of law and governance.

Anyway, I propose this question: what documentable problem is lit.se facing due to a lack of research in our questions?

Not what problem might we face later; what thing detrimental to the site is happening because of a real or supposed lack of prior research on questions?

A lack of research itself is not a detriment; it can only be a cause of a problem, it's that problem we need to consider--it could be that the problem won't be solved by downvoting lack-of-research questions, or that it's not a problem at all.

Rand al'Thor

This is like a meta-level XY problem.

BESW

There's a concept in design that I like to call "use by superstitious ritual." It's where you know that pushing the pedal and turning the wheel does something with your car, but you don't understand why or how.

You have rituals which you rely on to produce results without any concept of how the ritual relates to the result.

It usually also means you have extra unnecessary rituals (like pushing in the shift-stick button to change between forward-moving gears), or miss certain actions which aren't obviously necessary but will have long-term bad effects (like not changing your oil).

We can't effectively curate a Stack by superstitiously applying the rituals learned on other Stacks.

We need to understand how the gamification works, what it accomplishes and why it wants to accomplish those things.

@Randal'Thor A lot of meta questions regarding the use of site mechanics begin as XY problems.

Rand al'Thor

@BESW If you haven't already seen it, you might like the meta-ness of this meta post's title:

9

Q: How should we edit questions that are an XY problem?

^ That... is a joke. I'm making a point and trying to give an example of this type of question. My real question is: What should we do (if anything) about questions that suffer from the XY problem? Are these types of questions "OK" here? If you're not familiar with what an XY problem question l...

discussion questions

BESW

11:24

Heh.

Rand al'Thor

11:38

@BESW Well, questions lacking research might not be, to quote Ash, "OMG THE MOST LITERATURE LITERARY THING EVER".

On a slightly related note:

Example: a question about the author's intended message in a particular book got this comment:

This question confuses author's intentions with a story's meaning. Asking about author's intentions in this way is not a valid academic lens to understand literature. More importantly, these types of questions lead to very uninteresting answers.

The OP (who's no longer active here) pointed out that asking about an author's intentions is perfectly legitimate, and they aren't looking for an "academic lens to understand literature", but nevertheless got an answer they and others found interesting. — Rand al'Thor 2 mins ago

Napoleon Wilson

11:50

What's the context, though? Was the question trying to gain insight in the text's meaning and actually confusing both? Or was it genuinely just asking for the author's intentions? In that latter case, yeah, that comment would be...quite odd.

In the former case, I could understand the commenters concerns.

Rand al'Thor

The latter (and it wasn't edited from the former either).

Napoleon Wilson

But disregarding the question's intent it's also...interesting that it's downright eschewed as a valid academic lens altogether. I thought there were about 5 million of these lenses to be applied for maximum insight. But I'm admittedly no expert on this either.

BESW

12:16

Beautiful Libraries series, Trinity College, Dublin (2012) by German photographer Candida Höfer #womensart #LibrariesWeek

Tweeted by womensart1 on October 10, 2017 at 5:46 AM

Napoleon Wilson

12:27

Didn't we have that specific one already?

Jun 12 at 10:24, by BESW

Beautiful Libraries series, Trinity College, Dublin (2012) by German photographer Candida Höfer, known for her inte… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/874180869434613760

Tweeted by womensart1 on June 12, 2017 at 8:25 AM

BESW

Re-tweet for Libraries Week.

Napoleon Wilson

Ah, I see.

Obiwan KeNoobie

Hi. How does one go about participating in a conversation here? These are not the usual chatrooms you'd expect.

BESW

Hi! You're probably looking for the movies.se chat rooms. Each site on the Stack Exchange has its own dedicate set of rooms; this one's for literature.se.

For mechanical information about chatting, the FAQ is useful.

Most Stack sites have a "main" chat room for general conversation (like this one!), while for specific talks about, say, workshopping a particular question, other chat rooms are created. Some rooms are more active than others, and to some extent each has its own culture, but every part of the Stack Exchange network is expected to be nice.

Hamlet

quite honestly, these look like they're pretty typical for a private beta

Napoleon Wilson

12:38

o_O

BESW

As you can see, sometimes conversations in a room can overlap. Making new rooms is largely a matter of keeping that from getting too confusing. Remember, there's no such thing as private communication on the Stack Exchange; no DMs or any similar function is available to ordinary users. Everything we say is archived and aggressively seeded to Google's search bots.

Obiwan KeNoobie

@Randal'Thor Rand and BESW - I have read a few of your preceding posts and agree so much with what you both are saying. I am (very) new here and am amazed at the amount of resistance and sheer unwillingness to grant some slack I think I am perceiving from the part of, basically, users with very high posts and points counts.

Hamlet

The dip in active users around september does seem to be correlated to a decrease in upvotes and an increase in downvotes.

Obiwan KeNoobie

Closing or putting a question on hold seems something like a "shooting from the hip" reaction mostly which I sincerely regret as it is discouraging to someone who really did ask his question as succinctly and clearly as possible but which still did not seem to get someone's benediction.

Hamlet

Unfortunately there aren't any stats about the amount of comments being left.

But if I remember correctly, I think the increase in downvoting at the time was being driven by questions about things such as music, where people were downvoting rather than closing.

BESW

12:44

Close/hold is a vital mechanic in the Stack system, but it needs to be used with informed intent.

Hamlet

I do think this site has problems with rudeness and has a somewhat toxic community.

And the meta post seems to have gotten people talking about that, which is good.

Obiwan KeNoobie

@BESW BESW, no, I wasn't. What made you think so? I came here straight from literature.stackexchange. I just didn't post anything yet in literature.

BESW

@ObiwanKeNoobie Usually a new-ish user is looking for the chat room associated with their first and highest-rep account.

@Hamlet It's possible to turn that sort of thing around with a grass-roots campaign, but it takes a LOT of spoons.

Obiwan KeNoobie

@BESW BESW, why should I? I just go the idea of trying out the chat while I was perusing literature.stackexchange... this does not seem so out of whack to me.

Hamlet

-2

A: Our site can be cold, unforgiving, and unapproachable. We're driving people away. What should we do about it?

Since the question is talking about how to be more welcoming, I thought I would take a look at how this site welcomes new members in the past few days since this question was asked. It's been a mixed bag tbh. Good I thought that the community did a good job handling the question Understanding...

Mithrandir

12:50

@ObiwanKeNoobie don't worry about it. Welcome!

BESW

@ObiwanKeNoobie I'm not saying you should. Just that it's an assumption I made based on prior experience.

@Hamlet I was prominent in a campaign to improve RPG.SE's comment ethos, just by spending a few months finding every new person's first post and commenting a friendly welcome customized with some link to the help or meta which would assist them based on their particular question/answer.

Obiwan KeNoobie

@Mithrandir Thanks! :)

BESW

Just saying "hi" doesn't work; it gives people warm fuzzies but doesn't actually get folks engaged with the informed action that makes a Stack tick and keeps users around.

Obiwan KeNoobie

@BESW BESW, yes, I understood that. You know that on any bell curve you'll "unconforming" customers at both extremes, don't you?

@BESW BESW, the "hi" was just meant to break the ice (if any).

BESW, apologies for the fuzzies.

BESW

@ObiwanKeNoobie ...yes. Hence the "probably" at the beginning; I was offering information that's very often useful to people who ask that kind of question.

@ObiwanKeNoobie Sorry, I'm engaging in two conversations at once. The "hi" comment is to @hamlet and the conversation about main-site comment culture.

Mithrandir

12:54

humph that's probably the most contention I've ever seen about a simple hi

Obiwan KeNoobie

@Hamlet Yes, I think people are being driven away. I just came from biology.stackexchange where a new user had asked a question but it was put on hold (or closed, not sure right now) because it was allegedly not clear enough, however I was ready to reply to it because to me it was clear enough. I couldn't though because it was closed.

@BESW BESW, ah sorry. So am I I guess. I too was saying "hi" thus the (small) confusion.

@Mithrandir Mithrandir, sometimes the causes of war are trivial. Look at WW I.

Sure the death of an archiduke would not be cause enough to put half the planet on fire, would it?

Mithrandir

goes to find link on History.SE

Obiwan KeNoobie

Besides - apologizing for causing warm fuzzies is basic diplomacy for avoiding war - see Bismarck (diplomacy before war!)

Mithrandir

51

Q: How did such a relatively minor event as the assassination of an archduke start World War I?

The assassination of the Austrian archduke was, considered in the context of all Europe's near-explosive politics, a relatively minor event. So how did it cause such a major war?

military europe world-war-one contemporary-history

With winter approaching I'd like some warm fuzzies :P

Napoleon Wilson

@Mithrandir You're probably looking for the history.se chat rooms? ;-)

Mithrandir

13:08

Lurking in The Time Machine already

Obiwan KeNoobie

@Mithrandir Good question (Ididn't know it was actually asked). Are we supposedly to answer it here?

Mithrandir

@ObiwanKeNoobie what do you mean by 'here'?

This chat room?

Obiwan KeNoobie

@Mithrandir In this here chatroom.

Mithrandir

Hmm, not really, but I wouldn't be averse to discussing it.

The chat rooms are for informal discussions related to the site and it's topic - in this case, Literature

BESW

@Mithrandir It's fanuchånan here, so I'd settle for dry fuzzies.

Mithrandir

13:11

I linked that History.SE question because you mentioned it and I figured it might be an interesting read :)

Obiwan KeNoobie

@Mithrandir I know, I just have to acquaint myself with with what's acceptable on this site and what's not.

Mithrandir

Well, we're happy to help ;)

BESW

13

Q: Who should make welcoming comments?

When a new user posts their first question, there is often a need to clarify certain aspects of how this site works. This is usually done by a friendly comment starting with "Welcome to the site" or something similar followed by an explanation such as in this question. I always thought these were...

discussion comments

Obiwan KeNoobie

I'll have to leave you people for the time being as fate calls me elsewhere, I hope to discuss the WW I think yet. Anyway this was an interesting chat I've had here thks and bye

Mithrandir

\o bye!

Obiwan KeNoobie

13:14

Is there an "official" way of logging out of chat BTW?

Mithrandir

There's a leave button on the right

Or if you close all SE chat tabs it'll have you leave all rooms after ten minutes

Obiwan KeNoobie

OK thks I don't find it I think I'll just bow my way out backwards with graceful gestures

BESW

ttfn

Bookworm

14:00

0

Q: The Icelandic Edda's origins

The "prose Edda", as opposed to the "poetic Edda" was written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturlusson as we know. The older, poetic Edda is much older. How old could it actually be? There seems to be a possibility there is a linguistic connection with the name "Veda" - the old Indian Vedas - w...

norse-mythology

Hamlet

14:28

Can you expand on the possible linguistic connection? What's the link? — yannis 7 mins ago

@BESW @Randal'Thor here's an interesting case study about the value of requiring research effort.

On the one hand, many of the question's claims don't really hold up to scrutany.

On the other hand, the question itself is answerable.

@Randal'Thor any interest in writing a meta post about this?

The source for this possible connection is a comment from Rudolf Steiner in a lecture given in early 20th century about the Edda. I don't have the reference here as I read it a few years ago but it should be relatively easy to find. Personally, I am enclined to accept the existence of wider connections between cultures, the farther we go back in history. — Obiwan KeNoobie 4 mins ago

Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner (27 (or 25) February 1861 – 30 March 1925) was an Austrian philosopher, social reformer, architect and esotericist. Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century as a literary critic and published philosophical works including The Philosophy of Freedom. At the beginning of the twentieth century he founded an esoteric spiritual movement, anthroposophy, with roots in German idealist philosophy and theosophy; other influences include Goethean science and Rosicrucianism. In the first, more philosophically oriented phase of this movement, Steiner...

My personal feelings about the value of demonstrating research in questions are a bit confused at the moment.

Obiwan KeNoobie

15:04

@Hamlet It should be said Steiner was extremely knowledgeable about ancient cultures, mythology and religion; he was also the maintainer of the Goethe library in Weimar (amongst other things) </end of short impromptu appearance>

Hamlet

15:17

@ObiwanKeNoobie I think it's important to consider the time period during which Rudolf was working. He missed out on a lot of modern scholarship.

The time period at which he was working at is what's important to me, not his involvement in "esoteric spiritual movements" and the like.

Shokhet

Woah! New top bar on the website!

That was not there, last night.

Mithrandir

15:37

Right. 'twas rolled out... an hour ago?

Hamlet

16:23

I do think research is helpful because I think it removes the number of incorrect assumptions people have to deal with in answers.

I also think that questions based on some sort of confusion the OP wants clarified tend to do a lot better.

I think this tends to be the most important for questions asking about universal claims.

Mithrandir

17:33

@Hamlet voila

Bookworm

0

Q: What's up with these characters obsession with the words slut and whore?

Someone recommended Pack Challenge by Shelly Laurenston to me. It's erotica FYI--not really sure if this is the place for questions about that, but I thought I would try anyway. The main character has this obsession with the words slut and whore, and I'm starting to find it annoying She glanc...

pack-challenge shelly-laurenston

Mithrandir

cc @Ash

Catija

@Mithrandir Probably not great for those words to be in the title...

Mithrandir

Why?

Napoleon Wilson

At least use some quotation marks then.

Catija

17:51

@Mithrandir Because it's polite.

Profanity should not appear in titles.

Mithrandir

@Catija I guess. That's reasonable :)

Catija

Can you imagine the shit storm if that question hit the HNQ.

Mithrandir

...yes, I can

That's a pretty good incentive to edit :p

Bookworm

19:15

0

Q: What is the origin of epigraphs?

What are the origins of putting epigraphs in a work? Wikipedia has this example from 1700, but no explanation on when or why epigraphs came into vogue. Facsimile of the original title page for William Congreve's The Way of the World published in 1700, on which the epigraph from Horace's ...

history-of-literature terminology

Feeds

20:15

It's #LibrariesWeek! Come check out our questions about #Libraries & #InformationScience, or ask your own! https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/library-and-information-science

Tweeted by StackLiterature on October 10, 2017 at 8:07 PM

Mithrandir

^reposted because link broke last time

deleted previous attempt

BESW

20:27

@Hamlet Perhaps the site needs to revisit its concept of frame challenges.

Hamlet

@BESW hoping @Randal'Thor posts a meta post.

Mithrandir

@EJoshuaS - hey, would you mind adding a bit more info to the tag wiki excerpts you're creating, and do a bit more research before submitting? For instance, your suggested edit for [jane-eyre] was For questions regarding the life and works of Jane Eyre., but that's a book, not an author. You can also include a bit more info about the author in the wiki and not just for the lives and works of, like your proposed wiki for Jules Verne.

Oct 7 at 20:12, by Mithrandir

Remember: if you do not know enough about a subject to write a tag wiki excerpt about it, leave it for someone who does.

Obiwan KeNoobie

@Hamlet Hamlet, I never mentioned anything about his "involvement in 'esoteric spiritual movements'". I can assure you he did't miss out a lot on contemporary science as he was well rounded in sciences as well as in the literary and philosophical department. You should inform yourself. "Modern scholarship" still didn't discover lots of things. Most important thinking was done hundreds and thousands of years ago.

Hamlet

@ObiwanKeNoobie ""Modern scholarship" still didn't discover lots of things." With all due respect, if we're talking about linguistics/ancient languages, modern scholarship is where things are at.

Obiwan KeNoobie

@Hamlet Sorry man, don't have time to waste. Life is too short. >

</end of sudden impromptu appearance>

Hamlet

20:40

@BESW I do think it's appropriate to downvote a question if it's obvious that it will most likely require a frame challenge.

But other than that...

For example, I do find it strange that this hasn't received that many upvotes.

2

Q: Is there a direct parallel to actual social prejudices for each color in "The War Between the Classes"?

In The War Between the Classes, the class sets up four levels of classes: Blue, the highest class; Dark Green, the lower high class; Light Green, the higher low class; and Orange, the lowest of the low. Is there a direct parallel to actual social prejudices for each color? E.g., Orange represent...

symbolism the-war-between-the-classes gloria-d-miklowitz

Or I don't know: what's a good example of a good question that is downvoted because of a lack of research effort.

Mithrandir

@Hamlet completely unbiased:

-1

Q: What is the significance of the words of the prophets being written on the subway wall?

The fifth verse of "The Sound of Silence" runs thusly: And the people bowed and prayed To the neon god they made And the sign flashed out its warning In the words that it was forming And the sign said: "The words of the prophets are Written on the subway walls And tenement halls...

song-lyrics simon-and-garfunkel

Bookworm

0

Q: How does Sophocles use of dramatic irony contribute to the tragic form of the play?

I've been reading this book, Oedipus the King, and I'm interested in how irony is used so widely throughout the play. Can anyone help me out?

theater irony oedipus-the-king sophocles

Hamlet

@Mithrandir of course, no one really left a comment explaining why they downvoted, so it's hard/impossible to have a conversation about what should be downvoted, and what makes for good content

Mithrandir

And I'm quite surprised that this question didn't get any comments asking them to expand the question - it's a one line question.

BESW

The problem with comments for downvotes is that most of us (across the entire Stack Exchange) are very bad at explaining why we downvoted in a way that could actually lead to improving the question.

Hamlet

20:51

Then you get meta posts like this

1

Q: I asked a question about where I can find a translation of a specific work. Why is it being perceived as low-quality?

A while ago, I asked a question trying to find a high-quality, reliable translation for a particular work. To date, no comments have been posted offering helpful insight as to why the question is below quality, while existing meta precedent says very explicitly that these questions are categoric...

discussion specific-question question-quality

Which are to me the definition of a toxic community.

Mithrandir

@Bookworm worth closing as unclear or not?

Mithrandir

21:17

-1

A: What is the origin of epigraphs?

As is known, first epigraph was used in Froissart's "Chroniques" about 1404 and «Calendarium» of Regimontan at 1476.

Hamlet

@Mithrandir not entirely sure what you mean by "an image would be nice", but downvoting and leaving the comment, in my personal opinion, is the right thing to do and is a sign of a healthy Q&A community

Mithrandir

@Hamlet an image of the epigraph, like the one provided in the question

Hamlet

@Mithrandir oh. I would make that clear in your comment.

Mithrandir

done

Mithrandir

21:54

Yaay, got them to edit and improve

Shokhet

23:00

@Mithrandir Oh, cool. I haven't really been keeping up with the developments on MSE/SE blog recently. It looks good, but will take some getting used to :)

heather

23:43

...and clicked the SE link instead of the site switcher. first time out of a million to come =/

anyhoodle. @Mithrandir, I'd like your advice on an answer.

on my answer to your question on the meaning of the lyrics in Cohen's Hallelujah, what can I do to improve it?

Hamlet

@heather since you asked.

Looking at the answer.

You do a good job here

> I'd like to point out the second verse is all about failures. "Your faith was strong but you needed proof" probably references Gideon, who had God perform miracles to prove that he was really the one God wanted. "You saw her bathing on the roof / Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya" references, of course, David and Bathsheba - David saw her, killed Bathsheba's husband, and took her as wife.

and the rest of that paragraph

But when it comes time to answer the specific question

you kind of trail off a little bit

> He's in awe of the grandeur of God - this is a theme throughout the Old Testament as well, so this isn't really a reference to the next verse.

This isn't quite as convincing. It would be improved if you connected the lyrics of the song with quotes from the old/new testament.

Ditto for this

> He's in awe that in spite of his failures, God is still listening to him, and being pleased by his work. (There's references to this in the Psalms, as well.) I mean - he was God's chosen, but then he killed someone and took their wife. God was displeased with him, but forgave him and loved him still. That's outright baffling, that kind of forgiveness. He's also, in that sense, thanking God with his hallelujah - a thank you for being forgiven.

heather

okay.

Hamlet

@heather tldr it's an improvement on your previous answers, but it could be improved by connecting quotes from the song to quotes from the bible during the parts where you actually answer the question asked by Mith.

heather

okay.

Hamlet

@heather that's my take on it, anyway.

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