The Reading Room

verbose

00:00

and on Hallowe'en too. How appropriate

verbose

00:33

Oh actually yes! I do have another question about suspensions. Do they apply to just one site or are they network wide or does it depend?

bobble

It depends

Usually it's just one site

But if there's flagrant violations, across the network, and it doesn't stop - then a network-wide suspension. I've only seen one. I think a CM has to do it, but I am not sure on that.

verbose

00:51

@bobble ah thanks. A CM is an actual paid staffer, yes? Not just some kind of über mod with an emerald or ruby (rather than a plain ol' diamond) next to their name?

bobble

Yes, a Community Manager. They get paid money and diamonds on all sites and Superpowers.

Super-Superpowers

There's not that many

bobble

01:20

192

Q: Who is on the Community Management Team, and what do they do?

The members of the Community Management Team (sometimes referred to as the Community Team or CMs) are employees of Stack Exchange the company, but not all SE employees are Community Management Team members. When visiting the profile of staff members there is an orange badge indicator of that on t...

b_jonas

02:25

@bobble And unicorns.

verbose

02:53

Do I remember correctly that the current topic challenge used to be starred and pinned to the right sidebar? It seems to not be the case now.

@Randal'Thor I had a question for you that I didn't want to ask in public chat so I tried creating a room with you and me but I'm not sure it worked. For some reason it doesn't show up when I look at the list of all LitSE rooms.

bobble

03:16

@verbose The room is here. Since your chat user's parent account is your Stack Overflow account, it appears to have created the room under Stack Overflow, so it appears in this list of Stack Overflow rooms on the Chat.SE server.

(Also, that room is still public. I - and anyone! - can see what is in it. Only moderators can make a room private-private, in that read access is restricted.)

(to pre-emptively answer "how do I change my chat parent user?" - I listed out the steps here, though that says "Puzzling", you'd type in "Literature" instead)

(as another aside, I didn't know you could make a Stack Overflow room on Chat.SE! I thought that would have to be on Stack Overflow's dedicated chat server chat.SO)

bobble

03:32

Rooms can be migrated to other sites with mod powers.

verbose

@bobble oh dear

so there’s no way on Stack Exchange for anyone but a mod to have a private conversation with some other user?

bobble

That's by design. There have been several requests for such a feature and it was shut down as "Stack Exchange is not a social network". The only use-case imagined for private rooms is moderation purposes, and creation of such rooms for such purposes is restricted to moderators, to prevent lowly users from spamming/annoying mods.

(On Puzzling we have another exception for private rooms - collaborating on the creation of puzzles - but that wouldn't come up here)

verbose

@bobble that makes sense, except there are times when lowly users might want to chat with a mod for fairly good reasons. Like in this case it tunes out I can’t even delete the message, let alone the room.

bobble

For stuff like that you're supposed to raise a mod-only flag (on your post, on one of their posts, etc.) and if the mod thinks it requires a conversation they will make a private room for you

If it makes you feel better, the room will auto-delete in 7 days due to low messages, if you leave it inactive

You could move messages to Trash, moving messages is a privilege that room owners (which you are) have

(not that I'm sure how to do that. will look up)

found a how-to for moving messages

verbose

03:49

@bobble thanks, done.

Well, I still have a concern, so if any mod (@Randal'Thor, @Tsundoku, @Gallifreyan) could reach out to me privately that would be great

bobble

79

Q: How can I report a specific bad user?

Every once in a while we get a question about how to report a bad user to the admins. Sometimes it's a spammer, sometimes it's a troll, sometimes it's just someone who had a momentary blip in the "socially acceptable" filter. But the answers are pretty much always the same. So, here is a "master ...

support users spam faq-proposed offensive

bobble

04:08

>< If I downvote all of that user's bad answers it will get reversed as serial voting

verbose

@bobble thanks, this was very helpful. Yeah, I’ve downvoted but I too worry about serial voting. But if someone gives five bad answers in a row, that merits five downvotes, doesn’t it? And if two people downvote an answer then that should indicate that it’s not just serial voting, hopefully

bobble

I'm tempted to mass-flag their answers as Very Low Quality or Not An Answer

verbose

Did you read what I had written in that room to Randolph? If so, do you agree that there’s cause for concern?

bobble

I agreed with you, yes. I also believe that's the kind of thing that goes in a mod-only flag.

verbose

@bobble is there a “very low quality” flag?

bobble

04:19

yep

verbose

@bobble great, I was worried I was just being paranoid. Good to know I’m not and you share my concern. I hope you’ll raise the issue in a mod flag as well!

Oh interesting, I’ve flagged answers at various points in the past for all the other reasons but never for VLQ. Think it’s time to exercise that ability

bobble

I am not raising a mod flag at this point because you have raised one, and it'd be cleaner for less people to ring the alarm bell about the same issue.

Also - I have so few flags here! I'm used to my giant pile O' flags over at Puzzling

Mithical

05:07

@verbose The use of the VLQ flag is... disputed.

There aren't really many cases where a VLQ flag is better than a NaA flag.

verbose

@Mithical thanks! Good to know

Mithical

@bobble *not enough

verbose

In other news, over the last few days the rate at which my rep has been rising in French Language SE has far outpaced the same in Lit SE, which is generating the same bewilderment I felt when my rep on here exceeded my rep on SO

Mithical

@bobble Trash is still public; there is a private Trashcan room, but, again, you need mod privileges to move stuff there.

bobble

Yeah - oh, I must have forgotten to convey that

verbose

05:19

@Mithical Well hopefully @Randal'Thor will help me out once he gets here. Sigh.

Rand al'Thor

05:44

Welp, this was fun to wake up to.

bobble

Rand has come to save us!

Rand al'Thor

Thanks @verbose for the flags. Do you want me to move anything to private trash now that this is handled?

bobble

I am about to post a question to help push the bumped stuff down :D But if anyone has tags to suggest I'll take them. Question title: "Was Fontane's Tay Bridge poem compared to McGonagall's at the time?". Current tags: [poetry] and the two author tags.

Mithical

reception?

bobble

hmm, I think it applies

Rand al'Thor

05:50

@verbose It gets starred and pinned if anyone remembers to write a message and pin it :-P

Currently ongoing topic challenges: Theodor Fontane (German novelist and poet) and The Lusiads (classic of Portuguese literature).

Btw, @verbose: comment flags, much like comments themselves, lead a fleeting and unstable existence. If a comment is deleted for any reason, including the post it's on being deleted, then the flag will automatically be marked helpful and disappear from the mods' flag dashboard; and comment flags can only be "helpful" or "declined" - there's no way for mods to leave a custom response. A custom mod flag on a post, OTOH, will remain even if the post is deleted by non-mods.

@bobble german-literature? Also, most of the bumped stuff was already on the front page anyway, having been recently answered by other users, so that bump spree didn't make much difference.

Bookworm

1

Q: Was Fontane's Tay Bridge poem compared to McGonagall's at the time?

The Tay Bridge Disaster is one of the most famous bridge collapses. It inspired a universally reviled (yet nevertheless wildly (in)famous) poem from William McGonagall, "The Tay Bridge Disaster". The poem secured his place in history as "the world's worst poet". McGonagall's is not the only poem ...

poetry reception theodor-fontane william-mcgonagall

verbose

06:19

@Randal'Thor Thanks for handling stuff, Randolph! If it's possible to burninate those rooms, would you mind doing that? Does burninating the rooms make the messages unreadable too?

Two things: (1) I don't put it past the user to find the rooms, look through the trash, and find the messages, so actually, if it's not super hard to move stuff to private trash, I'd really appreciate it

(2) I first created a room, was confused that it was in the SO space, and thought I'd made a mistake, so I tried creating a second one, same thing, that's why there are two rooms, including one with no messages (not even deleted ones) in it

Rand al'Thor

There are three rooms altogether, but two of them are just named "Ignore this room, test".

verbose

@Randal'Thor Oh! I must have been even more confused than I thought.

Rand al'Thor

I've moved the trashed messages to private trash just now. I can also delete the rooms, although it doesn't matter too much as they'll be automatically deleted for inactivity in 1-2 weeks anyway.

verbose

Okay then, please don't trouble. Thanks for moving the messages to private trash!

Rand al'Thor

@verbose one, two, three :-)

verbose

06:24

And of course I apologize for not knowing the proper procedures for flagging, alerting mods, etc. I am very grateful to you (@Randal'Thor) and @bobble for explaining them so patiently to me. Even though I have been on SO for quite a while, I never actually participated in any community building activities there; I just asked questions (once in a while) and answered (reasonably often). Lit SE is different.

I think because I sorta recognize everybody who's active (more or less) and it's a much smaller community, I feel more connected and also more responsible for building up the site, and I'm still figuring out how the actual tools work

@Randal'Thor Oh I believed you. Thanks for listing them! I apologize for spamming you with room join requests. I just didn't know how to alert a mod about what I thought because I didn't realize I could have a custom flag message

Rand al'Thor

@verbose No problem at all! It was more important to alert mods somehow than to do it in exactly the "right" or recommended way.

And yeah, in a smaller community it's much easier to become one of the most prominent members and then get that feeling of responsibility.

Like, 7-8k rep on SO is nothing, but here it puts you in the top ten users.

verbose

@Randal'Thor Oh interesting. I didn't know that when a post got deleted, all the comments on it got deleted too (since up to now, as far as I'm concerned, the only difference between a deleted and non-deleted post was that the former had a pink background).

I also noticed that the tiny rep hit I took for downvoting a bunch of answers appears to have been magically reversed. I guess that happens too if a downvoted answer disappears?

Rand al'Thor

@verbose The comments don't get individually deleted: they're still visible to anyone who can see deleted posts, which is any 2k+ rep user (10k+ on graduated sites), whereas deleted comments are only visible to mods. But for some reason, deleting a post marks any comment flags on that post as helpful. You can still flag comments on a deleted post after deletion, but that'd require finding the post after deletion to (re-)flag.

And yep, when an answer you downvoted gets deleted, you regain the 1 rep you lost by downvoting it (and the OP gains whatever rep they lost from downvotes or loses whatever they gained from upvotes on that post, if applicable).

verbose

@Randal'Thor well, it's still top 6%, on SO, so it's not nothing. I agree tons of people in SO rack up far more reps but OTOH, that site has so many users who just ask a couple of questions and so end up with >100 rep, which means 7k–8k on there pushes you up percentage-wise even though it's not much compared to the actual experts on there.

@Randal'Thor Oh I see. Thanks for the explanation.

Imma go upvote @bobble's question so she can reach 2k rep more quickly and will be able to see deleted questions/answers.

Rand al'Thor

@verbose Percentage-wise, yes, but I meant you're in the top n users where n is a much bigger number than here.

I've also heard it's actually harder to get lots of upvotes on SO, especially in less-popular tags, since the flow of questions is so fast that you can answer something and then it'll be off the front page in moments and nobody'll ever bother to see it except maybe the OP who doesn't have enough rep to upvote. So I certainly shouldn't knock the achievement of getting 7-8k rep on SO :-)

Wildcard

06:37

Got a random question that maybe someone in here would know the answer to. It needs an intersection of booklovers and nerds.

I have a book that, as far as the internet is concerned, doesn't exist.

It's "The World and How to Take It" by Rev. A. J. Baird, D.D., published in 1891.

verbose

@Randal'Thor honestly my rep there is largely on the strength of one answer. My only gold badge on there

Wildcard

And I'm wondering if there's some way to put it online. I don't necessarily want to go through the work of scanning it myself, but maybe there is a project whereby I could give it to someone to do so?

Rand al'Thor

@Wildcard Maybe archive.org? I don't know exactly how that site works, and I'm only recently discovering how useful a resource it is (@GarethRees might know more), but they have a huge number of scanned old books, so maybe they accept donations or contributions from other people.

Project Gutenberg is another great resource for reading old books online, but their stuff is in searchable text form rather than directly as scans - I don't know exactly how they create new contributions to their database either.

verbose

@Wildcard Oh what a fun question. Aside from the two places Randolph mentions, maybe hathitrust.org? It might be worthwhile to use the "contact" forms on the respective sites to ask if any of them is interested in scanning the book and making the content available

Here's the contact form for the internet archive, which hosts the wayback machine as well as archive.org.

Rand al'Thor

@verbose Ooh, I hadn't heard of that one. Wanna add it to the meta list of useful online resources?

verbose

06:50

@Wildcard Another avenue, depending on where you live, is to go to a University library and ask them about options. Some University libraries work with Google Books to digitize their collections and if you have a rare book they might very well want to get it scanned and uploaded.

What's the book about?

If you approach a large research university that has a Victorian specialist or three on their English faculty, they might be pretty interested in the book / digitizing it / making it accessible online

@Randal'Thor done! Should I add the Old English literature sites I listed in this suggestion for a topic challenge?

@Wildcard btw this would be on-topic as a question for the site, perhaps?

Rand al'Thor

@verbose Sure, why not. Some of those sites might be already there, like Sacred Texts, but feel free to add anything you know about that's online, legal, free, and contains literary texts.

verbose

07:22

Here's a hypothetical for all you moderator types. Say if a user is suspended, and creates a sock to get around the suspension, and the sock is discovered and deleted. What happens to the original user? Still just suspended as before? Suspension extended? OG deleted? This is just a hypothetical of course

Rand al'Thor

07:37

@verbose Hypothetically, the suspension on the original account would probably be extended - unless it was already set to the maximum length and had just begun.

Mithical

Also depends what the original suspension was for - like, if the original suspension was for puppetry in the first place.

verbose

@Randal'Thor k

@Mithical That makes sense

@Randal'Thor I've made some reasonably extensive changes to that answer. Feel free to roll back of course

Eng Lit Learner

11:32

0

Q: "In a town. The village, tho it can scarce be called one, of X" - meaning

Reading a story by A.C. Smith, I am unsure of the meaning of the following: Three days later found me at the railway station of my cousin's native town. The village, tho it can scarce be called one, of X. At first, I thought that Smith just expresses that it is rather a village than a town, but...

meaning-in-context phrase-meaning literature

Tsundoku

@verbose A suspension warning? In limerick form? ;-)

verbose

11:51

I must speak to you, dear Herr Verbose
Your comments here are pretty gross.
Clean up your act
Or it's an unfortunate fact
Your time here will come to a close.

Okay the meter needs work, but best I can do tonight.

Better metrically:

I have to warn you, Herr Verbose
Your comments here are pretty gross.
Clean up your act.
Else, face this fact:
You're outta here. Adios!

Tsundoku

12:31

LOL!

@Bookworm So, from across the Atlantic, Scotland looks like part of England? Oh my ..., don't tell the Scots about this! ;-)

Gareth Rees

13:10

@Randal'Thor "Where does archive.org get its books from?" ⟵ this might make a good question for Literature.se (but is it on topic? it seems close enough). There are multiple sources, e.g. from Google Books by scraping, from public libraries via archive.org's scanning service, from users by upload, from their own collection of physical books, etc.

@Randal'Thor "Where does gutenberg.org get its books from?" ⟵ again, this might make a good question for Literature.se. Mostly via Distributed Proofreaders these days, using scans from the Internet Archive

Tsundoku

Archive.org hosts both works of literature and literary criticism, and I think that type of question could work here. (We may need a new tag for it, unless publishing is good enough.)

Tsundoku

14:14

@bobble If you're looking for somewhere to store your cookies ;-) getdigital.de/Keksdose-Using-Cookies.html

bobble

14:51

@Tsundoku I'm convinced I saw someone say it was in England - not sure where now, but you're free to blame the ignorant American

Rand al'Thor

@bobble Am I also free to channel my inner Scot and threaten to "gie ye a Glesca handshake if ye take us fer sassenachs ageen"? ;-)

bobble

You're free to do that to the elementary school "friends" who convinced me that UK = England because they thought it was hilarious

Never quite got over it

Rand al'Thor

Eh, it's a common mistake all over the world, not just in the US.

bobble

It's actually a running joke that everyone calls the Scot an Englishwoman in one of my favorite books... You'd think that would've cured me, but no

Tsundoku

15:07

@bobble Famous video about this: The Difference between the United Kingdom, Great Britain and England Explained by GGP Grey.

Now partially outdated by Brexit...

bobble

17:05

according to Area 51's rounding, I have 2k rep o_O

Mithical

grats

Tsundoku

20:13

Mod message as limerick:

> I'm writing to you, mister V
Your downvotes I don't wish to see
They have ill effect
Our users defect
Please stop that downvoting spree

There's always people who are desperate to keep their hats after Winter Bash. Don't be:

> There once was a fellow named Fats
Whose house was infested with rats
He burnt down the house
and ate all his grouse
and kept just his Winter Bash hats.

It doesn't make much sense, i know. But that's the effect of desperation ;-)

Wildcard

@verbose Thanks, I think I will ask it on the site then for posterity. I'll link back to chat as well since there are so many useful tips already given. (Will ask in several hours, after work.)

Tsundoku

20:36

> There once was a Lit mod named Randal
Who added "al'Thor" to his handle
The name was uncanny,
The "al"s were too many,
So one "al" fell to the Vandals.

Rand al'Thor

20:55

:-D

bobble

~~now I want a limerick~~

Tsundoku

@bobble You might get one eventually.

Rand al'Thor

There once was a Lit mod named Christophe,
Who with users became rather pissed off.
He suspended the lot,
Then regretted his plot,
When he remembered what voters consist of.

Tsundoku

@Randal'Thor What voters consist of? Such stuff as dreams are made of.

Rand al'Thor

Now, what rhymes with @bobble ...

bobble

20:59

wobble?

Rand al'Thor

@Tsundoku Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?

Tsundoku

@Randal'Thor Last night I dreamt I was a butterfly. Or is there a butterfly that now dreams it is me? (Hat tip: Zhuangzi.)

Rand al'Thor

Tsundoku, the Red King.

Tsundoku

What rhymes with bobble

Mithical

A bobbling crown decided one day
To join in a chatroom a long way away
She asked for a rhyme
And waited no time
In receiving this lim'rick I say.

bobble

21:07

:D

Tsundoku

> I will write a lim'rick for bobble,
But in earnestly trying to cobble
together a rhyme
I'll realise I'm
only able to write metre that hobbles.

bobble

ooh quote formatting

applause

Tsundoku

bows

So it's a limerick about failing to write a proper limerick. Metafiction, if you will ;-)

Rand al'Thor

If I ask a question on the main site about one of your limericks, should I use tsundoku as an author tag? ;-)

Tsundoku

That would be too ambiguous since there are many tsundokus on the SE network.

I think bobble is now the first Lit SE user who got two limericks.

bobble

21:19

is there a prize?

Tsundoku

You want limericks and a prize? Or do we want a prize for the best limerick?

Mithical

@bobble no

bobble

darn

verbose

@Wildcard To be able to see chat, users have to have 100 rep, I believe. Better incorporate the suggestions from chat into an answer. You can self-answer or turn it into a community blog answer.

Mithical

Anyone can see chat; you need 20 rep on a single site to participate, though.

100 rep is to create new rooms IIRC.

Tsundoku

21:28

Rhyme's Reason is a book by the poet John Hollander that "surveys the schemes, patterns, and forms of English verse, illustrating each variation with an original and witty self-descriptive example". Sort of fun to read.

verbose

@Tsundoku Hey you forgot this one:

Dec 27 '20 at 3:45, by Tsundoku

How pleasant to know Mr. Bose.
He writes such an excellent prose.
't Would have been a good thing
if he also could sing,
but he doesn't, he just sticks to prose.

Tsundoku

I hadn't forgotten it, but I have written only one limerick for you, haven't I? Or is there one I missed?

verbose

Of course the second limerick about me was by me, so @bobble wins the prize of being the first individual to have two others write limericks about her.

@Mithical Oh okay. I still think it would be better to have all the info in the answer rather than link it to chat, though

Mithical

@verbose yep, answers should be self-contained

Tsundoku

> This lim'rick is just so lewd
The metre also is screwed
When posted in chat
It got poked fun at
And to my dismay I was booed.

Not yet Ignoble-Prize worthy, but I'll work on it.

verbose

21:49

> A philosopher named Mithical
Had great faculties analytical.
They exercised their mind
To grasp every kind
Of subtlety metaphysical.

Tsundoku

22:57

Below is the first limerick I ever wrote in English (in 1994):

> I once had a teacher named Dowse
Who caused all his students to drowse
't Would have been a good thing
Had he made them to sing
But he didn't, he caused them to drowse.

The teacher's name is real; he taught he summer course on literature. The effect is fictitious.

bobble

I was not alive in 1994 D:

Tsundoku

Does that make me an old geezer?

bobble

I dunno. What's the limit for geezer-ness?

Tsundoku

That may be subjective. Or something like the Sorites paradox.

I don't have a going-to-bed limerick, so I'll just say good night.

bobble

g'night

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