The Reading Room

Rand al'Thor

04:23

@PrinceNorthLæraðr It's a particular tale of Breton folk literature, so why not? I'm not familiar with the work or genre either though - I just saw it mentioned on the front page of Wikipedia and went to read that article.

Could replace it by just oral-tradition a la literature.stackexchange.com/q/3565/17 if you like.

@PrinceNorthLæraðr :-D

Prince North Læraðr

@Randal'Thor I'll leave it up to you. I think a case could be made for keeping the tag

Rand al'Thor

Question: how did both Tsundoku and Peter Shor earn Revival badges for their answers to this question? That tag is supposed to be for when you get the first answer scoring 2 or more.

bobble

Maybe the logic assumes that multiple answers wouldn't be posted on the same day?

Or something else about how close in time they were

Worth opening a bug on Meta-Meta

Rand al'Thor

Maybe it only checks there's no other answer scoring more than 2.

7

Q: Can the Revival badge be awarded to more than one answer to the same question?

The description of the Revival badge says Answered more than 30 days later as first answer scoring 2 or more And the full description says Your answer must reach a score of two before any earlier answer to the same question reaches a score of two So why was I awarded the Revival badge...

Oh I see, "first" is interpreted in a different way from what I assumed.

Also, it means Tsundoku has now overtaken me in Revival+Necromancer count:

Jan 5 at 20:48, by Rand al'Thor

Users with the most Necromancer and Revival badges combined, out of a total of 500 on Literature - unsurprisingly, @GarethRees is way out in front with 73, followed by me with 46, Tsundoku with 42, verbose with 26, Peter Shor with 13, and Matt Thrower with 9. (Data.SE is updated weekly, so numbers may be slightly out of date.)

I'm now on 48 and he on 49 (Data.SE still shows 48 for both of us, but it only updates weekly). verbose's count has increased to 35.

bobble

05:30

If you count the questions answered after I bumped them, I don't look as bad for the Unanswered count

Bookworm

05:49

0

Q: Meaning of "Whose Language is the Sun", "civilized dome riding all cities." and "Break O break open till they break the town" in the following poem

The poem by Stephen Spender is given Below Far far from gusty waves these children's faces. Like rootless weeds, the hair torn round their pallor: The tall girl with her weighed-down head. The paper- seeming boy, with rat's eyes. The stunted, unlucky heir Of twisted bones, reciting a father's g...

poetry stephen-spender

verbose

06:52

@PrinceNorthLæraðr I was in my thirties once. I distinctly remember.

Mithical

07:14

*hands @verbose a cane*

verbose

@Mithical Thanks! Now I have something to wave querulously as I yell at kids to get off my lawn.

Mithical

07:30

As @bobble so rudely reminded earlier, I'm not a kid anymore, so I guess I get to stay on the lawn...

in PSE D&D Chatroom, 1 hour ago, by bobble

You are what we call a Grown-Up

verbose

@Mithical how rude of bobble to disrespect her elders by applying such epithets to them

Mithical

Indeed

verbose

kids these days

Bookworm

08:38

1

Q: Origin and significance of E-I-E-I-O in the Old MacDonald song

The well-known children's song "Old MacDonald had a Farm" has lyrics in the following format: Old MacDonald had a farm E-I-E-I-O ! And on that farm he had {article} {singular or plural creatures} E-I-E-I-O ! With a {creature-appropriate sound} {creature-appropriate sound} here And a {creature-ap...

meaning song-lyrics historical-context wording-choice nursery-rhyme

Tsundoku

10:47

@verbose The 2,500-Year-Old History of Adults Blaming the Younger Generation.

Sioud Abdou

11:29

a yoo

hey mithy

Tsundoku

12:47

I got a response from Michael Kay!

Rand al'Thor

14:45

Who'd've thunk it's possible to write an interesting literary question about "Old Macdonald Had a Farm" :-) Kudos to @verbose.

Tsundoku

To Whom it May Concern: March 4 is Grammar Day. (A tweet without an Oxford comma.)

I cleaned and ordered my book closet!. Comment: You have so many clothes that you need to make room in your book closet for them? So sad :(.

Tsundoku

16:52

Great Works Of Belarusian Literature And Where To Find Them In English on BelarusFeed.

Belarusian Writers and the Soviet Past on BelarusDigest.

Bookworm

0

Q: How successful is Oscar Wilde in portraying Victorian sentiments in his 1894 play "The Importance of Being Earnest"?

How successful is Oscar Wilde in portraying Victorian sentiments in his 1894 play "The Importance of Being Earnest"? Through the rich and witty dialogue, the characters of the play and their attitudes and actions reflect contemporary Victorian ideals. The argument is that whether Wilde is success...

oscar-wilde the-importance-of-being-earnest

verbose

17:13

@Randal'Thor well, as they say, there’s no such thing as a stupid question, only stupid answers. Thanks!

@Tsundoku it is a great answer. Is this the sportswriter Michael Kay?

Tsundoku

17:35

@verbose LOL. No this is the software engineer Michael Kay. At my previous job, I worked a lot with XML and XSLT, and one of the pieces of software I used was Kay's XSLT processor Saxon. And his book about XSLT was simply the reference.

bobble

He appears to have himself two separate network profiles

Tsundoku

Yes, that's why he updated the question instead of posting a comment.

Rand al'Thor

19:22

@verbose Are you implying that D.A.Hosek's answer is stupid? :-P

@Tsundoku He must be right chuffed to suddenly get not one but two nice answers after four years of silence. All thanks to @bobble's necromantic editing.

verbose

19:48

@Randal'Thor Bad Randolph! Troublemaker! 😁

@Tsundoku It's a sweet comment but really needs to be a comment and not part of the question ....

Rand al'Thor

Today I'm more verbose than @verbose.

Bookworm

0

Q: Meaning of "as it was, she witnessed minor twinges of the appropriate emotions occurring distantly, as if to some other girl"

This passage is from The Children's Bach by Helen Garner: Some things, Morty,’ he said, ‘strain a person’s sense of humour.’ He swept through the room. The three of them sat foolishly, with fading smiles. It was dark, and the rain had stopped. Vicki stood up and switched on the lamp in the corne...

meaning the-childrens-bach helen-garner

bobble

You're late, Bookworm darlin'

verbose

@Bookworm that question's gonna go HNQ, with two answers coming so quickly after it was posted. Sigh.

Or does going HNQ require upvotes?

Rand al'Thor

20:03

@verbose Yes.

rummages for HNQ formula

bobble

106

A: What are the criteria for questions to be selected for Hot Network Questions?

Basically the same formula used to select the questions shown in the "hot" tab on a site. We have a few tweaks: Successive questions from the same site are penalized by increasing amounts. So, the first question from SO in the list gets multiplied by 1.0, the second by 0.98, the third by 0.96, ...

not sure if that's up-to-date?

Rand al'Thor

44

A: How are questions in the 'hot' tab on a site selected?

What formula should be used to determine "hot" questions? Based on my analysis of the above and the comments so far, here's the second version of what I have implemented so far. This might suck. I don't know: (log(Qviews)*4) + ((Qanswers * Qscore)/5) + sum(Ascores) ------------------------------...

^ basically this, with some tweaks as listed in the answer bobble linked

@bobble I think it is. It includes new developments like the 8-hour threshold.

bobble

And it kicks questions off after 3 days

375

Q: Updating the Hot Network Questions List - now with a bit more network and a little less "hotness"!

Some of you may have noticed that we've been making some changes to the Hot Network Questions on the back end over the last week or so. I'm here announcing our first round of changes to how the HNQ works and give you some ideas of why we're starting here and where we're planning to go in the futu...

discussion hot-questions announcements

Rand al'Thor

adds to bookmarks list

bobble

Have you ever kicked a question off the HNQ?

Rand al'Thor

20:06

Main meta is the only site where I still use bookmarks. Haven't used them anywhere else since ... 2014? ... except for the occasional joke about giving someone a gold star (that doesn't even work any more) or getting a Favourite Question badge.

@bobble Don't think so, no.

Certainly not here on Lit, and I don't think I have on SFF either.

bobble

Personally, I've made a few edits which had the effect of putting a question on the list, by removing some unnecessary MathJax from the title. \times -> ×

personally I don't like MathJax in titles anyways, makes the homepage load slower

verbose

@Tsundoku I'm disappointed in all y'all for overlooking the obvious pun: "A Black Day for White Russian Literature"

Rand al'Thor

14 mins ago, by Rand al'Thor

Today I'm more verbose than @verbose.

Reminds me of a few times on SFF where two of us would answer a LotR question almost together, but then the other guy would ... well, this joke from meta sums it up:

@WadCheber Now keep updating your post until it's several pages long, full of headers and quotes and images, so that you can get the higher answer score and the tick. — Rand al'Thor ♦ May 25 '16 at 2:03

verbose

I did actually do that once, on SO. The OP switched the tick to my answer, which made me feel bad for a few minutes.

@Randal'Thor You have no idea what it's costing me not to reply with "and I'm more randy than Randal, so we're even"

looks up apophasis

Rand al'Thor

:-D

I know that as paraleipsis.

verbose

20:21

On another topic: academia SE also seems to follow the usual SE pattern of attracting mainly science nerds. Given that humanities higher ed is in real crisis, it's amazing how entirely absent any discourse about them is on that site

Rand al'Thor

Always wondered if there's a verb form. Like if someone keeps saying "I won't say I told you so", can you call them a paraleiping person?

verbose

Like, I don't recall any question on humanities hiEd there at all

bobble

@verbose academia.stackexchange.com/search?q=humanities

verbose

@Randal'Thor having poked around a bit, I agree that paralipsis is the better term

bobble

What do you do your poking with?

verbose

20:26

@bobble DuckDuckGo.

bobble

Did the ducks go?

verbose

@bobble Sure, one can find some, but look at the front page and it's almost all science/engineering type questions with a random business question thrown in

@bobble That reminds me of when my husband was in hospice and his cousin, who teaches elementary school in Canada, had her students write him postcards with jokes on them to cheer him up. His favorite was: "Two men walked into a bar. The third ducked."

verbose

20:52

@bobble well, I now also have the cane that @Mithical gave me.

bobble

is it one of those fancy ones with carved designs?

verbose

14 hours ago, by Mithical

*hands @verbose a cane*

Rand al'Thor

Do you have a top hat to go with it?

bobble

How about glasses to peer over?

verbose

@PrinceNorthLæraðr One could argue that a tale is sort of like a short story or a song lyric or something. Since we don't use tags for individual poems or short stories, I don't think we should use one for individual tales. So I agree with @Randal'Thor that replacing that tag with oral-tradition might make more sense.

bobble

20:56

Actually, spectacles. Or monocles.

verbose

@bobble I don't have a top hat. I do have a fedora. I also wear glasses, but I do not possess a monocle

Bookworm

22:06

2

Q: What were the parts of each of the six Seuss books that ceased publication in March 2021 was problematic?

Many articles around the internet explain the general reason why six books were removed from publication in March 2021 and some even detail specific examples from 1-2 of the books (for example, from The Guardian describes And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street and If I Ran the Zoo) but I h...

dr-seuss

Tsundoku

22:30

@Randal'Thor May I offer my sincerest contrafibularities?

Rand al'Thor

@Bookworm I feel like this needs another tag, but I'm not sure what ... it's not exactly censorship, but it's something more specific than just publication. Maybe reception?

Tsundoku

@Randal'Thor reception seems to be the closest thing.

bobble

@Randal'Thor race-issues?

Tsundoku

@bobble Is the question asking about race issues? Tags should be based on the question, not on potential answers.

bobble

Ah, was confusing that question with a news article I read which was asking about race issues

Tsundoku

22:55

I think if @PrinceNorthLæraðr cast a spell on me, I would sleep like a log ;-)

Prince North Læraðr

hehe

bobble

23:15

Go on, cast the spell

Prince North Læraðr

Sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep

Tsundoku

zzzzzzz

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