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3:51 AM

In one of the episodes from the Agatha Christie's Poirot series, Poirot says something along the lines that in solving crimes, finding the right questions is more important than finding answers. I thought he said this to Japp, but I just finished with all the episodes with Japp and I couldn't fin...

5 hours later…

Bookworm

8:27 AM

Q: Book about a girl named Abygail that can travel in time

Does anyone know of a book that satisfies the following properties: The book is about a girl named Abygail/Abigail (or possibly another variation of this name). The book says that the name "Abygail" is an old witch name. The book was published in 2004 or earlier The book was written or translate...

identification-request

5 hours later…

Tsundoku

1:15 PM

Jo Glanville: We internalised the fatwa against Salman Rushdie. This horrific attack is what follows. (The Guardian).

> It was the beginning of the retreat from freedom of expression – self-censorship replaced tolerance as desirable behaviour in a society where free speech was still supposed to be a benchmark for human rights. And we’re all still suffering from that shift in all areas of public debate.

After several topic challenge suggestions inspired by political events, my bet is we won't see a suggestion as a way of protesting against violence inspired by extremist faith. Because we must self-censor to protect ourselves against such violence. This is what some people call "respecting religion".

AncientSwordRage

@cmw much like Highlander, the traditional SE way is that "There can only be one"

That why only one correct answer can get the green tick

cmw

1:34 PM

@AncientSwordRage Well, right, only one green tick is true, though if it provides new information or explains it in a different way another answer is still welcome.

Mithical

@AncientSwordRage I think we were debating the usefulness of the accept feature for this site almost as soon as we launched.

Literature is a subjective topic and it's entirely possible for two completely contradictory answers to both be correct.

Q: Is the accepted answer feature good for this site?

One of the strange things about literature is that one question can have equally valid answers. See, for example, the question What is Jack's crown?. The thing about accepting an answer is it can be misinterpreted as saying that there is nothing to discuss. I know that the official documentation...

discussion feature-request accepted-answer

cmw

2:06 PM

@Mithical Yeah, the format breaks down when you have topics that engender a discussion more than Q&As.

AncientSwordRage

2:21 PM

@Mithical oh that's extremely true

It's possible that the traditional model dorsn't work here

But drifting from that means studying away from the network template strengths, if that makes sense?

@cmw I think that's a separate concern to subjective topics

Discussion can take place in comments, chat and spawn new questions though

An even when the answers are subjective they can still be judged on consistency and how well supported they are

Talking from experience on Sci-fi and RPG

cmw

2:37 PM

@AncientSwordRage Sure, likewise on Myth and Latin. I still don't think it's the ideal format, though.

Going back to the earlier comment, Area 51 keeps track of the "health" of a beta site. One of those metrics is answer ratio: "2.5 answers per question is good, only 1 answer per question needs some work. On a healthy site, questions receive multiple answers and the best answer is voted to the top."

Obviously that's not objective truth and every site is different, but that's the rationale for suggesting multiple "right" answers.

Mithical

Those measurements also haven't been touched in like... ten years and they're regarded as mostly irrelevant these days

cmw

The numbers, yes, but isn't the principle still encouraged?

Mithical

Sure

Bookworm

3:32 PM

Q: Is a paragraph starting with "She nervously peered over the edge." a placeholder text, or something else?

Is a paragraph starting with "She nervously peered over the edge." a placeholder text, or something else? She nervously peered over the edge. She understood in her mind that the view was supposed to be beautiful,but all she felt was fear. There had always been something about heights that distur...

quote-source

AncientSwordRage

3:51 PM

@cmw 2.5 answers per question isn't the same as 2.5 correct answers per question. Multiple answers mean you can pick the most correct one. The question is, how valuable is a question to the site if neither answer is completely correct? It's better off with one answer that covers all the points of both, at least IMO

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