cat and a dog here, not necessarily in that pecking order LOL ... run a shelter for small animals and had all kinds of other pets too ... not arachnophobic either
did ride on a donkey once...
user15026
As a kid I lived in a small country town, so all sorts of animals are familiar. :) But now I am in a small city apartment, so I just have the cat (I had frogs ,but they died, and so did my fish (they died from move-stress))
I don't think that it is helpful to group all those tags together in outdoor. I can imagine that some people want to look for (ie: fav the tag) questions specifically tagged with pond but don't care about creatures living in perches or cages.
yey vox populi badge ... we should get 20 more votes when we get this badge too, it's not fair we're rewarded for voting and still remain vote capped :(
user15026
@TildalWave hahaha yeah, waiting for more votes can be annoying sometimes. I see why they do it, but sometimes I am like "but there is another good question or answer I want to reward"!
that's why I thought we should get more votes with those two badges ... 30 votes and 40 votes in a day, whatever the other one is called ... they're a one off anyway
@Baarn That particular word is one most people who speak English as a primary language are unfamiliar with :)
In fact, there was a bit on a TV show where some pranksters went out and asked people to sign a petition to end women's suffrage (women in the US have only been able to vote since 1920). They got a lot of people to sign before someone pointed out what the petition actually meant, and how offensive it was. It was in pretty bad taste, but its a good indication of how poorly the word is recognised.
We have two horses, a thoroughbred and Arab cross that have spent most of their time in paddocks being ridden occasionally into the local bush land. They are not shod and their hooves are filed periodically.
However the children are riding them more frequently and onto the road to meet up with ...
@Beofett yeah. This is my first private beta, and I hadn't anticipated the effect of asking a bunch of questions early. In addition to vote caps (I haven't hit the rep cap yet), some unanswered questions have already been pushed off the main page. Whee! Tag search here I come. :-)
No, I think cats are a larger population. I love dogs, but cats are a kind of easier to keep and that tends to grow their population. Also, I think, cats have a more cross-gender appeal whereas dogs are typically more of a guy thing.
Don't read too much into a "guy" thing, dogs are very generally popular amongst men and women, it's that I think the balance tends to the guy side more for dogs than for cats.
Cats also tend to be less work and you can leave them for a couple of days more readily. Except mine, needs medication on a daily basis.
He has mega-colon so I need to treat him with lactulose to keep his stool soft enough for him to pass on his own. It's a fine balance though, too soft result in unpleasant messes to clean up.
wikipedia distinguishes between euthanasia and animal euthanasia, that's why I was wondering if it is appropriate to use it without "animal" on a site that is dedicated to pets.
I've got 5 chickens who all live in a pen that is being attacked by rats! The rats keep burrowing under the walls of the pen and it would be impractical for me to brick it up.
What's the best way to keep them out without harming the chickens?
To repeat an argument I made in the proposal discussion: why is "how do I do x for my goat?" fundamentally different from "I love my goat, Mark, and he's a part of the family. Yet recently I have found that I need to do x for Mark... how should I do that?"
I like Skippy's definition: "I believe that any animal or group of animals that a human being has an interactive personal relationship with could be considered a pet."
Doh, after all this time, I just figured out how the rep score gets listed on the user board... All time is your overall score, anything else is your score less the starting 101 that gets you past the limits.
Opinion, yes, a lot of behavior questions are opinion. Even the one you asked is opinion oriented. What all of us are trying to do is crowd source the ideas because it's not like the animals can speak up.
I guess you can get some objective answers there having some common points. Well, you can undelete the question again flagging for the mod's attention.
No, it's okay, I'll leave it. It may be better to do it by animal anyways. I just wanted to point out that opinion questions aren't always a problem and there is going to be a lot with site.
@Mistu4u I don't necessarily have an issue with buying suggestions (although I would be very careful about how any we might allow would be phrased), so long as they provide sufficient details to work with.
The "what kind of dogs are best for children" question is a good example... I'm still torn on whether I think its a good fit, but the answers seemed adequate
Product buying advice needs to be managed carefully, we get a ton of that on the photography site, but unlike camera gear, stuff for pets tends to stick around longer so not as likely to become dated advice quickly.
E.g. if someone were to answer 'what breed dog should I buy for my kid' with reputable studies on dog bite frequencies against children, by breed, or an analysis of innate behavior tendencies by breed, and how that might correlate into positive or negative experiences for the kids, I would probably consider that a good answer
(of course, there are no reputable studies on dog attack frequencies by breed that I've ever been able to find)
@Mistu4u the majority consider them off-topic, but I believe some allow them. Or perhaps some did allow them, and then decided to change the rules to ban them.
I haven't kept up with any of the sites I recall allowing shopping questions.
We've certainly discussed it at parenting.se many times, and never have quite come to a consensus that they should be allowed, even under heavy regulation.
@Beofett @JohnCavan, that's why I told to undelete the question and then raise a meta to see what the community thinks about it. As the site is now currently taking shape.
If it's decided not to be OT, fine, I will definitely +vote it.
Well, shopping-like questions such as "Are there products to help with situation X..." are probably good. Shopping-like questions like "I was thinking of buying X or Y, what would you pick" are bad. Shelf life of the question and answer is relevant.
especially because shopping questions are prone to carry a heavy subjective load, eg "what is the best $stuff" without describing what the OP considers to be best.
@Mistu4u - No, I'm pretty sold on the question being too broad at this point. Less about opinion oriented really, it wasn't intended as a "shopping" question.
@MonicaCellio - I tend to answer far more than I ever ask on these sites anyways... I usually find the answers to any questions I might already have on the site before I needed it. :)
@JohnCavan I saw a news report not long ago that said that in the US more households have dogs than have cats, but there are more cats/household than dogs/household.
@JohnCavan that's generally true for me too. I haven't been part of a private beta before, and the initial ramp-up is different. Usually I see questions come by and answer the ones I can, and ask less often (except for one site where I ask and answer a lot). But here I'm actively hunting for things to answer now.
@JohnCavan that makes sense. There were also regional differences reported, but I don't recall the details other than that Texas pegged the scale on dogs.
I wasn't really focused on getting that badge. I simply voted on stuff I liked (or disliked in one or two cases)
We already have over 100 questions on the main site. A lot of them are good and deserve the upvotes. On meta it is more about expressing consent, but as meta is the main place to form the site I think participation in the early stage is crucial.
And as I can't express some thoughts on meta due to being non-native I prefer using votes and comments.
Thanks, I know it is readable, but some things on meta are just too hard for me to express correctly (even in German I would probably spend an endless amount of time writing and deleting stuff)
Actually, English is a language that kind of came together from all sorts of sounds. It's been described as the language of Poets because it's almost built to make rhyme easy at the expense of other facilities.
I don't think there really was an original English, it basically formed. Consider that the English nobility spoke French until more modern times.
English is supposedly the hardest language to learn as a second language. Mostly, I think, because of things like "to" "two" and "too" amongst many others. Then there's the noun, slang, and other assorted crazy usage patterns.
I think German is a lot closer to English than many people realize. I found it remarkably easy to figure out what words meant when I was wandering about Lahr years ago. I do okay with French/Italian too, but that's mostly a result of taking French lessons in school.
The biggest thing people complain about when learning German are the articles. I can't understand why that should be so hard, to me it sounds logical to simply learn each noun as a unit that always comes with that article.
I can't speak french, but I can pronounce it a lot better than most (german) people who actually speak it. When it comes to Italian… well, I wont starve to death
I had Latin lessons in school. I never really managed to learn anything about that language, but I learned a lot about the theory behind other languages.