« first day (2788 days earlier)      last day (1363 days later) » 

01:50
Before going to bed, I want to thank all of the following people: AllisonC, bobble, C. Koca, CaldeiraG, Elmy, Journeyman Geek, Mast, motosubatsu, Nai45, Sarov, SerenaT, Stephie, and Talk is Cheap Show me Code - in other words, all of you who participated in our Litter Box channel in the last 24 h during which we had over 700 messages. It was the most active that I have ever seen this chat has ever been, and it is all of you who made it possible. Love you all! ;3
3
 
2 hours later…
03:29
@lila Regarding our discussion on "pushing" a user, I have a simple answer that I just realized. You want to vote based on the quality and accuracy of a post, not the markdown, not the user behind it, not why they posted it, etc... For example, if the post was good, giving them an upvte is fine, but if not, you should not upvte for the sake of increasing their reputation. Your example about a small beta site is tricky, ideally, you should matain v*ting for the post and not...
2
...the context or the user, but some situations require unique action. In that example, it would probably still be illegal, or at least frowned upon, but you could probably get away with it. There really is no way to detect you reasoning behind an upvote, but voting multiple times on the same user with the intent of boosting their rep in a short time period will be detected by the serial voting machine. Ethically, it might not be the best idea, but if it is truly going to help the site...
...I would support it. Finally, even if the "pusher" has only gave 18% of the users rep to them, I still see it as abusing the system (unless there is a special case like you pointed out), rep requires hard work, and that is why it is hard to have a lot of it, but rewarding when you unlock privileges. If you just unlock those privileges, they do not get the experience of hard work and could be less experienced with the privileges. This can lead to poor moderation.... anyway, I don't think...
...that in any regular situation that "pushing" would be acceptable. You also say that simply acknowledging that upvoting a user's post will get them over a threshold is fine, unless your sole intent of upvoting is to get them over the threshold. The threshold crossing should be a byproduct of their good post and you noticing and upvoting.
@lila And also, the chat room has reached 2k stars over the last week, we used to have 1.9k, but we must have starred a lot as a result of such amounts of activity. Well done everyone! :D
@lila Also you can probably remove Britanny Renyolds from the explicit access thingie that lets you talk in chat without sufficient rep, they now have 20 rep, which means they don't need and the special access thingie.
 
3 hours later…
06:27
@lila it was this video: youtu.be/bkQ0RFTHvIo. The part about milk starts at around 08:00
@lila pfft. I am the second chattiest organic entity on the network :D
 
6 hours later…
12:34
hi
@lila afternoon
13:05
Urgh, today is one of those "Platy pregnant?" days... pets.stackexchange.com/q/31462/12501 Sometimes I wish to answer those people with "How should WE know???". That's like asking "why did my dog die? He just dropped and stopped breathing". (Sorry for ranting, thank you for reading, I feel marginally better now)
@lila "about the joke please if you do not get the reference"?
@lila Ahh, the perils of stardom.
13:24
@C.Koca The SciFi SE is kind of brutal for trying to get reputation. Almost all of mine came from a bounty when I identified an obscure mid-80s children's show
@Nai45 She already said why she was doing it though. :P
13:47
@Nai45 "If you just unlock those privileges, they do not get the experience of hard work and could be less experienced with the privileges." - Yes, this, exactly. This is the primary reason I was unnerved by a user's "I want to hurry and get X rep so I can help the site more!".
@Nai45 "Congratulations on reaching 20 rep! You are no longer special."
2
14:17
@Sarov One of the hens in small village watched a few mobster movies and wanted to join mafia. The other hens in the village were laughing at her; she left the village and went to big city where mafia operates and started hanging out with suspicious company, then started asking them about mafia and joining the mafia. Anytime the hen asked, she got the response "there is no mafia". After initial enthusiasm, the disappointment grew more and more and the hen finally resigned and acc*pted the ...
Good morning
@Sarov ... apparent fact that there, indeed, is no mafia. The hen returned to her village and all the hens asked her mockingly how was it in the big city and, most importantly, did she join mafia? She flat-out responded: "there is no mafia". And that was the moment that all the other hens started to fear and respect her.
@Elmy big thanks!
14:31
...Hens? Like, chickens?
14:47
@Nai45 Big thanks for your insight and elaborate response. However, I have not ever noticed that invasion of users who accumulated a lot of reputation over a short period and started disrupting the site via misusing moderation tools was existing problem on Pets SE. I rather noticed quite the opposite: not enough people above certain thresholds of important privileges and insufficient community moderation. Arguably, first posts by new ...
@Nai45 ... users which occasionally hit the jackpot via getting into HNQ and earning them a lot of upv*tes is more disproportionate, but nonetheless normalized and acceptable form of "pushing" that happens on a regular basis in the whole network; to have similar effect with bounties, I would have to give giant bounty to a new user with 1 reputation to ...
@Nai45 ... reach similar results, while the lowest in terms of reputation the recipient of my bounties ever has been was already as high as over 1000 points, with the mean value of reputation score of all of my bounty recipients being as high as around 8000.
@Sarov yes
@Nai45 user removed
15:34
Oh by the way, don't you think that the name of the chat room for moderators, "Teachers' Lounge", sounds a bit... pretentious?
15:48
@lila Wait what. I'd heard of it but always assumed it was the chat room for the Academia SE.
@Sarov no, academia se has "The Ivory Tower"
> Moderator. Noun. Physics - a substance used in a nuclear reactor to retard neutrons.
2
Clearly it should be named 'Retard Room'! (I'm kidding please don't hate me.)
3
@Sarov hahahaha, no I do not hate you for this, quite the opposite :D :D :D never change, Sarov, please never change :D
@lila A little bit... I think it is intended to as well, maybe an inside joke between the original moderators? Or they just wanted to strike fear into the regular users... :D
@Nai45 Haha maybe, maybe someone mistook fear for respect? Real life teachers (where I live at least) are mostly high-horsed and pretentious, and are one of the most privileged and spoilt social classes who are constantly complaining about how supposedly "thankless" their job is (no, it is not). I do not want to identify with them and I think moderators are better than that.
15:58
@lila this was discussed on meta
@lila That's highly cultural. Some places are like that, some places teachers are low social class, some places they're almost (or even) considered holy.
@lila yes, maybe. I don't know about your teachers, but here in the US teachers are horrendously underpaid, so slightly different for me, but I see what you're saying.
@JourneymanGeek Now I'm curious. Y'have link?
-21
Q: Rename the Teachers' Lounge

Robert ColumbiaI've always found the name of the Teachers' Lounge to be mildly condescending, as if those who inhabit it see themselves as holding a superior position over the common users. This isn't what was originally envisioned with moderators being "human exception handlers", but a system in which moderato...

2
Was looking it up. :D
Danke.
16:00
Ignore my answer. Its silly
and its vaguely in the same vein of humour that called this room after a cat toilet
2
A more close resembling job would be specialized personnel that deals with hazmat utilization, or garbage collector which people are more familiar with. If all garbage collectors stopped working all at once, we would literally drown in filth after a month at most. One of the most thankless jobs in the world.
Well - at times, It reminds me of a the sort of parliment where chairs are thrown :D
@JourneymanGeek big thanks! no, your answer has a clear tone of being playful and flippant, but in non-arrogant way; I like it! Only answer I do not like is the -4 one. "Sin City sounds cool, but may offend some" oh really, who and how might it offend? :/
@lila religious folks I guess
@lila I got most of the arrogant know-it-all out of my system in my 20s. :D
16:09
@JourneymanGeek and good for you, currently I cannot really recall any instance of you ever being arrogant at all, and take in mind that I am reading TL sometimes
@Nai45 oh ok
oh and by they way, this question may have -21 score, but I totally totally whole agree with it; yes, the name is pretentious and condescending. it does not offend me (I have actually never been offended by anything on SE), I am just stating how it is in my opinion.
@lila I don't think any of the mods have been opposed to it in general + its just a name
16:41
@lila I actually disagree with the "You're never going to see it until you become a mod" part of it, though. To illustrate via ridiculous extreme, imagine if the room were called 'Room for mods, who are better than the stupid worthless non-mod users'. Is it okay to name the room that, just because only mods see it? It's kinda like saying "Hate speech is fine as long as you only ever say it to people who agree with you", from a 'as long as we keep it hidden, it's fine' perspective.
Agree with Mod Squad though.
@Sarov there's some stuff we end up needing to discuss that's not really for public consumption
Occationally inter-site moderation issues and so on
No one would see/know the name other than, well it was kinda the center of the drama going on
IIRC someone even leaked transcript, but I could be getting confused with another event
@JourneymanGeek Plus moderators. Which is my point. If we accept the 'the name implies condescension' premise, then my point is that the fact that the name isn't visible to non-mods is irrelevant. Mods, being exposed to the condescending name, would be subconsciously encouraged to behave in a condescending manner to non-mods.
(That's if we accept the premise, mind you)
@Sarov Possibly
But frankly
A WHOLE ROOM FULL OF MODS?
:D
16:48
...That should be the name. Including the ?. Better even with a !? instead.
.... if you're going to do it, might as well go with an interrobang ⁉
.....⁉!?
More seriously - Moderation attracts certain personalities, depending on the site
Oh?
This sounds like a fun discussion.
and while 99% of the time, things work out - when there's problems, there's a lot of "who watches the watchers"
17:00
What kind of "certain personalities"?
@Sarov Well - on bigger sites, there's the folks who're basically trying to do as much curation and flag handling as possible, the "face" people, the stubborn ones who're useful as a backstop in a crisis... simply because they'll do what they feel's the right thing, even if people are going to temporarily hate them for it
And mods often are stubborn/strong willed types
@Sarov *Retardant :D
@Sarov Great argument, it is a valid concern as evidenced by Stanford prison experiment.
@lila Oh, good analogy. I didn't think of it but you're right.
@JourneymanGeek Wonder which I would be... probably the stubborn one.
@Sarov or a mix of em
Stubbornness is useful to a point
@JourneymanGeek No! Stubbornness is always useful! And you will never convince me otherwise!!! >:D
17:11
@Sarov You can be wrong
Or you can be over your head
Me? Wrong? Unpossible.
Or literally tell someone "I can't deal with this right now" and take a break
@Sarov Unpossible?
@Nai45 (It was a joke. A self-defeating statement. Like saying "I never spell enything wrong.")
@Sarov Sure it was <insert sarcasm here. And after looking up "unpossible" , you get a definition for it, so apparently you were right all along.
17:17
@JourneymanGeek Oh it is not really that obvious whether it is the case, even though it may seem like this; as evidenced by Standford prison experiment in which the roles were randomly chosen, certain roles, and especially those of authority, tend to facilitate growth of certain personality trails. Without the context that they were random, it may seem to be a totally valid observation that the prison guard role attracted violent and abusive people.
@Nai45 Eh, maybe. Though I generally speak only Canadian English, so the argument could still be made that it wasn't a valid word in context.
Hello Cid Lough and welcome to Pets chat!
@user424479 hi Cid welcome to Litter Box channel.
@lila So... Becoming a mod makes you a stubborn, overworking face. Terrifying.
@lila I believe there username is Cid Lough but they lack rep, please grant them the special access thingie
17:19
ok
@lila Depending on how you see it
@user424479 hi you can talk in chat now
thanks for the welcome! just popping in here to see what The Litter Box is all about :)
2
@Sarov in a way yes, you are correct, but it just facilitates growth of traits that were already there. but we all have certain "feral" part of psyche that some people are not aware of, and which civilization "rejects" or "disragards", and facing that fact is uncomfortable, so we don't tend to think about it.
@user424479 Hello. It's about 30% pets discussion, 10% pet pictures, 20% moderation discussion, and 40% miscellaneous topics like astrophysics, ethics, and whether or not Lila is a blonde bot.
2
17:24
@user424479 it used to be general chat channel for things related to pets, but recently, people decided that unrelated things are okay as long as we mention subjects related to pets once a month :D
@lila I never know whether to refer to you as Lila or lila.
And chat room's name is meant to subtly imply that as long as the quality of chat messages is equal to or higher that of cat turds, it is enough (so that people won't stress too much about trying too hard)
Oh is that why.
So does that make the room mods the litter?
@Sarov :D
@lila Way to not answer my implied question. :P
17:28
@Sarov I don't know, how should you?
@Sarov not really, this is my ad-hoc interpretation :D
@Sarov So I'm not the only one with this problem... normally names are capitalized but lila's (or Lila's) is deliberately not capitalized by herself, so you would think that you would go lowercase but then autocorrect goes to Lila, and you double guess yourself and then suddenly you have a 30 minute internal debate with yourself.... I'm a bit of an overthinker, but you get the idea
@Sarov oooh yes, specifically this expensive type that turns blue in contact with moisture
@Nai45 but serious, I totally understand you; a certain user on our site has all lowercase nickname, and the nickname is I assume actually real name and surname! Whenever I am editing someone's post, or writing it myself, I always capitalize both, out of respect (and I really, really respect and like this user).
@lila Let me guess... Trond Hansen (or trond hansen, depending on capitizaltion)?
Right? Normally, I view not-capitalizing someone's name as a show of disrespect. But not using someone's stated username correctly can also be a show of disrespect and it's just auuuurgh.
@Sarov okay serious answer: the awareness that you are wasting your precious mental resources on thinking something like this, and the fact that I am indirectly the cause of it, gives me a sense of sick pleasure and makes me smug :D
@Nai45 Wow I am impressed; I was going to add "bonus question: guess what used I am talking about, winner gets a star from me ;3", but you hit the jackpot before. Really, I am impressed how familiar you are with the site.
17:37
@lila Psychopathic how you think ;)
@Nai45 I KNOW :D
@lila Okay I guess you're Alil from now on then.
@lila hahaha thanks, I have a weird obsession with SE, I guess just a fun hobby, but I have definitely spent way too much time digging through every corner and hallway of the site (such as the user's pages, old questions, meta posts, chat transcripts, etc...)
@lila Though, you assuming they're precious is erroneous. :P
haha okay :D oh hey by the way, you just reminded me of something :D I know a super hyper ultimate way of disrespecting someone is this: let's say the name is Alice or Bob; the trick is reffering to them as bOB and aLICE :D
@Sarov no, it is not, from the perspective of this chat room they are semi-renewable natural resources that must be preserved because what will we do without your witty messages? :/
17:43
@lila Ah yes, I have seen that happen before, lIlA
Random hopefully-amusing conversation:

Alice: "Apparently, someone made a knife out of bismuth."
Me: "What's bizmuth?"
Bob: "It's a metal."
Alice: "It's really pretty... I'm not sure what it can be used for, though."
Me: "Making knives."
Alice: "I mean... yes... but it's not very good at it though."
Me: "I could make a joke but I won't. It's too mean."
Alice: "Go ahead."
Me: "So? We still keep you around."
Charlie: *cracks up*
Alice: *thousand yard stare*
Me: "Hey, you authorized it!"
Alice: "I did. Now I'm officially broken inside."
Haha oh okay :D sorry it completed threw me off focus, because just a hour ago I was checking out one of my favourite channels and the last video is specifically about making bismuth knife (NileBlue) :D
Apparently NileBlue copied the original video that Alice watched.
@Sarov It reminds me of a thing I seen on some forum. It was about exotic and extremely "inconvenient" pets. One person asked via disrespectfully challenging the whole premise, along "why would anyone ever be so dumb to keep such things at home?" and a second person SHATTERED them via responding "I don't know, but some people just have really weird fetishes; your parents, for example, keep you" :D :D :D
...The use of the word 'fetish' there makes that so much worse on so many levels.
17:53
I guess so :D the original was in my native language, but I do not think anything was lost in translation because in Polish the word "fetish" means roughly the same.
...awkward silence...

 The Awkward Silence

Welcome to The Awkward Silence! Here, you can find the general...
._.
@Sarov do not worry please, I will answer your question in some time, but not before teasing you a little; let me enjoy this little bit of Schadenfreude for some time :D
@Sarov okay, maybe now? answer is: I am sorry, my mom forbidden me from telling such private information to strangers on the internet. SORRY MAYBE LATER :D
18:10
@lila Nope, too late; you're Alil now.
@Sarov okay... if the crowd decided, so be it.
18:23
...awkward silence continues...
19:08
Hmm all those discussions about "the Teachers Lounge" made me think that our chat name is not very inclusive... dog people or reptile people or rabbit people might not feel included. Maybe something like "the hairball" or "the flea carpet" would be better XD
I tried to come up with something like the German "eierlegende Wollmilchsau", which translates to "egg laying wooly milk sow", but I'm not aware of anything like that monstrosity in English
I'm starting tag clean up part 1! If someone could pretty please review pets.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/25355 and pets.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/25354, for a tag wiki, that would be great. I will create another meta post asking for feedback in a little bit, as well
19:34
@Nai45 Oh sweet, I just messaged the law enforcement unit and the prosecutor about organized crime of nuisance post bumping in progress. Thanks!
@Elmy Haha I am not sure whether you are aware of this, but this is the actual real scenario about what happened in the early days of this site and Litter Box chat room; people were GENUINELY UPSET about Litter Box being "non-inclus*ve to dog owners" - life writes the most ridiculous stories itself!
Hehe, I always thought it non-inclusive, but then I personally don't feel offended or anything, so it never was a problem for me
I think that if someone is really, genuinely, seriously offended by "Litter Box" being "non-inclusive" to dog owners, then in response I am really, genuinely, seriously scared and disturbed about where the society is going.
@lila Thanks :) Although I do thinking mass bumping posts is a necessary evil.
Hey, the pet world in general caters to the dog owner. They can live with a cat-centric room name :)
@Nai45 No, it is not evil at all; sorry for being unclear about this. My actual opinion is quite the opposite: mass bumping is the way to go, it's people complaining about mass bumping who are necessary evil :D
@Nai45 Please remember that you are talking to habitual serial nuisance bumper (in the old days at least, now I am more careful, but back then I did not know any better) :D
19:48
@lila Um... okay?
@lila Eh, well you can always go to "questions" instead of "home" to view recent questions, not questions+edit bumps if you need to find something. And besides, it will fade away after a few days.
@Nai45 please read again, I was writing too fast an punctuation + omission of a few words made it sound like not what I intended.
@lila Ah okay, thanks for clarification
"Just a little update: I gave a proper description. Please have a look and see if it's easy to understand and as unambiguous as possible." -Elmy the Moderator
^ please see this, I found this in comment of meta post but the way comments work is that nobody got notified about this
Ok, thanks for passing it on, let me take a look @lila
@lila Ok Elmy's description of shelter looks great, I suggested a few grammatical edits, but other than that, looks perfect!
20:10
@Sarov Hey I found the video which contains just the relevant part, without the big air quotes "offensive" content :D look please [I am sorry for having shared this, it was poor taste to share this in our chat room, apologies later in transcript of the chat room]
Will later, giving a presentation atm.
@lila Could you do me a favor and rename to be automatically corrected to ? (making it a synonym of shelter) Thanks
@Sarov Oh perfect! Watch it together with your audience then! :D
@lila Wow, I'm usually a very laid-back and tolerant person, but this is clearly a provocation and seems to be only fishing for negative reactions by the people who are harrased by this VEGAN
@lila No. :P
20:17
how does one add tags?
I really wanted to add behaviour and assign it as tag synonym to behavior
The lack of proper English spellings really vexes me
Ask a question and tag it with behaviour.
Not sure how to mark it as a synonym.
@C.Koca just go to and suggest that behaviour is automatically renamed to behavior
however I think that behavior should be the tag, and behaviour should be automatically renamed to behavior, not the other way around
Ahahaha :)
@Elmy It IS meant to be controversial, but this scene is meant to be sarcastic and hyperbolic, and in the context of full video it is obvious that it is hyperbolic intentionally to be funny; however, it needs specific taste of humor to enjoy videos like this, but for me personally it fits my taste :D
@lila I do understand that it's supposed to be funny, but I personally don't understand this type of joke and don't find it funny. The target of the joke is not the person playing the VEGAN, but a community of people that is represented by a bad stereotype.
20:26
@lila Hey lila, no intent to be naggy but did you get my earlier chat message about shelter and rescue-organizations?
If they painted a black face on someone and send them around shouting "I am BLACK! There's nothing like some slave work" the lashback would utterly RUIN the producer within a single day. But vegans are obviously a valid target and discrimination is ok as long as you target the right people.
@lila Please don't understand that as personal criticism, you are allowed to find it funny and I don't blame you. I blame the people who produce content like that.
@Nai45 I did, sorry I was distracted, now I need to look around a little to find how to do it
@Elmy oh I understand
@lila Just go here and make rescue-organizations a synonym. I would do that myself, but I lack the rep.
@Elmy Just to tell you what I'm doing here, since you made such a good tag description for I think it is best that is made a synonym of as shelter now covers both areas, do you agree?
@Nai45 Yes, that would be my preference, since shelter is more general than rescue organization
@Elmy I'm sorry I see
20:38
@lila I repeat: there's nothing to feel sorry about. You are not responsible for this content and you can like whatever you like. (My das likes watching videos of car crashes for whatever reason. I don't understand how those are funny, either, but he likes them, so I let him watch them). Maybe I'm just a little more sensitive to topics like discrimination and sexism.
@Elmy no, it's okay, do not worry please I am not taking it as personal criticism; and yes, I like some types of degenerate humor and have poor taste of what is appropriate in some settings; and it just got to me that, while I am not responsible for this content, I am responsible for sharing it in this chat and should think before sharing such things next time
@lila Now there's the other side of the coin... If we stop sharing content out of fear that someone will be insulted (where genuinly no insult was intended), then we practically censor ourselves. Someone else could have been offended by the "pretty please with sugar on top" clip, yet we all agreed that it was funny. So please don't stop sharing stuff. I find it much more constructive to speak about it than to hide it away.
2
@Nai45 hey sorry for this taking so long, I tried doing what you said and it shows a panel with some error message, I tried copying the error message to paste it in the chat and the panel disappear as soon as I release the mouse that I was using to mark the text, making it impossible for me to copy the eror mesage
@lila What does the error message say?
@Nai45 It claims that there is already a reverse synonym in proposal. I understand that to mean that someone already proposed a shelter -> rescue organization synonym and now we're trying to create a rescue organization -> shelter synonym.
20:50
@Elmy hmmmm, maybe someone saw my meta post and decided to take action
But there's only 1 proposed synonym that wasn't reviewed and it contains neither of those tags
I am confuzzled (confused+puzzeled), I think it would be best for the shelter to be the tag and rescue-organization to be removed and added as a synonym of shelter, how can we go about doing that?
Sorry I have to leave you alone with this, but I'm too tired to figure this out today. I probably won't have much time this weekend either -.-
@Elmy no problem, if it doesn't work after more effort I will relax and stop until I get enough reputation to do it all, so there aren't extra steps and people involved
I'd personally lean the opposite way. "rescue-organization" is very clear on what it is, where "shelter" could mean either "a rescue organization" or "a protective construct for outdoor pets"
20:55
@Elmy I know, yes you are right, do not worry please I will not stop sharing content with all of you in this chat, but I will think deeper about whether given things are appropriate to share there or not, I am really embarrassed right now, I should "lead by example" and it should be full-time not part-time if you know what I mean, this situation was a big oopsie daisy for me that should not have happened
@AllisonC no but Elmy's new tag description for shelter is very clear about that now, and it is a little bit too late to raise this issue again, there was a meta post in case you missed it.
@Nai45 I did miss it, yes :)
@lila Well, you just failed the Turing Test. Every human makes mistakes. It's our mistakes that make us human. There's no perfect person who never fails, so please don't put yourself under undue pressure. If it's any consolation: I'm not upset anymore, but I cannot forgive you because I never blamed you.
2
21:13
@AllisonC The story identification is the core of the scifi. You have to know scifi in general, not just popular works. I'd say to deserved all your points :)
22:05
@Elmy oh thanks for the kind words, please do not worry because I know you never blamed me, and I am happy you are not upset anymore; I do not really know what do to with the shared video itself, I am thinking about deleting it but also I want to be transparent about not denying what I shared and I do not want to "cover my tracks", please tell me whether I should delete it from the chat or not thanks

« first day (2788 days earlier)      last day (1363 days later) »