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Ben
12:29 AM
I was on the radio!
First time, and was pretty fun :D
 
Not sure if y'all care, but there are downvoted closed questions which haven't been cleaned up by the Roomba, despite their age, since they are locked. Here's the search to get them. Might want to unlock so they can be deleted, since they're not adding anything of value... Just noticed when I was reading through old posts.
 
Ben
I don't believe there is any kind of "clean up" really, these kinds of questions can be useful as a reference. "Things not to ask". They do show up in the "similar questions" lists so people can see that not only has it been asked before, but it was also closed.
 
The lock message doesn't make much sense; you're not currently resolving disputes about those questions' content. Anyways. Not trying to tell you how to moderate your site.
 
Ben
Yeah, I mean, as a user moderated site, the "rules" are not exactly followed to the letter, in regards to timeframes, etc. For example if such a question was unlocked, the arguments might start up again, which isn't something we exactly want or need.
It's not like theres a limit on how many posts can be locked at any given time XD
 
1:28 AM
9
Q: Giving NPC Priests Turn Undead

KirtLast night the party was adventuring in Curse of Strahd. In the previous session they had acquired the module-specific magic item and given it to an NPC accompanying them, In last night's session the NPC was able to attune to the item, unlocking among its other powers the ability Bane of the U...

 
@bobble Maybe bring it to Meta?
 
I'm not a user here, though. Just a passerby
 
1:45 AM
@bobble You could become a user.
 
Ben
One of us... One of us...
XD
 
This is true. RPG.SE and main-meta are the only other sites I would consider making accounts for. Though I'm pretty swamped helping to moderate two sites as it is.
 
2:01 AM
@Someone_Evil @V2Blast @Rubiksmoose @linksassin see suggestion from bobble, starting about fifteen lines up.
(ugh, another time that pushing the TL chatbots across chat would have been nice... "rpg mods: see message fifteen up")
 
hey there @Powerdork -- did you see my remark in discord?
 
@Ben congrats? What was the occasion?
 
Ben
Publicity for our family-started local Archery Club :)
 
Nice.
 
@bobble Cheers, I don't see a reason to keep either of those two
 
2:18 AM
3
Q: Does this magic item require that you already have the ability to use the feature that it modifies?

KirtLast night the party was adventuring in Curse of Strahd. In the previous session they had acquired the module-specific magic item This item can be attuned to by a good creature. In last night's session an NPC was able to attune to the item, unlocking its powers (emphasis mine): Augury. You can...

 
2:37 AM
@Someone_Evil :) glad to be of use.
 
Sometimes being a DM is just fun. the party had this cinematic fight with two water elemental myrmidons that ebbed and flowed, with prisoners grasped and freed, novel applications of cantrips such as shape water, much trash talking in Aquan by a few PCs and the elementals, numerous unpredictable choices. This is why we DM. A total of 15 grapple/athletics checks (to include a few shoves and knocked prones) since possession of the escorted prisoner was a key objective.
 
 
1 hour later…
3:59 AM
4
Q: Does a Firbolg lose their invisibility granted by hidden step if their summon makes attacks or deals damage?

Gerson LopezHidden step states: As a bonus action, you can magically turn invisible until the start of your next turn or until you attack, make a damage roll, or force someone to make a saving throw. Once you use this trait, you can't use it again until you finish a short or long rest. My question is: if ...

 
@Shalvenay yes but I'm not in a position to offer any system mastery
 
 
4 hours later…
7:46 AM
4
Q: Should casting Confusion centered on yourself from Wild Magic Surge be trivial to end because it's a concentration spell?

DqwertyCThe entry for a roll of 13 or 14 on the Wild Magic Surge table is: You cast confusion centered on yourself. (PHB, emphasis mine) Confusion is a 4th level concentration spell. The rules for concentration state that: If a spell must be maintained with concentration, that fact appears in its Dura...

 
 
4 hours later…
11:34 AM
I'm trying to make informal writing a thing on ELU, and I'm getting pushback already
0
Q: What do multiple commas mean, in informal writing?

PureferretI've just watched a video about Informal Texting, by 'Melissa and Friends'. It mentioned multiple ways informal writing can be informed and altered by use of punctuation, emoji and similar changes. One change that went unexplained is the use of multiple commas. youtube is down,, i am free It l...

Does anyone here use the double/triple comma?
 
not really
 
no, and I would be thoroughly bemused by it
 
I'm a terrible punctuation goblin
2
 
@trogdor maybe you can take it up
@Carcer same, thus my question
 
I'm not a prescriptivist about english language except for when I don't understand the usage
 
11:37 AM
@AncientSwordRage I repeat the previous thing I said
XD
 
@AncientSwordRage Yes, when one of the parameters in a list is meant to be empty, but this would likely cause a breakdown if used in communicating to a human . . .
 
@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica some humans seem to have adapted to understand
 
@AncientSwordRage yes, i do, and i'm now struggling to articulate why and when
it's always in a joking context for a start
 
11:55 AM
A difficulty in pinning down that kind of usage, is that it’s gonna vary across groups.
 
I think it's worth understanding
 
You’re gonna see different “dialects” of punctuation, especially with something like using commas where periods would be formally used, because that replacement is a natural result of the QWERTY keyboard.
 
That's true
 
So multiple groups are going to evolve that particular application independently, and apply their own contexts and needs to its use.
Which means it may not be a great question for the Stack, because you either get multiple equally right but equally incomplete answers, or an answer that is trying to summarize a PhD thesis.
 
I assumed it was just a common typo.
 
12:00 PM
I’ve definitely seen it used as a dialect choice.
 
@BESW I mean, is a question about how eyes work a bad fit for biology.se because that body part has evolved independently on separate occasions?
 
Maybe it started life as a typo and then some people saw it and thought it was deliberate, presumably taking the supposed meaning from the context, and started using it. I could see how that might happen.
 
Often in conjunction with comma-instead-of-full-stop and a particular kind of keyboard smash, in people that I think share dialectic roots in a subset of queer social media spaces.
 
Is that "queer" in the technical sense, or "queer" in the sense of strange?
 
@A.B. I don't think "technical" is what you're after there, as the "technical" sense of the word queer is probably highly dependent on the context in which it is used.
 
12:04 PM
I suspect it evolved as an analogy of the ellipsis
 
@AncientSwordRage Potentially! This is one reason “actionable solutions to practical problems” is such an important part of the Stack’s praxis. Stacks which drift into topics that don’t fit that model, get weird.
@A.B. Queer as in LGBTQ(2IA+).
 
I think both of those questions cross both good subjective and good list questions
 
@ThomasMarkov I was just using it semi-facetiously because it covers such a wide range of things currently that I didn't know what word to use to indicate them quickly! I meant the range of things that starts with gay and goes on from there!
@BESW Yep. (And I'd forgotten that acronym).
(What the heck is "2I" for? I don't recognise that bit.)
 
@A.B. it's for two-spirit and intersex
 
Two-Spirit is a recognition of a variety of Indigenous third-gender identities, and—yes, intersex.
 
12:08 PM
Oh, I see, the 2 is one initial and the I is another.
 
Sometimes it’s 2sI... there’s not a lot of standardization, for obvious and good reasons.
But yeah, different online spaces evolve their own dialects. ~he said playfully~
 
@BESW Let me check my guide on that....
Ah, whimsy (for some value of whimsy, YMMV)
 
I picked up ~<>~ in the early 2000s from theatre/online roleplay spaces, not as an indicator of tone but as an indicator of speaking in or out of character. Each personality in an RP space would be assigned their own set of symbols that bracketed their speech, and a separate set of symbols would be used to indicate that the IRL person was speaking as themself.
 
@BESW that's interesting
 
The variant I learned evolved in text message chats without automatic markdown like * becoming italics; as text-based spaces developed those features, the dialect either changed so that italic text carried the meaning which bracketing asterisks did before, or it changed to use more and more obscure symbols which would not be converted to rich text. So you’d wind up with spaces where instead of ~<>~, a character’s speech would be indicated by ~#!<>!#~.
 
12:18 PM
See, I've played in lots of online roleplay things and I've never seen that, mostly I've just seen (()) for OOC or sometimes asterisks for stage directions. It goes to show.
 
You’ll see people in this chat still using asterisks to indicate narrative voice; and you’ll see that I use brackets to do so.
 
everything different.
 
[grin]
 
@BESW /me agrees
 
@AncientSwordRage Exactly. Similar meaning, different dialect.
 
12:19 PM
Yes, I'm always using asterisks for that and then getting them turned into italics, and thinking "doesn't matter, that also means stage directions".
And, yes, also absent-mindedly typing "/me" in chats that don't automatically turn them into italics.
Does anyone else say bean?
 
(My first exposure to online roleplay conventions were in AIM and LJ, but by then they’d already been through several interface-based evolutions.)
As in “human bean”? I know it as a reference to the Mary Norton novels.
 
Oh, I love those!
 
Regarding ,,, I see it used most often by my friends, along with , at the end of sentences and other similar punctuation, to indicate nuances of speech that are hard to communicate with formal text.
Similar to how some online spaces consider ending a sentence with a full stop to be aggressive or rude.
 
Really? Now that I hadn't seen.
No, just an absent-minded train of thought after you said something about dialects in queer groups. I used to be in this role-playing chat, mostly teenagers, mostly queer in some way or other, and they had a lot of slang I've never seen anywhere else, such as when they thought a character was cute they'd call them "My precious bean" or something like that.
 
Yup. More common in spaces younger than myself and my friends, and often in intersections of platform and demographic that use thumbs to type more than they use keyboards
 
12:26 PM
@BESW yup
 
(If it takes extra effort to use a particular symbol, that symbol will acquire greater meaning.)
@A.B. I have a friend who might know a little about the provenance of that. I could only guess.
(It’s also important, I think, to remember that queerness in online spaces is usually modified by other demographics like class, race, or ability; in part because they are often groups of mutual support for shared challenges, but also because the platforms and contact points which bring people together are always modified by those sorts of things.)
eg, the Stack’s choice of interface support selects against demographics that only use mobile OSes, which selects strongly along, for example, class lines.
 
I don't even know what that means, but yes, I have no idea whether most of the slang they used was a queer thing, or, say, an anime-fan thing, or anything else.
Good point about the unintended effect of the Stack interface. Always interesting to spot things like that!
 
@BESW That might be part of the reason why ELU doesn't seem to like the question?
 
(I’ll always remember the time multiple rpg.se users were belligerently unable to believe that an asker genuinely had access to a phone 24/7 but only had access to the Internet for a few hours a month.)
 
@BESW that's something I can believe with relatives outside of the EU and America, but not something I think I'd be aware of otherwise
Or should I say western europe?
 
12:34 PM
I don’t remember if the asker specified their location but I’m familiar with the phenomenon right here: people may have a phone, but limited data plans that they have to share with an extended family.
 
I actually don't even use a data plan
I add through like prepaid cards and stuff because I just don't use my phone enough to justify a plan
 
(I’ve also seen people be really rude about homeless people who post on social media; you get a cheap phone and prepaid minutes to get callbacks from prospective employers, and then you can go sit in a public WiFi area.)
 
in fact I haven't used my phone almost at all for the last year and a half
 
I’ve been using my data plan as a hotspot for my mom’s distance-learning classes when our main internet connection dies.
 
@BESW I try and catch myself before I make those judgements but I'm sure I still do that on occasion
 
12:38 PM
(That RP chat I was mentioning used to have a constant background of "Halp I'm out of data can we finish this tomorrow?" :-D)
 
I have, in my extended family, what I'd consider a small data plan, and I keep being told to increase the amount
 
@A.B. This is a very common thing here! Our community development programs are trying to figure out how to provide mobile hotspots or sponsored phones with data plans to program coordinators who don’t have the money or infrastructure to attend online meetings on their own.
I count myself lucky because I locked myself into a two-year contract for a very nice plan that no longer exists.
 
@BESW when does it expire?
 
I’ve got a bit more than a year left.
(Unlimited data but only the first couple gigs per month is fast; “unlimited data” at any speed is almost impossible to get here, and certainly not for $35/mo.)
 
@BESW Phew
 
12:44 PM
@AncientSwordRage yes, it's a fusion comma/ellipsis, and its use definitely implies the sentence is not actually serious. i don't get why it's so effective but it is.
 
Yeah, they did one of those “we’ll give you a free phone if you sign a two-year contract” deals and I was like “...I love my independently bought phone but my mother needs a new phone and I’d love you to promise to keep letting me use this plan for two years. Thanks!”
 
@BESW I've literally had arguments about who has which phone and which sim, and how getting a new contract effects 3-4 people
 
Yeah, it can get wild.
 
In the UK, at least with my supplier it seems to be 3 years minimum
 
I spent two months on the phone and going from shop to shop asking different people the same questions before I picked my plan, because everybody told me something a little different or was just parroting the advertising material instead of knowing what was really up.
 
12:46 PM
@BESW I hate that
@doppelgreener it's bizarre that the video was the first time I'd seen it used but I got it straight away
 
@AncientSwordRage there you go :D
 
My first cell phone, we nearly got saddled with phones that wouldn’t get a signal in our area, because the salespeople neglected to mention that there was different coverage for different phones. The coverage overlapped in the densely populated areas but we live in the rural area that was completely uncovered by one of the types.
 
same here though, i never saw it, then i saw it, then i got it
 
1:16 PM
@BESW yikes
I just had a meeting END EARLY.
I'm shocked I tell you, shocked
 
@AncientSwordRage Did everyone just keep standing around looking at each other?
 
1:34 PM
Good morning.... 🥱
And no that emoji is not a cannibal emoji
 
@NautArch it was a telephone meeting where everyone but the host was muted
 
2:05 PM
3
Q: Grease spell: Can a creature with 10 strength or more jump over the greased area?

Guillaume F.The spell Grease does the following: Slick grease covers the ground in a 10-foot square centered on a point within range and turns it into difficult terrain for the duration. A creature that enters the area or ends its turn there must also succeed on a Dexterity saving throw or fall prone. Sinc...

 
2:20 PM
@KorvinStarmast i'm genuinely really happy about this. diamond moderators have been asking for it for like a year and a half
 
@doppelgreener The addition of the tabs on the left margin, or the free access to Teams?
 
There is a Teams Q&A set up for diamond moderation, but Teams used to only appear in the sidebar if you're on Stack Overflow. So only Stack Overflow mods would really remember the team existed, or be meaningfully informed about new activity, or so on. So the moderation team Q&A was kind of inevitably only really used by Stack Overflow moderators and anyone who actually made a point of regularly going there.
Safe to say, having a network-wide operation (the moderator team) have its activity overwhelmingly come from the moderators of just one site does not make for a good moderation Q&A.
 
@doppelgreener Aha, never seen that from the mod side. Looks like a nice quality of life upgrade for diamond mods on all of the SE sites. Thanks for the insight.
 
absolutely! you're welcome
 
2:42 PM
@Glazius emoji are very safe to use here. it helps to check a site for emojipedia to make sure it'll appear the way you want on most platforms: emojipedia.org/plus
(only Apple, Google, Samsung, and Microsoft are really relevant for our purposes)
@Upper_Case That's a very impressive meta answer you wrote yesterday. Great work.
 
 
1 hour later…
3:54 PM
i suppose the "girlfriend from canada" trope has an entirely different connotation/meaning in this halfling culture
2
 
4:07 PM
Every halfling village has an all girls school attended by halfling girls birthed through adolescent boys' insistence that they do have a girlfriend, she just goes to another school.
 
4:21 PM
@Yuuki If anything it's even sadder? You're trying to convince people to not only believe in your girlfriend from Canada but pass it around to their friends, and if she actually shows up one day there's no guarantee she even likes you, it's just someone you could have deluded yourself into thinking was your girlfriend.
 
4:33 PM
Do the Smurfs count as halfling? So... it wasn't Gargamel who made Smurfette out of a block of clay?
 
4:54 PM
Question, since I already did it, this answer answers the question, but about the halfling racial trait that is also called Lucky, when the question is about the Feat called Lucky, so flagging NAA is the right call?
 
@Yuuki I LOVE THIS SO MUCH
 
@ThomasMarkov I don't think it's a flag yet. Just comment about asking them to update or they should consider removing because it isn't applicable.
Give them time to fix it themselves first.
I put a comment up.
 
I also improved the accepted answer to include the sac question and added a note in the question that it isnt about the halfling trait
 
5:18 PM
I'm not sure that answer should be deleted. It's wrong, but that's it.
 
In its current form it isn't an answer.
 
> goblin soup
 
If you ask a question about the Rogue's sneak attack feature, and I write an answer about the Bard's psychic blades feature, that isn't an answer.
 
Well, it seems like they tried to answer it using that.
They even said they tried, so I'm not sure it's delete-worthy. Not sure what a worse first experience is, deletion or downvotes.
@KorvinStarmast That edit kept it in line with the original. I considered specifying where they didn't to poison/poisoned, but that felt it was an overreach beyond their question.
But if you look in the history, they weren't specific, and I didn't want to change their question fundamentally.
 
6:12 PM
@NautArch yeah, it did need some attention.
 
@ThomasMarkov That made me laugh
 
@Medix2 Surely there is a dupe there somewhere
I propose that this is a dupe target: rpg.stackexchange.com/q/67501/62294
 
Well, this one of all things is closed
 
as a dupe of the linked above
 
But I agree with that proposal
 
6:17 PM
which I think is correct
10-4 gonna hammer it
 
You can vote to close it yourself and it doesn't hammer??
 
well nvm then guess im not gonna hammer it
hmmmmmmm i have a question about site mechanics
 
Oh?
 
Suppose a question was tagged [dnd-5e][spells]
 
Is this about the gold-badge tag-edit non-hammer case?
 
6:20 PM
I dupe hammer it to a question with the same tags
I have both hammer
side note omg I just discovered something totally amazing.
You can edit your last message by pressing the up arrow key.
 
Oh, which gold-badge one is displayed?
 
@Medix2 Yes, that's the first question
 
Easily tested
I just can't test it XD
 
We can add the [spells] tag (which is probably legit anyway) to the recent dupe and target
Then you reopen and I hammer it
 
If you want to test it I have this question but it also has two close votes rn for unknown reasons...
Oh or that
 
6:23 PM
Wanna try it?
 
Yeah, just don't edit the tag yourself, let me do that
 
@ThomasMarkov Worth noting that you can't hammer a question if you're the one who added the tag that you have a gold badge in to the question.
 
Okay you're good to hammer
 
gotta add [spells] to the target: rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/67501/…
dont know if you have to do that or not
 
6:25 PM
OH
Done now
 
okay, so it took dnd-5e
 
And now we get to wonder whether it was alphabetical or uses-based
 
Probably uses.
Here's the next question.
Suppose I removed dnd-5e and closed it with [spells]
 
Wait, the gold tag only works if the dupe target has the same tag?
 
@Medix2 Yeah, isnt that sorta the point?
 
6:27 PM
That's a good point... makes it so you'd usually only hammer using necessary tags
 
Anyway, suppose I hammered the question for [spells] then added [dnd-5e] back to it. Could you unhammer it then?
 
I believe yes, there's a Meta on that I think..
The rules are:

There has to be a tag on the post currently in which you have a gold badge.

You can't have been the first person to add that tag to the post (or have participated in adding it the first time)
It seems like the only blocking of hammer votes are when the hammer-er edits the tags
But now I wonder whether you can hammer something, add a tag you have another gold badge in, and then unhammer
this answer seems to imply that you could
 
6:55 PM
Is there a SE approved mechanic for asking follow-up questions? Something more involved than the comments?
 
give us more details in here and we can point you in the right direction
 
Found an answer to a question, to which I posted a follow-up question. Got an excellent answer to that, which has lead me down the rabbit hole to wanting input on my implementation of THAT question, but extended discussion in the comments seems unwieldy and ill-advised.
Is it considered bad form to then post yet another question?
Or am I overthinking this? :D
 
is this about KRyan's homebrew?
 
Yessir
Just curious about Stack etiquette on drilling down on a topic
 
7:39 PM
Probably fine, though Im not familiar with the system so Im probably not the one to tell you. Id say just ask it and let the community workshop it in comments.
 
7:55 PM
Is mediocrely the proper adverb for mediocre?
 
Anyone know what's going on in the comments here: english.stackexchange.com/questions/562979/…
 
8:29 PM
@AncientSwordRage Yes, I suspect that I do. But IMO the root problem in the comment thread is that unlike RPGSE, the urge to move the extended discussion to chat has not been acted on due to how undisciplined that SE is about comments. Beyond that, the point that a StackWorthy answer to this is both a moving target and hard to support, means that some people would rather close it.
 
@KorvinStarmast I get that last part, I really do.
 
@AncientSwordRage We have a few metas somewhere about "just because it is hard to answer does not mean it is not answerable, if you don't know the answer pass on the question and let someone who does know answer it" -
- but not everyone buys into that ... just as with a few questions here ... or should I have done,,, the three comma thing to soften that? 😋
 
But for some reason one commenter has said "Don't go round editing tags you're invested in" and then "Please drop the thing about tags" Which I genuinely didn't follow
@KorvinStarmast I highly suspected it would get closed as it won't fit the 'preferred' expertise of the community there. It's why we have a separate stack for learners.
 
@AncientSwordRage They were not interested in a conversation about the tag, but were I think passing along a best practice in their own voice and style. That's what I got from that. Might be wrong, my mind reading isn't the best skill ever ...
 
@KorvinStarmast then why bring it up without explaining what I'd actually done...?
 
8:33 PM
@AncientSwordRage I am the wrong person to ask about that, since my 'gut' answer might get me banned, or suspended yet again. 🤣 😯
And it would be speculation anyway
FWIW, I stopped visiting that stack not long after I signed up for it.
 
@KorvinStarmast I can't stay away for some reason
 
NGL, we have literally the best stack on the network.
2
 
@ThomasMarkov As a mod for a different site, I feel like I can't comment...but .... sigh
 
@ThomasMarkov FWIW, I feel that ours is the best stack regarding comments discipline. My two cents.
 
The reason is, and I've given it some thought, that the hobby is collaborative so the community is as well
 
8:48 PM
One of my favorite stacks, in terms of topic, is a dumpster fire for comments discipline (AviationSE)
 
@KorvinStarmast I get irrationally annoyed when I see answers in comments on other stacks.
 
@ThomasMarkov You are not alone; I am in the same boat. (I got to be a bit of a nag over at Christianity SE about that, and NigelJ has given me some feedback on how annoying that is for some. But I keep doing it when I see it)
 
9:07 PM
@JoeNapalm You're overthinking this. Make each question detailed and focused enough to be standalone, then include a courtesy oh-by-the-way link to any previous question(s) for more context.
 
@ThomasMarkov exact same
 
@ThomasMarkov Why do you consider that to be irrational?
 
@JoelHarmon it’s rational to get annoyed. The level of annoyance I experience is probably irrational.
 
10:03 PM
4
Q: Are there any ways to increase the number of items I can attune to without being an Artificer?

Thomas MarkovThe problem is quite simple: I want to attune to four or more magical items at once, and I don't want to take ten levels in Artificer (the rules for attunement permit a maximum of three attuned items). Are there any features, items, etc. that increase the number of items you can attune to without...

 

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