@eimyr Sorry for the slow reply - I prefer sites with as few moving parts as possible, personally, so I'd steer clear of that kind of thing, but that's just me.
We have some lack of clarity, I think as to what consists of a "list" question on the site and why they are undesirable, per recent meta Q (Not) closing question for Spells with Concentration vs Spells with Thunder/Lightning Damage. I think it's worth discussing this in a more general manner.
So...
@mxyzplk thanks for pulling together that meta Q; lists have been simmering on my back-brain for a while, since before asking the 5e playable races (which I asked really as a test-balloon, not because I was terribly interested, tbh).
@TheOracle Yeah, could stand some clarification - I am not real fond of these kinds, but we need to be clear if they're closable and why exactly if they are
@mxyzplk Part of my antipathy toward the question that kicked it all of is that it's totally RTFM. There are 4 lightning spells and 6 thunder spells in the PHB, 1 more lightning and 2 more thunder in the Elemental Evil PG. That took me all of 6 minutes to research, including writing this.
@nitsua60 so. we're setting up for a small gang fight -- oh, 15 of them vs 10 of us -- they arrive on the battlefield, we turn up, and they run without firing a shot despite their fleet being a good match for ours in number and composition
(we still managed to pin down and blow up two of them)
@nitsua60 Right and I hate RTFM questions too, but in general people have proven more tolerant of that than I on meta... I think we do owe everyone clarity of yes/no and why because there's various reasonings conflated in here. RTFM != unbounded list != will need frequent updating, etc.
@mxyzplk I'm probably one of those more-tolerant types; I usually draw the line at "do you need to synthesize info from multiple places to get the answer?" That one, though... you just had to read the spells. It's not like there are thousands of them spread across dozens of books.
You're definitely right, though, that there are a couple of problems that often overlap but are wholly distinct.
And the current meta really puts a point on it: people mean different things when they say "list question."
Hmm. Interesting thing from playing Bubblegumshoe last night: there's no obvious "lying" ability. You have to find the ability which describes how you're lying, like Reassurance or Negotiation or Intimidation.
Hello. I have written a question about possible children of Garou and ghouls in VtM, and got an answer. However, even though it has the information I needed, is very speculative, and needs rewriting, or the question itself starts looking as opinion-based. SHould I edit it or post a new answer with the same ideas?
I'd rather give the poster the benefit of the doubt, but there's a history of making that sort of thing personal when they're rebuffed. Not sure what to do--flag?
Left a comment asking why he's specifying non-digital sources.
@Baskakov_Dmitriy Given the comments in the linked question and the focus on mathematically showing that he thinks nitsua60's claim is impossible, I'm getting a strong passive aggressive vibe off the whole thing. "Pretty amazing," indeed.
Well, even if his real goal was attempted revenge, why should it matter? What we have is a question that has a possible answer (a way to quickly make such list). If the answer feels like having unnecessary details, such as mentioning nitsua60 or the previous question, edit it.
Because experience has shown that asking a question with a hidden agenda of any sort results in the querent shifting the goalposts on answerers, wasting everyone's time.
It's important to ask the question you really want an answer to.
If there weren't that "non-digital" caveat I'd probably be more charitable in my interpretation.
But there are at least two legal ways to search for D&D 5e spells digitally, which I (a total 5e neophyte) found quickly by searching our own website.
Well, if an escalator suddenly stops, you (and people around you) are going to be in a bad situation if you have an open cup of a hot drink. I have seen it once in Moscow Metro.
Luckyly, it was just cold water.
And about the question -- let's hope that the author get's the message that one shouldn't use Stackexchange like Twitter. :)
Why is thr big animal in movies alwayd interested in the smaller (moving) prey in movies? This is the same for Jurrasic park, Star wars, Star Trek, etc. Is it something in the animal psychology ("Oh look! Moving thing!") Or is it jusg for the movies?
Also, apologies for the horrendous spelling. I'm on mg phone and I am a wee bit tipsy
And why do they still call aliens (extra-terrestrials) "humanoid"? Isn't that insanely racist??
In all fairness, I do feel a bit to blame: that it only took me 6 minutes was a red herring on the original comment. The speed with which I was able to get the answer is unrelated to downvoting, really. Even if it'd taken me an hour, it's full-on "read the book to me" and requires no expertise. Knowing that to be a belligerent user, I should have thought twice and posted the proper comment: "all you need to do is turn the pages, so shows no research effort."
@Zachiel I never said I pirated it--it's perfectly legal to scan your own copy. It's not "fair use," which US-centric folks often misattribute: it's "doctrine of first use."
@nitsua60 Hey, I was just joking (hence the quoting and the smiley in the end), I'm not saying you pirated it (and I'm not saying that I pirated something)
Sincerely, Mala, even if your intent was not that one, it looked very like so. The attitude that transpires from some of your comments is belligerant indeed. Now, I know better than to judge one person as a whole by what this person happens to write on the internet (especially beacuse tone does not show in writing), but it looks like it was you trying to turn this personal. For example, that revision rollback.
@Mala I refer to you as belligerent because twice in the last two days you've put into one of your posts a reference to an individual user, had it edited out by a different user with a note to the effect of "I don't think this call-out is warranted," then you've edited the reference back in. Honestly, I find that belligerent.
@Mala I hope you also see my comment from six minutes ago--I was wrong to put in the reference to "six minutes," because that's a red herring. If it'd taken me an hour to come up with the list I still think the original question'd be -1-worthy, for low effort.
IIRC correctly--and we're talking about the "how do I efficiently find..." question, right--a different user had, in revision three or four, already edited the personal reference to me out. Then you put it back in. That's what strikes me as making it personal.
If you disagree with another's edit so much that you'd revert it wholesale, I've found it useful to comment asking what the reasoning was and why I disagree, rather than just revert.
@Mala I thought I remembered seeing in the revisions someone else removing me, then you putting me back in. I can't look at it now, because only you can see your deleted questions.
@Mala So that's back on the thunder/lightning question, yes?
In all fairness, I do feel a bit to blame: that it only took me 6 minutes was a red herring on the original comment. The speed with which I was able to get the answer is unrelated to downvoting, really. Even if it'd taken me an hour, it's full-on "read the book to me" and requires no expertise. Knowing that to be a belligerent user, I should have thought twice and posted the proper comment: "all you need to do is turn the pages, so shows no research effort."
it's all released materials for 5e, which seven closed because it seems only not-by-me questions are allowed to ask for all materials without being time-troubled
well, phb dmg the two dragon adventures elemental evil adventure strahd adventure abyss adventure
@Mala you can, but you didn't. You left it open, which left it open to the reader (me, in this case) to define the scope of what "should" be considered as source material. I looked in PHB and EEPG; admittedly I don't own SCAG and didn't realize there are spells in there. I knew MM, DMG to not have any, 'cause they don't have spells. UA aren't official, so I didn't even think about them.
@Mala I wonder if there's just a culture clash at work here. I cut my D&D teeth inputting spell metadata into a Lotus1-2-3 sheet so as to have a spellbook on 5-1/2" floppy. I don't consider "flipping through the books and listing the spells that fix criterion" to be high effort. But I may be an outlier.
@Mala I think that flipping through every page of spells to make a list of which suit your needs is trivial. In fact, I think it's one of the fundamental tasks of choosing to play a caster. Again, that's possibly just one grognard's perspective, in which case reopen votes may continue to accrue on your thunder/lightning question.
now: all this stuff is 'bad' and people will find any reason to close mechanics-related questions, and go so far as to even edit out parts where the original asker specifically asks for mechanical answers, and then downvote answers for providing mechanical anaylsis
Which, ok, it's just the way it is
but I regret that it came so far
because these questions were really good and much closer to the original format (programming questions) as all those fluff questions now
since there were objective rules on how to judge those
@Mala This strikes me as a sweeping generalization. Of my 195 answers, I'll bet a good 150 of them are "mechanical answers" and "mechanical analysis." I know, because I start to break into cold sweats when I'm not writing an answer that's completely citation-based.
@nitsua60 Mechanics is not only citation but also statistical analysis, which doesn't count anymore now that people prefer 'personal experience' aka anecdotal evidence here
I think we already talked at lenght about how a lot of "statistical analysis" does not take the game system and the intended purported experience of games
I'm not personally sure it is inherently bad, but it sure generates a lot of bad answers (and again, I'm not sure this is a problem as long as good answers keep coming)
Here's Back It Up as originally suggested for RPGSE by SevenSidedDie
Something that happened to you personally, or
Something you can back up with a reference.
I feel this is missing something, namely:
Something you can back up with careful analysis.
While personal exper...
@Mala I'm pretty sure I've read every word you've written on meta. I don't recall anything that would back up the assertion that everything that doesn't fit what you're calling "the new way" will be removed.
(During the summer I've a desk job, so I stay pretty-current, even with comment threads.)
I think that backing something up with careful analysis might be good if we define "careful analysis" as encompassing "studying and understanding the game system"
@nitsua60 Multiple reasons. Next to fluff/story based questions, I also really like the mechanical aspects. This was ok for a long time, but when it started changing with seven and mxy enforcing story-first, I complained. Probably not in the optimal way, and I guess now my name is tainted. Yay.
I mean, even you call me bellingerent
and mxy even used ad hominems against me in the past as side effect of using his diamond powers
calling that out was not received well
and I am not surprised when people who only see that mods dislike me that they automatically take their side
Well, I can understand that your name might be "tainted" because of the unoptimal way you used to complain. But I just want to have you notice that the meta question is on hold with myx suggesting you that you better define the applicability field (which questions might be good for analysis), and it is not con hold "because so"
@Mala Okay, just as an exercise, I'm going to call out an example of what I see as belligerence: "I am not surprised when people who only see that mods dislike me that they automatically take their side." (a) how do you know what others see? (b) I don't agree that mods dislike you, though perhaps they find you more difficult than average. (c) You're injecting the idea of "sides" into things.
Plus, we all know that myx has a story of getting things... well I wouldn't call it personal, but it's not the first time he runs into similar problems. He's not a bad mod overall and I don't personally feel he's misusing his mod powers (his high rep user powers, on the other hand? That's a different question.)
I think I have seen people blindly apply both 1 or 2 and then get disproved by a mix of the two (playtesting is important. You write the rules, then you playtest. And who knows what will break, but something most probably will).
@Mala I don't have an opinion on how welcome others feel around here (except, perhaps, the pervasive "this site is not welcoming to newcomers" problem.) I do think that grouping people like that is overly-simplistic.
@mxyzplk I'm not sure whether to leave that answer present for now and work on it further later (to let people still vote for it if they find I represented what they think well or not I guess?), or delete it and restore it later because it's only partially addressing the issue and needs work. Which do you think?
Gotta run to make lunch for my kids. Again, @Mala, I do apologize for accidentally introducing the red herring that was the time to find the spells you wanted. I do still think that no matter the time it's a downvote-worthy question. So I cast that downvote. But there's good news: I only get one vote.
@Mala I don't see a side! In that case, I saw an argument play out in real-time, and saw what I believed to be a mis-characterization of it. So I said so.
@mxyzplk Alright. I'll delete it for now because I'm not sure exactly about what's missing from it -- too late to process I guess -- and that also means I'm not sure how badly it might just suck as an answer to your question.
@Mala The real problem here (IMO) is that we shouldn't ask how to solve a problem. We should have a problem, and accept every solution that is compatible with our needs. This means no asking about what kind of solution we want (unless, I think, it's part of the problem, like a game-development question). That was one of the main reasons of the "no raw tag" camp (yes, this is a Y/N dycothomy, we have defined camps there, but not everybody is in a camp for the same reason as others)
(I still like raw, but for different reasons, and it's the purely mechanical "how does this work" questions)
@mala I don't have time to address every misapprehension referred to in this chat, but my main concern is that it does appear you are taking normal site stuff "personally" and allow it to turn into personal problems in return. This isn't "me" or "ssd" it's a lot of other site users that are flagging, voting, commenting to that end. Don't fall into the trap of "sides" or "people are picking on me" because it sends you down a hard to escape spiral.
@dopplegreener I think you addressed the list and "maintenance needed" aspects fine just there seems also to be site disagreement over triviality of lists
@mala that seems to me and to the others flagging your posts and telling you on meta to not be the case. And whether is is the case or not, it's how you are coming across.
Don't take it personal, and don't make it personal.
@mxyzplk But I doubt you disagree there are patterns in your and sevens behaviour that are easily noticeable, and they usually tend to focus on removing stats / analysis related stuff and pushing fluff/story/anecdotes
I disagree, but that's a topic for meta and the whole back it up thing, which nitsua60 and zachiel have done a good job explaining to you again, I have nothing to add but "read what they just told you."
@Mala from my POV, it seems you've taken a couple of question closures & comments and responded to them fairly confrontationally. i don't know what term i'd put on it ("taking it personally", "responding fists swinging", seeing it like you need to take someone down a notch, something else?) but there's something vaguely antagonistic going on there, when most others resolve these situations with fairly level-headed discussion, and there's definitely passive-aggression gong on.
I am not comfortable with undeletion. It references at its core something he said was a red herring alreAdy. If you have a real question about how to quickly search spells, ask it without reference to that question please.
(as in, mala, your actions have read as antagonistic and passive-aggressive, which surprises me. but it's an odd situation so i'm not sure how to read it accurately.)
@Mala not talking about this conversation. just pointing out the stuff that happened around the response to nitsua60 (in the question you've now edited, i haven't seen the original) and in your much earlier meta question asserting ad hominem.
You removed the reference to Nitsua, and that's good, but myx asked you (and told you the reason, and so did I) to remove the reference to nitsua's commenti in that question, because it was a red herring (which is different, and broader). It's hard to believe you didn't notice the difference.
@Mala That's the point, he did - but fore some reason I fail to grasp, you don't see it.
@doppelgreener I didn't know he used pirated material and didn't expect him to, but there seems to have been such a large disparity in effort for that task that I felt it warranted a question
@Mala Yeah, I don't personally feel "I could look this up in minutes using {not actually legal source} therefore you didn't do your research" is a reasonable response. We don't like to endorse piracy or any other illegal activities here here, and that goes a step further and suggests users should be expected to engage in illegal activities as basic research, which I don't think is an OK basis to operate on. (ping @nitsua60.)
No, I mean talking about it. You said that you rolled back the question because you felt that saying out loud that your question was born from nitsua a user's comment was integral to the question. I have yet to see someone that agrees with you on that.
Is it ok to close a question for low effort if the only way the question is low effort is when using pirated material?
More to the point, if the correct answer would require someone to read (lets say) five books with more than a thousand pages in total, I feel it should be a valid question, eve...
Is it ok to close a question for low effort if the only way the question is low effort is when using pirated material?
More to the point, if the correct answer would require someone to read (lets say) five books with more than a thousand pages in total, I feel it might be a valid question, even...
Here's Back It Up as originally suggested for RPGSE by SevenSidedDie
Something that happened to you personally, or
Something you can back up with a reference.
I feel this is missing something, namely:
Something you can back up with careful analysis.
While personal exper...
