@jrista @JeffAtwood - Sometimes I feel a bit confused about SE policy - podcasts have mentioned before that SE is interested in keeping users worth keeping but it sure doesn't feel like that very much. I'm not defending my somewhat poor choice of diction - I should have be nicer , but it doesn't feel like kid gloves should be pulled out for a user whose been to other SE sites and outright refuses to make a simple improvement on a post that betters the community.
meanwhile...best.wife.ever. Looks like she is going to get a new job without more money and with me even asking has said I can have a 'photography budget'
@rfusca Meh. I wouldn't lose sleep over it, personally. You're right that what we want are users worth keeping, and if someone's ego/temperament/personality/whatever is going to be so fragile as to 'take their ball and go home' after a couple semi-critical comments then (in my opinion) they aren't users who are going to be worth keeping around. We regulars are an opinionated bunch and I for one like that we talk pretty frankly with one another and with the site in general...
If I had to worry about being politically correct in order to not hurt someone's fragile feelings every time I posted something, I probably wouldn't hang around for too long, honestly...
@JayLancePhotography Well I won't be losing sleep over it, but I've read @Jeff's blog for years and respect the guy and what he's done with SE, so I feel a tinge of guilt when he stops by to say something as such.
That's cool, I guess. Most of the time he kinda comes across like a dick to me... But that's just my opinion and I'm quite certain that there are some who think the same of me (and I couldn't care less). :-)
@JayLancePhotography the regulars are, for sure - we've all got fairly thick skin. But we do have to be wary of jumping on people who aren't on photo.se for hours a day.
@rfusca Yeah, well... I think it's totally debatable as to whether you 'jumped all over' anyone making your comments. And if 'piss-poor' is the line we're drawing for being 'so insulted I'm quitting' then that might be a problem... :-)
There's a line to be drawn somewhere in between 'skin so thick a bullet will bounce off it' and 'skin so thin saying 'hello' makes a guy wet his pants.' :-)
Scrappydog's response definitely felt more on the 'wet his pants' end of the spectrum.
@JayLancePhotography well I don't think I jumped all over him, but I do regret uses the words 'piss poor' - its just not something I normally do.
@mattdm ya, i checked beforehand that he was SE experienced, which is one of the reason I didn't come out with the kid gloves on once he said the whole "Opinion noted" (like I dared to comment on it).
@mattdm Not being a SO user I didn't know that. Seems weird... I'd rather leave a comment and give someone a chance to tweak things than to 'spend rep' up front with a bunch of downvotes.
Maybe when we're bigger and it's possible for an answer to gather some serious downvotes it'll become more of a dynamic...
I hate to say it, but not really. It's a total cliche but my favorite tends to be 'whatever I'm working on right this moment.'
I have a few sets from high school and another few sets from college that I'm especially fond of because they have my friends in them, but they aren't any great shakes technically... It's mostly sentimental value. :-)
Jeez... Now you got me thinking about it... :-) I actually have a much easier time hating work that I do for myself. I can detach myself from client work and pick the 'winners' very easily... But (as an example) I've never taken a picture of my wife that I'm happy with (not because of her, she's a knockout, but because of me)... I expect I'll feel the same way about all the pictures I take of Abby...
@JayLancePhotography: I'm making you a room admin, as I have with @rfusca, in case anyone pops in here that needs some tempering, and us mods aren't around.
Interesting... I still can't star my own posts, but I can pin them, and pinning takes priority over stars. Hmmm... Is the intended use for, say, admin messages to the group, do you suppose? Announcements that need to show up on the top...
"Hmm....I feel a disaster lurking...time to make an EXTRA backup of all my critical data...just in case my automatic ones stop working for some reason."
lost my backup drive, which silently killed my automatic backups, then I lost three more drives, which took out my semi-paranoid random manual backups that I used to do every 6-8 months, along with all my original data...
I tell ya
truly terrifying experience
thinking you lost....everything
but it IS getting a little out of hand now
I must be consuming nearly 3 Tb of drive space between multiple copies of my music and photography, my critical data, and my non-stop backups
talk about a disaster...I had a colleague recently whose gas grill propane tank sprung a leak, caught on fire, blew up, hit a gas line in his house, and the whole house was a fireball inside of a minute
it was one of those gas exchange things. Fire dept. said those are crazy dangerous and blow up more than you'd think - because you never know how the last guy was treating the tank
I've seen a couple in my lifetime, but none that brilliant
one was back in 1994....it was literally the picture-perfect "shooting star"....the thing arced across the sky, leaving a brilliant glittered trail behind it
I was on a mission trip to Jordan (in the middle east) at the time, and it was probably one of the most memorable moments of my life
^--- its a bit noisy, but compositionally its pretty nice...I love the big star
@DLambert Its not mine, btw...just something I found in my collection of space and night sky photos. I thought it was pretty unique though, with a time-lapse foreground of old faithful.
@mattdm in regards to how-tos. I think we should do more of a "here's something to try and the complete steps to do it, with sample pics, setup pics, technical reasons, everything" - many a time we leave that kind of stuff out of answers to q's
if you do that, make sure before you publish it, that one of the others follows the steps to see you haven't missed anything daft from the steps (which is easier to do without realising than you think)
Realistically, prior to bring this up, if somebody posted a question that said "Can somebody show me everything to do with reverse lens macro, include the how, the why, setup pictures, several examples, and compare it to alternate methods?" We would ask for it to be split out and point them to half a dozen places. I'm suggesting a definitive post you can learn more about a subject than a single answer covers
Honestly, I think the goal of Stack Exchange is exactly to accumulate amazing, stellar answers for even simple questions.
Sometimes, that's a simple short answer. But if the question is "How do I use reverse-lens macro", and someone posts a whole article an the subject, awesome.
If no one wants to produce such an answer, that's one thing. But if we're suggesting doing so for the blog, why not just put the same thing on the site itself?
@mattdm For example you choose to throw the book at the person about Pentax lenses and it felt rather out of place to me, given their question (especially unfinished).
@mattdm Because I think such 'answers' are sometimes out of the scope of the questions asked.
@mattdm You can really make a similar argument for "best question of the week" and "best answer of the week" stuff - why are we reposting content or links to content that already exists (the meta posts suggests elaborating on it, why shouldn't that go in the original answer/question)? If its that good it should stand on its own! There's going to be crossover between the site and blog.
Well, the answer-of-the-week idea is specifically because answers aren't very visible on the site. The idea is to increase that visibility -- not to replace it.
@mattdm If somebody had an interest in the answer - why wouldn't they have had an interest in the question that sparked the answer?....If somebody gives a great answer to places to shoot wildlife in Louisville, KY - if I cared about that answer, I would have clicked on the question.
@rfusca sometimes, you don't know you were interested in the question until you see the great answer. :)
The thing about the moire-based focus adjustment is an example. I barely would have clicked on that, because I know how to use a focus chart. But turns out I learned something new.
@mattdm I guess we're just different in that regard - although I can acknowledge that its a good answer to the question - it still doesn't spark my interest.
Its still a good answer to an uninteresting subject to me.
I don't have another example offhand, but surely you can think of an occasion where you learned something interesting/useful under a heading which didn't strike you initially?
If the blog focuses on best answers/questions and some reviews - I probably won't be contributing. While I think those should be part of it, and even suggested them, I think they should be filler for something else.
@rfusca I agree. We don't just want to replicate content...we want to add new content. I think blogs on techniques and blogs on equipment are two ways to bring new content to our forum.
@rfusca Dang it, you're right. TBH, I kinda felt like the field had improved a bit since we had that conversation and maybe it wasn't necessary any more? I could be wrong though... Do you think I should still post something?
I figured. ;-) I just got busy/lazy. Maybe I'll pull something out for next week. I actually did go poke through some of my photos and I have to confess that part of the problem is that I overwhelmingly favor portrait orientation in my composition...
@ElendilTheTall well i just posted on meta that if we're going to highlight stuff like that, at least lets do it all in one go with a "This past week in Photo.se" post, highlight answers, questions, and the PotW. That way if you like that stuff, its all in one go. If you don't, its one thing to skip.
@ElendilTheTall I really just wanted to get some people off their duffs to post a couple more pictures. We can't have a damned frog win, after all, can we?? ;-)
@rfusca that building was the first public building in the country to be completely electrically lit. It was finished in 1905, and when they checked the electrics in 1996 they found some of the original bulbs still working
Anyone with 10k+ of rep can... I occasionally grab one from a different chat room. Apparently I don't have the power to grab my OWN flagged chat messages, though. :-P
@ElendilTheTall You don't get a rep bonus. But getting 3 starred comments in a row is such a feat of unparalleled skill that @rfusca will personally send you a check for $4.32.
