The Sphinx's Lair

AncientSwordRage

1:31 AM

@Rubio VOLCANOS is so tempting, but the E is missing.

Sphinx

2:49 AM

0

Q: Has anyone done a puzzle by Intrism?

Summer break started this week for my kiddos. I was in a coffee shop the other day and I overheard a conversation at the table next to me about 3D wooden puzzles by a company called Intrism. After I got home, I searched Google and found their website (linked above). It looks like they specialize ...

three-dimensional

bobble

3:46 AM

@Sphinx if this gets upvoted another time I might start suspecting spam

oAlt

4:37 AM

The upvote and downvote buttons look a bit weird...

bobble

5:08 AM

-221

Q: We are graduating the updated button styling for vote arrows

Update This experiment has been graduated. The new styling for vote arrows is now live across the Stack Exchange network. About a year ago, the Product team, focused on improving the general experience, conducted an experiment to update the styling of the voting arrows on Stack Overflow in order...

discussion featured design voting announcements

Jafe

5:33 AM

@bobble just did

+3 / -3 currently

oAlt

@bobble i see

oAlt

5:50 AM

DISPATCH (send) is 8 letters but I don't see the wordplay

Jafe

7:15 AM

wow, looks like people can get super dramatic about whether up and down arrows should have circles around them

(reading the answers to the meta post above)

Rubio

7:39 AM

I’m currently on mobile and the change actually does make it hard to tell if you’ve voted on a post or not - the contrast is minimal. Not sure why the arrow needed to be so small vs the circle either; that’s just aesthetics, sure, but I have an opinion and it isn’t favorable. I’m not polishing my pitchfork over it though, just … annoyed that of all the things SO could be doing right now, this minor tweak that is (to me) all negative, doesn’t seem like it should have gotten any priority.

oAlt

8:54 AM

good point

I don't see a good reason to change the design either

AncientSwordRage

11:16 AM

@Sphinx I get so angry when people do a good job moderating and people start saying it's 'unwelcoming' !!

Rubio

12:49 PM

It’s not “unfriendly or unkind” for people to politely express their opinion, even if their opinion is at odds with how site rules and moderation works.

Sphinx

2

Q: What country is he talking about?

My friend sent me another of these word connection puzzle. He asked : "What country am I talking about?" He also said that more than one country is a possibility. This is linked to "I Can't Get This Puzzle" I can't get this puzzle

word enigmatic-puzzle

oAlt

1:17 PM

(Just playing devil's advocate here) I mean it's probably unwelcoming since the link in the close reason says that "discussions are welcome in our real time web chat", yet the comment doesn't make reference to that and so discourages the genuinely-interested person from asking that question.

Also, though I'm less sure about this one, the Internet does not do a good job of representing tone, so some people will probably feel unwelcome by a neutrally-stated message.

Rubio

1:46 PM

frankly, I suspect "you closed their question" is what is perceived as unwelcoming. the comments might have been more friendly in pointing out why not all questions work in this format, surface topicality notwithstanding, but there's only so much sugar coating we can put on.

At the end of the day, stackoverflow.blog/2018/04/26/… speaks (among a great many other things) to how the fundamentals of site moderation can feel unwelcoming to the uninitiated.

People don't like being told they're wrong, even when they are. But at some point - if someone runs screaming through a nudist beach, yelling at everyone to stop being naked in public, that person is the one in the wrong for assuming the status quo everywhere else in their life explicitly does not apply to this beach where the local customs are different and need to be understood. If a new poster gets it wrong, we can (and should) be nice about explaining why it's wrong, but they're wrong.

AncientSwordRage

@Rubio It's 'unfriendly or unkind' to imply a neutral statement deserves this kind of comment "no need to make them feel unwelcome"

bobble

There's also the belief that the question was perfectly fine - it was asked "nicely" and "was unlikely to trigger excessive discussion" - though it was explicitly asking for people to share personal experiences and recommendations, so I've no idea how that is

AncientSwordRage

@Rubio or to say someone helpfully moderating is being 'not nice'

Rubio

@AncientSwordRage I'm going to disagree, respectfully. I don't think someone stating that opinion is unkind or unfriendly, just misguided.

AncientSwordRage

It's like reminding someone the signs say "keep off the grass" and being told you're "Not nice"

@Rubio It's a very othering statement though, I'm not bobble, but if I were in that position I've just been accused of being unwelcoming unlike the others... it sort of indirectly implies a divide based on some extra unspoken rules

bobble

1:58 PM

I have good reason to believe that in fact CoffeeDayAndNight is an Intrism employee, that they are posting this to promote their product (and maybe to create links to their site for SEO reasons, though in fact I think that's ineffective because those links are "nofollow"), and therefore that the story they tell about overhearing a conversation and googling the company is, well, not true. — Gareth McCaughan ♦ 4 mins ago

Jafe

10 hours ago, by bobble

@Sphinx if this gets upvoted another time I might start suspecting spam

Gareth McCaughan

hmm, yes, it does seem to have more upvotes than it can plausibly have gained honestly.

Rubio

A bit, yes

AncientSwordRage

2:15 PM

@GarethMcCaughan maybe it's just people who thought we were being 'unwelcoming' reacting to that with pity upvotes?

Jafe

who's we

Rubio

@AncientSwordRage I moderate the site. I’ve had many (incontrovertibly) unfriendly things said to me about me or my moderating activities. Once by that same user, as it so happens, not that this is particularly relevant here. At some point, someone engaged in moderation in good faithneeds to be able to shrug off a bit of critique, self assured that they are in the right.

Is that right? Is that fair? No. But such is life?

oAlt

((I did feel that the "I overheard them talking about this" part was a bit suspicious, but gave it the benefit of the doubt temporarily))

Gareth McCaughan

@AncientSwordRage yeah, maybe. (I had a quick look to see if there were obvious sockpuppet candidates and didn't find any)

(which doesn't mean there aren't any; I didn't look very hard)

Sphinx

2:41 PM

1

Q: Pick the odd one out: 146, 821, 704, 603

Pick the 'odd one out' among the given options: 146, 821, 704, 603 The correct answer is 603. Can somebody explain why that is?

odd-one-out

AncientSwordRage

3:17 PM

@Rubio that sounds like you're saying that people can't be unkind or unfriendly to moderators?

Rubio

I'm saying they will, irrespective of whether it's actually allowed. (And no, it's not allowed, of course.)

AncientSwordRage

ok, but that's not the question here

Rubio

Pushback that doesn't rise to the level of "unfriendly or unkind" comes with the territory.

AncientSwordRage

ok, my threshold for what counts is lower (I also moderate a SE site, FWIW)

Rubio

Fair enough. I didn't see anything in the comments, then or now, requiring deletion for the content. I'm willing to let people calmly express their opinion that seeing a question closed with minimal explanation and no sugar coating is unwelcoming, especially given that there was a blog post and a whole SE campaign that sided with that viewpoint.

I reserve the right to disagree with them, and to likewise let calmly expressed opinions to the contrary be stated.

Sphinx

3:31 PM

0

Q: How to go about solving the puzzle?

Pick the odd one out 214, 350, 520, 738. The correct answer is 214. Can somebody explain why that is?

mathematics

oAlt

3:58 PM

Re: C4, assuming "retreat" isn't an indicator, it's interesting to note that it has some short synonyms

AncientSwordRage

4:12 PM

@Rubio I guess maybe I didn't see what was said as 'minimal' and the lack of sugar coating does not implicitly equate to being unkind. But explicitly calling someone 'unwelcoming' or 'not nice' does. At least to me. YMMV.

ACB

Urgh! MTC is about to end. I was planning to contribute a puzzle to this topic, somehow totally forgot it. Anyway, the next topic is also interesting, let's see.

Rubio

C4 Hint: Second letter is A

Rubio

5:52 PM

Hm. puzzling.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7259/… does not link to puzzling.stackexchange.com/help/referencing and really should. It's the actual site policy from which our site-local policy posting ultimately emanates. It should probably be in the Okay, so how should I give attribution? section somewhere. @bobble, as the preeminent custodian of that post, would you mind doing the honors at your convenience?

bobble

Ping me tomorrow if I haven't yet

Rubio

You're assuming my attention span exceeds 24 hours. Some days I'm lucky if it exceeds 24 minutes. :)

AncientSwordRage

6:08 PM

@Rubio I've starred it for you

Rubio

Thanks. I think. hehe

bobble

10:23 PM

@Rubio done

Sphinx

11:59 PM

0

Q: An Almost-squarish set of numbers

A set of numbers is called Almost-squarish if it satisfies the following two properties: The set contains only positive integers. The product of any two distinct numbers in the set is one less than a perfect square. A trivial example of a Almost-squarish set is {4, 12} because $4 \cdot 12 = 7^2-1...

mathematics number-theory

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