There's a lot to read here

Yeah I'm trying to catch up. BTW, you've done a great job solving puzzles lately!

Thanks I just posted a new riddle

Hi rand al'thor and d'alar'cop

hi!

I'm just lurking really :-)

hi pac :D

you 2 have really been carrying everything lately :p

pac and mag

it's getting quite riddlerish in here :-)

Still trying to catch up, but I see there's still a lot of harping on that one comment from Jan Dvorak, which was totally wrong and he (or someone else) deleted it

he probably felt singled out P:p

yes, I don't think that's what people are really worried about...

it's a sideaffect..

*effect

from the tensions that have been brewing

where is Shog9's commentary?

never mind.. found it

Emrakul never did manage to answer my question earlier today

the conversation deteriorated into an insult-fest and then he shut down the room

@McMagister I've just seen the answer to your latest riddle. Nice one! :-D

@Shog9 "quite honestly - I consider this site a joke." - "then none of us will be sad to see it go." - this kind of PR is very harmful. what kind of attitude is that to bring to this discussion? you said we should be reasonable - and presumably objective and polite... well, need I say more?

Im waiting to hear what emrakuls uniform stance is

I did ask for shog to reframe frok contributing but apparantly hes view is valid and should be listebed to and respected

Mobil devices will be the end of me.....

Rand it wasnt an insult fest no one really insulted anyone

it was a little riot

It was ae not understanding as he refused to read above to gather what was going on

tensions spilling over

'female genitalia' ... avi calling AM stupid ... AE accusing me and you of 'footbullet city' whatever the hell that means ...

it was getting quite hot

Hmm fair enough to be honest I dont know why my height was brough into question

your height??

I didn't even follow all the argument

He told me to grow up

I was sticking to my question like glue, trying to get Emrakul to answer it

well 'grow up' is more maturity than height :-p

If he can take things out of context then at least I can do is repay the favour

rofl!

Are all you here as synical as joe is to the imolementation of rules and this almightu stance thats yet to be taken??

no

I left a comment there..

As calm and collective as ever :) I expected no less

let's see whether calm and collected gets further than abusive and abrasive :-)

you two seem to be basically pushing for the same thing, and me too

I bet 'cop's answer will get more respect than anything to do with f****e g*******a :-)

Caught up, I don't really understand what's the big deal here?

How many riddles are closed as off topic?

none

people just want clarity as what's going on..

that's all..

it's like a team with no instructions...

the uproar was about some users mistakenly under the impression that riddles are off-topic

that upset a fairly large section of the main community

The people who would know that riddles are off-topic are the ones who read meta, and if they read meta then they know that riddles are on topic again, wouldn't they?

I only seen one user who was mistaken that riddles are off topic and that was in the great adventurer riddle

And he has been reeducated

there was also Jan Dvorak

I think that comment has now been deleted

but if it's happened once/twice/n times, what's to stop it happening again?

I think Jan Dvorak was the one I was referring to

Why would it happen again?

zlobi.wan.kenobi?

maybe we're getting mixed up

both JD and ZWK have been under misapprehension about on-topicness of riddles

New users will see many riddles in the front page and so they won't think riddles are off topic

old users will be gradually reeducated

eventually no one will think riddles are off topic

and everyone is happy

we're just calling for a clear statement from the mods. Emrakul said it was redundant, but would it hurt him so much to make one?

yes, the meta stuff wasn't clear McMag

that would make things happen much quicker, rather than 'eventually'

I've never seen a clear, unambiguous thing in meta actually... although I'm new to the politics of it all

Also theres an emphasis on quality. So that would he nice to know

yes, I said that to emrak to

he's the only one I bother with

*too

Speaking as an outsider, it was as clear as things get. declined feature request with an accepted answer outlining why things didn't need to be that way. Does your help center say riddles are on-topic? Perhaps that needs clarifying. This site has gone in a few radically different directions over time, from being questions about puzzles to riddle questions to questions about puzzles to riddle questions again, of course some people will be confused ;)

thank you @Seth

It's nice to see someone understands :-)

yes, good point. thanks

Looks like this help center article could use some editing.

They can be edited? All the articles looked generic to me so I thought they applied to all sites or something.

@McMagister Yes. For example. IIRC a mod has to make the actual edits, but the community should write/approve a draft on meta.

Any drafts on meta then? That should be the first order of business.

I agree, and said as much Tuesday. It would be far more productive than much of what I'm seeing on meta and chat.

Also this page

Maybe

A mod statement isn't going to be worth anything anyway, you, the community, choose what goes here (within the bounds of your site name and SE's rules ofc) and you enforce that policy. The mods are here to help, in the early stages because there often aren't enough active users to enforce everything and in the later stages because there are some things you cannot (and shouldn't) do on your own, like deleting users or editing main help articles.

Drafting a good help/on-topic article is a good first step towards clarifying site scope. Probably the best first step you can take :)

I didn't realise that

I think we got the impression mods had power when they came out and said "there will be no more fun"

But you guys shot that down. Why ask them to step into power again if that isn't what you want?

we shot the proposal down

not their power

I made that clear on Tuesday, @Geobits

why don't you guys listen?!

From where I was standing, the clear statement from the community was that mods shouldn't take unilateral action to say what is/isn't on topic. That's why the current request to have the mods write an official, clear post about what's on topic doesn't make much sense to me.

@d'alar'cop oh.. I'm afraid that was terribly misunderstood.

"don't like fun" is a common way SE jokingly refers to their policy on not accepting broad, opinion based, off-topic etc questions. People like to complain that it makes the site "no fun". They didn't literally mean there would be no more fun. (at least that is my take, having seen the term used across different metas at different times)

At the time the moderators were worried the site would get shut down, so they took action to try and prevent that. Meanwhile SE had no intention of shutting the site down, even though any other site that got like this would have been. So I think that all turned out well.

maybe so

So, we have a problem lets take action and fix it! That's what community moderation is for, after all ;)

I think the moderators have made it clear they don't have a problem with riddles if a) they are high quality (which you all agree with, right?) and b) they won't cause SE to shut down the site. B) has been taken care of. How about a)?

yes

Have you, as a community, decided what makes a riddle "high quality"?

no

we've had trouble with that

@seth that is what my meta post is about. although already it has attracted negative reactions

you normally don't know until the answer is present

@Geobits There are two parts to what is/is not on topic: 1) SE wide rules, 2) Site specific rules. SE wide rules prohibit things like overly broad questions, questions with offensive content - and these will never be changed and they must be enforced by everyone including mods. The other part is up to the users, by voting on meta. Any official topic documents are written by the mods, based on what policies are established on meta.

yes

well riddles are not broad

if they are "good"

@Geobits Let's keep it simple. Divide the community into those who want something from the mods that they can follow (SHEEP) and those who want to have their own say in what's on topic (SHOOTERS - these are the ones who shot down the Mods' Big Meta Post). The SHOOTERS are happy to post challenges, riddles, whatever and solve them. The SHEEP don't have anything from the mods to follow since their Big Meta Post, so they go around attacking the SHOOTERS' questions.

Right.

Hence a new clear statement from the mods, which is what some of us are calling for and which wouldn't take them many minutes to compose, would reconcile the SHEEP and the SHOOTERS and peace would reign on P.SE. Sounds good, right?

No.

You're dividing the community into factions and opponents. That's not what a community is!

I was oversimplifying, yes. People have lots of different views.

A community is a group of respectful people who, although they may not always agree, take the time to listen to each other's opinions and respectfully discuss them.

And respectfully decide on a policy and/or resolution.

I presented the same argument in a more realistic and less confrontational way on Tuesday. Geobits was there. Now he asks the same question again. So I made it simpler.

I should add that I haven't taken part in the slanging match in this chatroom in the last few days

I did :)

you and Avi, yes

I ask the same question again because the answer is based on the assumption that people are going around closing riddles for being riddles. I haven't seen that happen. While I did see one or two users casting close votes (before being pointed to meta), that's not unusual for any SE site.

conflict & resolution. Go jeremy kyle

SHEEP and SHOOTERS... YES!

Every single site across the entire SE network has to do this, especially in early beta, lets not let personal views, ad hominem attacks, smear campaigns and dis-respectfulness undermine the support this site has been given! SE has allowed you to do something very few other sites are allowed to do! Let us put the dis-respectfulness aside and together make this site something that we, and Stack Exchange, can be proud of.

ohai Kev

Calling people "SHEEPS" and "SHOOTERS" is not accomplishing that and only undermining the good opinion and support this site has/had :/

If there were constant close-open wars going on, I would agree that more action needed to be taken. As it stands, the community opinion seems pretty clear. Draft up a help center article to point mistaken people to and be done with it IMO.

but there's truth in the analogy.. it's not meant to be insulting

@d'alar'cop Then write it in a way that isn't :)

one might even say... VERY-ACTIVE CHALLENGERS vs CASUAL USERS

sorry

how's that?

If you people are that worried I suggest this:

d'alar'cop, let's let @Kevin read through some of what's been going on before giving us some of his wisdom as a moderator (and let's hope he does do the latter rather than just keeping schdum)

this help centre idea is very good though - thanks @Seth! :-)

the harshness has been loud but from a small part of the community - and it was understandable to me

the PR needs work

Wait

wasn't there already a question about whether riddles were on-topic or not?

yes

Travis Kindred said YES with overwhelming support

defining 3 or 4 different kinds of riddes.... it was great

my answer was distant second

Then where's your problem? Write that help center article and get puzzling! :)

that was before the mods' meta edict

yes

that's important

although the edict subsumed riddles... it was about challenges

a riddle will pretty much always be a challenge... look at my answer on the edict for my way around that though

you guys are rapidly undermining all faith I had that you would be able to work through this and make a successful site :(

Community: Riddles are on topic. Moderators: Challenges and riddles are banned! Community: NO! Big SE man: Not necessary. Moderators: [nothing further]

What conclusions can we draw?

@Seth why?

@Seth - What have we said now?

I don't understand that comment at all

:(

I thought we showed commitment are care frankly

that we are willing to fight and push for the success and enjoyment of the users

we may seem negative... but we are actually the most positive

OK, SHEEP & SHOOTERS wasn't the most tactful way of putting it. I was annoyed at Geobits for asking the same question more than once, and wanted something alliterative for the second class. It came out badly. Sorry. My point is still valid though: there are lots of kinds of people here, and I'd like to see them all united rather than bitching at each other. A new post from the mods would go a long way towards that.

VERY-ACTIVE CHALLENGERS vs CASUAL USERS

@d'alar'cop Things like "SHEEP AND SHOORTERS", "and let's hope he does do the latter rather than just keeping schdum)" and "edict" (when there was no "edict" just a proposal by concerned users that this site would be closed) do not build the kind of trust and respectful attitudes necessary to build a sucessful site, rather they undermine everything you want to do my hurting feelings and making people not like you.

Including myself.

*by hurting feelings

I know you can do this, but you have to put your dislike for certain people and/or their opinions behind you!

maybe you are taking those comments too seriously?

the "edict" is sort of pet name that it has..

it was originally an edict..

Sorry. I've never been very good at tact. I'm a perfect gentleman compared to Oblongamous and Avigrail (aka Bobbee) though! :-)

no one is really fussed now... people just want something clear to hang on to

@d'alar'cop On the internet there is no body language, there is no tone of voice, I can only take what you mean by the words you use, perhaps better words need to be chosen?

I can understand that, happens to everyone.

well maybe... " making people not like you. Including myself." :p

If you read the Mods' Big Meta Post (TMBMP as I usually call it), it was an edict. "If you disagree with this, SE is not for you."

Oops.

OK, so we've all been guilty of tactlessness.

also, please look at the first Revision

except @d'alar'cop maybe :-)

I mistyped above.

:D

well I think seeing what people mean... and not what they say is safer :p

"Puzzling.SE: Where We Hate Fun - It's time to disallow challenge questions"

was the original title of the meta post

I didn't mean I didn't like you, I meant you were undermining my trust that this would be resolved in a good, respectful way.

@d'alar'cop That isn't very easy on the internet, is it? ;)

but its been changed to" Is it time for us to disallow challenge-only questions? "which is much more neutral

I see your intention... and that's what I talk to... whether you like me is something entirely different

So, looks like we have a few things that we can take action on ourselves, lets do it!

We need a good clear help/on-topic article for one.

The original title of the mods post was "Puzzling.SE: Where We Hate Fun - It's time to disallow challenge questions", so that was an edict

LOL McMagister, just saw you posted that too

I at least have been trying to be polite, respectful, and reasonable here. I think we all have in the last few hours here. If we've occasionally said something untactful, let's shake hands and make up. I don't think we have any major quarrels among ourselves here :-)

being some civility back?

@pacoverflow It's not a good title but really I've been posting riddles and answering them without fear so it clearly has no teeth anymore

you too @Oblongamous, please :-)

@McMagister Didn't you join the site after TMBMP?

@randal'thor You asked so nicely I think it may be possible

@McMagister I remember your first post was to answer my really hard riddle that I thought nobody'd ever solve!

One day you must tell me how you managed that :-)

@randal'thor Yes, so as a new user I can say that TMPBP doesn't affect me.

@randal'thor Lots of wikipedia

@McMagister Yeah unless something changes, it seems to me they are on-topic

first groups and topological spaces

which led to manifolds and mobius functions

Isomorphisms were my initial guess

did you spot the hom(e)omorphism word similarity early on?

mobius functions??

Well I've got to go. What happens to this site is up to us/you now, lets make it something we can be proud of!

@randal'thor no

yes let's

bye @Seth and thanks for all the help! :-D

all the best, nice you meet you :D

I looked up Mobius thinking it had something to do with Leipzig

bye @Seth

see you all later :)

ciao

bye 'cop :-)

@McMagister Immediately you joined the site, you solved two hard riddles that had had the riddlers gang stumped for days! Kudos to you :-) I liked the traffic light and angle riddles too.

Leipzig was supposed to be a ref to Hausdorff; can't remember whether you got that?

hi @AE

we've managed to keep it civil this time - happy? :-)

ok, so what should this new meta post say

I guess it will be strongly related to Victor's post

only more like a statement than a question

this one: meta.puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/1680/…

@Emrakul ?

@Victor we are resolving this thing

@Emrakul @Victor c'mon once and for all

let's end this crap

hi emrak :)

what does it seem to you that people want to see?

hi Boz

hey

I think people want the following: "At Puzzling SE, at present, Riddles and Challenges in general are welcome and appreciated. Obviously all questions about theory are as always more than welcome, and there is a base of expertise to address these too. There is an attentive keen audience. Definition of quality is something we are working on." - how do I put this in a meta where votes can seal the deal?

"The will to enforce quality is here, and some vague guideline are currently in place and operating well."

I think it's an issue about how those things relate to us

even some of the SE staff seemed to imply that we ARE in line with these

OK, I posted something

let's just see

@Oblongamous it is worth noting that it was washed away by a CM of SE, not one of the site mods or even some other chat mod. Clearly, SE didn't think there was much value to your argument or didn't find it worth separating from the vitriol

@Oblongamous that's called the community trying to form the site in to what they want, it just happens to possibly not be what you want. That's why closing and reopening is vote based and left up to the community with the exception of cases that are clearly off-topic by community norms

ping me if there's anything

@randal'thor that's the meaning of status-declined

@randal'thor in general mods don't form policy unless the community isn't doing it itself, and even then, the community is always welcome to disagree with the mods and raise support for other policies. What happened is that they saw a problem, the community wasn't dealing with it so they made a judgement call on bad information.

They discovered it was bad information from Jon Ericson and the post was status-declined indicating it wasn't correct. The community then started discussing the issues, so the mods don't have to try making policy now, because people are actually trying to work it out as a community.

The one thing I will grant is that it would probably be worth putting a note at the top of the big post to explain what status declined means for those who are less familiar with the way SE works, as I think some of the confusion may be based around that.

There is a lack of answers on this meta question. Perhaps someone with good writing/spec skills could whip up a draft there?

also @Oblongamous - just because you don't like someone disagreeing with you isn't a reason to tell them to not participate. You aren't the dictator of the community either. You seem to tell people to go away if your arguments bother them but they are just as entitled to the view that you are being a pita. Personally, I do agree that there are some interesting points that you have, but your attitude about it puts people off from listening to you

@Oblongamous you should consider that the reason shog9 considers the site a joke is because of the petty arguments and squables though. Was he a bit harsh, yes, but it was out of the tremendous amount of frustration felt over the communities inability to work together and resolve issues, preferring instead to bicker and fight and hold past mistakes over people's heads unreasonably

@randal'thor because a) it isn't an edict and b) it isn't how meta works. People propose ideas and the community votes on them. Moderators don't have any special power in forming the standards of the community. They likely haven't made another post because the community is discussing it now, though, a compromise would probably be to edit the start of the post to reiterate those poorly understood parts of how meta works to avoid confusion

@randal'thor the basic problem with that is that it is another edict, while the statement the mods made was technically inaccurate, making another statement telling the community what it's will is isn't the answer either, but rather just making it more obvious that substantial portions of the mod post were determined to be unneccessary

@Emrakul what do you think about the idea of simply editing the existing post to clarify to people what the state of the post is. It's a bit abnormal for meta, but it wouldn't hurt anything and would put minds at ease and eliminate any chance of it causing confusion amongst those who don't understand SE well. I'm just thinking a couple sentence note added to the beginning of the post and pointing out that people should read the marked answer from Jon

@SabreTooth you may be waiting a while

;) / :/

@Oblongamous they were trying to do right, they just didn't quite understand how much flexibility they actually had. The community was going off the ropes, but the mods tried proposing taking out too much slack because most of them are more familiar with the more technical, less subjective side of SE sites

@Oblongamous the way things work with SE is that the community proposes communities. Those that get enough support go to beta. SE has metrics they look for in order to have a viable site that is worth it for them to host. The community can have a fair bit of flexibility in how they fill those requirements, but sites close when SE doesn't believe the site can meet those requirements.

if the community is tearing itself apart, that IS a reason that sites could be closed

so yes, being too obnoxious can be a major contribution to getting a site closed

@Oblongamous when the site is closed or promoted to live

it isn't up to SE or the mods to figure that out, it's the community's responsibility, but they need to do it in such a way that SE doesn't lose confidence that SE's goals will ever be accomplished by the site

hi?

Hi.

Someone called me. I was out for many hours.

Things scalated quickly here.

I am still trying to read and process everything. It is too much information for my brain right now.

I was going to post an answer to Jon Ericson's question and I had written it partially. Looks like that I will need to rewrite it from scratch now, but only after reading everything to understand where we are now.

@Emrakul yeah, I'd probably just put it as a little note at the start of the post, maybe in a quote box or something. Leave the original post in tact, just something for anyone who TL;DR's it

certainly doesn't hurt anything, helps make peace, and may possibly avoid someone being confused that manages to find their way in to meta at some point in the future and stumbles across it

it does read kind of scary for someone unfamiliar with Meta and the way SE functions

which I think is easily lost on those of us with lots of SE experience under our belts

the average user has no idea what Meta even is

but they might stumble across a link to a particular article on meta somewhere and get scared

@awesomepi - I think there's a mistake in your question! :-O

@AJHenderson - What you just said is exactly the point some of us have been trying to make for days! All the Geobits's and Emrakuls were on our backs saying 'nothing needs to be done, just calm down', but when it comes from a respected SE member like you, they can see the sense in it. No offence to you, of course, but there is ad-hominem stuff going on here even from the P.SE mods.

(maybe I shouldn't have said that, just when everything is starting to calm down)

it is a valid point though

@randal'thor not intentionally I don't think. It really is a mindset thing amongst experienced SE users and what you were asking for in the way you were asking it would cause confusion among experienced SE users

I actually had the same thought as you prior to reading your suggestions, I just put it in a more SE Meta culture friendly way

there are unstated implications to the comments or posts you were asking for that really aren't the direction things should be going

primarily, that mods shouldn't be setting policy unless they absolutely have to

so mods making a statement on anything isn't the right move

however, pointing out that the last time the mods did move out of what they thought was necessity turned out to be not quite to that point yet is also worth clarifying on that original post itself

it's a subtle distinction, but I hope I'm explaining it well

@AJHenderson Fair enough. People like you and Seth have been a great help in changing our proposal to something more SE culture-friendly that achieves the same goals. BUT ...

you say "the average user [...] might stumble across a link to a particular article on meta somewhere and get scared". I completely agree! But when people like me tried to say exactly the same, Doorknob and Emrakul just said things like 'point me to examples where people have got scared' and then when I did, 'oh that's just one example, it doesn't prove your point'.

@randal'thor yeah, I read their objections and I agreed in the contexts that they were talking about. They were responding relative to making a new meta post and a new meta post isn't the right move for the current level of discomfort

@Doorknob冰, @Emrakul, etc. - please try to look at what people say rather than who's saying it. I might be friendly with Oblongamous and Avigrail, but I haven't joined in their insults here!

I don't disagree with Emrakul's response to your earlier requests. He could have thought of the alternative himself perhaps, but I also can't really fault him too much for that since I'm sure he is tired and frustrated by the whole situation and being made out to be a villain when he want's to see the community succeed as much as anyone

he has kind of been put in a damned if you do, damned if you don't position by a few people in here

the initial anger was over mods appearing to set a policy, now they have backed off, but people are upset with them for not setting a policy that "I" like

the truth of the matter is that as long as the community is talking and things look like they may move forward in a productive way, there jobs are to do nothing but try to facilitate the discussion

in fact, mods can't VTC on their own site specifically because they are supposed to be very hands off in directing the community unless they see no other option

@AJHenderson, "mods can't VTC on their own site specifically"?

believe me, it annoys us to no end, but SE has repeatedly declined giving us an option to VTC as a mere mortal

I've seen a LOT of VTC'ing from P.SE mods on P.SE

we can do a binding close

we can't vote to close as a normal user

ah OK

in other words, we are only given the opportunity to contribute towards closing when we KNOW it is off topic

you can make either 'infinitely many' VTCs or none?

we can't say "we think this should probably be closed"

well, we can comment, but we don't get a vote towards having the community close it

yep, just the nuclear button

a bit like flagging posts in chat

yep

our job is to understand the site, understand the site's health and step in to a) keep community established policies enforced uniformly and b) step in directly if absolutely necessary for site health

we aren't leaders of the community, other than by implication of the added deference that people give our views

that added deference is why we wanted a new post from the mods

it's what I was trying to say with SHEEP and SHOOTERS, but I wasn't saying it very well!

@randal'thor doesn't that new meta post do this? if not, please edit.

yeah, I do get where you were coming from. I do agree it likely isn't a major issue, but it also doesn't hurt to fix in a way that doesn't interfere with meta norms

@d'alar'cop the difference is that the new meta post isn't from mods. The concern is that someone will see one post that has a diamond next to the author, even if it is marked declined and give it more weight than a post from a community member with a hundred up votes

especially since the post with the diamond next to it has scary words

@d'alar'cop Yes, your new meta post looks good (I was the first UV!), and hopefully it'll have the effect we're looking for. Together perhaps with an edit on TMBMP as suggested by @AJHenderson.

and if they happen across it, that is probably a valid concern, though in reality, them coming across it is pretty unlikely

but still not outside the realm of possibilities

@d'alar'cop are you talking about the one you made earlier?

I have to go ... just popped in to check on that 'spot the mathematician' question, and got dragged into chat again :-p

see you later, all

I'll admit I voted that down, but only because I didn't think it really added anything to the discussion. Kind of similar to what Andrew commented about it, without a clearer understanding and clarification of what is good quality, the post doesn't really have any actionable meaning

it's more or less just a restatement of Jon's response to "the post"

but in less detail

so DV on grounds of "not useful" not for actually disagreeing with the idea I very much do want to see good puzzles and challenges on topic

(I'd like to join the discussion but so much has happened over the past few days I don't even know where to catch up from...)

I'm just as stumped as anyone as to how to actually clarify what is good quality

@Sp3000 honestly, a lot of the discussion has been kind of argumentative and some of the main points I think may have been addressed now. The big thing I think is trying to figure out how to define quality questions in a clear way that makes the site generally useful and makes the internet better

I know personally, I see the ideal as somewhere between where it was at the end of private beta and where it was at the time of postgate

at end of beta, I didn't find it very approachable because things were so deeply theory and it didn't make things particularly interesting to me. More recently, there was so much noise and posts that were of no interest that couldn't easily be filtered through that it wasn't worth my time and the overuse of spoilers compounded this even further by making it hard to read

so I just kind of gave up about trying to get back in to it with all the other things I have going on

this is one of those SE communities I want to like and want to be involved with, but haven't seen content that was engaging enough yet in either one direction or another