oh! challenges. I will take a look :D

Unfortunately had to throw in the towel on the writing challenge, I couldn't produce anything I was happy with. I'll definitely try the next one, though.

And thank you to the mod who cleaned up the comments section on the recent gender question. Feels like I can never post an answer mentioning nonbinary/non-cis people without getting some random vitriol about how it's "political" to acknowledge my own existence, lol.

Yeah, questions about gender and sexuality always seem to attract those sorts of remarks, unfortunately. Probably doesn't help that questions about gender and sexuality always seem to hit HNQ

I understand where they come from here, I genuinely do, but sometimes I just want to post and not get long-winded monologues in the comments section trying to draw people into debates about gender. I understand that they felt it was relevant, but I’m sick of my inbox being barraged whenever I so much as mention pronouns as a thing writers can think about.

It was a genuine question and I tried my best to post a simple, genuine and helpful answer, which they accepted as helpful. I just want to leave it there and be left alone.

@F1Krazy There's an HNQ with about 2000 views right now which has some pretty bad grammar right off the bat (in the first line for example), but I can't suggest an edit because a different edit is pending. What's the wait time on edit reviews usually, and how many are in the queue right now? I considered asking this in the other chat room but that seems to be about beta reviewing people's non-SE related work.

Just opened the queue and the suggested edit you mentioned is the very first one. It does correct the grammar but I think there's still a little more to be done so I'll improve the edit and save

Thanks for flagging it up

Well, on the plus side, the ongoing angry brigade has brought some life to the chatroom and given my flagging finger something to do. Bless you, mods, you're very appreciated.

I'm probably not going to post answers about gender anymore, seems like that's just a recipe for inbox spam...

It's good to feel appreciated, today has been a bit of a drain for us, too, I think. I've left a comment on your answer reminding people of what the comments section is for, and hopefully that at least stems the tide.

You're doing God's work, thank you Krazy.

No problem ^_^

❤️

It's a bit sad to hear that you won't be answering gender-related questions anymore, but I understand completely

It's a subject I absolutely love helping people with, but I'm a bit bummed out that it keeps resulting in fires you lovely mods have to put out, so I'll probably give it a break for a while.

How has recent moderation been going otherwise? Nice to have a mod team around.

@F1Krazy Thanks so much. Is there typically a lot (like dozens) of edits up for review?

@Sciborg It's been going alright. There's usually not all that much for us to do, other than a particular suspended user who keeps creating sockpuppets. Tonight's probably the most work we've had in months

@NikeDattani Nah, usually only one or two. That one suggested review was the only one in the queue

Definitely some excitement for your day, I imagine

...I stand corrected, it wasn't the only suggested edit. I'm sure it said it was

@Sciborg Not sure "excitement" is the right word, but yeah

"hornet's nest" may have been more apt, yes

@F1Krazy Sometimes it says the edit queue is cleared when you review something, but there's still more in the queue that won't appear until some time has passed. However I would have thought mods would see everything in the queue.

If we can, then I haven't found the option for it yet. I wouldn't be surprised if there are things I can do that I still don't know about

It's possible that there's a delay on things showing up in the queue, or maybe the post got fully taken care of and exited the queue before you could reach it and then showed back up later? Not sure how it works.

@Sciborg Sorry to hear about the inbox spam, though this might be because you're taking a very strong stance on a controversial topic. You said "they/them is typically the modern way of referring to an agender..." (emphasis mine), and if you just said its "one way of referring to an agender..." you wouldn't have got as many of those comments. I'd argue that a better way is to use the character's name, meaning pronouns are avoided all together!

That's a fair and constructive point, I think - there's definitely ways to write around using pronouns at all, and in retrospect that's a way I could have worded it better or expanded further. I wrote it fairly briefly without realizing it would cause a fuss, I guess. Might improve it later to include those points.

In particular you'd have to write with care, since something like "Sciborg went to the fridge. Sciborg thought about the options" is a bit... clunky :p

"Sciborg went to the fridge and considered the options within" - much less clunky

Yeah. The main thing would just be taking care to avoid clunkiness, but it's totally doable.

Hi, I have seen that the exchange I was part of (I guess we are talking about the same one) got perceived so extremely upstirring.

Seeing the portrayal of the events involving "spammer", "angry brigade", "hornet's nest" do either leave me thoroughly perplexed, or, maybe, hopefully I can offer a clarification.

I had the intent to post altogether 2 comments. I have posted a later third one when I got personally addressed in a response from someone.

Now, I theorize, we could have been spared much of the drama if I had the brains to develop my comments in a standalone text-editor, and posted them only after they had been polished enough to satisfy my aim for the accurate semantics.

(English is my second language; I seldomly manage to get it accurate enough at the first go. Yeah, another hint I should have taken to use the separate text-editor.)

So, as we know, the SE comment field leaves only 5 minutes to edit: I have exceeded that a few times.

Apropos, does the comment notification show up every time a comment being edited, or just when it's added for the first time?

Anyways, I can imagine how my dedicated attempt to sculpt my messages through several edits, and the occasional re-submitting (when I ran out of the 5 minutes edit-limit), could have been perceived as a barrage.

I hope it's made clear that it was not my intent.

I wish that only the final state of my 3 comments is considered as intended input.

As for lessons learnt, I have used a separate text editor to type up these messages.