@amWhy maybe it's best to let this sit for a while. I understand how you did not like this situation. But being put on the spot to greet back can also be uncomfortable. Moreover joining a room is not a very concious act.

I sometimes feel it would be better if the transcript were default and joining would need to be an active action.

@quid I guess I don't get that, because I choose to be where I am in chat; occasionally I forget to "leave". But I'm not talking about heavily shadowed or almost indiscernible usernames/icons; I'm talking about the bright, not faded, users/icons in a room, even in this case that you link to. If there's another way a user can unconsciously enter a room in the first place, I am completely clueless about that "way". I enter chats very deliberately.

I can default to pretending people aren't there, even when their icon is lit up in the row of users in the room; but that would be ingenuous, and further, prevent some shy newcoming onlookers from engaging, simply for the fact of not being noticed or welcomed.

@amWhy I do not want to come off as making up excuses for a situation I did not follow in detail, but the "seen" in chat is as far as I know not very reliable.

Of course one had to join at some point, but what happens then can depend on various technical circumstances.

@amWhy indeed, I think it is a positive how you try to engage users that join a room, but it seems to me there are some users that at least at times just want to follow chat passively.

I'm not talking about the "seen in chat"... I'm talking about being in a room, where someone's icon floats to the row of users "in" the chat room, all lit up (hence "joined" ) and this happening multiple times daily for more than a month, in multiple chat rooms, ironically, the very chatrooms I happen to be in when the user "floats" in (joins) the room, all lit up...

If the icon floats in that's different, I agree.

@quid I'm sorry If I'm sounding, or coming across as being difficult.

The point about some users preferring read-only stands though. If somebody clicks on a room in the side bar to see what's going on, they will automatically join. But maybe they did not really/fully want to join but just check what's going on. Maybe to see if they want to join the conversation.

@amWhy this is not the case.

You raised a legitimate concern.

@ManShunJohnMa, are you or your account associated with the account JohnMa?

And as Martin said it is perfectly possible to do this 'silently' (which might be more considerate) but it is not the default.

@amWhy that's weird, you are right.

@quid This user, along with another user, have very recently been involved in the deletion of questions I answered, one back in 2013. So I have reason to believe that his presence is not necessarily innocent.

@amWhy yes, I understood that.

Interestingly, the user @ManShunJohnMa has deleted (or was deleted,) within minutes of your comment to my comment to them.

To be clear, behavior like ostentatiously following around some user will not be tolerated.

@quid one of JohnMa, or ManSunJohnMa, has been present in virtually all chats I've regularly visited for at least the past six weeks (I'm sure it's been longer than that, but there is absolutely no doubt that they've floated in chats in which I have spoken, commented for at least 6weeks now. John Ma has also been involved in recent deletions of question (some very old) that I had answered. So I'm not crying wolf!

Please note that less than a moments of noting ManShunJohnMa was in this room, and my asking him if the account was associated with JohnMa, and your reply, ManShunJohnMa's account was deleted. That account has been hanging around almost as much as has the account with username JohnMa. I hope you can check out recently deleted accounts

This is the chat account of ManShun(JohnMa): chat.stackexchange.com/users/312835/man-shun-john-ma. Clicking on this the link to this user in mathstackexchange (parent site), yields "Page not found."

Anyway quid, I don't want to keep you up. This is all too much of a coincidence. I do have reason to believe I'm be stalked in chatrooms, and targeted on main.se.

@amWhy I took notice of this. I will pay attention to the described phenomenon.

@amWhy The account manshunJohnma is also mine, @amwhy. That's the id I have when I am using the phone. What's wrong with this?

I see that this is still discussed. I'll add that I often do the following: I'll join the room, leave a message or response and leave immediately. (In other words, I'll use chatrooms sometimes similarly as the comments on the main site, but not attached to a specific question.)

One reason why I do this is that I do not like excessive pings. (I think that I have made this clear a few times, so people who often talk to me often in chat probably know this.)

I prefer pings which are made for a reason. (It's perfectly ok if I am pinged to see something which needs my attention. And also I'm fine with ping from replies - this is a useful feature since it makes clearer what a user is responding to exactly. But I do not like something like: "Hi @MartinSleziak lol!")

This is a reason why I often leave quickly after saying something in the room. (Hanging around in chat encourages others for random chit-chat and random pings.)

And this is also the reason why I avoid main chat room. (And in the past when I added a user among ignored users, it was usually because of many pings.)

I have digressed a bit - and I have mentioned something similar in this room a few days ago.

But since the way people use chat are discussed, I've added explanation for my "strange" behavior in chat.

@amWhy The parent account of the account with the longer name has already been deleted for quite some time.

I am confused, @MichaelGreinecker When I use my phone to log in I can still see the name pops into the room.

As you can see now

@JohnMa I only see JohnMa. But the chat-account ManSunJohnMa still exists: chat.stackexchange.com/users/312835/man-shun-john-ma The parent user does not, however: math.stackexchange.com/users/451122/man-shun-john-ma

@MichaelGreinecker So are you saying that the parent user (instead of the chat-account) has been deleted long ago?

@JohnMa Yes. It was merged with your current account, to be precise.

If you want, I can delete the last part of my last message.

So did I request it or do you guys happen to do it? (I can't remember, sorry) @MichaelGreinecker

I'm not sure what users themselves can do, but the message I get when clicking on the account contains (plus the IP I removed):

So I guess this was at least on request. I also see n option to merge chat accounts.

@JohnMa

So can I also request to merge the chat account? Thanks. @MichaelGreinecker

@JohnMa I don't see an option to merge chat accounts. I also have a hard time changing parent users, but I do little chat-moderation.

No problem, thanks. that's not a big problem anyway. @MichaelGreinecker

@JohnMa Community mods might still be able to help according to the meta.SE-post: meta.stackexchange.com/a/283432/194588

@JohnMa is there any information attached to the other chat account that you need to be preserved? If not we could just delete it (I think).

The other thing to do could be to simply log out of chat once on your phone.

I mean to do it "one time" not each time.

It is plausible there is just some old cookie around that makes things confusing.

@quid Can you delete the chat account? The account has too low a rep that it cannot even leave a comment in chat so I can't imagine anything is left there. Thanks.

@JohnMa it's gone.

For documentation the links to the account given above chat.stackexchange.com/users/312835/man-shun-john-ma now yields and error.

@quid That's great, Thanks. Now I use my phone and it automatically switch to my usual account. Thanks again.

@JohnMa you are welcome.

@quid, @DanielFischer: Any update on the season of hats?

I checked Meta SE, and searched via "Winter Bash 2017", and only found a post from Jan 2017 about winter bash 2016 and how to improve winter bash 2017. ...

@amWhy rumor has it that it'll start on December 13th, but I have no direct info so far.

see meta.stackexchange.com/questions/303371/…

@quid Ahh, yes. I also found the winter bash 2017 countdown page. Confirms the "rumor"!

@amWhy In my mind this was the rumor, though. As far as I understand it is an undocumented site somebody dug up. I mean SE could just change the count down, they did not announce it yet.

@quid Ahhh, thanks for the added info.

But on second thought I'd assume if they would consider this they would not have waited for so long without contradicting it.

@Sebastiano Have you read the link you were given to the Help Center? Why are questions no longer being accepted from my account?. There, you will find an explanation, along with measures you can take to improve your questions and other ways to contribute to the sight.

Hey, @anon! Glad to see you here!

@Sebastiano It would also be a good idea to read the frequently asked questions about asking, e.g.: how to ask a good question?, What kind of questions should I avoid?, and more.

Oops, @quid, perhaps you'd rather answer, as a mod.

Being a lazy git I am always happy if somebody else does my work @amWhy :-)

@quid :P Unfortunately, I can't edit the last word of my comment to Sebastiano: Should be "site" and not "sight"! hides in embarrassment...

@quid Jack is still targeting questions which I've answered, one, just an hour ago, which he edited. Just hit the review queue today, also closed another today. If this kind of behavior is allowed, then there are no holds on me doing what I always do, closing poor questions, (third all time reviewer in the review queue), And I'll find them like Jack has always found this, I guess: Target a user... go through each and every answer, review the question answered, vote to close.

He did that with specific askers, repeatedly, submitting 20 something votes to close, or delete, from one user alone. Is it okay to serial close one user, or questions from one user, but not okay to serially downvote? I will leave this site over this matter. I find the behavior unacceptable.

One question that came up, and I had answered, I did vote to close. But in every case of questions closed where I had been an answerer, it is Jack who initiates it, downvotes, waits for closure, if it comes (even if closure is 2 months later, and jumps in to initiate deletion. I know there is only so much a mod can do. I have never ever encountered such blatant targeting in the post. I can not remain at a site where one user, angry with another user over a disagreement about one ...

post back on Sept 30th, leads to such retaliation and vindictiveness. It's rather scary, when Jack is still retaliating more than two months after the only disagreement we've had over the last almost 7 years.

@amWhy I am rather against this. Yet many are not that much against it if the votes themselves stay reasonable. On the targeting if you: could you link the post.

@quid The earlier examples are stated in a post on meta, this summer, about taking care about repeatedly posting as many as 20 questions/answers on Crude, that it was no more appropriate than focusing on one user and downvoting. He then posted to meta asking about this, posting an enormous list of questions he voted to close, all from one user, asking if there was such a thing as "serially closing," or "serially deleting" posts from one user or another. I'll try to find it.

Anyway, on two questions I answered, today alone, he not only voted to close, but bumped two questions from 2014/14 by editing them today. Anyway, I asked mods to comment or answer the meta post he posted, and none did.

@quid Yes that's it.

@quid I see you posted, as a mod-in-the-making... But he had already been submitting strings of 6, 7, 8 posts for closure/deletion in CRUDE for a a couple of months prior to that, and after that, until Sept 30, where I commented on an answer he gave, critically, the question was poor, was closed twice, deleted twice, undeleted, and reopened due to Jacks preoccupation. And come Oct. 1, he never came back to CRUDE, despite my invitations back, that we missed his contributions.

I'm not here for this; and I find it troublesome that a user like Jack is being permitted to target, not just me, but others long before me.

I found at least one of the edits. The edit should have been avoided.

On the general subject:

To focus closures and deletions of questions on those that got answered by a specific user is in my opinion inadmissible.

At the very least it is very poor form, but in a clear cut case I would say it is more than that.

The problem might be that it is hard to track and to prove.

@quid I understand that; and it's the main reason I feel frustrated, not angry, but anxious, dealing with this, and worrying that there's nothing I can do, and nothing that mods feel they can do. This is the only reason I say that I can't stick around to see this continue. I'm not angry with you or the mods, or almost anything about the site. But it's been feeling, with Jack's actions, at risk. And I can't see going on each week to see this persist.

Thanks, @quid. I really, really do appreciate your time in discussing this with me. It's a lot easier to bear such activity when someone, like you is really listening, and concerned.

@amWhy if you document it, I could look in it.

Just a list of concerned questions would be sufficient.

I'll try to keep track, and see what's happening over the next two days, documenting if anything is amiss. I rarely know about the questions being closed, then deleted, until upon deletion, and the record on my rep for the day. I've encountered two today only through reviews, and history of reviews. But I'll work on it.

Please keep me updated @amWhy

Here's another from 2013. To go back four years, working methodologically through my posts (most of which have been 2013 thus far), I think is wrong. There are plenty of current questions, for anyone interested in maintaining or improving quality, that could be addressed, more than enough that to justify obsessing over posts from 4 years ago, day after day. math.stackexchange.com/questions/574749/…)

(I just encountered the above in the review history, where Henning voted to keep it open, about 10 minutes ago.)