Hi mods, I have a question. I've been flagging alternate accounts of a user who's suspended, and it seems like these flags have been correct: the MSE accounts associated with these flags have been removed. But the network profiles associated with those accounts have remained, and in several cases they have used the same network profile to recreate MSE accounts with the same name.

Is there anything I should do on my end besides keeping up my flagging when I notice these (probable) alternate accounts? Is there any resolution on your end to the problem of deleted users using their network profiles to recreate profiles here with the exact same name?

@JyrkiLahtonen QUOTE you at least threatened to write to a grad student's department head unless they change their mind about site policies and started agreeing with you. END QUOTE This is false and dishonest. I demand a retraction. I said I contemplated writing to the department; I never said he should start agreeing with me.

@JyrkiLahtonen Why did you not raise your objections to my reports in 2015 or 2016 or 2017 or 2018?

@MichaelHardy You admitted guilt in threatening to write to the department. That was so far off the range of acceptable behavior that no retractions will be coming.

I supported you in meta in 2017. More often than not your meta missives were not discussing the software. Rather, you accused individual users. This is one of the threads that survived. The discussion there is telling. You called other users a number of things simply because they vote differently from you.

I'm not going to list the adjectives you used, because if I cannot point at an exact reference you may demand that I retract that also.

A retratcion? For God's sake, MH. That's like a felon demanding a correction that - "No, I was not convicted of 7 cases of burglary and 5 break-and-entries. It was 6 of each. Get your facts straight." And, I am not going to reply to any further comments from you.

To any mod, one thing I've noticed occasionally is that with a question which is in some stage of already being, or in the process of, opened or closed, that the question text has had quite extensive additional information added to it by somebody other than the OP, with no comments or other indications the OP wrote this themselves previously. I recall in one case the editor had an answer already & another case they didn't. It's possible the corresponding comment was deleted. ...

(cont.) In any such cases, should I flag this for moderator attention? If so, are there are any particular situations where I should or should not, e.g., I should only do it if the editor has an answer, or perhaps only if they don't have an answer? Since this seems to only deal with moderators, I thought it would be better to ask here than on meta, but please let me know if I should have asked there instead.

I created a room and I tried inviting some people from other SE sites to my room. But now when I go to a particular user’s profile I don’t get the option “invite this user to ....” rather I get just two options : “start a new room with this user” , “search for messages” and “ignore this user”

Why I’m not getting the “invite this user to...” button? Has he blocked me or what?

@Knight Are you present in the room when you're trying to invite the user. (Only the rooms you're in are offered.)

Mathematics Meta: How do I invite a user to chat?

@MartinSleziak Yes

I’m not getting the option “invite this user to...”

Hmm, strange. I am also getting this differently than in screenshot in the linked post when I check your chat profile.

@MartinSleziak Aren’t you also getting “invite this user to ...” thing?

Could this be an explanation?

> This happens when you are in the room which is gallery and the other user (whom you want to invite) has no access for that gallery mode room.

> If you go to other public room, and then refresh the user's profile, you will find an option for invite to for only public room.

From: No invite option in chat

@MartinSleziak Thanks. I got it the option now

I guess it might depend also on the fact whether you and the other user are present in the same room.

This is what I got on your profile while we were both in this room:

Aha! But he wasn’t present in the room at that moment.

After I left the room (and joined anonther one) I got this:

Maybe the user was present in another room that you were logged in?

Yes

I was in “Let’s do some physics” and he was in “The h bar”

I am not really sure when it is shown and when not.

But you have helped me, thank you Marty :-)

Any mod here that I can bother to grant chat.stackexchange.com/users/459916/user766955 explicit write access to chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/52405/the-apl-orchard ?

@JohnOmielan The philosophy of SE is that the users don't matter, only the questions and answers.

As such, it is expected that other users will attempt to improve questions.

Personally, I try to maintain a light touch when editing other's questions, but there are other users who believe that it is entirely appropriate to invent context out of whole cloth in order to prevent poor questions from being deleted.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no clear consensus in the community about whether or not this is really appropriate.

@XanderHenderson It certainly is a contentious practice when an answerer edits to recreate the question they already answered, or proceeds to answer the question they wanted to answer...

@amWhy Exactly. If there were consensus, it wouldn't be contentious.

In any event, @JohnOmielan, you should feel free to flag, but you should also recognize that the moderators have their hands tied to some extent, and may not be able to do much of anything about the behaviour---they seem to have a fairly hands off attitude when it comes to problems for which consensus doesn't exist.

@XanderHenderson I'm just saying, that there is far more sentiment against an answerer editing a question for the sake of their answer, than an otherwise good samaritan strongly editing a question to substantially modify it.

Questions not deemed Community Wiki are not open for grabs. A suggested edit can be correctly refused if it no longer reflects the question asked.

@amWhy In principle, I agree, but I don't believe it appropriate to attempt to infer motives. A selfish answerer and a good samaritan may make the same edits. If the question is improved, and it done in a way which doesn't invalidate other answers which have already been posted, I tend not to get involved.

@amWhy And this is another reason for me not to get involved: if the original asker feels that the edits unduly change the meaning of the question, they can always revert.

"and it [is] done in such a way which doesn't invalidate other answers which have already been posted" ... Therein lies the rub.

In any event, making large edits to questions is, at best, a controversial practice. My feeling is that the moderators are likely to be unwilling to wade into the controversy without reason.

@amWhy Oh, absolutely. Edits which invalidate existing answers are a major problem. Newbie users do this all the time, too.

@XanderHenderson I think we are highly in agreement, then. :-)

@amWhy Yup.

@XanderHenderson Thanks for your feedback. I try to not infer motives myself so, although I also find such relatively large edits by other members than the OP suspicious (although in some cases it could be they are just putting in the text the OP wrote in a comment & the OP has deleted the comment). This is why I haven't flagged any of these yet. However, if I believe it substantially changes the question, invalidates an existing answer, or otherwise appears to be inappropriate ...

(cont.) based on just its contents, I'll then consider flagging it, but this will also depend on any other feedback I get, in particular from any mods.

@amWhy I appreciate your input as well. In addition to agreeing with Xander Henderson's viewpoint, I agree with yours as well. I'll keep it in mind when deciding what to do if I run into any other such similar situations in the future.

@JyrkiLahtonen I did not admit guilt. I said I had considered writing to the department. Maybe that could be viewed as threatening to write to the department. If that's what it was, that's not an admission of guilt.

@JyrkiLahtonen "You called other users a number of things simply because they vote differently from you." Where?? Where is that in the linked thread? I was consistently respectful of those with whom I disagreed in that thread.

@JyrkiLahtonen "Rather, you accused individual users." Where did I do that in the linked thread? Yes, I accused some people, just as you have accused some people. So what? And in the thread you linked, do you find any accusations?

@MichaelHardy Only posting this to admit that comparing you to a criminal was uncalled for. Remembering that this site is not a criminal court. In matters like your offence the mods act more like baseball umpires and such. Why don't you post an apology to Zachary Selk in meta? I will follow suit. The thread I linked to does not contain any accusations. That does not mean that you did not accuse others of, among other things, (academic) dishonesty.

It is simply that those threads were deleted as being too offensive (Najib Idrissi tellingly mentioned "four posts from you since yesterday).

@BillDubuque I think calling up such past actions is not wise. Do you want me to recall some such also? Ripping open wounds that may have healed? Otherwise, I'm afraid amWhy hit the nail on the head. I don't recall too many instances of you practicing what you preach. Of course, you will call this also an "ad hominem". It's only when you criticize others that it falls under the umbrella of "things that may have caused damage, and you should be able to mention".

@JyrkiLahtonen I'm not sure what I would apologize for. For accusing him of bullying after he acted to censor postings only to prevent discussion of a topic that he wanted not to be discussed? For considering taking my complaint elsewhere after the moderators repeatedly did not respond to my reports nor acknowledge their existence even when asked if they were aware of them (they still haven't)?

@JyrkiLahtonen It is only you - not I - who started and continues to argue based on unscrupulous ad hominem attacks. Again, I ask you to please stay on topic and discuss the principles of the matters and stop personally attacking your political opponents based on your self-described narrative models of users (whom you clearly are very far from understanding).

Together at Home: Bill, you and I can't always get what you want... it "don't mean" the sky is falling. Play fair, like you want everyone else to do. That's all anyone asks.

Sorry, I was just listening to it, and I thought you might need to hear it.

@amWhy Please don't ping me any further with such nonsense. This is not a forum for you to engage in unfounded personal attacks on users whom you hold huge grudges against due to prior moderation actions.

@BillDubuque Don't flatter yourself, @Bill, you were a mod for such a brief stint in time that never impacted me, and never played a role in any other actions. Don't be the pot calling the kettle black. And I won't ping you, if you stop pinging me with your ad hominem attacks and other fantasies you may dream of. You were kicked out as a mod after only a few months, and for good reasons.

I'm quite sure you held the shortest tenure of any mod ever on Math.SE, and it ain't no surprise. I'd tell you to go pick on someone else, but I wouldn't wish you on anyone.

@amWhy Again, please have the courtsey to refrain from pinging me with your nonsensical fantasies. THis is not a place for you to exercise your grudges and spew hate on others.

@amWhy Any further such stalking will be reported to the SE team, including all the instances of your vengeful and retaliatory downvoting (which, recall I kindly let you remove instead of reporting in the past - a mistake with hindsight). I still have all that evidence (which can be combined with the recent meta reports and others).

@JyrkiLahtonen That's quite some "logic" you exercise there - where aparently you think it's ok for you to start this mess by viciously personally attacking MH, but it's not ok for me to mention things that I think did damage to the site (without any personal attacks). The mind boggles. But by now it is clear this room is far too partisab for rational discussioin since personal attacks are allowed to stand ....

@BillDubuque Selective memory is such a bliss.

@JyrkiLahtonen Yes, you seem to be in a state of bliss. I suggest you reread the transcript to learn the truth of the matter,

You fool no one anymore, @Bill. Least of all the SE team. Also, I asked you to not ping me. And if you don't respect my wishes ... well that's typical of you.

I leave you two to enjoy your fantasies....bye.

@BillDubuque Good bye. Aren't you "Gone" on math.se?

But my "narrative" of you is based on your actions, not your arguments. What kind of a narrative, in your opinion, describes a user who A) freely downvotes competing answers, B) complains about getting "political" downvotes to their posts, C) will happily answer the umpteenth upvote producing duplicate, D) denies all interest in rep points, E) complains about others being quick to vote to close as automatons, F) but themselves rapid-fire votes to reverse community decisions,

G) complains about others not upvoting their posts enough to protect them from deletions, but H) refuses to upvote other material.

the last option says: ignore this user, it works perfectly!

@Magic_Isa Indeed, @Bill should do that. Thanks for your advice to him. Since I politely asked Gone to not ping me. Thanks for your support for my request.

If such a use wants to seen in light other than self-aggrandizing prick it is hardly the other users fault, if they see such a user in such a light, is it?

@JyrkiLahtonen Sigh, your "narrative" models of others are far worse than I ever imagined. Will you ever learn to argue based on principles rather than personal attacks based on your extremely poor understandings of your political opponents? Sorry, I won't stoop to your level, no matter how much ludicrous nonsense you post. I expected more maturity from folks pushing 60.

@Jyrki That's hilarious, will you be blaming me for covid19 too?

@Bill Why would I do that? But the point, if any, is that our meta-arguments will NOT be seen ONLY as arguments. They are seen in the context of ALL our other actions on the site. You demand that others see their own faults but NEVER reciprocate.

@BillDubuque Then take the initiative and do those more constructive things, and disengage here, now. Novel idea? Take the initiative, for once, Bill.

@JyrkiLahtonen I never claimed to be infallible. Of course we all make mistakes. But let me add one remark. It seems you are trying to build models of others based on your (imperfect) recollection over the past decade here. That's hard enough to do even in real life over a half-year let alone in a virtual decade, e.g. my meta views have changed much since the site evolved. Better to carefully read what people actually say now than attempt to read between the lines over a decade.

Fair enough @BillDubuque. The power of "a (self)reinforcing narrative" at work :-/

I will disengage from here. I have other problems to tend to. Ones I'm better equipped to deal with, I think.

@KReiser keep flagging and mention that it is a respawn (maybe you did anyway, I did not crosscheck for simplicity and to make the advice general). We cannot take action outside our site, but we can escalate to SE or coordinate with other mods if there are cross-site or network issues.

@quid Got it, thank you for the response.

@XanderHenderson I'm not entirely sure what do you mean by inventing context, but if it's simply about adding context that does not the change the initial idea (OP's one) then as the majority is in agreement with this guideline, it's pretty clear that there's also a consensus that that's appropriate.

Regarding the exchanges above, I would like to invite everybody not to "weaponize" events of the more distant past, neither directly nor indirectly. It just degrades the climate and is close to name-calling.

@MichaelHardy Regarding this, I am somewhat of the opinion that there is an "ends justify the means" zeitgeist that is fundamentally behind some problematic aspects of our site. It is a priori good that people are willing to say "Well, since people are doing nothing about this, I'll do something to try and change that." This can give rise to a lot of good endeavours. The problem is when that "something" essentially changes to "anything" and tramples over procedures etc.

@Zacky There is a spectrum of possible edits which one could, and there is a spectrum of opinions on where the line is between acceptable and unacceptable editing. There is no consensus on the issue, though I am sure that if you stake out one extreme or the other, you will find agreement.

But even in those cases of trampling over procedures, there is arguably some end in mind. The thinking about contacting the department of a user... I don't see the objective you had in mind. That the department would contact SE to suspend/ban him? This is... unlikely. That they would themselves take some disciplinary action against him? That is not related with his actions here.

I would also point out that the answer to which you have linked is not really evidence in favor of your view that there is consensus. The thread of comments attached to it is somewhat contentious, and I think that @BillDubuque hit the nail on the head:

I would also point out, @Zacky, that if you reread the transcript if this rooms, I said:

> If the question is improved, and it done in a way which doesn't invalidate other answers which have already been posted, I tend not to get involved.

So, from the tone of your comment, I feel like you think that you are disagreeing with me, or that there is an argument to be had. I don't think that you are going to find that here. As far as I can tell, you are not disagreeing with anything that I said.

@XanderHenderson As I understand mostly, beside the last paragraph, is connected there, that is if one agrees with one part, then they almost automatically agree with the other one (reffering to the paragraphs with bolded words) that's why I infered that there's a consensus.

@XanderHenderson Yes, I agree with most of what you said, not sure how my tone looked and I'm sorry if there was something odd, but I meant no arguing and just wanted to state what conclusion I drawn regarding the consensus.