The Base Camp

Sue

00:29

@Aaron, I like your iceboat question! It's cool, and unique. I don't know if you're asking something you already know, which is definitely encouraged! I've been working on an answer but it's not finished yet. I'm not sure if I'll get it in before JJ does. I'd happily defer of course! I don't want to contradict him in comments, but I actually found a place where a boat permit is not needed. He probably found places where it is.

@CharlieBrumbaugh I don't know about revenge votes. I've had what I felt were those too, although I doubt they'd come from him, and they're not fun. Votes are for the higher-ups to figure out though.

@CharlieBrumbaugh, as for the rude comments, he's far from the only one, and his are often not rude, just abrupt, which is how you defend your own. He's the only person I've ever seen actually say he was going to step away from the discussion, and ask for no hard feelings.

I respect that.

Charlie Brumbaugh

00:46

@Sue yes he often starts fights and then says not going to argue but that doesn’t mean he is stepping away

Aaron

15:59

@Sue I get what you are saying about the abruptness and the linear thinking and all that, and I do agree. However, there are also times where he seems to ignore what people say and keep arguing against them without taking their view into consideration at all. I know lots of people like that, and some of them are my coworkers, so I know it is not uncommon. Maybe it's the thinking style, like you said, but I tend to think it's ignorance.

@Sue And when I say ignorance, I don't mean that in any kind of name-calling way. I mean as in the literal definition, that is: not paying attention to something, literally ignoring certain aspects of what another person is saying. Sometimes people do that because they don't feel like spending the effort to think about it. Sometimes because they assume so strongly that they are right and you are wrong that they don't bother to fully process what you say. Sometimes it's accidental.

If it happens occasionally and the person responds positively when it is brought to their attention (eg: "Hey, you are ignoring what I said about...", "Oh sorry. I see what you mean. I still disagree because... [or 'Ok I guess you're right']"), then it can be obviously accidental. But when a person never acknowledges it at all and always continues full steam ahead 100% of the time, then I stop thinking it might be accidental.

@Sue As for the help I provided him, that is because I often try to treat everyone the same no matter what they have done. So I will try to help him even though he has offended me multiple times. At least, I try to treat them the same... of course, I can't remove myself from my biases 100% either, but I try.

I've done that to people even in the same conversation where they've harassed me before, and it is so funny to watch their confusion when they respond with things like "Why did you just support what I said? I just completely trashed you a minute ago, and I even called you a -------. What is wrong with you?" It also does wonders for ensuring a hatchet doesn't need to be buried in the first place. But the humor is priceless.

Charlie Brumbaugh

16:18

Just went over 40k rep

2

Aaron

16:53

@CharlieBrumbaugh Your fishing survival question from an hour ago is attracting some negative attention. The question is good; I think the attention comes from people having trouble thinking in context. Nonetheless, we might want to clarify some things so they don't need to make the assumptions they should be making given the context. I offered some comments toward that end.

Charlie Brumbaugh

@Aaron Its possible to see the see the Close vote counts here outdoors.stackexchange.com/review/close/history and that means in this case I am not really worried about it. Paparrazo has a low success rate when it comes to actually closing questions

Aaron

17:09

@CharlieBrumbaugh I deleted all my previous comments there and added a revised one. Your comment is now left hanging.

Aaron

18:41

Ugh, the response on that question is just annoying. One of his comments literally is a valid answer. "No, cannot be done. It is not a reliable food supply at all because you cannot catch fish at ocean with that." would be a completely valid answer. Possibly not true (I don't know), but still a full answer. To then say the Q is too broad and cannot be answered when you have just provided a valid answer is just... silly.

So I wondered if we could get more help from a fishing stack exchange, and I was just surprised to find that there is no site for fishing, I didn't even find one by searching "fish" in area 51 proposal site.

Charlie Brumbaugh

19:29

Charcoal HQ

Where smoke is detected, diamonds are made, and we break thing...

23

128

Aaron

20:00

I have seen that charcoal chat before. What is its primary purpose?

Charlie Brumbaugh

20:14

@Aaron I use it to ask other users to help flag spam, in this case outdoors.stackexchange.com/questions/978/…

Sue

@CharlieBrumbaugh, @Aaron, @ab2, if any of you are in the process of deleting that answer Charlie just referred to about tick prevention, outdoors.stackexchange.com/a/20623/5547, would you be so kind as to give that person a break, even if only for a little while? I know there's spammy stuff there, but I think it can be made into a useful answer. Those oils actually work. Rene left him a comment about disclosing. I left two comments.

One is to teach him a bit about our system, and the other is to explain deletion, and also the need for disclosure.

I don't think it would hurt us to give him a little while.

@Rory Alsop, I don't know if you agree from a community member and mod, but I think he does have some knowledge, we just need to teach him the right way to share it within our guidelines. He could be a valuable user here.

@CharlieBrumbaugh I definitely get why you'd send that over to the charcoal room. Can you ask them to hold off, if you agree that he could use some time to come back and make some changes?

@Aaron, thanks for that other ice boat question! I deleted my comment from the original question.

@Aaron Thanks for this thoughtful response about papa. As always, you're "give the person the benefit of the doubt" attitude is appreciated. I didn't see ignorance as an insult or name-calling. It's a useful word that's only judgmental if it's meant that way, which this wasn't. I do like that you take the time to explain though, just because texts only have the tone of voice we attribute to them, and there's no body language.

It's the nature of text, and can make communication difficult!

@Aaron and @CharlieBrumbaugh, I don't mean to say that papa doesn't make comments that can be, and sometimes are, rude, unfriendly, sarcastic. @CharlieBrumbaugh, thank you for pointing out to me that there are times he says he's leaving a discussion but doesn't do so. I shouldn't have been hard on you about that. It invalidates your feelings, and goes against what is sometimes true.

He's bugging you about a question, but I don't see a downvote, which is good.

@Aaron, @CharlieBrumbaugh, @ab2, @RoryAlsop, do you think there's such a thing as "trigger-finger" where comments are concerned? I call it that because we, including me, think something, write it and hit send without really thinking. Sometimes we're sorry later, but either don't go back and delete, or leave it because it's part of a discussion that would leave others reacting to something we might or might not have said. I think sometimes it's a social media problem.

I don't want to generalize because that hurts people's feelings!

About social media our pastor advises us to write something, walk away, come back, read the context again, check your comment for tone of voice, then post it if you still want. I know I ignore those instructions all the time! He freely confesses that he does too! He's not a holier-than-you type of guy!

I don't have any social media accounts, and this is my only form of internet communication, and I love it because it's not a forum!

@Aaron, @ab2, @Willeke, @RoryAlsop, @Aravona, @anderas, I just found something really cool! SO is highly regarded as a Q and A site, and is even used to define it! From What's the difference between and Q and A and forum "The idea of the Q&A plugin is to create a system similar to StackOverflow and other FAQ sites." It then explains the model.

Wikipedia's definition of a Q and A site explains the system and gives examples, including, in the second paragraph on the page, SE. That links to our Wikipedia page, which I had no idea existed!

Stack Exchange

Stack Exchange is a network of question-and-answer (Q&A) websites on topics in varied fields, each site covering a specific topic, where questions, answers, and users are subject to a reputation award process. The reputation system allows the sites to be self-moderating. As of September 2018, the three most actively-viewed sites in the network are: Stack Overflow, Super User, and Ask Ubuntu.All sites in the network are modelled after the initial site Stack Overflow, a Q&A site for computer programming questions created by Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky. Further Q&A sites in the network are established...

Probably everyone else has seen that. It's a recent discovery for me!

@Aaron, interesting and good idea about Fishing. There was a proposal a long time ago, but it got absorbed into TGO. If you search Great Outdoors at Area 51, you'll find that there was a fishing and hunting proposal that got merged with TGO in May of 2011. If you think it's time for a new one, you should start it! People would probably like it.

@Aaron, Area 51 is tougher than ever before, so it might do you good to try and get people from here interested first. If you can't ping them, you can always leave a note on one of their posts asking them to meet you in here. You only get 3 days to have 5 followers and 5 example questions, or it's shut down! area51.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/27938

Aaron

21:10

@Sue Regarding the "give it some time" for that answer under discussion: When it comes to questions, it is hard for me to accept the "close it quick before it attracts bad answers," but I understand that point... however, for answers, there really isn't much reason to give them much more time to respond. Leaving an answer can have side effects, but not much, certainly not as much as leaving a question open. I agree we should give people as much time as is reasonable to expect them to respond.

In my opinion, that is more than a day, as it is easy to go multiple days without checking in.

@Sue Excellent point about saying things you regret later. I have noticed that, even if I was correct in an argument (or so I believe), that I can still regret how I defended it when I look at my argument later on.

Sue

@Aaron Hi!!! I like at least a day, maybe two. If it's not hurting the site, there's nothing wrong with giving that type of grace period. My first post was an answer on another site. It was deleted because I didn't know the rules, but they did leave it up for at least a few days. I didn't come back for three.

@Aaron I'm the same way, especially in here, when you only get two minutes to delete!

Aaron

@Sue Concerning the Wikipedia page: I had not seen the SE wiki page, but it does not surprise me at all that one exists. In fact, I would be surprised if it did not. TGO is not a major presence online (I tried getting at it once by Googling TGO and got no results, so I Googled "The Great Outdoors" and still didn't see it. I had to Google "Stack Exchange The Great Outdoors"), but Stack Exchange itself is a very, very major part of the internet these days.

Sue

@Aaron I didn't realize just how big we were as an internet presence, although I should have.

It's humbling to be part of such a big deal!

Aaron

In fact, StackOverflow, the birthplace of StackExchange, is such a major part of software engineering that nine tenths of software Google questions are answered by a StackOverflow answer being the first Google hit anymore. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the Google crew has changed their algorithm to prefer StackOverflow pages.

Sue

@Aaron Really? That's cool!

I know the SE sites were birthed because SO people thought it would be interesting to branch out a bit.

Reading the Area 51 rules reminds me that they're trying to be very careful about creating new sites. Quality over quantity.

It's a good idea, but I've seen some things that would make good sites go down. I was really hoping Accessibility would make it!

That may have suffered from a lack of specific definition, though.

It was really about technology, which is very important!

Aaron

21:22

It certainly is cool. It does a lot of good in many ways. But it also magnifies the problems. Many of us have become quite fed up with the unyielding nature that is entrenched here, the robotic SE expectations. It's difficult to describe, but you are likely aware of it by our discussion we had recently about "the good of the site" taking precedence over "the letter of the law"...

There are a lot of high-rep and moderator users who seem to want it the other way around, who want the features and the rules exactly as they are.

Sue

@Aaron I did read that discussion, and I think I may have been at least part of the problem there.

Aaron

Part of the problem? I thought you were advocating for the same thing Charlie and I were. That we need to put the people first.

Sue

@Aaron Oh, okay, that's what you meant. Yes, I was advocating for putting people first!

I thought something I said had been interpreted to mean otherwise.

Aaron

The benefit to the users should come before the strict dictates of the regulations. The rules are there for a reason, as they help 98% of the time. But the other 2%...

Sue

I agree. That's one of the reasons we struggle at TGO, especially me, because I'm not sure when that 2 percent has kicked in and I'm not being helpful.

Aaron

21:26

So anyway, my point I was starting to get at is that SE has become such a huge monolithic thing taking over a lot of limelight on the internet that it is difficult to avoid it. So I was going to say that, when I disagree with people on other SE sites metas and some people say "If you don't like how it works here, feel free to leave," that assumes that leaving is easy to do.

So SE becoming so huge is cool, and SE has been very helpful. But it has its flaws just as everything else does, so its flaws are magnified by it having become so colossal.

As an analogy, I live in the US, and I would rather be here than most other places in the world. I think it's relatively a great place, but I think it has some serious flaws. When I talk to people about those flaws, a common response is "If you don't like it, leave."

Sue

@Aaron That's an excellent analogy. Where are you going to go, why would it be better, and how would you even function there?

Aaron

My father even has a shirt that says "If you don't like this flag, I'll help you pack." As if me thinking we problems in our country means that I am somehow against the nation and would be happier elsewhere.

I'm not sure what I'm trying to get at with this mini-rant I appear to have gone on a tangent with. Sorry. It's just what I started thinking of when we got onto how huge StackOverflow and all of StackExchange has become.

Sue

@Aaron What are you sorry for!? As far as I'm concerned, this is a useful discussion! I'm learning a lot!

As for the larger picture, like your dad's t-shirt, you're exactly right.

Aaron

Sorry for the tangent I suppose. I have a habit of getting distracted by whatever my thoughts go to in a conversation and I tend to derail conversations easily. I did that yesterday to Willeke with the language stuff too.

It's like I can't keep focused when we are OH HEY DID YOU SEE THAT SQUIRREL!?

Sue

@Aaron I'm good with tangents. In fact, I go off way too often myself. It's common in women, to make a huge generalization. We have a funny book called Men and waffles and Women are spaghetti! It's so true. I drive my sweet hubby nuts when I change course 50 times in a conversation, whereas my girlfriends either aren't confused or don't care!

Sometimes we circle back, other times we don't!

Ooops, I meant the book was called Men "are waffles", not men "and" waffles. It's about staying in a box to finish a subject, or spilling all over the place like spaghetti does!

Your comment about the squirrel is really funny because I just saw a squirrel jump off my roof and got distracted!

Aaron

21:39

That is hillarious! I don't know if I've ever seen a time when someone made the squirrel joke and someone responded with "Oh, no really, I was just distracted by a real squirrel."

Sue

@Aaron It's true! In fact, I was wishing I had my camera right beside me! I've caught him flying like that before, but I always want to get more pictures!

Aaron

I do use the joke with real squirrels around, but only because I just saw one so I insert "Hey a squirrel!" into the conversation because of it.

As for the ice yacht thing, I wasn't sure exactly how to ask that question. Hopefully we get something good, as I want to follow up a question about water/ice hybrid possibilities. I have a feeling though that some people actually do modify water boats for ice sailing already.

I mean, why not? Supposedly people tried to modify boats with wheels to drive over land even hundreds of years ago. So modifying a boat to skate seems very plausible.

And I've been thinking today about the possibility of one vehicle which transitions on the go from one to the other.

Sue

I think the entire ice boat subject is fascinating. Sometimes we go from question to question about the same subject but related issues, and I think this can be one of those. It's also a huge racing sport.

Aaron

I have neat visions in my head of sailing along water until you hit the ice, then being able to slide up onto the ice, extend skates, and continue on your way. That might not be practical though. Whether it could work or not, the times when anyone would even want to do that might be very rare.

I also want to ask more questions about lenses and mirrors in the survival tag, and I even wrote one up, but I decided they are starting to drift away from what most people consider TGO.

Someone answered my natural lens question saying that I should not discount the possibility of making glass in the wilderness during long term survival. I thought that was not feasible, but that answer has me wanting to get out there and try it.

Sue

About the sailing thing, the idea of making a dual purpose thing is a great idea. It would be practical because I think, though I haven't studied it enough yet, that ice boats have very limited usage because there has to be ice. When it switches to water, you probably fall in! I have to do more research about that though. What made you think of the ice boat category in the first place?

The lenses and mirrors thing is interesting too.

Aaron

21:51

So I wrote up a question yesterday about making glass, but every way I worded it, it looked like it belonged somewhere else, maybe diy.se, but the nature of how I want to do it makes it off topic there. I eventually deleted my text. I might remake it if I can think of a good wording.

Sue

@Aaron I suppose making glass would be a tough sell, but I didn't see it.

If it would be for the purpose of the whole wilderness survival thing, you could probably figure out a way to word it.

We have plenty of things that could belong on DIY but we keep them because they have a function for TGO.

Aaron

My question about beginning sailing had a picture in it. I put a picture in of what I thought was a normal sailboat. It was small enough that I didn't realize it was not a normal sailboat. Rory commented on it to let me know that the picture I used was of an ice yacht, something which I was not even familiar with.

So I did a couple of Google queries on ice yachts, then iceboating, and it led to the rest.

As far as the usefulness of a water/ice transition vehicle, if someone truly needed that capability they could just use a hovercraft. Those are literally all terrain. Land, water, ice, swamp, everything. The military even has hovercrafts that can carry troops over mine fields.

So a hovercraft would be the tried and true method, as it could do what I'm talking about and more. But they are so noisy, require fuel, and just don't seem as elegant as sailing over water and ice by the wind.

I envision someday getting out on long voyages, including over water, free from the hassles and stresses of civilization, to take a break from everything. And I have been dreaming up various ways to do it.

Sue

We have duckboats, bostonducktours.com, which are basically an amphibious vehicle, so that's not the same thing, but they're fun.

@Aaron You should definitely go on your voyage. It amazes me how many people on our site go off into the woods for days on end.

We had small sailboats when I was growing up. Daddy was a rebel and always went out in thunderstorms. The Coast Guard brought him in one time and Mom was furious!

He wanted to go on a great adventure, but was too busy, so he did shorted adventures.

He was a doctor and when he retired at 72 he wanted to join Doctors Without Borders, but they had a cutoff age of 70. It was really too bad!

Aaron

Unfortunately there are so many restrictions and obstacles. Some of them are understandable, as we need to be good stewards of nature. But still, it just seems like you can't go out to get away from civilization for a while without... well, without pouring over the laws of civilization to make sure you don't accidentally get arrested. And then you also need to be careful that you don't become lunch for the bear civilization.

Sounds like my kind of guy.

Sue

Definitely!

Aaron

22:04

It seems like going out on the ocean 100 miles from any land mass is the only way to truly get away and take a complete break from civilized life. That is one of my reasons for turning to it recently.

For example, I like Lake Ontario, and I am tempted to take a canoe out and spend a weekend out on the water. But I don't know a lot about how that works. Would the coast guard come out and tell me I can't just sleep in a canoe on the lake? Would the weather tell me that? Is it even safe, or do I risk getting run over by a speed boat or commercial ship, or perhaps just be an annoyance to them? Not sure, but all the uncertainties are part of my point.

Maybe I should ask some of these as questions right on our site here. And maybe that will lead to a fun adventure.

Sue

@Aaron Those are all interesting questions about the canoe. Other people would definitely like to know, especially because you have a specific lake in mind, so it wouldn't be too broad.

Although actually those are a bunch of questions which can stand on their own.

Have you done much traveling? People here are always going to exotic places, or already live in exotic places.

Aaron

Not in a TGO sense. Just your conventional car traveling, and only to other locations in the US and to Canada. My outdoor experience is, unfortunately, almost exclusively limited to NY state. Fortunately we have a lot of variety within the state.

Sue

New York definitely has a lot of variety! What area are you? The lake region is gorgeous, and there are lots of other scenic areas too. My son and his family live in Poughkeepsie, which has taken me forever to learn how to spell! They lived in Manhattan for years. Way too noisy for me!!!! Then they had kids and moved to the suburbs.

My dad grew up in the city, and we had family in Albany that we visited frequently.

Aaron

22:27

I'm in Oswego county at the moment, which extends right up to lake Ontario. But I'm moving soon. Most of the places I've lived are in NY, generally central NY.

And I just put up the sleeping in a canoe question.

Sue

The central region is pretty. I'll have to look up Oswego county. My squirrel is digging a hole for a nut. Did you know that squirrels dig holes and pretend to bury a nut so other critters won't steal the nuts from the real holes? Aren't animals amazing!!! I'll go check out that question!

I have an interesting question (to me!) ready to post too.

I like that question! Hope you don't mind, I added a tag to it!

Aaron

Wow, I did not know that squirrels do that. I think I've seen that and wondered "What does that squirrel think it's doing? Has it been hit in the head?"

Sue

@Aaron That's awesome that you've actually seen it!

Aaron

And I probably should be going. I asked a question on ServerFault.SE and was hoping for an answer on it before I left work, but at this point I'm just wasting time and probably can't claim it as work time for the last hour.

Sue

I should go too! This has been fun. Thanks!

Aaron

22:33

ditto

Good night

Sue

Good night back!

Charcoal HQ

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